1) PRAGUE AND ITS FRONTIER OF URBAN AND NATURAL LANDSCAPE This project is rethinking inflexible urban planning with attempts to visualize alternative future for the city expansion and its evolution within existing administrative borders. Choosing Prague as an example of the city tissue following local geographical specifics that cause sudden alternations of urban landscape and wild nature, the project results in a manifesto of new urban frontier that utilizes the close proximity of urbanized and vacant neighborhoods and illustrates practical applications of this researchbased vision in future city planning.
2) ADMINISTRATIVE BORDER OF PRAGUE From an administrative viewpoint, the border of Prague is defined as a circular trajectory on a map. It has a diameter large enough to absorb the whole richness of local geomorphology with its rhythm of urbanized clusters and vacant natural zones. Hence on many places on its perimeter, crossing the administrative border is only noticeable on road-signs.
design of a new city frontier
City of Prague
map of The Czech Republic
3) GEOMORPHOLOGY AND HUMAN HABITATS Geographically, Prague is known for its plateaus and valleys divided by steep slopes of diverse rocky landscape. From an urban viewpoint it means densely urbanized islands surrounded by wild nature in areas of hardly accessible land that were not suitable for human settlements.
ADMINISTRATIVE BORDER NATURAL BORDER
administrative border of Prague is just a trajectory on the map
natural grow of human habitats folowing geographical features of Prague
clusters of urban islands in Prague
4) GREEN CHOCKS
For that reason, specific qualities of the city can be experienced: Uninhabited green zones of either abandoned wild nature or city forest stretched away from outside of the city border deep into the city center in parallel with an urban tissue with high population density. For citizens this means that one can travel from outside the city to its very center without even entering suburban or urban zones. And vice versa, for someone fleeing from the civilization this phenomena means to exchange tedious journey to the official city borders for only a little step aside from built to un-built land while staying within a perimeter of the metropolis.
6) NEW CITY FRONTIER MANIFESTO a typical example of suburbanisation on the administrative border
In a reaction to above findings we propose to reevaluate existing borders of Prague. New borders should be defined through city’s tangible features and its topology rather then politics of landowners and commercial development. This newly defined frontier will have a potential to heal numerous symptoms of contemporary cities including “the urban sprawl” and depopulation of the city centers by combining qualities of countryside and urban living.
green zones streching away from the city centre
allotment gardens in gaps between urban and natural landscape
5) DEGRADATION OF EXISTING VALUES
Sadly, such desirable and precious features are nowadays highly underestimated. Instead of treated as special zones within the city, the edges of vacant green areas are due to their unsuitability for conventional city development defined as residual zones and in better cases left abandoned. In worse but also more common cases such areas are being degraded to suburban and suffer from the same symptoms as “the urban sprawl” on the actual administrative border of Prague.
8) TRANFORMED BORDERS
7) CLEARLY DEFINED EDGES Imagine a densely populated city that does not stretch to low-density suburbs but ends up suddenly as a medieval town ends with its border wall. Since we do not need any more to protect the city by such physical barrier, we can redefine its border by an inhabited structure with two facades: One looking to the city and the other one opening itself to nature. Following terrain features, such newly erected structures merge the differences between manmade and natural landscape while pointing out the benefits citizens can harvest from both sides of this frontier.
During 19th century industrialization when Prague grew out from its former baroque fortification the absence of greenery in the city was resolved by reconstructing baroque border walls into a green parks stretching around the city. A manmade structure that served to divide turned ultimately into an element that connects the city with nature and improves a quality of life. Through this project we propose another wave of transformation that comes together with mixing traditional typologies and fall of former city zoning. Once again the perception and function of city borders changes in order to improve the life of its citizens.
inhabited structure in nature; Halen, Atelier 5
9) NO MORE LOST OPPORTUNITIES In our manifesto, we aim to stay universal and open. However, we verify this broadly applicable concept on one specific location with specific needs and specific features. We use the building program and a site of recently built commercial and office center in Prague and create utopian project that clearly demonstrate alternative scenarios for so many similarly lost opportunities in the current city development.
tranformation of baroque borders in Prague
10) CASE STUDY
location of the commercial centre BEFORE / AFTER the city development
hypermarket _busy main road _commercial zone
Our case study is a city hybrid that blends conventionally disconnected typologies. Its main function is a mediator between manmade and natural landscape. Its purpose is to merge qualities of living in the countryside together with positives of living in a vibrant metropolis. Individual typologies that were in the commercial project indifferently spread on the site are now utilizing the most they can from each other and from proximity of both environments: Supermarket and offices located on the north are exposed to the main road to become “a commercial banner” of the project and at the same time function as a noise protection for a leisure time area located in the middle of the plot. The leisure zone is an extension of a city park with manicured greenery, places to laisure and sport activities. An entrance gate to the city park is made by a cluster of little businesses and culture assets connecting the supermarket on the north and semi-private patios of residential complex on SouthEast that gradually blends with steep slopes of wild greenery on South and provides its inhabitants direct contact with nature and with the city amenities at the same time.
offices
retail/culture
We believe that such integrated structure will become new city center and attractor of activities that is not in the middle of an urban tissue but on its natural border. This former periphery of the city will grow to densely built-up area that is more cultural and attractive then its suburban counterpart located on the actual administrative border.
alternative project for the selected site
housing TYPICAL URBAN SPRAWL
NEWLY DEFINED FRONTIER
city park city
offices
parking
countryside
_old pilgrim road _contemplation zone
_the main axis: _pedestrian and roller_skates road _recreation zone
alotment garden
housing family house
shopping mall
border line
park extension
wild greenery
private gardens
11) BIRTH OF NEW STRATEGIES FOR THE CITY DEVELOPMENT Since Prague is perceived as a poly-centric neighborhood of urbanized islands, the new city border is a system of buildings that enclose these islands and define new links between geographical features, urban development and connection with the main road
perspective section of new residential units
extension of the city park
siteplan showing the typical rythm of urban and nonurban
needs of contemporary lifestyle in the city. interior view “from the city to nature “
A city structure designed and described in the project is a tangible result of the above manifesto and an example of restoration of old pilgrim’s path
its practical implementation in the city context. Its final form, however, is designed by an individual and although its principals, purpose and functioning are strictly reflecting the vision of the new city frontier, in hands of other designers, urbanists and architects the building might acquire completely different form. Hereby, this manifesto
Connection to public transport and future metro station
gives a birth to a principle transforming a city development not only in Prague but in many other cities.