Productive grounds. Transalpine trajectories by RE-CYCLE ITALY

11 PRODUCTIVE GROUNDS TRANSALPINE TRAJECTORIES

PRODUCTIVE GROUND TRANSALPINE TRAJECTORIES

EDITED BY MOSÉ RICCI JÖRG SCHRÖDER

Edited by Mosé Ricci and Jörg Schröder Design and Setting Sarah Hartmann, Jeannette Sordi, Sofia Hanina

Progetto grafico di Sara Marini e Vincenza Santangelo Copyright © MMXIV ARACNE editrice S.r.l. and the editors Texts by kind permission of the authors. Pictures by kind permission of the photographers/holders of the picture rigths. All rights reserved. www.aracneeditrice.it info@aracneeditrice.it via Raffaele Garofalo, 133/A–B 00173 Roma (06) 93781065 ISBN 978–88–548–7372–8 I diritti di traduzione, di memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento anche parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo, sono riservati per tutti i Paesi. Non sono assolutamente consentite le fotocopie senza il permesso scritto dell’Editore. I edizione: settembre 2014

PRIN 2013/2016 PROGETTI DI RICERCA DI INTERESSE NAZIONALE

Research Units Università degli Studi di Genova Leibniz Universität Hannover

INDEX

Productive Grounds: Transalpine Trajectories Mosé Ricci, Jörg Schröder

METHOD

DESIGN

1 Recycle Footprint Mosé Ricci

2 Recycling Genoa: from waste to footprint Sara Favargiotti

3 Strategy Chiara Olivastri

4 Recycle devices. Strategic operations. Jeannette Sordi

5 Visions. On Roger Federer recycled as a designer Alberto Bertagna

6 Process and Communication - (infr)actions: cultures of making Raffaella Fagnoni

METHOD

RANSFER

7 Context Hanover - Shaping Uncertainty Maddalena Ferretti

8 Framework Hanover - Places as urban assemblage Emanuele Sommariva

9 Scenarios Hanover - Visions for initial spaces Sarah Hartmann

10 Transalpine Trajectories Jörg Schröder

PART I - H A N O V E R S E M I N A R

RE-CYCLE MANIFESTOS 1. Temporary Devices

2. Hybrid Infrastructures

3. Ecological Reclamation

4. Building Transformations

5. Temporary Uses

100

6. Urban Agriculture

102

7. New Grids

104

8. Water Design

106

9. Cultural Reuse

108

10. Energy Factories

110

SITES OF INTERVENTION 116

1. Sopraelevata Jeannette Sordi

122

2. Terralba Sara Favargiotti

130

3. Multedo Chiara Olivastri

PART II -

GENOA WORKSHOP

RECYCLE DESIGN PROJECTS I. SOPRAELEVATA 01 Sempre Di Domenica Xavier Ferrari, Theresa Gernreich, Silvia Sangriso

140

02 Sottoelevata Matteo Ferri, Francesca Marina, Isabel Niestroj

144

03 Inter(attiva)zione Riccardo Posadino, Giorgia Tucci, Regna Will

148

II. TERRALBA 04 EcoProCycle Benjamin Grudzinski, Sara Marino, Arianna Spinale

150

05 Artrailway

154

Cybell Bassil, Carolina Queirolo, Chiara Toso 06 Univercity Hall Agegnehu Girma, Kira-Marie Klein, Caterina Lavarello III. MULTEDO 07 PARCulture Lisa Leitgeb, Fabio Torterolo

158

162

08 Go(a) To The Next Level Giulia Ferrari, Sara Guasco, Lena Rospunt 09 ReMaking_Lab Laura Nazzari, Martin Paladey, Benedetta Pignatti 10 R(E)nvironment Karolina Kernbach, Henri Mezini, Mirko Roselli

166

168

170

Lindener Hafen, Hannover Photo by Sarah Hartmann

INTERNATIONAL RECYCLE APPROACHES

Eixample and Foce: Re-naturalise urban plots Manuel Gausa

176

Llobregat and Albenga: Recycle metropolitan parks Manuel Gausa

186

Re_Form Matera, Re_Using the Modern Maria Valeria Mininni

194

HANNOVER

genova network

VENICE re-cycle research coordinator

1. GENOA recycle italy international workshop

BARCELLONA

EMILIA ROMAGNA re-cycle italy law proposal for planning

ROME re-cycle italy final exhibition and symposium NAPOLI recycle italy international workshop

Recycle Genoa Network

PALERMO recycle italy international workshop

MATERA

INTRODUCTION

Lagaccio, Genoa Photo by Alberto Terrile

PRODUCTIVE GROUNDS TRANSALPINE TRAJECTORIES

Professor Mosé Ricci > Università degli Studi Di Genova Professor Jörg Schröder > Leibniz Universität Hannover

The Book "Productive Grounds" is based on two workshops held in 2014 in Hanover and Genoa and supplemented by a thematical framework provided by the researches of the Università degli Studi Di Genova and the Leibniz Universität Hannover. The objective of both workshops was to rethink urban grounds in order to create new relationships between the city and the environment, landscape and ecology. Genoa was taken as a Case Study, because in the current period of economic uncertainty, the city offers a clear potential to think about the recovery of dismissed or underused infrastructures and central, but underused areas. The general goal of the RECYCLE Genoa Lab is to contribute with different visions to the mapping process, currently undergoing within the Italian National Priority Research Project (PRIN) RECYCLE Italy: new life cycle for architectures, infrastructures and landscape, led by Dipartimento di Scienze per l‘Architettura (UNIGE) and supported by Institut für Entwerfen und Städtebau (LUH), with the financial support of the DAAD initiative Hochschuldialog mit Südeuropa.

METHODOLOGY

Genoa Recycle Footprint, elaboration Recycle Genoa Lab

RECYCLE FOOTPRINT Mosè Ricci

> Università degli Studi Di Genova

Recycling means putting things back into circulation, reusing waste materials that have lost their value and/or meaning. It is a practice that makes it possible to reduce waste, to generate less trash, to cut the costs of disposal, and to contain the costs required to produce new goods. In other words, recycling means creating new values and new meanings. Another cycle and another life. This is where the propulsive contribution of recycling lies: it is an ecological action that pushes what exists into the future by transforming waste into something that figures prominently. Architecture and the city have always recycled themselves. Examples like Split (Croatia), the Teatro di Marcello in Rome or the Duomo in Syracuse are just a few of the most obvious manifestos of recycling. It’s not a question of restoration: the idea of conservation tends to embalm the image of architectural or urban space by attributing value to the unchangeable. When recycle processes are carried out, the value is the change itself, especially when it succeeds in generating figures charged with new meanings and expressions as the cases mentioned above.

The innovative aspect of this contemporary condition lies in considering this policy as a strategic approach for architecture, the city and derelict landscapes. The recyling paradigm offsets the paradigms of new construction and demolition that have dominated modernity, but not in an ordinary way. What is important is to look at those experiences that, thanks to a recycle process, are capable to increase the culture of the city, beauty and urban quality, in relation to specific places and conditions. The practice of recycling spaces and the urban fabric is indeed necessarily contextual and adaptive. The project of recycle cannot be carried out by using stereotyped methods or traditional tools. Each place and each case provides the context for a different project. We might speak of different tactics, in the same way that Fabrizia Ippolito uses this term for urban actions which respond to a sole intervention strategy. The concept of recycling implies a story and a new course. It involves narrative more than measure. Its field of reference is the landscape, not the territory. The idea of territory calls for architecture to provide quantity, stability, persistence in time and projects as authorial decisions, capable of determining the competition between places by means of the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signature. The idea of landscape, instead, does not require architecture to entail specific times, it asks that they age together, that architecture should change constantly in the same way that landscape should always change. And it asks that the project should be polyarchic, i.e. decided by many, shared by many, contributing to the construction of that landscape-portrait, a very beautiful image by JoĂŁo Nunes, which is the portrait of a society and not of an author. Finally the idea of recycle is oriented to increasing the environmental quality of the city, eroding metropolitan functions in favour of an increased sensitivity to landscape and ecology. In Genoa, the no-longer-used industrial heritage and infrastructure are a real opportunity, which occupies the most strategic areas in the city, between the sea and the mountains. Thus, the first objective of the Recycle Genoa research project has been to evaluate the consistency and the potential of this urban materials: the recycle footprint. The recycle footprint is the trace that former life cycles of urban areas and uses left within the city. It represents a sign and a value in itself, a map and a width. In other terms, the recycle footprint is the real herit-

building transformation temporary devices temporary uses cultural reuse reti immateriali

FORGO A T

urban agriculture

rischio

reti ecologiche

ecological reclaimation

vulnerabilitĂ

reti idriche

water design

consistenza

reti infrastrutturali

hybrid infrastructure

RE-LOAD Val Bisagno RE-MERGE Sopraelevata

scenari concorsi

new grids PARAMETRI /aree /volumi /infrastrutture

footprint

LCA

B.E.L.T.

strategie

dispositivi

PIC city

Detroit Future Plan

visioni

PIC city

processi

PUG Lecce

Emscher Park

Recycle Methodology; Genova Recycle Lab.

Recycle Genova Footprint; image and data: Genova Recycle Lab

age that a city that does not consume further territories can invest in its future. The first phase of the Recycle Genoa Research Project aimed at highlighting, and acknowledging, this unrecognized patrimony. In Genoa, the no-longer-used industrial areas and infrastructure represent a real opportunity. They are mainly set along the railway, also abandoned, that was connecting these areas to each other, between the sea and the hills. They occupy a continues strip, a filled void within the urban pattern. The recycle footprint represents the contemporary geography and potential of the city. In other terms, it individuates the shape and consistency of this urban heritage, and establishes the urgency and potential of urban interventions, defined through quantitative and quality objectives. The research project experimentally individuated a set of parameters, both quantitative (dimensions, environmental and hydro-geological characteristics and percentage of risk, density of inhabitants and services,…) and qualitative (property, land value, ecological and social risk, vulnerability,…) These parameters consider both design objectives – in terms of architecture, landscape and urbanism – and Life Cycle Assesments method, as applied to urban areas instead of buildings or objects. Moreover these parameters allow to individuate some sensors, or Hazards Critical Control Points, capable to highlight the points or major risk or where to individuate first and more strategically. The footprint is therefore the context for recycle and expresses the real potential for the reactivation of urban open space, its management and maintenance, the possibility to generate a new social cohesion, improve environmental qualities and discover new economies and energies (human and material). Mapping the recycle footprint can therefore be intended as the first of five steps of a design methodology that the Recycle Genoa Unit is developing. The main objective of the research is therefore to identify the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of this wasted opportunities, highlighting and connecting them through an overall strategy that could forecast new possibilities started from the dismissed industrial landscape. The second phase consists therefore in valorizing these urban materials that form the recycle footprint. In Genoa, this means to outline an urban concept, or strategy, that can valorize the dismissed industrial fabric and infrastructure. As mentioned before, this area coincides with a strip com-

Recycle Genova Blue Footprint; image and data: Genova Recycle Lab

Recycle Genova Green Footprint, image and data:Genova Recycle Lab

prised between the sea and the mountains, a thick line that crosses the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most central areas. The idea is to rethink these spaces as new ecological infrastructure, called Genoa BELT which stays for Basic Ecological Light Transformation system. The objective is to imagine a landscape infrastructure capable of linking different urban areas regenerating them, using the recycle footprint as a design and development material, a shared vision for the future of Genoa. This strategy is to be applied through a series of devices. The project of recycle makes it difficult, and probably nonsense, to outline an overall plan to be actuated in ten or twenty years. The project of recycle, as mentioned before, is extremely time and place related. Actuating it requires operative instruments, capable of linking planning and design strategies to the existing condition of a city, also considering its transformation (or not) over time. In collaboration with the Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover, and in occasion of the DAAD Recycle Genoa-Hannover Workshop ten manifestos, have been individuated, that respond to this: building transformation, temporary devices, temporary uses, energy factories, cultural reuse, urban agriculture, ecological reclamation, water design, hybrid infrastructure, new grids, are operative strategies for actuating the recycle project, linking the design project to the performances it can achieve. A fourth phase consists in outlining visions. The quality of the city is the problem in fact, not its physical shape. The latter is no longer controllable. It has already exploded. The traditional urban project finds it difficult to emerge as an instrument for controlling transformations. It may pursue a spatial order or became a form of process or the meeting point between strategy and opportunity, but successful results of these actions raise doubts. The only way left for describing the space where we live in, and transform it, is to think about it as a landscape whose aesthetics cannot depend upon superimposed measurement. It becomes a complex project. The aesthetics of a landscape lies in images, in the way each place is lived, mythicized, or told. Above all it is the apparent form of a cultural, economic and social context, rather than a physical one. Recycle strategies emerge from a given context which is underused or misused, and should be able to envision better and possible future, foreseeing the effects and the impact on key players, executors, peopleâ&#x20AC;Ś In this sense, a fourth phase of the recycle Genoa research project consists in outlining and testing visions.

Visions represent quality targets. Through vision we can mold processes of local development by exploring change. The images of the future help focusing on strategic issues in order to define settlement choices, adjusting or playing in the gaps of traditional planning methods. Visions express points of no return as regards urban change management and generally they interpret a strategy of development, which is not scared by process accelerations, because in these images the future has already started. Finally, the recycle project implies considering process as the founding element of the design and planning action. Process represents the way in which it is possible to realize the project fundamental ideas and figures, making the targets displayed by the vision real. Process completes and sharps the vision; it is the active master plan device that the city uses to ensure the quality of change for citizens. These five phases are not necessarily consequential, as very often the project even starts from the process, from the desire or need to activate transformations starting from the no-longer-used urban heritage. This five thesis forecast a design methodology to be applied in an hermeneutic process of readjustment and improvement.

Sestri - Genova Photo by Alberto Terrile

02 RECYLCE GENOVA: FROM WASTE TO FOOTPRINT Sara Favargiotti

> UniversitĂ degli Studi Di Genova

Since 2009, the new Erzelli Science and Technology Park is under construction. Erzelli is an area located in the hills behind Genoa airport, between the districts of Cornigliano, Sestri Ponente and Borzoli. The project area measure of 44 hectares and it was obtained from the excavation of Monte Croce hill realized between Thirties to early Sixties. In this area was built the ILVA - Italsider steel plant and later of the airport of Genoa. On April 4th, 2007 was signed a programmatic agreement between the Region, the Municipality and the Genova High Tech company in order to approve the development plan for the Scientific and Technological Park of Erzelli. The project includes, in addition to the construction of new houses for students of the Faculty of Engineering, the construction of new buildings for research centers and high-tech companies such as Siemens and Ericsson, the creation of an urban park with recreational facilities, commercial services and cultural activities, workshops and residences for students and researchers. The approval of the project has been extreme complicated and, even today that the work began, it continues to engender doubts and discussions. Numbers are clear: the project will build 413,000 square meters of surface area on the Erzelli hill1 and it will also provide new connections to the existing infrastructure connections (rail, road and

airport). These, at the same time, are located near to the former industrial areas, next to the hill that have an equivalent area in decommissioned assets. Those areas occupy a position of primary importance for the redevelopment of the entire west of Genoa because they are located in the intersection of the main directions of the road system. About 20 hectares of these areas were abandoned since ten years. The others are obsolete of and, according to the environmental report of the new urban plan (PUC), they will be transformed into areas of urban redevelopment. The debate for the location of the new technology centre is still on going, but it is clear how is relevant today understand the importance of considering the urban waste as options for the future development of the city. As in many other Italian cities, it is a significant event but not the only. In fact, the Genoese Recycle Lab ha been conducted a preliminary survey to define the recycle imprint, called Recycle Footprint. The resulting image shows a collection of obsoleted industrial buildings, infrastructures and facilities that have been caused by the abandonment of space, functions or economic activity. This leaves the city with an unexpected heritage that must be reused. Every city has a recycle imprint represented by the amount of areas, volumes and infrastructures that have been rejected and that can be re-evaluated trough their reuse. So, the theory of recycle can be a tool for the city development: giving new meaning to produce new value to those parts of the city, buildings and open spaces that have already been made but which were abandoned. Furthermore, it seems clear that the traditional tools to plan cities (like the zoning) and build new buildings (like typology or morphology) are no longer efficient (Ricci, 2013). They were created in the Twentieth century but today, where the demand for new construction is in permanent decline, they have lost their value. The 2010 CRESME data about the growth of cementification and consumption of soil show how it is urgent to stop this process of overbuilding. A more sensible attention has to be paid to the abandoned materials of the city so that, through the activation of a new life cycle, will engendered a new operative attitude to the urban design. Therefore, Recycle Genova Lab wants to find a concept for the recycling in the city of Genoa and it also wants to apply on specific case studies as a tool to direct and manage the change of the city. The Laboratory is developing a new development model that restore the value of open spaces - always seen as a burden rather than a resource. Considering them as

a urban catalyst, the research team also sets a taxonomy of scenarios, tactics, and conversion policies for the renovation of themselves and the surrounding areas. In particular, the Recycle Genova Lab works on the recycling of underused railway infrastructures and areas. One of the main aims is to rethink the role of infrastructures, considering them as a relational place to engender new relationship between city, environment, landscape and ecology. To do this, the Genoese unit proposes a methodology to approach the urban design that consists on several steps: the evaluation of abandoned heritage and its potential relationship with the city (Footprint and B.E.L.T.); the development of several devices that can be activated; the application of devices in specific areas in order to reactivate them. An hermeneutic process that wants to verify - through the comparison of possible futures scenarios in specific areas in Genoa, Hanover, Barcelona and Matera - if it is possible to construct a new methodological approach to the recycle of urban landscape. Recycle Footprint The first aim was to build the Recycle Footprint: the shape and the consistency of the unused industrial heritage and railway infrastructures in the city of Genoa. Showing the footprint means to investigate the condition of things, but also to value the potentialities and problems, and to define the parameters of urban quality and environmental performance to be obtained from recycling. Therefore, the footprint is a descriptive and interpretive inquiry, addressed to a vision of change that coincides with the rethinking of the existing. In fact, during this phase, the research have been included not only the areas already abandoned but also those areas which are in a process of abandonment or transformation over the next five years. Most of the areas selected are adjacent to road or railway infrastructures and their former functions were closely linked to the industrial era, today in decline. In addition, to draw the consistency of the Recycle Footprint, the research team has considered also the projects approved by the Municipality and the relationship of the studied areas with the infrastructural, water, ecological and social networks assets in the city. The first goal was the identification and the classification of various territorial problems, in order to construct the most appropriate indicators for monitoring the environmen-

tal performance in the contexts analysed. It was also necessary to deal with the transfer of environmental impacts between different ecological spheres, in line with the Life Cycle Thinking (LCT). Thanks to the contribution of CE.Si.SP.2, it was possible to develop an integrated methodology for the identification of appropriate environmental policies. Thus, all aforementioned parameters were evaluated in order to process the consistency of the ecological footprint produced by the urban waste on the city (like: sqm., cu.m., materials, market value, spontaneous re-naturatlization, hydrological risks, centrality in relation to the infrastructural system). The footprint of Genoa is equal to 4,350,000 square meters, 27.18 million cubic meters and 67 km of railway. It generates peaks of different intensity, spread along the Genoese territory. It is also evident that there is not a univocal relation between the size of the areas and the respective intensity of the footprint: small areas may have an high incidence of abandoned elements, or vice versa, large areas have a reduced impact of them. In any case, the wide amount of abandoned heritage emerges and it must advantageously be reused: a new life cycle can be imagined for urban materials that are already saturated (Recycle) or that are almost abandoned (Precycle) - like the urban road Sopraelevata. The elevated road of Genoa is one of the main travel routes of the city. In fact, it crosses the city along the coastline and overflies the old town, the touristic and commercial harbours. Since many years, its future causes a controversial debate. The Recycle Genoa Lab proposes a vision of a possible future through its recycling. This is the image of Genoa today. The survey and the updating of the Recycle Footprint will continue even during the next stages of the research. In fact, the development of the footprint is a fundamental and essential part of the process, starting from the landscape and overlapping levels of qualitative and quantitative parameters. These guide the interpretation of the abandoned infrastructures according to different issues: size, accessibility, urban and regional plans, materials, new centralities, mitigation and environmental compensation. Those data are substantial information that provide the basis on which develop designing strategies and visions. At the same time, they must be updated according to the outcome achieved from the other phases of the research process.

