[ Lena Tkachenka Fabrizio Pollara ] Master project University of Madrid
[ Landscape architecture ] prof. Ana Luengo Anon prof. Jose Luis Esteban Penelas
2016
[ Palermo ]
[ Waters and shadows. Ways to hide ] Palermo, a sultry sicilian city, exposed to the sun and saulty waters. The historical city centre looks like a dense mass of houses interspersed by tiny courtyards. Dense urban morphology is crystallising here throughout the senturies. Streets get narrower to widen suddenly revealing their real nature, their vocation, turning into the informal extension of inhabitants’ most intimate spaces. Is there a possibility to escape from the stone city heat? In the surreal world, standing burning at the midday afrikan sun, we would imagine the sounds of crushing pavement , poured through its cracks water, and a narrow water channel, coming from the underground, released from the pressing soils. Papyrus plants are growing all over it, as it was once in the wild and uncontrollable rivers of Palermo.
[ Alena Tkachenka_visualization ]
The city needs oasis. Some its spots, such as piazza Bellini, are mostly used for parking and transit. It’s possible to make it green, but which kind of cultural stability will it bring? What is the reason for the Garden to be there? The chosen spot, besides its architectural and cultural density, has something mezmorising just 10 meters under. It’e one of the secret is numerous water channels, used in ancient times for the water supply and for the secret meetings of political fugures and groups. Some secrets of Palermo need to be unvailed.
What are the hidden spaces? The greatest memory of a city. Palermo in the case of a project and the relation with its two rivers. Their presence, along with the favourable geographical presence of a harbour, contributed in making this settlement the most famous and productive commercial spot all over the Mediterranean basin. The elongated and repaired geographical features of the latter, contributed in making it a safe place for the incoming trading ships. In the ninth century Arabs conquered Western Sicily and Palermo keeping unchanged the morphology of the primitive structure, became a charming and picturesque capital, background for mosques and minarets, interspersed by water courses and basins, souks and lush gardens.
project location
From a cultural and technological point of view, qanats, a network of underground water supply basins, are the greatest inheritance of such a prosperous era. Starting from the fourteenth century, such a vast port was no longer needed and rivers had already been covered to increase the availability of the buildable land portion; anyway some remembrances of their former presence are still appreciable within the street configuration (especially where the rivers bed were actually located) as well as in the terrain stratigraphy in correspondence of the still nowadays existent portions of the city walls, where once they were surrounded by the rivers waters.
In comparison with the natural landscape, the Arab interventions are tiny as ants pathways... Nevertheless, the significance of these tiny spaces in all times gives them another metaphysical scale. The research is aimed at reconnecting all these elements into one coherent unique system with the ground street level of the city in a way that it will make the city user rethink and experience the urban fabric according to elements that are not patently shown since they belong to a former hidden version of it which is not defined by the rules of the usual streets layout.
project location
The underground level happens to become an element which provide us with some limits but freedom at the same time. The new realm of Palermo can be an “upside down city� with its own rules, without considering the crystalline nature of the old town. A water supply network can connect all the city. Historically interesting is to mention that at the glorious times when secret group, Beati Paoli, used to defend the weak from the vexations of the city despots, this network made out of the qanat channels and the catacombs were used to host secret meetings among the members sect. What is more important to understand, is what kind of material surrounds the channels.
project location
Detailed analysis of the soil composition gives more comprehencive view on the design and proves the possibility of the safe intervention in the historical part of Palermo.
project location
The thickness of calcarenites in the chosen spot is from 10 to 20 m. Calcarenite is a type of a limestone which consists of grains, shells, dolomites, etc. It’s a very firm material and is applicable for bearing loads.
project location
Clayey sands at the project spot have the thickness from 10 to 20 m . This type of a soil is less adaptable for the stable uilding construction.
project location
Subsoil composition at the spot has depth between 2 and 6 m. It is an average number and shows that the river was not going through in the past.
[ Mysterious qanat on the ground. Piazza Bellini ] The project in Piazza Bellini is about the creation of a new public space filled with water and plants according to the location of the old qanats- the Arab water supply system. The main concept has to do with the creation of a new landscape language which revives the identity of a place. In the case of Piazza Bellini is all about the remembrance that once Palermo had a river, and was full of water and nature life. The supply of water comes from the refurbished water system located exactly under the designed pavilion. It provides nutrition for plants which grow within a flooded place and which were once inhabiting the rivers side of Palermo (Papireto river). This continuity of natural sustainable resources is very relevant for a city.
[ Alena Tkachenka_visualization ]
All solutions together, in fact, provide a better climatic environment in the square. In terms of visual language we create a frame for the historical values of the square. It underlines the buildings, giving a new way of staring at and perceiving them. The passage reminding of a water system underneath the ground, provides various places to rest and enjoy the surroundings with different approaches. The latter with more intimacy alternates with passages and open spaces . The concept of a “water
A research project the spiritual and physical understanding of flooded� square provides an area with the possibility to playabout with water, plants, earth.
stone through architecture. Transmissions of heat, a use of labyrinth as a forming structure.
Benches represent an icon of thick walls of qanat engineering structures buried under the ground, repeated on the ground surface. The level of water within this “metaphoric” channel varies from 5 to 20 cm. The metaphoric passage continuously turns into a real passage “underground”: the horizontal connection suddenly becomes vertical.
The open space of a staircase provides another type of experience: the shiny bright “outside” becomes a dark “inside”. The space underground connects the “garden” on the surface and the real qanat system . Exhibition hall, placed 9 meters under, gives an unusual space for art installations and and makes possible to enter the real channel, to walk through the secret catacombs of Beati Paoli.
[ Alena Tkachenka_section ]
Palazzo Delle Aquille
A city-user is forcedly brought to physically interact with the water: the green passage cuts the square from angle to angle. A new garden as a monument to the vital in the past engineering structure, has to be a physical obstacle for people. In this case interaction is real and reasonable. However, it’s not a compromise to the pleasant use of the space, enriched by healthy microclimate, given by water and by planted Papyrus species, as a quote to Papireto river.
[ Alena Tkachenka_plan ]
Santa Caterina
beam structure
rails for walking
pathway
bench
pathway
Antica Pizzeria Bellini
patio
entrance to an exhibition hall
Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio
[ A church of Water ] Exhibition hall. -8.5 m level
[ Alena Tkachenka_visualization ]