Recycle Framework The new plan for Detroit, signed by STOSS Landscape Urbanism (Detroit Future City. 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, Detroit, 2013), proposes a general framework that holds together the areas involved in the recycle process and that suggests possible future transformations for the city. The goal is the organization of the city according to ecological networks (Future Ecological Networks). In fact, the project does not impose functional restrictions to the project areas, but offers a range of solutions trough which local authorities, citizens, designers and all those are involved in the process can activate transformation processes o+f the city, with the common objective of city recycle. It is possible through different local tactics and devices that allow to operate within the existing city, increasing the overall environmental performances. Following this example, the second operative action proposed by the Recycle Genova Lab is to go beyond the Recycle Footprint and propose an urban recycle strategy for the city of Genoa: a wider framework that is the general frame for the recycle operations in specific areas. In Genoa, this operation is called Genoa B.E.L.T. (Basic Ecological Light Transformation) System: an ecological belt that holds together the sequence of empty areas and buildings and guides the transformation processes. Lastly, starting from the Recycle Footprint, the aim is the development of an overall strategy for the city changing and the re-signification of abandoned areas. As for Detroit, the methodologies for recycle transformation becomes relevant rather than the individual results achieved by each projects (proposed through a series of simulations). In fact, a strategy not necessarily can activate a global change in all areas. Instead, a strategical approach can give a common meaning for the city change, through the reconversion of local contexts. Therefore, the Genoa B.E.L.T. System is the sense that each recycled areas can gain becoming a unique system.

1. Source: www.erzelli.it and the preliminary draft of the PUC adopted, Foundation Description 2. Centro Interuniversitario per lo Sviluppo della SostenibilitĂ dei Prodotti, coordinated by professors of Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Chimica e Ambientale

Multedo - Genova Photo by Alberto Terrile

03 STRATEGY Chiara Olivastri

> Università degli Studi Di Genova

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Zu, “The Art of War”, Third Century B.C.

The strategy has always been conceived and borrowed from the military jargon, referring to its particular meaning to draw the general lines of conduct in various operations of war, in order to achieve victory as quickly as possible and in the less expensive way. In general terms it is an action plan that identifies a predefined goal. An organization that does not have a strategy goes from one direction to another, following the different contingent opportunities, but never achieving great results. A strategy brings thought, plan and actions together, it helps to understand what you intend to do, how you intend to proceed and, above all, how to plan the right moves to reach the desired objective. Reporting immediately the aim, it also clarifies the deadline to which all the specific actions will be traced. In order to develop a plan, it is essential to have a detailed and in-depth knowledge of the territories in which you operate, which has already been

somatized and introjected and then reworked and synthesized into concepts and systems. In a more general overview of the process, it is clear that the strategy follows the footprint, the investigation and precedes the processing of the devices, the more concrete phase of the procedure. The definition of strategy is not to be considered as a constraint or a simplification of the reading of the complex urban reality, but rather the lifeblood from which to develop significant tactics; as Norman Berry explains in a concise way: “A creative freedom that comes from rigidly defined strategies is necessary2”. The helplessness of a disciplinary apparatus, which continues to represent a series of theoretical positions and experimentations, and fails to look after a disadvantaged urban condition, and furthermore fails to understand the dynamics of changes and steer transformations, emerges clearly. In the idea of undertaking an significant change in the discipline, the conception of a strategy can result in an important breakthrough, mainly for its unavoidable feature of the forecast, in which the anticipation of trends and the satisfaction of the objective with the unexpected move are implicit. The awareness of the lack has shifted: it is not so much a lost sense, but a way to find. McDonough (2003) in its book ‘Cradle to Cradle’ asks himself how the spaces would be if the man was planning products and systems that enhance creativity, culture and productivity, which would be both smart and safe to allow our species to leave an imprint on the environment in which rejoicing and not grieving, and then identifying the primary responsibility in the absence of a global design, a complete ideation that would rule the process from the beginning to the end, a strategy. To eliminate the concept of waste, not reducing or minimizing it, exceeding the concept itself from the design3. The clear objective in building a strategy for the city of Genoa, is to weave a tangle that ties and gives strength and meaning to the various existing networks: intangible networks, ecological networks, water networks and infrastructural networks, within which the different recycling interventions have their own place. An ecological belt, called Genova B.E.L.T. (Basic Ecological Light Transformation) System, which holds together the sequence of vacant places of the city and states the best transformation devices.

Using the words of Enzo Mari, the quality of the project depends on the cultural change that it activates4, the ultimate goal is that from the Recycle Footprint we can develop an overall strategy for a change in the city starting from the re-signification of its abandoned areas, such as a plot of a story that intends to best describe the distinctive character of places, without canceling the specifics, but rather protecting them through a strong narrative structure. A great framework that acts as a general setting to recycling operations that affect specific areas. Emphasizing the strategy as a key step of the process definition, we intend to highlight the methodology by which the various recycling interventions are conceived in abandoned areas, rather than the mere intervention. In fact, it is not said that the strategy activates a global change in all areas, but instead wants to give a common meaning to which the change in the city can tend through the change of local contexts. Genova B.E.L.T. System is therefore the sense that all Recycle areas put back together can acquire. In the idea that there is a mutual enrichment and enhancement, on the one hand we have the context, with its networks, its arteries to suggest tactics that can bring life back to those unresolved spaces of the urban structure, on the other hand we have the reactivation that mends the interruptions of the system and enhances the existing networks. In redefining the new approaches and modus operandi within the cities, Haydn and Temel in Temporary Urban Spaces (2007) re-write the glossary of new terms that redefine the architectural language and dedicate an entry to the definition of strategy and tactics as: 5 Strategy is, like ‘tactics’, but it refers to long-term war planning in contrast to short-term, more flexible battle terming. ‘strategy’ means an approach that emerges from the planning desk and the sand table; it works from position of power that is in a position to force its opponents to accept its conditions and to ignore limitations imposed by circumstances. Strategy plans for its own space, and that is a space of autonomy, where the objects, whether enemy soldiers or one’s own, can be maneuvered at will. The urban- planning equivalent of strategy is the master-plan.’ Genova BELT System has as objective the long term, as opposed to the logic of short-term and profit that produced interruptions and false temporary solutions. The long term requires an enlarged, spatial and tempo-

ral look, that frames the particular as part of the system and the logic that generates it. The model of the networks is what the balance determines; working on the realization of the networks means to interpret the areas to recycle as opportunities for expansion, upgrading and completion, as the balance of the strategy. It will then be present a double interpretation, both as a network of areas of recycling, and as a network service that works across different networks in which joins and comes back to life. In water networks, then, the opportunity of giving the water the task of restoring a sick land, or redesigning a space will be explored, in the infrastructural ones there will be an opportunity to strengthen the routes or create serving spaces, in the ecological networks, green will enter as a leading actor in redefining shreds of the city with new programs and types of investments, and finally, in the immaterial ones, as public attractor, which creates a continuous or temporary flow in cultural, social, artistic, sporting and commercial terms. Of course you can also witness the simultaneous presence of multiple networks in which the node connects and increases of significance the territory in which it occurs. In this perspective, the intervention itself, the tactics, loses its value if it is not considered as the natural product of a clear and obvious strategy, that was inevitably missing in the design phase prior to abandonment. Devising the design according to ecological effectiveness strategies, could represent a unprecedented innovation and could help optimize a system that already exists, is not the solution in itself to be radical, but rather the change in perspective. Thinking about the long term also means to take position against the trend of the new construction to planned obsolescence, in which the contemporary city is increasingly punctuated by episodes of abandonment of the new. The planned obsolescence6 (Latouche, 2013), notoriously related to consumer objects and tools, is a concept which is also concerning the city logics: in this case obsolescence is the inability of space to become flexible and therefore adaptable to an use demand which is evolving, conveying different needs. In this regard, the strategy, in its strictly defined being, will necessarily provide flexible tactics and devices that can change and take over on each other according to the different needs and contingencies and thus allow the strategy to achieve the goal.

1 Definizione del Sabatini Coletti, Dizionario della Lingua Italiana 2 Norman Berry, â&#x20AC;&#x153;How to Create Winning Advertising Strategiesâ&#x20AC;?, 1984. 3 Braungart, M., McDonough, W., Dalla culla alla culla, Blu Edizioni srl, Torino, (2003). 4 Mari, E., Progetto e passione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2003 5 Haydn, F., Temel, R.,Temporary Urban Spaces, Glossary (pag.16) 6 Latouche, S., Usa e getta, Bollati Boringhieri, (2013)

Terralba - Genova Photo by Alberto Terrile

04 RECYCLE DEVICES. STRATEGIC OPERATIONS. Jeannette Sordi

> Università degli Studi Di Genova

“Recycle” is the title of an ongoing Italian research project that links 10 Italian Universities, including the Faculty of Architecture of Genoa, and several international partners, as the Leibniz Universität Hannover. In terms of urban planning and design, recycle can be intended as a procedural strategy capable of triggering a continuous reactivation of the urban system, a medium for rethinking architecture and the city. In fact, the city does not follow an unchangeable biological course but it has the capacity to regenerate itself from within, to overcome one life cycle and its decline by reinterpreting itself. This process of reinterpretation, of finding new meanings and forms for obsolete or dismissed urban landscapes, has interested many European cities in the last decades; especially those turning from an industrial economy to a post-industrial one, based on tourism, services, culture, and information. In the case of Genoa, thinking about recycling the city, landscape, and architecture, means to look at the no-longer-used industrial heritage as a potential light and ecological infrastructure, placed in the heart of the city. The project of infrastructure, as Mosè Ricci underlines, has until now been conceived as a medium for development: necessary and sufficient condition to create urbanization

and improve metropolitan qualities.1 Recycling obsolete infrastructure is instead a different operation; it requires to look at the existing conditions to develop new opportunities and uses for what is already there. Infrastructural systems, when open to the interaction with urban design, may work like artificial ecologies, creating the conditions necessary to respond to incremental adjustments in resource availability, and modify the status of inhabitation in response to changing environmental conditions.2 Infrastructure can indeed accommodate local contingency while maintaining overall continuity.3 In the same manner, recycle devices are tactical, temporal, and site specific operations, which offer an overall strategy for recycling urban landscapes. Tactical The project of recycle implies that specific interventions correspond to specific places. As Ricci puts it, we may speak of different tactics responding to one strategy of intervention:4 adapting the urban and industrial obsolete heritage to contemporary needs, improving its environmental performances, creating social interaction and appropriation, and suggesting new economies. Tactics, unlike plans or strategies, resemble a way of proceeding step by step, giving immediate answers to contingent conditions.5 Slipping into spatial and temporal gaps of planning, tactics can indeed modify the objectives of the plan. This is the case of the areas that remain waiting for a new destination for years, as is the case of the railway deposit of Terralba, in the eastern part of Genoa, or obsolete industrial sites whose function lost any meaning, as the industrial halls (warehouses) in Multedo and Sestri, on the western coast of the city next to the railways and the airport. Specific tactics of intervention instead may become operational devices capable of reactivating these areas, even for a few months or years, improving the environmental and urban quality of the surrounding and suggesting future uses and meanings. Until now, the Recycle Genoa research project, in collaboration with the Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover, have explored a series of devices that may contribute to the development of these areas. Building transformation, temporary devices, temporary uses, energy factories, cultural reuse, urban agriculture, ecological reclamation, water design, hybrid infrastructure, new grids, suggest 10 concepts and opportunities for transforming the no-longer-used urban heritage, in-

Re-MERGe, process of transformation of Sopraleavata, G. Garbarini, G. Giglio, UNIGE.

tervening on public spaces, new systems of production, new grids, and ecological networks.6 Besides these, we could add many more projects/ devices such as urban forests, floodways, fab-labs: infrastructural landscapes and experimental activities that when tested and consolidated may become replicable strategies. A few common aspects make these “operational” devices different from traditional planning techniques. First, no-longer-used and recycled infrastructures may be recalibrated multiplying their functions – adding many more uses to the traditional one of mobility: public spaces, green corridors, permeable surfaces, ecological filters. The second aspect regards “scale.” Instead of being thought as a way to represent and regulate, the scale can be read as an emerging property of the materials to be recycled. In terms of design, scale can be intended as the spatial framework within which “variations in design parameters of a certain discipline (may be functional engineering constraints) interact with variations in parameters of other disciplines (may be variables of the spatial experience controlled by urbanists and architects)”7 – from designing public spaces to ecosystems to regional infrastructures. Finally the third issue is time. Increasingly, both urbanists and institutions need to produce long-term strategies because of sustainable objectives and necessary investments in infrastructure. Nevertheless, these systems must be resilient and adaptive, capable of quickly responding to uses’ changes and performance’s needs.

Temporal Recycling necessarily implies the temporal variable, i.e. thinking about design in terms of life cycle and transformation processes. For the Recycle Genoa project, the interstitial and neglected spaces of the city become the place in which new activities may take place, emerging urban landscapes that, if connected, can make a new ecological infrastructure for the city. This infrastructure may have “times” of activation, functioning, and transformation that are different from traditional ones, determined by citizens’ wishes, by the will of the actors that can promote these interventions, by the city itself, and by the natural transformation of ecological and temporal processes over time. Landscape and ecology can contribute to define new parameters to evaluate these transformations, suggesting new objectives: resilient scenarios that take into account environmental questions as well as the widespread shrinking of public resources. In this sense, the Recycle Genoa Unit aims to develop an integrated methodology to develop specific environmental strategies based on the so called “Life Cycle Thinking”8 principles. This methodology leads to the evaluation of the impact of every transformation along its all life: “from cradle to grave.” However, recycle devices suggests to close the circle, or leave it open, going from “cradle to cradle:” from one use to the other, new life cycles that succeed each other and can coexist.9 Also in this case, strategies derived from landscape and ecology can suggest a different relation to time. Ecological and landscape projects, so as recycle, require the notion of cyclic transformation, change over time, and evolution: long term frameworks that can be modified through short term projects; multi-scalar devices that are highly time related. Incremental The construction of recycle devices also implies social aspects and contribution, even more than in the case of traditional urban design projects or planning. Recycle necessarily starts from existing conditions that can be highly connotated in terms of memory and identity, but also be particularly difficult because of the degradation that years of not-usage lead to. Recycle is a well-known and not-elitarian practice, that everybody can understand, appropriate, and bring forward; a spontaneous collectively shared practice that right know is probably also the only possible strategy for communitarian policies and urban planning, at all levels.10 Thinking

Recycle_Restore_Reload, mitigating urban park, A. Zampichelli, UNIGE.

about recycling devices as an overall urban strategy, inevitably means to create a relation between processes of informal appropriation of urban space (bottom-up) and strategic visions that facilitate unusual practices, mechanisms of appropriation that are not contemplated by general city plans and that can nevertheless enrich the quality of public space and collective experiences. Guerrilla gardening, illegal orchards and farming, street art, or skate parks often produce innovation within the hidden spaces of the infrastructural shadow, testing their existence and adapting to the awkward space. The evolution of these activities and spaces can be facilitated by local actions. Site specific Recycle as urban design strategy resembles what has Sebastian Marot has defined suburbanism.11 Sub-urbanism, according to Marot, indicates a sort of urban environment that is more “landscape” than “architectural,” typical of the suburbs and very different from metropolises. However, suburbanism also means a design approach that is in opposition to the idea of a super-urbanism à la Koolhaas: “While the methods and routines of urban design have traditionally mimicked those of architecture, thereby perpetuating the dominance of program (and of an approach that goes from program to site), the suburban condition calls for an inversion of this hierarchy, in which site becomes the regulatory idea of the project.”12 The

site suggests a program, which is very site specific and time related. The project of recycle therefore suggests to build visions or scenarios that become a strategy to test devices that may be replicated and implemented, suggesting new methodologies and opportunities offered by the existing conditions. Two devices-visions have been developed within the Recycle Genoa research project that can be taken as example. The first, Recycle_restore_reload. Eco stadio-parco rigeneratore delle performance ambientali,13 suggests that the riverside park of the Bisagno river, which recovers the no-longer-used and degraded areas along the riverfront as an infrastructure capable of mitigating the high hydrogeological risk of the area. The city of Genoa has in fact been built between the sea and the mountains, and, in the 1970s it is along the two river valleys of Bisagno and Polcevera that most of the development (60%) has taken place. In the last decades, frequent floods, whose damages have been exasperated by the high density of constructions in the area, have highlighted the fragility of the area. This thesis project started from the opportunity offered by the dismissal of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stadium, the famous Ferraris soccer stadium designed by Vittorio Gregotti along the river-bank, and its reconstruction at the river-mouth, and expanded the field of intervention in order to mitigate the environmental risk of the Bisagno Valley neighborhoods. This strategic operation suggested to rethink the whole fluvial area transforming it into a landscape infrastructure: an environmentally performing public space for a highly dense area. The second example, Re-MERGe. MobilitĂ Eterogenea per Riconnettere Genova,14 explores the possibility of converting the Sopraelevata, Genoaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous elevated highway, into a light mobility infrastructure and public space. In the last twenty years indeed, in particular after the transformation of Porto Antico, the Ancient Harbor area, the future of the highway has been one of the hottest topics within the architectural debate of the city. Architects, politicians, and citizens, have found arguments against and for the demolition of this historical piece of infrastructure. The question of the thesis was the following: in a territory which is very dense and lacking green spaces, and in which most of the pollution derives from the Port area, why not to generate a public green space as a filter between the sea and the historical city? Recycle Sopraelevata proposes a process of transformation of the mobility infrastructure into a landscape, to be activated over time. The first phase designs some access points that would allow its

temporary use; the second phase forecasts the limitation of the car access to one of the two traffic ways, transforming the other into an urban park that would connect the city’s Fairy (Fiera del Mare) and the Ancient Harbor (Porto Antico); in the third phase the most famous highway of Genoa would be transformed into a green area, a soft infrastructure connecting the East to the West, through the Center, of the city. It is a processual project of transformation, an operational device that would re-plan Genoa’s urban mobility and public spaces.

1. Ricci M., “Tre falsi assiomi,” in Infrastrutture minori nei territori dell'abbandono. Le reti ferroviarie, ed. by E. Corradi and R. Massacesi (Roma: Arcane, 2014). 2. Allen S. “Infrastructural Urbanism,” in Points+Lines (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 46-89. 3. ibid. 4. Ippolito F. Tattiche (Genova: Il Melangolo, 2012). 5. Ricci M., "Recycle Footprint. Impronta da Riciclo," in Nuovi Cicli di Vita per Architetture e Infrastrutture della Città e del Paesaggio, by S. Marini, V. Santangelo (Roma: Aracne, 2013) 6. These devices have been investigated together with the Leibniz Universität Hannover research group, partner of the Recycle Genoa Unit. 7. Rico E., “Eduardo Rico_ the role of infrastructural landscapes within the image of the city,” in Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the in-between, ed. by T. Hauck, R. Keller, V. Kleinekort (Berlin: DOM publishers, 2011). 8. This part is developed by the Department of Architectural Sciences of the Polytechnic School in collaboration with CE.Si.S.P., Department of Civil, Chemical, and Environmental Engineering, Genoa Polytechnic School. 9. See McDonough W., Braungart M., Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North Point Press, 2002. 10. Mosè Ricci, “Tre falsi assiomi.” 11. Marot S., Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory (London: Architectural Association, 2003). 12. Ibid. 13. Master Degree Thesis in Architecture; Candidate: Andrea Zampichelli; Advisor: Mose Ricci; Co-Advisors: Mathilde Marengo, Jeannette Sordi, presented July 2013. 14. Master Degree Thesis in Architecture; Candidate: Giulia Giglio, Giulia Garbarini; Advisor: Mosè Ricci; Co-advisor: Jeannette Sordi, presented December 2013.

Terralba - Genoa Photo by Alberto Terrile

05 VISIONS ON ROGER FEDERER RECYCLED AS A DESIGNER Alberto Bertagna

> Università degli Studi Di Genova

Roger Federer is a Swiss tennis player. According to most critics, he is the best tennis player that ever appeared on the scene. He was atop the leaderboard ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) for 302 weeks, surpassing the record of 286 weeks previously held by Pete Sampras. He has the record for singles titles in Grand Slam tournaments (Wimbledon, Roland Garros, U.S. Open, Australian Open): 17 wins. He started playing when he was 6 years old. Today, at 33, his parable is declining: the age affects the efficiency, not only in tennis. Act I, July 2001, Central Court of Wimbledon: Roger Federer, born in August 1981, meets Pete Sampras, born in August 1971, which had triumphed in the previous four editions. The match is extended to 5 set. Result: 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 6-7, 7-5. Federer wins, in what is considered the handover between the two Champions in their only confrontation played in an official tournament. This is the Federer’s memory of a crucial point of the match: «I do not know how did I guess, but it was as if I knew that [Sampras] would serve to get out on my forehand». How did Federer guess the direction of the Sampras's service? How could he know that Sampras would serve on his forehand?

Some clarifications are needed, for those who are not fans or lovers of tennis. In the case of what is called “singular”, the game is played between two players, who – making use of a racket – have to hit a ball, letting it bounce once in his own field and directing it into the opponent’s one. The court is 78 feet long between the “baseline”, and 27 feet wide for singles matches between “sideline”. A “center mark” divides the baseline into two parts. A “net” is stretched across the full width of the court, parallel with the baselines, dividing it into two equal ends. The net is 3 feet 6 inches high at the posts and 3 feet high in the center. Parallel to the net, crossing the center of a player’s side of the court, is the “service line”. The line dividing the service line in two is called the “center line”. The center line and the service line draw two”boxes”, called the “service boxes”. Depending on a player’s position, he will have to hit the ball from baseline into one of the two service boxes when serving. A match is divided into “sets”, each set in “games”, each game consists of at least four “points”, and the players alternate serving from game to game. For each point, the server starts behind the baseline, between the center mark and the sideline. The receiver may start anywhere on his side of the net. In a legal service, the ball travels over the net (without touching it) and into the diagonally opposite service box. Now we steal some information that a most passionate of tennis, David Foster Wallace, has provided us and that allow us to better understand the meaning of the question above. «By way of illustration, let’s slow things way down. Imagine that you, a tennis player, are standing just behind your deuce corner’s baseline. A ball is served to your forehand — you pivot (or rotate) so that your side is to the ball’s incoming path and start to take your racket back for the forehand return. Keep visualizing up to where you’re about halfway into the stroke’s forward motion; the incoming ball is now just off your front hip, maybe six inches from point of impact. Consider some of the variables involved here. On the vertical plane, angling your racket face just a couple degrees forward or back will create topspin or slice, respectively; keeping it perpendicular will produce a flat, spinless drive. Horizontally, adjusting the racket face ever so slightly to the left or right, and hitting the ball maybe a millisecond early or late, will result in a cross-court versus down-the-line return. Further slight changes in the curves of your groundstroke’s motion and follow-through will help determine how high your return passes over

Vision - KM 1,9 La Terrazza, Re-MERGe, G. Garbarini, G.Giglio, UNIGE

the net, which, together with the speed at which you’re swinging (along with certain characteristics of the spin you impart), will affect how deep or shallow in the opponent’s court your return lands, how high it bounces, etc. These are just the broadest distinctions, of course – like, there’s heavy topspin vs. light topspin, or sharply cross-court vs. only slightly crosscourt, etc. There are also the issues of how close you’re allowing the ball to get to your body, what grip you’re using, the extent to which your knees are bent and/or weight’s moving forward, and whether you’re able simultaneously to watch the ball and to see what your opponent’s doing after he serves. These all matter, too. Plus there’s the fact that you’re not putting a static object into motion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile coming toward you – coming, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that make conscious thought impossible. Mario Ancic’s first serve, for instance, often comes in around 130 m.p.h. Since it’s 78 feet from Ancic’s baseline to yours, that means it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you. This is less than the time it takes to blink quickly, twice. The upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of time too brief for deliberate action. Temporally, we’re more in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that bypass conscious thought. And yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of decisions and physical adjustments that are a whole lot more involved and intentional

than blinking, jumping when startled, etc».1 Long quote, but functional to explain the Federer’s metaphysical doubts: did not know where the ball would come; yet in a fraction of a second he prepare for his perfect straight, run it, and get the point. Federer, however, took not only a fraction of a second to respond to that Sampras's service: he is prepared for fourteen years, since he was six years old. Ivan Lendl, the Czech champion who inaugurated the modern tennis, made up of extreme angles obtained from the baseline, remembered that his debut on the playing fields had occurred at age three, when his mother took him with her and while playing kept him tied to the poles that hold up the net. Andre Agassi, one of only seven players in the history of the sport able to win all four Grand Slam tournaments (the same as Federer, for that matter), who was forced from an early age by his father to grueling workouts, wrote bitterly in his autobiography: «I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and still I keep playing, keep hitting all morning, and all afternoon, because I have no choice. No matter how much I want to stop, I don’t. I keep begging myself to stop, and I keep playing, and this gap, this contradiction between what I want to do and want I actually do, feels like the core of my life».2 Tennis, at least since the Eighties onwards, requires discipline and total dedication to be practiced at professional levels, and endless workouts. Only by practicing thousands and thousands of shots a day, day after day for years and years, since young age, one develops the ability to do «what can not be done with the normal conscious thought».3 But what may be of interest in all of this, to us, to those who are involved in the project? Let’s suppose that Roger Federer decides to become a designer. What are the skills, acquired during his sports career, which could make use in this new dimension as an architect, urban planner, landscaper or any similar? How could Federer respond to a service that does not come from Pete Sampras; to a ball served, in his field of designer, by the contemporary city? With its highly developed kinesthetic sense, we could imagine. So here is the (fantastic) story of the architect Roger Federer. Act II, July 2021, Wimbledon: Roger Federer has abandoned racket, shorts and T-shirt, and is now a designer, in charge of redesigning the stands of Central Court. How does he face the project? In tennis, according to many coaches, players, and commentators studying the opponent is not that relevant. Of course, at a professional level, all know the weaknesses

Vision - Circus on the Sopraelevata, Students: Ferrarri, Gernreich, Sangriso

and strengths of others. And certainly, before a game, the previous performances of the opponent are vivisected. Yet, once in the court, all this knowledge is neglected: there is too little time available, to indulge in arguments. Is it credible to imagine that the first action of Federer, in front of the project to be developed, will consist in a study of the history of Central Court? Is it credible to imagine that his approach moves from the recognition of what the history of architecture has been saying about stands or bleachers, at least from the Colosseum to nowadays? Is it credible to imagine that someone used to stare at the ball that comes in front and only control the movements of the opponent, neglecting everything else, would pay attention to something that is not exactly what he has to look after? Nothing can distract Federerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention from the ball to reply and probably anything would be able to distract him from the task of designing the stands

of Central Court. No matter what happens next, or a few feet away, or what has happened previously. The project of Central Court is now his goal, as it was to hit the ball. «Playing without thinking»: this is the only way to be able to deal with a ball that comes to 130 m.p.h. If we try to translate the slow motion proposed by DFW into design language, we would obtain the same amount of variables. An uncontrollable quantity: resistance of the soil; extemporaneous presence of birds at risk of extinction; associations of “enemies of the Court” already against the existence of the old field; associations of “friends of the old Central Court” fiercely hostile to its transformation; economic constraints; visual perspectives to be protected; spectator movements in and out to calculate; amount of rain by channeling; energy efficiency and security varies to be taken into account. And so on. All worthy of respect, as it is important to carefully consider the direction and intensity of the wind before hitting a tennis ball. But Federer, probably, in its new role as a designer, would respond the same way in which he responded to the service of Mario Ancic: without thinking too much, kinesthetically, perhaps with a «Federer Moment», as DFW calls those shots that the Swiss carries out and leave you speechless, because rationally “impossible” to achieve. How much did Marcel Duchamp know about fountains and urinals? Probably nothing. Now, increasingly, design means to intervene on the existing heritage. And “directing” the existing to a new sense looks the same as reversing the direction of a ball or activate its movement: an action that requires an experiential approach and that is beyond the logic of «conscious thought». Maybe just developing a kinesthetic ability you can gear up to respond to a contemporary that no longer requires definitive solutions, but progressive adaptations which ignore the need to ensure continuity of time and space. Maybe just developing a kinesthetic ability it is possible to respond to situations that can evolve at the same speed of service by Mario Ancic. If design today means to work on the existing, analysis, information, or too much awareness are no longer necessary: this is the teaching of the architect Federer. In order to produce a difference of meaning, to see a fountain in front of an urinal, to change habits, and imagine what is no longer may be, you must have - without mediation - simple visions.

1 David Foster Wallace, Federer as a Religious Experience, in «The New York Times Magazine», August 20, 2006. 2 Andrè Agassi, Open. An Autobiography (AKA Publishing, 2009), 26. 3 «Boys, what it is is I’ll tell you it’s repetition. First last always. It’s hearing the same motivational stuff over and over till sheer repetitive weight makes it sink down into the gut. It’s making the same pivots and lunges and strokes over and over and over again, at you boys’s age it’s reps for their own sake, putting results on the back burner, why they never give anybody the boot for insufficient progress under fourteen, it’s repetitive movements and motions for their own sake, over and over until the accretive weight of the reps sinks the movements themselves down under your like consciousness into the more nether regions, though repetition they sink and soak into the hardware, the C.P.S. The machine-language. The autonomical part that makes you breathe and sweat. It’s no accident they say you Eat, Sleep, Breathe tennis here. These are autonomical. Accretive means accumulating, through sheer mindless repeated motions. The machine-language of the muscles. Until you can do it without thinking about it, play. At like fourteen, give and take, they figure here. Just do it. Forget about is there a point, of course there’s no point. The point of repetition is there is no point. Wait until it soaks into the hardware and then see the way this frees up your head»: so the tutor Schtitt explains tennis to young students of Enfield Tennis Academy in Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Lagaccio - Genova Photo by Alberto Terrile

06 (INFR)ACTIONS DESIGN PROCESSES IN RE-CYCLE PRACTICES Raffaella Fagnoni

> UniversitĂ degli Studi Di Genova

"Design is a way of imagining a future, with a process to make it happen. The emphasis should be placed on investment and opportunity." Bruce Mau At the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Dick Fosbury revolutionized the high jump event: instead of going over the bar facing down and lifting his legs individually over the it, he went head-first over the bar, backwards, curving the body over it. He invented a unique back-first technique. The jump took the name of Fosbury Flop. He jumped higher than any man before, thinking the opposite of everyone else, breaking the traditional way of acting. Perhaps it is not the common way of thinking, but the right way to succeed. Recycling has been a common practice for most of human history. Recycling process is a physical, spiritual, social, cultural transformation of buildings, villages and areas in order to save memory and identity of cities and improve the level of their urban culture. Talking about (infr)actions doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean thinking about Recycling practices (for areas, building and industrial sites) as breach of law, agreements or set of rules. Recycling aims to create something new. It is not a revolution because it does not aim to subvert values, beliefs and institutions, but

it is able to set new goals, to make new habits just using traditional ideals and common trust. Recycling means abandoning the traditional thinking, give up the traditional way of acting (through actions, or infr-actions) using innovative approaches to transform our vacant land. It increases landâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s value and productivity and promote long term sustainability; using abandoned sites and open spaces to improve health, culture, education of all citizens. Anyway it often happens than the practice of recycling goes against the rules. Reality is shaped by the meaning that people give to things, according to the situations in which they find themselves and what they have created. Cycles are repeated in a frame of time and sense and generate opportunities of renewal at every stage and at the same time they leave behind ruins, wreckage, wrecks and debris. In the cities, people live in a condition of survival among the remains of residence among the debris of progress among the leftovers, with a possible way out to transform quantity into quality through the aesthetics of the ruins. For example, in contemporary art exhibitions most of the works are sublimations of wastes, residues. The approach to recycling thus develops within a frame of sense, through the transformation of residues. The attribution of meaning helps to build what one perceives, relates to the way in which people react to what they see. The individual perceives a particular aspect of reality, interacting with it. The place exists and is activated, people can modify it with actions and continue to assign new meanings to it. So the environment is activated and will act indirectly on the people. Everybody will assume a new behavior that will result from the new constructed reality. Men, therefore, do not model the environment, but when it is activated the environment influences menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions (ie when it does exist and the subject perceives it). Re-cycling makes sense. Of course, it makes sense to reuse products and reduce their consumption and to improve the initial design of the product. But given the growing production of waste worldwide, it still makes more sense to Re-cycle. The same goes for buildings, industrial heritage and urban areas. The sense of recycling is the recycling of meaning. The development of recycling projects is slow and still subject to development standards enacted at different times, which currently no longer make sense. We need the courage to change direction and to break with the traditional way of acting.

The statutory provisions that have governed the development of the city do not facilitate the need for process optimization and upgrading. The substantial failure of the old ideas of planning that sought to rigid pre-determinations of urban layout has occurred. The model used was the hierarchical pyramid implemented in a very long and indeterminate period of time. It was believed that it could and should predict the shape of the city and its development; just as if they had a crystal ball. A concept that stood in a setting detached from the reality of the transformation processes, which certainly are not easily predictable and controllable by hierarchical models often far away from the needs of citizens. Recycling process in the consolidated cities is the alternative to extensive development. The adaptive reuse of urban areas moves by leveraging existing infrastructure and combining a density to ensure the mixture and variety of uses necessary to give life to a city. Based on these assumptions, the Genoa Re-cycle Lab has chosen some areas of Genoa as a base for making students experiencing their knowledge about re-cycling practice (The Railway area of Terralba, The ex foundry factory Ansaldo, Multedo, The Sopraelevata highway and some others). The re-cycling process doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only give good examples of re-use practice, but it also gives models of financing and method of protecting the industrial heritage decreasing its impact on the environment, economy and society. Some specific lines of investigation and action outline the phases of the process: - Analysis of intervention sustainability, to clarify particular needs or concerns related to the working group; - Evaluation of sustainability and social chances, economic and environmental benefit of recycled sites, to disseminate the results of the project to a wider local audience; - Modelling of the industrial heritage use and its potential as economic development, to identify, mobilise and validate what the city really had to offer to the project in form of good practice, existing tools, site visits, policies and other experiences; - Combining different economic strategies to redevelop derelict industrial sites. To mobilise the political and institutional support required to ensure that the Local government leads to real change.

Culture of making Many groups, associations, spontaneous organizations, have started processes to re-activate areas, buildings, or cities in recent years; they involve focus on the role of people, their activities, and their emotions. These have in common the experimentation of a series of bottom-up processes, to re-start and to re-connect good initiatives starting from the citizens. They generate a capillary system of actions, or micro-actions, which become important for the relationship established between individual actions and both reality and the public. Through this interaction a process of pervasive osmosis, capable of self-sustaining with the effects produced by the individual projects, is activated. In this way a design approach comes into play, based on the attitude of observation, on the analysis of information and on the ability to translate them into creative solutions1. The relationships between makers and the industrial/commercial power structure of the city raise questions about the policy of making today. They can provoke thought and action in the present2. The cultures of making in past and present, pose questions about the possibilities and policies of our work. How can artists, designers and craftsmen take advantage of seemingly unrelated people, facilities and processes? How should the city making-culture engage with commerce and with its publics? It is up to the city's makers and users to decide what this trademark will stand for. The key concept is to create a shared vision. Design comes into play as envisioning (the ability to think about what does not yet exist and how to achieve it). It exploits the tools of communication, the story, the representation, visualization and interaction. Taking advantage of the ability to give shape to the daily life and public environments, but without reducing the whole thing just a matter of form. Strategies for reuse and/or recycling become aesthetic practices and are part of a continuous and collective narrative, even at the micro-scale, with a growing number of events/actions self-regenerated, ad hoc.The implementation of recycling processes involves the social aspect; participation as a spontaneous and proactive process is a widespread practice, suitable for all and the most plausible strategy for the contemporary development policies. The activation of recycling practices requires informal processes of re-appropriation of space (bottom-up) and legislative instruments and tools that facilitate these spontaneous processes (top-down). The informal actions often cause unusual practices to become established mechanisms of appropriation

(infractions) which are not covered by traditional development systems and which can also enrich the quality of public space and collective experiences. Guerrilla gardens, unauthorized vegetal gardens, street art, skate parks, they often produce actions that activate innovation and redevelopment activities. A model of design activism and participatory design can be used in generating services where those who have traditionally been individual endusers tend to become collaborative co-producers; where people who have traditionally been considered only as parts of the problem become agents of the solution. In this general framework the services generated by social innovations are co-designed and co-delivered, involving also final users: knowledge, creativity, time, energy and skills of the users are involved. A bridge between bottom-up social innovation and top-down public services can be built through an appropriate use of design knowledge and skills, adopting a participatory and community-centred approach, focusing on and activating different actors, and helping to clarify their motivations and promote their alignment towards a shared goal. In this frame, community-centred design supports the consolidation of emerging ideas, making them more effective, accessible and replicable. The goal is to promote changes in the way people get what they need to deal with their basic social needs. The role of designers is to facilitate this process, to get good results in influencing people’s behaviours. If they manage to get it right, it means they really know what cause behaviours in the first place. A Human Centred Design approaches could be more relevant to develop service concepts whose aim is to contribute to social innovation, since not only it is possible to understand the context of use from users’ perspective, but also, to involve them in the design process. In literature, we can find different terms to designate human-centred design methods: ethnography, contextual design, empathic design, experiencebased design, participatory design, and co-design. The differences among them are marked by the role of researcher and subjects along the design process. One of the most important phases of the recycling process is the valuation about economic and environmental impact assessment. Often businesses do not consider their supply chains, the ‘use’ and ‘end of life’ processes associated with their products. The CESISP3 research centre works on these issues.

Below a brief interview to Adriana Del Borghi4 and Carlo Strazza about their Life Cycle Thinking Approach. What is Life Cycle Thinking? Life Cycle Thinking reflects the acceptance that key societal actors cannot strictly limit their responsibilities to those phases of the life cycle of a product, process or activity in which they are directly involved. It therefore implies that all processors, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, users and waste managers involved in the life-cycle of a product share responsibility. The individual share of responsibility will obviously be greater in the parts of the life-cycle under their direct control and minor in distant stages of the life-cycle. Is it possible to evaluate the impact or the benefits - ex ante – to verify the recycle effects and to propose design hypothesis? Environmentally benign designs are bound to be more profitable, given that they incur in lower waste treatment and environmental compliance costs while converting a higher percentage or raw materials into saleable products. Recycle options where the benefits from avoiding manufacturing impacts may tend to dwarf energy and materials used for recycling the materials. Nevertheless, these issues should be dealt through the use of integrated metrics with a life cycle approach in order to actually measure the environmental friendliness. Which are the contents and the phases of LCT approach? The analytical tool that implements Life Cycle Thinking is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The methodological framework for conducting LCA, as defined by ISO 14040 standard, comprises four main phases: Goal and Scope Definition; Inventory Analysis; Impact Assessment; Interpretation and Improvement Assessment. Two attractive features of LC thinking techniques are: the inclusion of input and output wastes associated with a process, and the emphasis on environmental impact rather than emissions as a means of comparing different alternatives. In this sense an LCA takes into look all possible flows that a product/process incurs. Is the LCT a linear process? So-called “attributional LCA” and consequential LCA” can be distinguished when applying evaluating procedures in Life Cycle Thinking. In attributional LCAs, the processes included within boundaries are those that are

deemed to contribute significantly to the studied product and its function. In consequential LCAs, the processes included are those that are expected to be affected on short and/or long term by the decisions to be supported by the study. Consequently, the linearity that appears from the connection between processing units disappears and the production changes impacts upstream and downstream processes, considering its demand and capacities. It is possible talk about â&#x20AC;&#x153;(infr)actionsâ&#x20AC;? in LCT? The unique feature of LCT is its comprehensive scope along product/service life cycle stages, enabling designers to avoid problem-shifting issues. This conceptual framework fits over the concepts of Pollution Prevention and Cleaner Technology, and shares the same level with Industrial Ecology. Furthermore, LCT allows for the usage of Environmental Management Systems and LCA as the procedural and analytical tool for the analysis of different process/product systems. Nevertheless, the use of LCT does not only focus on the environmental dimension but also on social and economic aspects as well.

1. Fagnoni, R., Pericu, S., (2014) Re-activate the city, sharing spaces for research on design and humanities In: DE MORAES, Dijon; DIAS, Regina A.; SALES, Rosemary B.C.(Eds.). Diversity: design/humanities. Proceedings of Fourth International Forum of Design as a Process. E-book. Barbacena: EdUEMG, 2014. pp. 538-546. 2. AA.VV. (2013) Detroit Future City 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan- Inland Press 2001 Detroit, MI 3. CE.Si.S.P. is an Interuniversity Centre for the Development of Product Sustainability. (http://www.cesisp.unige.it/eng/index.htm) 4. Adriana Del Borghi, assistant professor in Chemical Engineering, Carlo Strazza, researcher in in Chemical Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Chemistry and Environmental (DICCA), University of Genoa.

Hannover, Leinhausen Survey campaign 2014, Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover

07 CONTEXT HANOVER SHAPING UNCERTAINTY Maddalena Ferretti

> Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover

Uncertainty There is a global discourse concerning the need of new tools for urban planning and design. At the turn of the new Millennium, some general and global concerns arose: unclear perspectives of development, scarcity of resources, environmental issues. All urban areas, both shrinking and growing, are somehow affected by these conditions. This is especially true for contexts, such as Italy, that have experienced a dramatic and sudden decrease of their economic power. Italy represents a relevant example of what happened to many southern European contexts in the last decade. Its cities are stepping back from a condition of growth to a new one, where recycling the existing land and building capital has or should become a key point of the future policies. Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s condition is different, both in terms of urban growth speed and of investment capacity. Nevertheless if we should define a common de-

nominator for the urban situation of these two countries, we should mention uncertainty, a shared condition of all cities in recent times. As Thomas Sieverts was claiming already at the end of the 90s: «Our present view of urban development is shaped by the concept of uncertainty. The reasons for this can be broadly summarised with bullet points: the fact that in principle the development of highly complex systems cannot be forecast; the fact that the relationship of wanted effects and undesired side-effects in the collaboration of various socio-technical systems cannot be foreseen; the increasing satiation of basic existential requirements which comes with prosperity, with the consequence of more liberal, not easily predictable investment possibilities of time and money. For these main reasons, research cannot remove this type of uncertainty, because it belongs precisely to the insoluble paradoxes that, despite the ever greater permeation of society with complex research-based rational systems, the paramount uncertainty of forecasting the system as a whole does not remove»1. Sieverts’ position is even more valid nowadays, when the new economic, social and environmental conditions have caused a radical turn in people’s thinking and attitude. The change of perspective in common awareness imposes to substantially rethink cities physical change according to a diverse idea of social and ecological targets of future city development. This applies also to German contexts. The shrinkage phenomenon is interesting large parts of the states, as the last City Report 2012 outlined2. The famous research Shrinking cities3, which first pointed out this urban process, was started by a German architect and urban planner, Philipp Oswalt. The following International Building Exhibition in Saxony Anhalt (2003-2010) tried to envisage new strategies to deal with shrinking urban contexts. Shrinking cities confront urban planning and design with new issues related to slow or even not existent development and questions about how to plan within this new condition of uncertainty. Traditional planning takes growth as its starting point and it depends usually on huge investments. On the contrary, planning shrinkage means using existing resources and avoiding other land consumption for new development areas. So empty spaces left after shrinkage become crucial elements of the strategic planning. However, this is not the unique condition of German urban environment. Another significant process is the increasing attractiveness of big cities such as Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, so that growth is still a major

challenge for some parts of the country. Even in cities with no strong growth forecasts, such as Hanover, it is possible to observe a constant concentration phenomenon bringing people from the suburban areas to the city in search of better job opportunities. Even in this case, though, the perspectives of future urban development is unclear. Also Munich, the fastest growing city in Germany, is confronted with uncertainty and it is thus integrating alternative urban policies, such as temporary uses, into the traditional planning in order to guarantee the completion and effectiveness of the planned projects. An example is the AGROPOLIS project by Landraum4. It forecasts the creation of an agricultural park in the area of Freiham, to the West of the city, where a new residential neighbourhood is going to be realized in the next thirty years. In the in-between time while the construction is led to completion, the City of Munich envisaged to occupy the area with temporary uses focusing in particular on urban farming. This approach shows that even growing cities have to tackle with a mutated context and must adapt their tools and policies towards flexibility and process-oriented designs. New paradigms and sustainable solutions are needed, that save and recycle land resources, implement new instruments and address the development of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;post-metropolisâ&#x20AC;? where uncertainties are opportunities of change. Context Recent urban development policies in Germany have highlighted a change in addresses and directions that goes along with the economic, social and spatial transformations of the last twenty years. Indeed the unification of East and West represented a major challenge for the State and at the same time the opportunity to transform the structure itself of its built environment. However, unless a lot has been done to uniform the development conditions of the two parts of the country, Eastern cities remained slightly backward and often suffer social problems and shrinkage phenomena. The structure of Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s settlements is highly polycentric and heterogeneous. The biggest urban conurbations are Berlin (3.4m inhabitants), Hamburg (1.7m inhabitants), Munich (1.3m inhabitants), Cologne (1.0m inhabitants) and Frankfurt a.M. (0.6m inhabitants). Moreover the city regions have gained in recent decades increasing relevance due to the spread of cities throughout territories. The Ruhr region, as an example, is the largest city region in Germany5.

The recent City Report 20126 has highlighted that German cities, whether large, medium or small sized, are today challenged with ensuring social cohesion, handling demographic and climate change, adapting to globalization, strengthening the economic structures, promoting education and innovation to improve housing and living qualities as well as preserving the historical heritage. The territorial dimension of settlements is an important phenomenon to be noticed. In general, outside metropolitan areas, all types of cities and towns are affected by population losses in the last ten years, with a few exceptions. This applies equally for East and West Germany. Only in West Germany some cities stabilised, such as Hanover that has recently witnessed a slight growth phenomenon. Within the metropolitan areas, the large cities are mainly growing, unlike small and middle-sized cities that have demographic losses. This shows the success of the big cities over the small ones, but it also expresses that most of the territory (the major conurbations are only 5) is suffering dispersion and isolation problems. To face this condition the Federal Governments´priority is to support cities’ development and to address challenges locally. Hence the Government is pursuing a policy that strengthens communities and supports them to cope with these tasks. In 2007 Germany adopted the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities and, in line with this approach, it established a National Urban Development Policy (NUDP). This initiative has taken root via various activities, projects and programmes and it has been recently readapted to respond to the changed needs and demands. One of the main key issues of the NUDP is the urban redevelopment of ‘weak’ areas «affected by significant urban function losses; the principle indication of such function losses is permanent oversupply of structural works, such as, vacant dwellings or derelict sites in inner cities, particularly industrial sites, former military sites converted for appropriate reuse and railway sites». Urban redevelopment measures are funded by the Federal State in order «to help solve urban design problems resulting from high vacancy rates, provided that these constitute a functional deficit» and to promote sustainability at the urban level7. Hanover According to the Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Develop-

ment) Hannover is classified as Großstadt (Big City) as it counts 522.686 inhabitants8. It is located in Northern Germany and it is the capital of Lower Saxony. In recent years Hanover has been interested by a slight growth process (+0.6% from 2006 to 2011), a common condition of many German cities, although there are some big cities which are growing much rapidly. As terms for comparison in the same period Munich has grown by 6,5%. Furthermore, Hanover’s positive growth ratio is mainly due to an immigration phenomenon from the countryside to the city, because this last provides a wider job offer due to its greater economic and political power. In 2011, the immigration/emigration ratio was +4,9%. In addition to the administrative offices, the economic structure of the city is mainly marked by the presence of some big factories such as the Volkswagen, the Continental, the Komatsu-Hanomag, the WABCO. The service economy is also gaining increasing importance and it is employing always more people9. Despite the slow growth, in the last decade the City of Hannover has planned new residential areas for meeting the supposed demand of the new inhabitants. Some of these projects remained unrealized though. Indeed, the risks connected are often too high or the financial capacities so reduced that the finalization of the projects has sometimes failed. This is the case for example of the former Continental factory in the Limmer neighbourhood. In 2003 the City promoted a design competition for the redevelopment of this area. The winning project pictured an accumulation of row- and double-houses, by proposing a full occupation of the area. The master plan was updated in 2011 under the name of Wasserstadt Limmer, but it kept the main concepts of land occupation and zoning. Due to reclamation problems, the master plan was never enforced. In 2014 a new project has been proposed to fulfil the need of new housing: 2.000 new homes will be built. The administration has already come to an agreement with new interested investors. Nevertheless it is still not clear if the Conti programme will be actually implemented in the near future. The on going economic structural changes and the demographic trends have meant for Hannover – as for other western German cities – a progressive abandonment process resulting in a growing number of brownfields without functional destination. At the same time there is a changing, differentiated demand for new areas of development and an ever-narrowing financial capacity of the Municipality.

Consequently, to recycle industrial sites and leftovers is becoming crucial for Hannover’s future governance policies. Some few years ago the City started a survey campaign in order to collect information and materials about possible reserve areas (former factories, unused military barracks, etc.) which could be suitable for future residential or industrial developments or as open spaces in-between the built fabric. As a result, different reconversion projects have been planned to transform this unused built capital into new housing districts in order to once again integrate it within the urban structure. Nevertheless, reconverting brownfields into dwelling districts entails not only a huge financial capital but also a long-time transformation that often starts with the reclamation of the area and arrives step by step to the construction of the buildings. Thus, some questions arise: what is happening to these areas in the in-between time before the project’s implementation? How to accelerate the reintegration process, by recycling them for instance without big investments and only for the inhabitants’ public use? How to involve citizens in the transformation? Are these areas conceived only as reserves for the future growth of the city, or can they play other roles such as green reserves, open spaces for cultural/leisure activities, spaces where to implement sustainable urban interventions? Hannover’s case study is a significant example to answer to all these questions. Moreover it is relevant in the German panorama as it embeds some features that are common to numerous cities: the situation of relative stability, as for the demographic development and for the economic dynamics, subtends nonetheless many factors of uncertainty that imply to reconsider the design and planning process of this urban environment with a different approach. Therefore, a critic look on this context must start from an on field analysis. That is the aim of the Seminar Urbane Feldforschung, currently held at the Institut für Entwerfen und Städtebau (LUH) and involving Master and Bachelor students. The Seminar is building a catalogue of the existing and possible recycle areas of Hannover, which are not necessarily the ones pointed out by the Municipality in its survey campaign. Instead, a first selection was applied right to the ones already included in the actual planning instruments. Only the areas potentially representing a propelling and repeatable model for the whole city have been picked. Also new recycle areas have been added during the analysis, although some still in use, because they have inherent a high transformative value and they can

represent an occasion for important transformations. The next step of this methodological approach forecasts the development of visions for every recycle area. The visions synthetize the main goals and the expected results: 1. a process-oriented design able to include uncertainty and flexibility as new values; 2. a different look at the city’s open spaces, imagined not only as possible reserves for new housing developments but as structural elements for the creation of an ecological capital for the urban environment; 3. a closer look to the networks and infrastructures linking together all the potential areas of transformation. The final objective of this methodology is to envisage, in a shared process with the Municipality, a possible future for these uncertain spaces and to incorporate them in the future planning addresses of Hannover. Here it would be possible to implement a more conscious urban transformation that considers urban recycle a crucial approach and takes into account alternative strategies of slow development, more respondent to the topical situation of this context.

1. Sieverts T., Cities without cities. An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt (London: Spon Press, 2003) 2. Deutscher Bundestag, Stadtentwicklungsbericht (Berlin: H. Heenemann GmbH & Co, 2013). http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/144/1714450.pdf 3. Oswalt P. (ed.), Shrinking cities, Vol.1>International Research (Hatje Cantz, 2005) 4. Schroeder J. , Baldauf T., Deerenberg M., Otto F., Weigert K., Agropolis München (Muenchen: 2009). http://www.agropolis-muenchen.de/index_en.html 5. Breuer B., Urban development in Germany (2010). http://www.eukn.org/Germany/de_en/Dossiers/Urban_Development_in_Germany 6. Deutscher Bundestag, op.cit. 7. National Urban Development Policy (July 2007). http://www.nationale-stadtentwicklungspolitik.de/ 8. Raumbeobachtung (ed.) Wachsende und schrumpfende Städte und Gemeinden. https://www.bbr-server.de/imagemap/SWSGEM/WEB/INDEX.HTML 9. Landeshauptstadt Hannover (ed.), Nachhaltiges Flächenmanagement Hannover (Hannover: 2010). http://www.refina-info.de/projekte/anzeige.phtml?id=3122

Linden-Mitte, Hannover (2012) View of the Ihme-Zentrum social housing complex at the periphery of the old city

08 FRAMEWORK HANOVER PLACES AS URBAN ASSAMBLAGE Emanuele Sommariva

> Leibniz Universität Hannover

In 2013, as part of the International Symposium ‘Thinking the Contemporary Landscape – Positions & Oppositions’, I bicycled around the Royal Baroque Gardens of Hannover (built in 1680 for want of the Duchess Sofia Wittelsbach-Simmern) almost loosing myself in the different “rooms” of the park, which comprises 50 hectares of lawns, hedges, walkways, and statues arranged in strict geometrical patterns. At the end of it, I entered into the community gardens (Kleingärtnerverein) of Rosendorf just behind the Wilhelm-Busch Museum and the river Leine, crossing part of the old suburb of Herrenhäuser. I did this because I wanted to know about Hannover, not as a tourist or a resident, but as an architect and urban planner who is interested in the potentialities of marginal urban places, to get their atmosphere and to see how these places are conceived and lived by the citizens. I wanted to know if the activities related to urban agriculture would tell me something about the city that I could not see another way. This personal experience is just an example of a broader investigation of places: a sort of reinterpretation of urban derive1, the exploration technique proposed by the avant-garde artists and political theorists which formed

the Situationist International during the 50’s. Beyond the discovery of unities of human environment, of their main components and their dimensions, the analysis of a fixed spatial field entails establishing databases and taking into account multiple crosscutting factors (level of urban complexity, redundancy of functions, accessibility system, people’s memories). It is here that the study of maps comes in, ranging from the traditional urban and territorial ones, towards the evaluation of ecological, transformative process and footprint assessments, along with their correction and implementation through direct analysis. Planners have long been exercised defining or layering the principal elements of a region, but this process of definition's improvement has usually been reduced to the issue of drawing boundaries around a place. But this kind of approach only distinguish between an inside and an outside, a counterposition between spaces, functions and land values, resulting from a logic imposed by the economic and housing market; and yet if one considers almost any real place, and certainly one not defined by administrative or political boundaries, these supposed characteristics are not exhaustive to describe sense of a place. From this perspective it is possible to envisage an alternative interpretation of places, in order to introduce new values for the survey and to stress the deeper capacity of mapping technique, the same which guided Hannover’s students during the Seminar ‘RECYCLE urbane Feldforschung’ 2. Not only to document a given site, but to “unfold” the potentialities of reuse, or quoting Guy Debord «…to express a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances, in which overlapping perimeters and increasing uncertainty are the precondition to read the urban left overs, the scraps, the voids» 3. A progressive “sense of place” Understanding how sense of place develops and changes is relevant, as Edward Casey said «… to study how people interact with their environment and considering how this interaction may become more sustainable; although places are not things in any usual or material sense: they are some kind of entities or occasions». The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of few blocks; the appealing or repelling character of certain parts of the city; the evident continuity of urban landscapes, in

Linden Süd, Continental AG, Ihme-Zentrum Selection of the focus areas of the Seminar RECYCLE urbane Feldforschung (2014)

spite of functional zoning, the major or minor relevance of social actors that inhabits specific neighborhoods are various factors which denotes the necessity to develop a “progressive” idea of place, in relation to the cyclical process of construction, transformation and reuse that cities undergo in time. Approached through diverse disciplines the concept ranges between two extremes. For some, places are bounded and related to genius loci4 and to stasis; others reject this essentialist notion frozen in time, asserting the dynamic nature of contexts in a constant state of flux, so that changes may be the results of determined top-down actions or part of recursive urban cycles. The geographer Doreen Massey suggests that places can be conceived as «the articulation of moments in relation to the societal transformation and the introduction of new meanings. According to this, the sense of a place cannot be enclosed in a set of predetermined boundaries but is extroverted, including a consciousness of its links to the territory» 5. Rethinking about the lesson of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Capitalism and Schizophrenia6, the philosopher Manuel De Landa considers this issue proposing the Assemblage Theory as an ontological schema for reading urban entities. Urban assemblages are wholes constructed from the modifications, interactions and overlapping between multiple contiguous parts, even if incongruent and heterogeneous. These can be organized in different levels and at different scales, based not only on their own properties but also on their potential relationship. Interpersonal networks, institutional organizations and other non

governative associations are assemblages of people; social movements are assemblages of citizens and local communities which live directly a territory; a street is an assemblage of discreet things (material and immaterial) all come together to define this context, but it is the connection between these elements which define the complexity as well as the “sense of the place”. Recent design discourse has shown a prejudice against rigid formal urban structures and has advocated tools to promote self-organization, emergence and indeterminacy. The role of the designer in such projects shifts from that of an “artist” who gives concrete form and definition to a project, to the engineer of a system, who sets in motion a process or series of process that will ultimately lead to a range of possible futures and associated forms. Yet most landscape and urban designers receive very little training in actual systems theory7 and are largely unfamiliar with tools used in other scientific disciplines, especially with using the computer not only as a tool of design production, but as a device for go beyond the traditional limit of the direct analysis on site. So how might mapping intersect with this assemblage theory version of place? How can computer descriptions and models of landscape processes be used as a tool for design, especially within informal, emergent or self-organized contexts? Mapping as tool for a “Fieldwork Seminar” Even if it seems difficult to represent such complex and fluctuating entities, the potential of mapping along with procedure of survey and data collection, lies in its inventiveness and its capacity to assemble transformative scenario about the perceived “reality” of a place. In these terms, James Corner acknowledges that maps can be used to select specific territorial elements, to layer the disparate field of conditions that characterize the analyzed contexts, or to imagine the possible futures, in parallel with other visualization techniques, such as collage or conceptual sketches. This specific methodology has resulted for the landscape urbanists to emphasize the processes of mapping in order to identify and then describe the nuanced relationship between the material, spatial and social orders of forces acting on the territory, as well as to describe an approach that anticipates change over time8. Rather than producing traditional representation, either orthographic

(master plan) or pictorial (perspective rendering), these types of projects are process driven and the mappings produced act instrumentally. To use De Landa’s terms, the landscape urbanist mappings attempt to set down the component parts and contingent relationships of the “place assemblage”. It is this potential dynamicity that have been investigated in the different focus area selected for the Seminar ‘RECYCLE urbane Feldforschung’. The aim of this course is to demonstrate the possibility and convenience of an urban development working on the vacancy as well as on the underused areas of Hannover city (empty plots, abandoned sites, vacant infrastructures, peripheral contexts). In this sense, the general goal is to explore the operative impact of urban re-activation processes by analyzing and mapping city’s land capital available for future planned interventions. According to the different data collected in 2012 by Lower Saxony's Territorial Agencies, the demographic trends in Hanover Region describes an almost constant amount of population living in the rural areas and a growth of 2.3% in the urban and suburban agglomerations, resulting in increasing demand for housing and for public services. If urbanization processes and demand for land will not lessen, the determinant conditions of spatial development will continue to foster land consumption. Only in the year 2014 in Hannover have been built 254 new residential buildings, producing an increase of 7.7% of new urban area. Nevertheless one crucial responsibility of regional development policy is to maintain and improve environmental quality, by securing and enhancing open space and countryside in spite of building new infrastructures. Recently Hanover’s Urban Planning Office has realized a transformation map showing reserves of territory in order to settle down priority directions for future transformations of the city, mitigating their impacts and stabilizing physical aspects of places by recalling De Landa's assemblage theory9. Our vision for Hannover starts by looking at this map with a different perspective: highlighting the existing and new potential functions of these areas in relation with the neighboring contexts, by studying their consistency and urban roles with both a remote research of data and a dedicated field survey campaign to record the perceptive as well as geo-spatial information. The development of this methodology led to the definition of a “Recycle Footprint Map” of Hannover, by focusing on analyzing the city’s reserve areas as priority objectives of urban quality

and environmental performances to be obtained with the recycling actions. Within this framework, four thematic maps are produced to represent the abandoned and dismissed land capital according to various territorial elements (building structure, infrastructural networks, open space system, water streams). By changing and updating the methods of urban design, we want to explore the possibility that also design disciplines can be converted from simple expressions of standards, financial investments and land-uses into a wider landscape sensitive development, giving a new sense of necessity to what real-estate market consider as urban left-over. There are key issues concerning the operative aspect of the recycle strategy: − − − − −

the transformation of building typologies in the post-production city the rapid reuse or progressive abandonment of city spaces the new ecological urban dimension connecting environmental issues the social participation into the decision making process the interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approach for the design

The final goal of the seminar has been the construction of a comparative matrix about the focus areas, underlining their transformative adaptability to the strategy described in the analytical phase. A collection of virtuous scenarios connected to the relationship between city densification, resource optimization and reuse of the existing urban elements will be then the base to build some speculative visions of possible design interventions. For the students this course will have not only a theoretical dimension, but also an experimental one: this represent an added value both towards a more creative approach to design (working on vision and processes rather than function and standards) by updating the didactic and research methodology. In the contemporary cities the role of the voids has become significant, for the extension of the city, for the discontinuity of its "parts", for the life cycles of its structures and landscapes. Inside and outside the city we can recognize the "architecture of the void", even their incomplete variations. Bernardo Secchi defines them as «spaces that are between things, next to each other, become empty because they lack a recognizable role and difficult to bring back into some formal categories can characterize their extensions».

In this way, reading urban complexity means also to foster a paradigm shift towards a more sustainable, ecological and participatory sensitivity for urban disciplines, another advantage for the students is to experience a direct interaction with individuals and urban social forces into a placemaking process, which contributes to rethink the future governance of our territories.The Seminar ‘RECYCLE urbane Feldforschung’ cannot establish a definitive answer in relation to the existing trends of development in Hannover, but instead offers a complex view of the urban environment at different scales. This mean to tackle unexpected opportunities, which put together different crosscutting themes (sustainable, smart and resilient cities, social welfare, alternative mobility, temporary uses, 0km markets, open space and greenification strategies, climate changes, environment mitigation policies) and to map the city surface, the soil itself, as a multiscalar dynamic surface: a terrain for an assemblage of heterogeneous parts.

1. Debord G. (1956) Theory of the Dérive. Les Lèvres Nues, vol. 9, Internationale Situationniste 2. ‘RECYCLE urbane Feldforschung’ is a seminar held in SS 2013/2014 by Prof. Jörg Schröder, Arch. Maddalena Ferretti PhD, Arch. Emanuele Sommariva PhD at the Department of Urban Design and Planning, Leibniz Universität Hannover.. 3. Debord G. (1955) Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Les Lèvres Nues vol. 6 4. Norberg-Schulz C. (1991) Genius Loci: a phenomenology of architecture, Rizzoli: Milano 5. Massey D. (1994) ‘A global sense of place’, in Space place gender, Minnesota Press: Minneapolis 6. Deleuze G., Guattari F. (1980) Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, Les Éditions de Minuit: Paris 7. Mostafavi M. (2003) ‘Landscapes of Urbanism’, in Mostafavi M., Najle C. (eds.) Landscape Urbanism: a manual for the machinic landscape, pp. 5-9, AA Press: London 8. Corner, J. (1999) ‘The agency of Mapping: speculation, critique and invention’, in Cosgrove D. (ed.) Mappings, pp. 213-252, London: Reaktion 9. De Landa M. (2006) A new philosophy of society: Continuum Edition: London

Eastern edge of the branch canal at Lindener Hafen, Hanover 2014. Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover

09 SCENARIOS HANOVER VISIONS FOR INITIAL SPACES Sarah Hartmann

> Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover

In recent years and decades, the discussion about the architectural heritage of the industrial age has increasingly become an urban task: Industrial buildings and sites, infrastructures and residential areas have evolved to vacancies, parallel to the course of the structural change. Those spaces are higly valuable - not only because of their often central localization in the urban fabric. Innovative new interpretations of such derelict sites can be currently observed all over Europe - such as the case of Toni-Areal in Zurich or the Ile de Nantes in France.1 When such an obsolete or abandoned urban site is to be developed, we, being architects, have a clear model in mind. There is an owner or an investor who commissioned a planner to evolve a development plan. The vision is that, by investing in building measures, the urban sites are redesigned and used in a new way. Subsequently a desired final state is designed, which is then translated into a development plan. It happens, that this procedure is not working out - be it that the local real estate market passes through a weak phase, be it that residents lodge an appeal, be it that any kind of contamination is discovered on site or old buildings are preserved as monuments. Then, years of vacancy testify the difficulties of such procedures.2

Due to such shortcomings and the increasing scope of do it yourself and bottom up practices, the idea of urban development as a result of planning has been deeply questioned in recent times. On account of constantly moving dynamics of development, changing framework conditions and the increasing complexity of involved stakeholder constellations, the longterm forecasts of urban development are no longer appropriate as an absolute basis for urban planning. But the crisis may also be an opportunity, because it forces us to rethink our present assumptions and to step onto new ways.2 Accordingly a transformed attitude towards the urban pactices can be stated. A movement, that shifted away from static ways of planning and working, towards individual, small unit based and performative strategies.3 Since the beginning of the post-industrialization, it can be more and more recognised, that temporary, initially unplanned uses play an increasingly important role in the public and cultural life as well as for the spatial development of a city.4 Places with uncertain time horizons - like underused, poorly accessible, post-industrial, post-infrastructural, post-military, and post-tourist areas - are rediscovered and evince a breeding ground for creative development. Temporary clubs and bars, start-ups, migrants economies and informal markets stimulate the appropriation of space, the revitalization of desolate or underused areas, create hubs for social and cultural interactions and initiate longer term uses. Practices and stakeholders of temporary uses have now become a major force of urban development.5 These process-oriented developments communicate openness, innovation and identity and have resulted already into many examples of sustainable urban development. Frequently, identity generating qualities are incurring, which affect the image of a site decisively and thus strengthen its economic, social and cultural basis. However, it remains unclear which role the planning disciplines, in this almost automated seemingly urban development process, play. In this sort of urbanism, the planner does not impose the rules of urban development, but instead acts in a force field that he has to know in order to be able to use it to his advantage. He has to know what spatial development is taking place. How will the space develop in the future? How will the different parameters take effect spatially? Which patterns of development generate the infrastructures, which generate the landscape spaces, and which the political and economic systems? 6 To engage with this new role in the uncertain process

of development, concerning economic and temporal conditions, is a quite new and challenging task of the discipline of urbanism. In order to deal with those questions in a holistic way it is implicitly required to renew the approaches and tools. In the light of the previously presented concepts of the ReCycle approach, the following essay formulates an approach which describes possible processes of initiation, for temporally uncertain areas in the city, through the tool of scenarios. As part of the bachelor thesis Design Week, Students from the University of Hannover ellaborated processoriented spatial proposals, for a partly still operating industrial area, the "Lindener Hafen" in Hanover. The essay aims furthermore to clarify the framework of the approach and to point out a more general perspective, in order to show the methodological transferability of the approach for other contexts. The theme of Urban Re-Cycle7, which means a transit from a measurement system (the territory) to a value system (the landscape), as formulated by the Genoa Lab Group was included in the thesis as an important theoretical framework. The Re-Cycle strategy is hereby used, to design a strategic process that opens up the possibility to push forward a continuous reactivation and re-interpretation of abandoned urban landscapes. Context The area of the Lindener Hafen is characterized as a porous industrial and commercial island within the central city area of Hanover. Still functioning and abandoned enterprises are mixed up with intensively used and derelict open spaces, on an area of about 70 hectares. The aim of the urban development strategy of the administrative government is, to secure this area of production within the city, even in the distant future. Nevertheless, convincing forward-looking and sustainable ideas for the use of the partially empty or underused space in this central location are missing until now. The change of the land use into housing is not possible due to various emissions (5,000 residents moved in 2013 to Hannover, since then housing is again an important issue).8 The areas represent currently a storage of space, and are thus not contributing to the attractiveness of the area. The matter at Lindener Hafen is to develop a range of different scenarios of temporary uses to initiate necessary innovations in industry and trade, in oder to strengthen the competitiveness that could be developed strongly within this inner city area.

Scenarios: What if, ....? The tool of scenario provides the possibility of admitting the uncertainties and the indefinable, that has so far often been the downfall of planning. Peculiarities and the spatial diversity of the existing manifests the conceptual starting point for the concept. Instead of fixation occurs creativity and integration of different interests. The technique of scenario, is used in the project to bring together complex general conditions and to translate them later on as individual results of the theoretical considerations into a spatial design. The scenario anticipates possible futures, thus ideas of development can be analysed, proofed and developed further. But scenarios are in this case not understood as forecasts, although they also depend on assumptions. Since they have to relay on the extrapolation of current developments and existing social trends, they remain always speculative.9 However, the added value lies in the fact that undesirable developments can be pointed out in an early stage and can be therefore adapted. It enables an investigation about how to communicate and represent isolated ideas of possible changes of non-linear and complex development processes and interactions of probable futures. For the project, the scenarios were not only to be developed starting from new uses, but also of a renewed interpretation of the industrially characterized spaces. Baseline-Scenario of the project: Through international cooperations, especially with the fair of furniture in Milan and through the university network, Hanover is a fertile ground for furniture, design and production. It is assumed that young designers, as well as established ones, have the opportunity to show their products in an unconventional and innovative way, at the "Hannover Design Week 2015". The area around the harbour of the neighbourhood of Linden will be transformed in this period of seven days into the fair Design Week, in order to exhibit and stimulate young, creative and international furniture production. Afterwards, the fair establishes itself into a recurring event and takes place once a year. Through this cycle the new fair obtains increasing importance and new temporary and culturally creative uses come up throughout the whole year. Due to this feedback, arises the possibility that temporary buildings and uses gain a longer-term perspective on site. Further temporary elements will define - in addition to the festival - another starting point for the transformation of the entire port area. After ten

* * * * 2

Phase 3

Phase 2

number of temporary activities

Phase 1

time

2014

2015

2016

2018

2022

2024

20xx

Diagram of increasing activities: a possible process of development Leibniz UniversitĂ¤t Hannover

years, the Hanover Design Week has become an international happening, and some former temporary uses made up new spatial configurations. Which long term vision can result from these impulses for the port area, being a multi-layered site of production in the city, including as well cultural and leisure aspects? To answer those questions in different scenarios, a ten years time frame is given, in which experimental interventions at derelict or underused land and buildings are allowed and even encouraged. However only under the condition that these interventions can be completely removed by the expiration of the period of ten years. As the graphic above shows, the Design Week is used as an initial act of excitement (1). In that respect, temporarily intended uses are getting denser and of brighter variety over time (2). But "temporary" does in this case not mean, that at the time X (3) there is nothing left of the short term uses. Instead, the long-term goal of the short term occupation is to launch an initial phase - an introduction to the production of city and of urbanity that is new and unfamiliar to Hanover. Three different stages of development were designed in the theses through the tool of scenarios, in order to create a spatial and programmatic added value to the heterogeneous and highly perforated area. The students developed spatial concepts for exhibition areas, infrastructure and services for the project-based intervention Design Week, which developed in cooperation with the Hanover Fair. All concepts are based on highly short-term ideas, since the design week lasts only seven days on

the site. The second stage starts from the assumed success of the Design Week. On this basis, elements were identified and defined, which, although still temporary, sustain the time beyond the Design Week. Also new temporary uses (e.g. design, production, leisure, etc.,...) are implemented, which influence each other through positive synergies. The scenario of the third stage formulates a future vision, in which the previous temporary interventions have already initiated longer-term uses and formed thereby new urban spaces. Conclusion and Discussion The resulted projects cover a wide range of different approaches and spatial manifestations: starting from a simple but highly effective idea of a large semi-transparent roof, to the idea to occupy the edge of the branch channel (see picture on the right) by multifunctional steles, and thus attribute a new meaning to it. Or the idea to transform industrially used bridges into exhibition areas, or even to create a campi-system that spreads along both shorelines of the branch channel. All interventions that have been designed in the projects - temporary and long-term - have the power to influence a possible development process of a mixed tissue of operating and fallow industry. In the last and most concept related part - the design of a condition, after about ten years - the recycle approach was very important and useful. Students defined mostly existing, and identity creating infrastructural elements as axes or points of development, e.g. the existing but partly disused railway network. The works that emanated from the available existing buildings were much rarer. Hereby, the methodology of process-oriented recycling is seen transferable, as its aim and scope is not to create definite endresults, but to design and set the right course for a development process that still has an open end. The process is furthermore strengthened by the tool of scenarios: this conceptual approach made it possible to create different visions of the future spatial situation of the area - from the building scale up to the level of the whole city. This cross scale approach is moreover an essential access to handle the complexity of the area and to explore and identify its inherent problems and opportunities.

Perspective of the design week taking place at Lindener Hafen Sofia Hanina, Student at Leibniz Universität Hannover

1. Eisinger, A., Seifert, J., UrbanRESET: How to Activate Immanent Potential of Urban Spaces (Birkhäuser, 2012) 2. Oswalt, P., Die Stadt stimulieren. Standortentwicklung mit kapitalschwachen Akteuren und temporären Programmen, in Werk, Bauen, Wohnen, 6 (2002): 44-49, online: www.urbancatalyst.net/downloads/urban_catalyst_WBW.pdf 3. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin (ed.) Raumpioniere. Stadtentwicklung durch Zwischennutzung, Analysis and Exhibition (Berlin 2004/ 2005) with Studio UC-Klaus Overmeyer und Cet-0 4. Ngo, A., ed al., Vom Unitären zum Situativen Urbanismus in ARCH+ 183 (2007): 20-21 5.Raumlabor (ed.) Acting in Public (Jovis, 2008) online: http://raumlabor.net/wp-content/ uploads/2008/01/raumlaborberlin_actinginpublic_web.pdf 6. Oswalt, P., Overmeyer, K., Schmidt, H.: Less Is More - Experimental Urban Reconstruction in Eastern Germany, A Study by the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau (Dessau 2001), online: http://alt.bauhaus-dessau.de/images/body/less_texte.pdf 7 Mosè Ricci: New Paradigms: Re-duce, Re-use, Re-Cycle the City, in RE-CYCLE Strategies for Architecture City Planet (Milan 2011) 8. Bundesistitut für Stadt- und Raumforschung (ed.) Szenarien und Visionen zur Stadtentwicklung, online: http://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/StadtentwicklungDeutschland/Tendenzen/Projekte/SzenarienVisionen.html 9.Klein, M., Hannover wächst weiter, in Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , 18.04.2013

Field experiment in the future newtown Freiham in Munich - establishing urban space Agropolis MĂźnchen and raumlaborberlin

10 TRANSALPINE TRAJECTORIES Jörg Schröder > Leibniz Universität Hannover

Firsthand trajectories between Genova, München and Hannover have made this research a pleasure, and an innovative device to take best advantage of a transalpine connection. DAAD has funded this part of research, and also this book, as international partner of the PRIN national Italian research programme. Trajectories highlight the very similar and really diverse conditions of European cities and territories. As contribution to Re-Cycle Leibniz Universität Hannover provides reference scenarios for the Genova-Group. The scenarios in München and Hannover open up programmatic and conceptu-al fields for comparison and transfer, to evaluate adaption of Re-Cycle methodologies and to contribute in their development. The German context highlights the approach of Re-Cycle to concieve the transformation of the city as holistic sustainable approach. Our reference can be seen in the "manzo" built for the Re-Cycle exhibition1 in the MAXXI in Rome: it is inspired by the butcher's table to explain all parts of the animal and its complete use for different dishes, pointing also at further uses for clothes, tools, liquids. It suggests to re-build networks

Urban Initials Concept Freiham, Munich. Agropolis MĂźnchen and raumlaborberlin

of food and knowledge, and includes the production chains, the people involved, and the landscapes standing behind the butcher's table. With the "manzo" as map re-reading and re-connecting forgotten urban and rural relations, the "manzo" suggests to re-define urbanistic paradigms in general. The contribution of Hannover and German territorial context bring together different experiences from growing and balancing built-up conditions, landscapes and in general more volatile economic driving forces. Actual practices and conceptions of transformation in Germany can support this re-reading: What has been a temporary occupation of vacant places and an underground cultural movement in Berlin since the 90ies, now becomes part of city development strategies. Projects since the 1990ies that influenced the landscape urbanism approach and its follow ups for ex-industrial areas (in regard to stabilisation, cleaning, creation of identities and spatial qualities) now influences regional and landscape development in larger scales.

Bavarian Prealpine Arc

City of Zurich and Cantons of Zug, Schwyz, Uri, Tessin Metropolitan Area of Styria

Ljubljana Urban Region

Grenoble metropolis

Verona and the prealpine valleys Milan metropolitan region Turin, Ciriacese and Lanzo valleys

RURBANCE Rural-Urban Cooperation and Governance. Pilot areas. Landraum

Trajectories look ahead. For this four crucial issues can offer further discussion. Urban Initials The first issue is a new understanding of temporality in urban planning. Since time, use and cultural and economic horizons are changing and becoming very unpredictable, temporary uses can introduce qualities of living spaces from the very start of urbanistic projects. An example has been proposed in the "Urban Initials Concept" for the new town Freiham in Munich2. Connecting a cultural approach towards the urban-rural border with the theme of "Food for the City"3 and elements of urban agriculture, but also taking advantage of Munich's creative milieus, "Urban Initials" aim at creating urban spaces with a strong identity - involving from the very beginning future inhabitants, housing firms and "selfmade city"4 organisations, and actors from the adjoining city quarter.

Research by Design Since the conditions for urban planning have deeply changed in regard to the modernist approach - that nevertheless dominates legislation and planning procedures still strongly - urbansim will have to rebuild its own discipline. As Umberto Eco stated, that "architecture is the art to articulate space"5, design processes, methodes and paradigms have to be reshaped. Certainly also in an artistic and aestetic perspective, but at the same time by relevant and transferable research.6 Building Culture In an also social and economic unterstanding of "Shaping the Territoriy", building culture includes all sorts of built elements, infrastructures, cultural landscapes, and of course architecture, but firsthand focusses on the processes to produce spatial qualities and to the actors that are involved or should be involved7. Also by new ways of communication of planning and building issues, as for example with the Agropolis Magazine8 as imitation of the weekly magazine that accompanies the newspaper SĂźddeutsche Zeitung. The Territory Concieving Re-Cycle not only as urgent theme of urban planning, but setting it in a renewed understanding9 of the complex nature of European territories, may open up sustainable regional strategies for urban-rural cooperation10.

Baufortschritt

Open Claims

ProjektbĂźro Stadt aus Stroh Hausbaumschule Freiluftsupermarkt

1. Jahr

2. Jahr

3. Jahr

Urban Initials Concept Freiham, Munich. Agropolis MĂźnchen and raumlaborberlin

1. Pippo Ciorra, Sara Marini (ed.): Re-cycle. Strategies for Architecture, City, and the Planet. 2011 2. Urban Initials Freiham Concept for the Capital City of Munich, 2014 by Agropolis München (Jörg Schröder, Kerstin Hartig, Florian Otto, Sarah Hartmann, Nathalie Hörth) in collaboration with raumlaborberlin (Markus Bader, Benjamin Förster-Baldenius, Urs Kumberger, Andreas Krauth) 3. Food and the City. Research project at the Chair for Regional Building and Urban Planning, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 2013 4. Kristien Ring (ed.), with collaboration of Miriam Mlecek: Selfmade City, Berlin 2013 5. Umberto Eco: Introduction to Semiotics, 1972 6. A research by design approach actually is developed in the PhD-Thesis works inside of the City&Landscape doctoral college, organized by the Chair of Regional Building and Urban Planning in cooperation with the departments of Landscape Architecture and of Open Space Development of Leibniz Universität Hannover 7. Scientific research for the EU Alpine Space Programme project AlpBC Alpine Building Culture, that aims to combine energy issues with the Alpine building stock as well as with new constructions (Jörg Schröder, Sarah Hartmann, Miriam Mlecek, Kerstin Finkenzeller, Lisa Leitgeb) www.alpbc.eu 8. Jörg Schröder, Kerstin Hartig, Florian Otto, et.al.: Agropolis Magazine. 2009. First prize of the Open Scale Competition of the City of Munich, as contribution to the new awareness of urban agriculture and open space qualitites for urban development 9. Jörg Schröder, Kerstin Weigert (eds.): Landraum. 2010 10. Scientific research for the EU Alpine Space Programme project RURBANCE, led by the General Direction for the Environment, Energy and Sustainable Development of Lombardy Region. RURBANCE aims at new governace models for rural-urban cooperation (Jörg Schröder, Kerstin Hartig, Urs Kumberger, Nathalie Hörth, Lisa Leitgeb) www.rurbance.eu

AlpHouse Cross-Scale Relation Scheme. Photos Klaus Leidorf, Laura Egger for Landraum

RECYCLE MANIFESTOS

01 TEMPORARY DEVICES Jeannette Sordi

Temporary - so as recycle - means to adopt the “time” variable as the main paradigm for transformation. Materials and objects, and architecture, get their meaning from the use that can be made out of them, over time. The first experiment of “recycled” architecture consisted therefore in readapting no longer used materials, or even better constructed materials that are thought to have a temporal use, adapting them to new functions and possibilities. Most notably, the clearest examples can be found in projects of architecture made out of containers - the single use constructed form and material par excellence. LOT_EK Sanlitun South, by NYC-architects, is an Urban Shipping Container Village in Beijing, a shopping and living center of 24,000 sqm. The project was inspired by the traditional Chinese ‘Hutong’, and containers are organized like a village with a dense fabric of narrow alleys, low-rise buildings, elevated walkways and bridges that connect the levels together. In each alley, a rhythmic system of metal frames connect the buildings, they are railings for the upper loggias at the same time, originating an urban and industrial setting which is also very quaint and accessible. Another example is the Bayside Marina Hotel, by Asutaka Yoshimura Architects, in which containers are reassembled into a 2 087 m² hotelkomplex next to the harbour. The main idea was to produce cheap rooms in the neighbourcountry Thailand so that the volume was defined by transportation conditions. The community buildings were built in conventional way, but, by shifting and rotating position interesting interstitial places

Platoon+Graft Platoon Kunsthalle Seoul

NYC-architects, LOT-EK – Sanlitun South Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects Bayside Marina Hotel

are developed. The same concept, was reused for realizing emergency accommodations in case of natural catastrophes. Kunsthalle Seoul, by Platoon+Graft, is a building for producing and exhibiting all forms of street art, built out of 28 cargo containers. The whole building looks like a oversize container in the middle of the urban landscape. The program is not defined: alternating exhibitions, concerts, workshops, movie nights, discussion panels, multimedia performances etc. create a dynamic space where new ideas are born and presented. However, this well known approach can be shifted from the idea of “reusing” temporary structures to the temporary “use” of the urban landscape. The interstitial and neglected spaces of the city become the place in which new activities may take place and ecological systems arise. Temporary strategies may allow to use a piece of land in a determined time lapse, intervening in the gaps of urban planning and exploiting the potential of sites. If connected, this places can originate a new urban “infrastructure” that can have different“times” of activation, functioning, and transformation that are different from traditional ones, determined by citizens’ wishes, by the will of the actors that can promote these interventions, and by the natural transformation of ecological processes over time. Further Information on the projects: http://www.archdaily.com/318090/ http://www.archdaily.com/27386/platoon-kunsthalle-graft-architects/ http://www.arcstreet.com/article-bayside-marina-hotel-yasutaka-yoshimura-architects-99654298.html

02 HYBRID INFRASTRUCTURES Sarah Hartmann Westway

Highline

Infrastructures, Landscape and Architecture are the decisive factors that shape the image and the daily use of the environment. The disciplines that belong to these categories have been working for a long time on the tasks, that were supposedly assigned to them, with an intrinsic approach. As a result of this in warded processes of implementation - as for example the construction of huge infrastructures in the 60ies - the city fabric got partly refracted and inhabited, unused and unattractive spaces emerged. Nowadays there is an increasing interest for mega infrastructures and the undesigned spaces around it notable. Nevertheless, as stated in the "infrastructural urbanism" approach, it still needs to get even more present: "although the interdependence between infrastructure and urban development has been a central topic in urban planning, infrastructure as a design element plays a comparatively subordinate role". As a new category of urban design, infrastructures can not any longer be seen only as technical and functional devices but it is necessary to conceive them as hybrid potentials that have to be integrated into the city fabric by designing actively the spaces that they enable.The three examples of recycled infrastructures represent three different approaches of dealing with unique city spaces. The High Line in New York, was an old railway highline, that was closed in the 80ies and was transformed into a public park, which opened in 2009. One of the determing factor for the huge success of the park is seen in the new perspective on the city. The height which was formerly important

The Highline, New York James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofido + Renfro Urban Mobilities of the Westway in London Reasearch by Susan Robertson Museo Storico del Trentino, Trento Studio Terragni Architetti

to guarantee s smooth running of the train transport, allows nowadays to look at Manhattan like at a stage. The second example “Museo Storico del Trentino” deals with the transformation of two tunnel tubes, which were no longer needed. Instead of shutting it down, this unique formation of space was transformed into a historic museum - therefore one tube was painted black inside, one white. The Westway Highway in London is an example of how to make use of the spaces that are underneath and generally conceived as ugly, ordinary and unsafe. By encouraging temporary uses, informal processes and bottom up approaches, these spaces provide areas for those who usually have no projection space in the city fabric. In that way these residual spaces can regain attention, a stronger meaning and a new perception - which is precondition to integrate them into the urban body. As shown by the references, infrastructures create hybrid potentials for the city fabric and hence "the possibility of re-examining (...) a new attitude to infrastructure that goes beyond technical considerations to embrace issues of ecological sustainability, connection to place and context, and cultural relationships"2 is urgently needed. 1 Hauck, V., Keller, R., Kleinekort, V. (eds.) Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the In-between, 2011 2 Mossop, Elizabeth. Landscapes of Infrastructure, in: The Landscape Urbanism Reader, 2006 Further Information: Museo Storico del Trentino: Elisabetta Terragni – Studio Terragni ArchitettiTrento, IItaly2007 – 2009 Westway: "Infrastructural Form, Interstitial Space and Informal Acts", Ed Wall, in: Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the In-between, p. 145-157

03 ECOLOGICAL RECLAMATION Emanuele Sommariva

polluted sites

soil washing

demolition

reclamation

The remediation process of brownfields or polluted terrains, as well as the potential reconversion of heavy transformed lands into economically productive sites, such as grazing or orchards, are included into a wider interpretation of ecological reclamation. Anthropogenic influence, especially by urban and industrial activities, leads to a deep alteration of soils and results in the disturbance of the ecosystems. Efficient and sustainable reclamation technologies are required to limit the depletion of natural resources, arable soils and to propose new ways of waste recycling. Various approaches of restoration, rehabilitation and reclamation are available in ecological engineering on degraded sites. Many authors highlight the fact that the main precondition for ecological reclamation is the re-functioning of soil as the first action of a complete recycle strategy. The two selected projects deals with two similar suburban residual landscape: two landfills contaminated with urban residues of decades and their future management means also to relate these issue to wider policies for territorial governance. Vall dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;en Joan is located in the south-west of Barcelona, close to the Garraf Natural Park, and spread over an area of 60 ha, with a total waste volume of 22 mil. tones, collected for over 30 years. In 2003, Batlle & Roig Architects has been commissioned to define the pilot project of land reclamation with the support of the Hydraulic Service and Waste Treatment Department of Barcelona Municipality. The recycle intervention started by disposing the large amounts of

Corner + Field Operations Fresh Kills Park

Batlle & Roig Vall dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;en Joan remediation

residues into controlled depots, using layers of compacted earth to keep them isolated and covering the all slope with arable soil for the cultivation of new vegetation. A system of terrace fields give the structure not only to the land morphing but also to the drainage materials and geotextiles used to support both the phytodepuration and the renaturalization process of the site. The project includes as well the reuse of waste to produce biogas energy with a potential of about 100.000 MWh per year. Fresh Kills is the vast landfill of Staten Island, which operated from 1948 until its definitive closure in 2001 and covers a territorial surface of 890 ha, equal to 3.5 times bigger than New York Central Park. The process of ecological reclamation started in 2008 from the feasibility study of James Corner + Field Operations and NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) which will last for at least 30 years. The park has been structured into different layers: an engineering substrate, a drainage system, a leachate deposit, a methane confluence and various covering layer of soils for plantations. This multifunctional strategy has been conceived more as a program of self-growing interventions over time than a prefigured master planning.

Further Information of the projects: http://www.batlleiroig.com/ http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/freshkills-park

04 BUILDING TRANSFORMATIONS Sarah Hartmann

FrĂ¸silos

Kraanspoor

Tour Bois le Pretre

Transforming, maintaining and making use of existing buildings and derelict structures is nowadays one of the major tasks for architects and urban planners all over the world. Especially structures from the industrial area gain a high attention, as they provide identity and unique spatial qualities. "As a contrast to the characterless buildings and cityscapes that are the same all over the world, these locations stand for a type of architecture that has specific features and relates to history and context, while at the same time offering space for current and future needs. The simultaneous quality of stability and openness is what makes the locations so extraordinary and invites engagement with them."1 The three examples, that were analysed in a Workshop show three different strategies to deal with transformation. They are about "adding on top" and "wrapping around": The FRĂ&#x2DC;SILO Project by MVRDV is a radically transformation of an old silo building into a high quality residences. Silos are unlike warehouses bare structures, which are not suitable to cut out windows or doors. Furthermore this Transformation would destroy the most exciting aspect of its present state: its emptiness. Therefore the silo was kept and used as an impressing staircase and foyer. And the apartments were wrapped around the core within the new structure. In that way the unique atmosphere could be kept and the silo serves as common and identifying space for the residents. The second project Kranspoor uses the existing industrial structure of an old crane way as a basement for a new building, which is added on top. The pre-existing facilities have been utilised in the build-

Frøsilos, Copenhagen MVRDV Tour Bois le Prêtre, Paris Lacaton & Vassal Kraanspor, Amsterdam OTH Architecten

ing’s new function. The former stairwells still remain as entrance to the building and are foreseen with panorama lifts and new stairs. In that way, the Kraanspoor is being preserved as industrial heritage and has a completely new function. The third strategy is different, because the starting point is not an industrial building, but an 17 story apartment building from the post-war era: the Tour Bois le-Prêtre in Paris. It was until recently one of those apartment blocks that characterize the periphery: ordinary, faceless, unattractive. Lacaton Vassal created a second skin, which they set in front of the old core. With attached winter gardens and balconies they enlarged the homes and reduce energy demand. The rents remained nevertheless low. Anne Lacaton describes the crucial point when it comes to building transformations: "The challenges of our modern society seem to all rely on a culture of mindfulness, the interpretation and the transformation of the existing environment. The decisive factor here is to exploit the full potential of the existing structure and to look at everything in a new light. The existing substance provides the basic framework for all projects."2

1. Baum, M., Christiaanse, K. (eds.) City as Loft, 2012 2. Lecture Anne Lacaton, Jean Philippe Vassal, Re-Invent – Bauen im Bestand, 08.05.2014,Munich Further Information: Frøsilos, MVRDV,: http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/frosilio/ Tour Bois le Prêtre, Lacaton & Vassal: ARCH+ 203, p. 110-115

05 TEMPORARY USES Maddalena Ferretti

brownfield / leftover

10-30 years

temporary use

future development

The implementation of temporary uses is an increasingly common practice in urban redevelopment processes. Indeed, the economic crisis has widened the need of flexible projects rather than fixed master plans, as they better answer to the fluctuating demand of the current real estate market. Temporary uses permit to re-activate dismissed places with a bottom-up approach filling the time gap before the development. The participation is an important factor of this process as it creates a virtuous cycle of re-appropriation of the area by the citizens. In addition, these operations increase the space security, representing an added value for the owner/investor and a benefit for the community and the city government. All the three examples analysed display a common strategy of intervention, put in act at the beginning of the planning process. The Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin is a new orchard initiated by some activists. The area, a former leftover at the centre of Berlin, has become a place for harvesting food and selling the bio-products resulting from the farming. The investors and the City put strong pressures on the project, so that the permanence of this temporary use is currently at risk. The recycle of the former airport of Berlin Tempelhof into a new urban park started in 2008. The project proposed new temporary uses for the first five years of re-activity. It also envisaged an organizational body of public institutions for the management of the process. But in this â&#x20AC;&#x153;learning urbanismâ&#x20AC;? the users participation is also an essential element. Citizens and associations took active part, implementing gardens, organizing

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Prinzessinnengarten, Berlin Eichbaumoper, Mühlheim Raumlabor Tempelhofer Park, Berlin Raumlabor

cultural events or simply using the space as a new leisure area for the neighbourhood. Despite the success of the operation, there are no clear perspectives about Tempelhof’s future. A new housing district has been planned here, even though the construction didn’t start so far and the protests of activists and residents are increasing the difficulties related to the project’s implementation. The last example deals with the transformation of a former metro station in Mülheim into an opera house. The station, built in the ‘70ies, is made out of concrete. Before the recycle through the temporary use, this infrastructure was object of vandalism and violence. The reconversion, once again carried on through the citizens participation, returned this space to the community and contributed to boost an identity feeling for this place. As shown by these projects, the temporary uses allow to recycle abandoned spaces that have inherent in their condition of indeterminacy a potential not only in terms of space, but also of time. Through the recycle, these spaces are no longer considered a criticality but an important resource for the city. For this reason, many German cities (i.g. Berlin and Leipzig) are adapting tools and procedures in order to integrate temporary uses into the planning process. Further Information: Prinzessinengärten: www.prinzessinnengarten.net Raumlabor Berlin: www.raumlabor.net Tempelhofferfreiheit: www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de

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06 URBAN AGRICULTURE Emanuele Sommariva

seeds

bees

rainwater livestock

compost education events reuse

orchard

schools

youths

design

research community market sufficiency

action

policies

open

sales

labelling gardens

Citizens often ignore that food production sites can be found within consolidated tissue, as well as in residual urban leftovers. While nutritional themes are addressed internationally, especially on the relationship between organic cultivation and cultural values associated with places, not so much has been written about the potential implications on the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s structure. Urban agriculture can be an instrument for defining more sustainable urban/rural environments and articulated food systems that reconsider the local excellences and needs. Today, FAO estimates that the growth of demand for food produced in periurban contexts ensure more than 800 million people (about 7.5 % of world population). In many cases, what is creating the overcome from a â&#x20AC;&#x153;residualâ&#x20AC;? peri-urban agriculture towards self-sufficient multifunctional food systems is the development of associative models of consumer groups or shop networks operated by local farmers.The recent emphasis on green design show its influence also in the two described projects, connecting in a single framework different topics such as public health, food security, territorial governance and new living qualities. Agropolis is the winning proposal of Studio Landraum for the competition Open Scale, launched in 2009 by Munich administration in order to prefigure the future sustainability of the metropolitan areas, by defining episodic patterns of production that can be expanded up to a complete redesign of the urban landscape. The project offers an innovative vision of reusing

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Studio Landraum Agropolis MĂźnchen

Stefano Boeri architetti BIOMilano (Expo 2015)

the rural and green spaces in transition to the city, aiming to develop new eco-districts within the 335 km2 of Munichâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suburban territory. The focus is set on the development of the Freiham agricultural park, which will be an incubator of green areas for neighboring communities and the new residential areas. Urban agriculture, although reconfigured in a more domestic form (private gardens, community gardens) or service related (school farms, bio-waste facilities, leisure activities) becomes an element of mitigation and helps to establish participative form of land uses. BIOMilano is the proposal of Stefano Boeri Architetti to create a vast global kitchen garden in an unused area to the northwest of Milan for the International EXPO 2015. Instead of the traditional national pavilions, each country will have a section of land on which to propose themes related to agricultural production, or to display forms of bio-diversity, technologies, and possible solutions to problems linked to food supply. On the southern part of the site, a big glasshouse will host plants and show off innovative cultivation techniques, linked to the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more extreme climates. After the Expo, Milan will define the first Agro-nutritional Scientific Park, which will be used to carry out research into the production and the representation of different forms of agriculture, seeding and food production. Further Information of the projects: http://www.agropolis-muenchen.de/ http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/news/b-i-o-m-i-l-a-n-o-six-transition-states/

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07 NEW GRIDS Chiara Olivastri

Paths, edges, districts, nodes and references, these are the terms that Kevin Lynch1 used to describe a city, to build a mesh that today would be incomplete. Today, the new networks are formed, not only by the concrete elements, but also by new devices that reduce impalpable reuse and recycle what remains of the city in a landscape. The new grids are set on the mend and tuning system of waste in the city, those abandoned public spaces are being called into life by collaborative initiatives between citizens and designers, such as “esto no es un solar” an urban redevelopment program developed by Patrizia Di Monte and Ignacio Gravalos for the city of Zaragoza in 2009. With the help of the City and private initiative was built a network of urban voids with new temporary functions. On the other side of the ocean, in Detroit, a former city of 900 000 inhabitants in the urban area, now the best route to visit the city is called “Cloudspotting Detroit2 “, it consists of 31 points of interest. The important thing is that many of the first 16 conspicuous places of the city are evanescent. Demolished areas, abandoned parks, steam rising from manholes fed by underground heat, large abandoned public buildings, markets for used objects or where one can barter, Victorian villas reconquered by nature, houses occupied by squatters, re-naturalized infrastructure, abandoned neighborhoods that will be replaced by artistic installations. Clouds of dust, of steam or of tastes that substitute the traditional urban attractions

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Cloudspotting, Detroit MVRDV Multiramblas, Barcelona Gausa Raveau “Esto no es un solar”, Saragozza Patricia Di Monte e Ignacio Gravalos

(architecture, museums, libraries, Detroit even lacks some basic shops) and return the ruins of the assembly-line city to narration and nature, transforming Detroit into the first post-metropolis. The modern city is finished, with its paradigms and its components, its physical spaces emptied of meaning no longer express an urban figure, we are witnessing a change in priorities, the proliferation of network immaterial, communities are strengthened and claim new types of spaces, the rebirth of urban waste. Also Barcelona is recycling itself. In the city packed with synergetic action, contemporaneity and not completely integrated, the architectural studio Gausa-Raveau with its Multiramblas project, the Office of the Assessor for Urban Ecology directed by Salvador Rueda and the geographer Francesc Muñoz’s seminar on Recycling Barcelona are elaborating a multifaceted strategy to recycle the block-fabric of the Plan Cerdà. The concept of intervention is linked to the adoption of a scheme that manages traffic flows in 3X3 block units rather than a 1X1 unit. Within this supersquare driveways are to be recycled into public spaces, green areas and urban gardens. It starts a new season for the future of the city, which will be organized on new grids and meshes that are going to weave a new relationship with the landscape and the inhabitants.

1. Lynch, K., L’immagine della città, Marsilio Editori, Venezia, (1964) 2. Ricci, M., “Reduce_reuse_recycle” Magazine of sustainable design Eco web Town, n.2, December 2011

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08 WATER DESIGN Sara Farvagiotti

City regions today face the increasingly difficult challenges of urban water management. Many cities are addressing the challenges of urban water management through comprehensive and complex initiatives that combine water collection measures with recreation and ecological programs. The ambition is to re-ignite social and ecological dynamics. Water Design practice could respond to changing environmental conditions. Some projects work with natural hydrology and propensity for flooding whenever possible to built at higher ground with increased residential densities, restoring natural landscapes with natural process, whenever possible, for maximum provision of ecosystem service. Implemented flood-control disaster preparedness and landscape intervention on a neighbourhood scale in existing urbanized areas and primary transportation corridors. For instance, through flooding, the project for the former Quito Airport by LCA aims to generate an active hydrologic park. The transformation of the runway into an urban park ultimately serves as an opportunity to test the insertion of leisure activities and aquatic ecosystems typical to the tropics. Others propose new innovative ecological water management practices such as Taichung Gateway Park by STOSS. Aqua-cultures is an innovative park model that integrates recreation, culture, water treatment, and biodiversity. Through the integration of an innovative and symbiotic water treatment system, Taichungâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest cultural park can provide a sustainable vision and evocative experience of water management for the rest of

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LCLA office 3km Airport park Quito

Detroitfuturecity.com Blue Infrastructure

Stoss Urbanism Taichung Gateway Park, Taiwan

the world. Aqua Cultures is a living filter for water and air that catalyses a robust range of urban programs: recreational and cultural activities occur within, atop, and beside the pools of water. Finally, the strategic plan for Detroit proposes a new infrastructure system shaped by urban context, topography, and landscape to configure the existing stormwater system, locally and regionally. Blue and green infrastructures are landscapes that can help to address water and air quality issues. In particular, blue infrastructures [water-based landscapes like swales, retention ponds, and lakes that capture and clean stormwater] provide an active use for vacant land and oversized roads. Blue infrastructure networks capture and clean stormwater runoff from all areas of the city and reduce the frequency and magnitude of combined stormwater and sewage discharges. Each system type works in a different way that is appropriate for different kinds of topographic and urban conditions. Downhill, higher vacancy areas function as major collection areas, detaining stormwater from uphill areas of the city with lower vacancy and higher runoff. Procurement processes and staffing shortages impact “hard” infrastructure today, and blue infrastructure will likely face similar challenges. Dreiseitl H., “New Waterscapes for Singapore,” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. Mostafavi M. with Doherty G., Lars Muller Publishers, 218. LCLA office, 3km Airport park, Quito, Ecuador, 2008, Pecond Prize. 2008. Stoss Urbanism, Taichung Gateway Park, Taichung, Taiwan, Second Prize, 2012. “Blue Infrastructure,“ in Detroit Future City. 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, Inland Press, 191.

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09 CULTURAL REUSE Maddalena Ferretti

1. 2. empty industry area empty industrial area with long history newpublic public useuse new with long history

design

receive building elements perception of in a authentic way structures’ authenticity identity by historical recognition

new identity

Zeche Zollverein

Centro de diseño metropolitano

cultural reuse

Cultural reuse is an effective recycle strategy for abandoned industrial sites. The idea to implement new uses connected to public activities, such as cultural and leisure facilities, has a double advantage. From one side cultural reuse doesn’t require big renovation interventions on the industrial structures, as the architecture of the factories, often characterized by the presence of large open inner spaces, is formally very suitable to host such activities. From the other side, although instilling a new meaning into a former industry, cultural reuse is a form of reappropriation of the space by the public which tries to take back the identity and authenticity of these places and to make their history and beauty once again perceivable. Finally the aim of this recycle strategy, as shown by the analysed examples, is to transform brownfields in new urban catalysts in a public, but also authentic way, keeping the industrial atmosphere as an added value of the reconversion process. The two projects approach the topic similarly, even though they extremely differ for the scale and the historical background. Zeche Zollverein is a large former industrial site located in the Ruhr area (western Germany), near Essen. It was a coal mine complex with annex structures for the material’s processing after the digging phase. This industrial sector was very typical for the Ruhr region in the 19th century, as a very rich layer of coal was discovered here. The project of recycling and transformation through cultural reuse is part of the interregional project “Emscher Park”, that tried to redesign large parts of the industrial region.

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Centro de dise単o metropolitano, Buenos Aires Zeche Zollverein, Ruhr area, Germany

Nowadays the coal mine has become a public landscape park, a museum, a location for artistic and culural events as well as a place for leisure and sport facilities (a swimming pool, a skate lane, etc.) and for accomodation services (bars, restaurant etc.). Zeche Zollverein is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites and it is one of the anchor points of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. Much smaller is the Centro metropolitano de dise単o, a former fish market at the center of Buenos Aires. The market was transformed in an art- and design center, including ateliers, laboratories, exhibition areas, event locations, little shops and a library. The project keeps the old building structure, in particular the entrance hall, where new wooden containers host the different cultural activities. The Centro metropolitano de dise単o is a clear example of how to use design and culture as urban catalysts for attracting a various public audience and for recycling a former productive site to make it again a lively and interesting space for the inhabitants. Also the social purpose of the intervention highlights that cultural reuse is a way to involve the community into a participatory process of transformation where people become the essential element of the reconversion. Both projects have been realized through public funding. References: M. Baum, K. Christianse, (eds. 2012), City as loft. Adaptive Reuse as a Resource for Sustainable Urban Development, gta Verlag, Zurich. Homepage Zeche Zollverein: www.zollverein.de Homepage Centro metropolitano de dise単o: www.cmd.gov.ar

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10 ENERGY FACTORIES Emanuele Sommariva

conventional house

smart house

There is an increasing energy scarcity in global terms, insomuch as the actual production system is stationary in relation to the demand set by urban population. The bigger centers for energy dissipation are today the cities and their future sustainability will be played by the possibility to collect and use short-chain production systems, instead of centralized power plants. The research for innovative alternatives determines the need to define new criteria and concepts in which architecture and urban planning are the leading sectors. Sustainable design programs such as LEED, contributed to encourage interventions that include social and ecological issues, such as reducing the amount of CO2 stored in buildings within concrete structures, collecting and reuse storm water, creating green roofs and green facades, reducing the impacts on waste management, promoting alternative mobility, and other cross cutting issue. The connection between energy savings solutions and the idea of urban recycle determine the transformation of traditional typologies, involving both the reuse of housing and community buildings, as well as the reactivation of public open spaces with ephemeral interventions, as in the case of two project presented in these pages. Photovoltaic Roof is a part of the 14 ha esplanade developed in the occasion of Forum Universal de las Culturas 2004 by Lapena & Torres Architects. The intervention is located between the urban southeast peripheries of Barcelona at the end of one of the urban Diagonal Avenues towards the

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HHS Architects Energy Bunker

Lapena & Torres Architects Photovoltaic Roof

BesĂ˛s River Delta, above the one of biggest water treatment plant of the city. In former times, the area was used for industrial production, defining a barrier between city and sea, but now it provides space for cultural uses like the Congress Centre (CCIB) and sport facilities. The photovoltaic canopy has a productive surface of 4500 m2 with a 30Â° inclination oriented to south. The roof propose itself as an urban landmark, which characterize the end of the Diagonal belvedere with a staircase to the sea. Energy Bunker was built in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg during the World War II as a shelter against air raids and contained anti-aircraft artillery on the roof. During British occupation, the interior was blasted so it remains as a memorial for the last 60 years. In 2013, HHS Architects proposed a total reconstruction of the inner structure and set in the newest technologies of energy production. By using a combination of solar energy on its roof and southern side, biogas, wood chips, and waste heat from a nearby industrial plant, the Energy Bunker is set to supply most of the Reiherstieg district with heat, while also providing renewable energy. The bunker contains also a restaurant, a sport center and a library for the neighboring communities of Hamburg. Further Information of the projects: http://www.jamlet.net/ http://www.hhs.ag/projekte--energiebunker.de.html http://www.iba-hamburg.de/projekte/energieberg-georgswerder/energiebunker/projekt/energiebunker. html

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SITES OF INTERVENTION

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OVERVIEW OF THE SITES 1 SOPRAELEVATA 2 TERRALBA 3 SESTRI

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Highway along the Coastline, Photo Sarah Hartmann

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01 SOPRAELEVATA Jeannette Sordi

Sopraelevata Aldo Moro is the most famous highway in Genoa, and probably worldwide. Running between the city and the harbour, it provides the most beautiful view on the urban landscape: from the hills, to the built fabric, to the sea. The highway was built in 1965 to provide a solution to the increasing mobility problems the city was going through, since the annexing of the municipalities around Genoa, the expansion of the residential neighborhoods eastside, and the expansion of the harbor on the west. The construction work started on February 1964. The completion of the project required one year of work, 4600mt of asphalt, 210 pillars, for an overall cost of 1,752 millions of Lires at the time. Forty fully charged trucks tested its resistance and on the 25th of August 1965 the Sopraelevata opened: 6km of high way finally solving the problem of crossing the city center East-West. In the 1980s, the process of deindustrialization of the city center had already taken place and, by the beginning of the 1990s, the waterfront beyond Sopraelevata was transformed into a multifunctional public space. Since then, many projects promoted by the municipality, including Renzo Pianoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Affresco for Genoa (2004), proposed to dismantle it, and to build an underwater tunnel instead. However today, the demolition of Soprael-

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Sempre di Domenica, Xavier Ferrari, Theresa Gernreich, Silvia Sangriso, DAAD Recycle workshop, Genoa 2013.

evata no longer appears as a priority for the city. Taking as an example the Highline in New York, or the Promenade Plantee in Paris, increasingly it seems more appropriate to avoid the demolition of such an infrastructure and thinking instead about how to reuse the 100,000 squared meters of overhead space it provides. Sopraelevata is still one of the main routes of the city, but is also one of its main symbolic images, a monument between the sea and the city. Recycle Genoa suggested SUPERELEVATA as an alternative way of using Sopraelevata: temporarily transforming it in an urban promenade, for example on Sundays when traffic is much reduced, or multiplying its functions on the bottom, the FOOT[PRINT] of SUPERELEVATA. This idea somehow brings back to the mid-nineteenth century project, when the Sopraelevata did not exist and in its place there were the Terrazze di Marmo, designed by Ignazio Gardella (1835-1844). The so called â&#x20AC;&#x153;marble terracesâ&#x20AC;? were used to store goods arriving from the sea and as a passage to the city, but on the top the building provided an astonishing panoramic walkway for pedestrian.

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use above

surfac

71210 m

100 % max. heigth total length

16,10m

4700 m use below 1120 12 220 0

*above

ce 2*

121 12 21

Old railway rails in Terralba, Photo Alberto Terrile

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02 TERRALBA Sara Favargiotti

Terralba is located between Albaro district in the south, San Martino area in the east and San Fruttuoso district in the north, which is the official municipality of the area. The San Fruttuoso area was an independent municipality up until 1873, when along with five other municipalities of the Bisagno Valley, it was annexed in the Municipality of Genoa. Later, with the urban expansion of the early twentieth century, the small rural village just outside of the walls has been transformed into a residential neighbourhood close to the centre. The central area of the district is the square with an indoor municipal market. Next to the market, there is the obsolete railway area called Terralba. It is situated in proximity of the main train station Genova Brignole. The area is also very close to a relevant cultural a historical building: just behind the market, there is Villa Imperiale that today is a public library with public park. Furthermore, Terralba is rounded by public facilities: the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Genoa at the San Martino Hospital. The area is considered of strategic importance as a node in the development of the urban railway system, which envisages new local stations. In Genoa there are many abandoned railways areas like Terralba, that could now offer a valuable opportunity for the city. In fact, the recovery of

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Terralba and other dismissed railway lines or areas in between the city and the hills remain the most interesting proposal for the future of the city. In the city Urban Plan, Terralba is defined as a district of Urban Transformation (Distretto di Trasformazione Urbana). That foresees the realization of an integrated approach to redesign the connections of the urban fabric through the realization of public space and facilities. It also provides the reorganization of railway facilities. Furthermore, the plan envisages the construction of a new underground metro line with its metro station in Piazza Terralba, connected to an intermodal parking area. Finally, the main plan proposes the construction of public facilities to diversify urban uses of this area. According to that, the workshop projects have followed three main aims. The first considers Terralba from a hole to a new urban hall. The reconversion of the existing buildings and infrastructures into an urban park will allow to include new facilities or temporary activities for the city and the university. The second aim is to reuse the drosscapes, transforming the railway infrastructure area in a park. Terralba park will transform the site of Terralba into a landscape infrastructure: a renaturalized park providing new economic and social activities. Finally, the third aim is to consider Terralba in the larger scale of Bisagno Valley: considering Terralba as a potential site for recalibrating the larger ecological urban system, especially in terms of water management, could allow to transform Terralba area as fundamental element of a wider ecological Bisagno park.

1 In 2011 Ferrovie Abbandonate (www.ferrovieabbandonate.it) reported that out of a total of 22,846 km of Italian railway lines (www.rfi.it), about 500 km of railway tracks were unfinished and almost 6000 km were abandoned.

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used

15 % available volumes 3

145.000 m

35 % dismissed

128

50 %

decay

-25%

disused tracks

3,4 km

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Abandond industrial building in Sestri, Photo Alberto Terrile

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03 SESTRI Chiara Olivastri

Sestri is a small district in the west of Genoa, once it was an independent municipality, but now it is included administratively in the Town Hall VII Ponente, located between Sestri Ponente and Pegli. It is an integral part of this resort, which was united in 1875. The area of Pegli, Multedo and Sestri is strongly characterized by the difference of the vocations of its parts; from the coastal city of Pegli, the port of Multedo and the links with the oil lines and deposits, to the shipyards in Sestri. The eastern area of Sestri, where the mix of productive activities, crafts, recreation and marina uses of the coast, is waiting since a long time for the establishment of a new integrated set-up. Currently the contraction of areas for oil trades assumes particular importance, which will be progressively focused, in order to combine the pursuit of improved environmental quality and the planting of activity capable of attracting new applications to the market and generate income and local employment. The project, which allows the recovery of new spaces for approximately 120,000 square meters, in addition to those located in the

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north of the railway line dedicated to functions of the dry port. Another important transformation in space is the ex former Ansaldo foundries, 22.000 square meters between Sestri Ponente and Pegli, an immense space, forgotten at the mercy of the deterioration in the residential district, in which the presence of the shed built by Ansaldo top ‘900 and remained operational until the 80s, this is the mirror of general impression “squashed” between the Oil Terminal and the company Carmagnani and Superba. The proposed redevelopment would be abound: artistic pole-museum spaces for young people on the international model (in the style of a former Berlin “Tacheles”, a meeting place for artists from all over the world), science center modeled on the less accessible IIT and so on. The transformation of the present use must also take into account the construction of a link road, from Via Multedo, which will start only as a result of the expected reversal in the sea in the shipyard of Fincantieri, which should solve most of the problems in the processing and thus leads to increased orders. Finally, according to the obligation of the City, it is also provided for the construction of a new metro stop, exploiting the train tracks already available but unused, it will divert here on the coast of the city traffic, which will be implemented once the new internal rail hub for the transport of goods is built. In fact, the iron street currently divides the city from the industrial area, which has, however, an important view to the seaside. It is possible that the contraction of the industrial side, which is already happening with the closure and abandonment of several warehouses used in the repair and construction of the yacht and the development of the marina with its new property, it can lead to a new range of places. It will be interesting to imagine a day to get off the subway and going into a former industrial area with a new public vocation, reaching the sea and stroll in the old docks where once moored tankers and to watch the planes landing, after having touched the technological center Erzelli, arriving on a track above the water.

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43 disused tracks

0,2 km 136

decay

0-25%

available

100 %

volums 3

38.000 m

used

0% 137

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RECYCLE DESIGN PROJECTS

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01 SEMPRE DI DOMENICA Xavier Ferrari, Theresa Gernreich, Silvia Sangriso > SOPRAELEVATA

PRESENT

FUTURE

Image: Vision

Sempre di Domenica proposes to close the Sopraelevata to vehicle traffic on Sundays. Even though the high-line along the harbour is a symbol of identification, it is also a burden for the city. The heavy traffic is increasing and with it the noise and pollution of the area, that is a serious issue also in relation to the pollution restrictions of the European Law. Moreover, Sopraelevata provides a huge open space in the old city center, especially in comparison to the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;vicoliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. These tiny and dark streets of the ancient city are about only two metres in width, and stand in huge contrast to the Sopraelevata, which is about 16 metres wide and, as it is built on an upper level, it opens up the possibility to have a fantastic view over the city and the harbour site.

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Image: Eventcalender

Image: Vision of Sundays

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Image: linear and temorary use of the Sopraelvata

The project suggests to close the Sopraelevata on Sundays and open it to pedestrian use, in order to give this huge open space back to the inhabitants of Genoa, and to limit as well the pollution and the noise. This concept is flexible, cost-saving and cost-efficient and it also considers the issue of recycling. The first step in the process of realising the project is to make the Sopraelevata accessible to pedestrians. Therefore temporary stairs, built out of euro pallets, will be placed on strategic access points along the high line. The programme includes three different types of 'Sundays'. Firstly the Free Sunday, where everyone can use the Sopraelevata as they like. This will be scheduled every second Sunday to keep the costs down. The Event Sunday is the second type: On these Sundays, interesting happenings will take place on the Sopraelevata, such as a movie night or a performance of the circus. This can also be combined with events that already take place in Genoa, such as the Euroflora exhibition. The third type will be the Theme Sunday, where a specific theme will define the happening on the Sopraelevata, such as a BBQ-Sunday or a Game-Sunday.

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02 SOTTOELEVATA Matteo Ferri Francesca Marina, Isabel Niestroj, > SOPRAELEVATA

Image: new spaces under the Sopraelevata

The area UNDER the Sopraelevata also has a big potential to provide space for new and innovative uses. The overall aim is to connect the city and the seaside and activate the challenging parts along the Sopraelevata. Right now there is plenty of un-used space, which can be activated through different interactions by the citizens of Genoa. The intention is to create connections, which cross the street and merge both sides. Along the Sopraelevata a range of spatial challenges appear. The project proposes a fitting activation, connecting both sides. Those points are little interventions, which can be temporary at first, but that have the potential to may get constant over time. Not only the built space, but also the ground in between can be occupied. In the calm and traffic free area near the Terminal Traghetti a low budget camping will be in-

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Image: examples of use

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Image: eat and work

stalled for backpack travellers who can stay for one or two nights near the city centre. On several levels, platforms with tents are hanging below the Sopraelevata, which lulls the camper into sleep. In containers, which are re-used from the nearby industrial harbour, there is a check-in desk and restrooms. A skate park in a vacant area between harbour and the railways is a suitable place to allow students of nearby schools to have an open space for spraying, biking, skating and boarding. To launch the skate park the pupil can build the course by themselves with the help of Genoa CUS out of old shipwrecks and develop the park step by step. In the limited space between highway, train station and cruise ship harbour is the perfect location for the future Students Film Festival of Genoa, that will be the attraction for tourists and citizens all over Italy. Directly between the old harbour and the city centre, a high transit area with tourists, citizens and hang-arounds is connected through a temporary grass floor that can be occupied by the passengers for spontaneous soccer competitions. It is lined by a snack box and a watchtower in the same height as the Sopraelevata, in order to make a stunning view over the sea, possible.

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03 INTER(ACTIVA)ZIONE Riccardo Posadino Giorgia Tucci, Regna Will, > SOPRAELEVATA

Image: concept

The event of the Sopraeleventa will be used to strengthen the participation of the inhabitants and to involve them as an active part of the city. The Inter[attiva]zone creates a new space for Genoa between the city, the harbour and the sea, at a higher level above the ground floor. Thus, the project is based on closing one street of the Sopraelevata to cars. Platforms dock like parasites, to the Sopraelevata orientated towards the sea. The next step is the participation of the inhabitants to adopt the new Sopraelevata. Each platform has a special topic, which is linked to the city of Genoa. There will be student areas, a place with a open-air cinema and an artist area. Spaces for shops, ateliers and exhibitions are created. A further step would be to connect also the other side of the highline at some strategic points directly through attached platforms with the city fabric.

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04 ECOPRO CYCLE Benjamin Grudzinski, Sara Marino, Arianna Spinale > TERRALBA

Image: Masterplan

The area of Terralba, which is partly used by the railway company, is discussed to be abandoned over time and to be recycled for public use. This area defines a whole in the city structure of Genoa. As the economic situation is quite insecure, and long forcasts are neither possible nor useful, the project proposes an alternative strategy. Instead of proposing a fixed masterplan for the whole area, the concept foresees different phases of development and implementation and therefore an overall flexibility for the whole area. The suggested project is highly process oriented: an activating movement is implemented at frist. The eastern part of the area is abandoned. It is therefore suggested to transform this part from a brownfield into a crop field. Typical italian plants would create biomass, which over time degenerates on top of the

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Image: Step by step

Image: section

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Image: Urban farming

contaminated soil, and thus creating a new layer of clean soil. Few paths and new entrances would make this a place of a renewed identity. People could cultivate their vegtables in certain areas and could take a rest from the dense city structure. If accepted by the population and if the railway company actually leaves the area because it is less used by time, the process can spread over the rest of the area. The cleaned parts provide multiple scenarios from food production by the population, open public parks to more commercial uses. The grown interest would justify a bigger investment, the old building could be reused in multiple ways. If the Park grows into a place of great interest, the soil was cleaned and the railway company truly left, the area would be able to present a innovative food centre, where people chat with each other, grow their own food, meet and just relax in a park with exceptional identity. The old railways could be reused to distribute food from the park and into it. The planned metro station could be reinvented as a multifunctional infrastructure hub for people, food and information.

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05 ARTRAILWAY Cybell Bassil, Carolina Queirolo, Chiara Toso > TERRALBA

Image: Masterplan

The project area is an approximately 150000 square meter large abandoned railway area in the neighbourhood of Terralba. In addition, it includes some leftover buildings of the train company. Just two rails will be used in the future. Besides, it is located at the bottom of two mountains, the main street of Genoa and some buildings form the boundaries of the area. The reuse of the nearby villas of the 19th century, which provide cultural activities and which are surrounded by the nature of the mountains, are an important characteristic for the project. Urban green spaces are rare in Genoa, unlike the importance of the nature in the urban back and in the mountains. Therfore green spaces should become a more important part in the density of buildings. Another important issue of the project is the management of water. Be-

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Image: Layers of the Park

Image: future vision

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Image: cultural area

cause the place is located in a valley, the nearby Bisagno River has difficulties with flooding in the winter. The following steps were developed to turn the area into cultural used green lines, which are neither expensive nor difficult to implement. At first the park area is defined by dividing it through a vertical green wall into a bigger park and the train area. Then it will be opened for public by tearing down parts of the restricting wall. The existing rails will be kept as a memory of the old use. Further every squarein the grid is 20 over 20 meters large and can have different themes. A drainage system will be installed in the areas of concrete squares for collecting water. Later on the water can be reused for the park watering. Furthermore, the train wagons will be reused by a camping system of initially few wagons for creative young artists. To help them start their business some wagons could be rented for the first period for free. In return, the artists have to take care of their wagon and the corresponding grid square. The old hall in the middle of the park can be used for changing exhibitions or a canopied place for concerts. If this system succeeds more wagons could be rent and the other buildings in the park could be cultural recycled as well. As a last step there should be an investigation in a bridge system that connects the cultural buildings, the park and the city. In the end, the once leftover useless space becomes a popular communication and art platform and a green oasis for everybody.

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06 UNIVERCITY HALL Agegnehu Girma, Kira-Marie Klein, Caterina Lavarello > TERRALBA

Image: Masterplan

Terralba is an underused railway deposit close to the eastern station of Brignole and to the Bisagno River. Due to the hugeness and vacancy it has been inserted into the Recycle footprint mapping process as one of the most significant sites for urban transformation.The area is partly disconnected from the rest of the city and because of its lower level there is no possibility to go down and enter the area from any site. Lying amongst the coastland and the inland with its mountains Terralba is surrounded by lots of university facilities. The site can be perceived as a whole, therfore the idea was to fill it with functions, that are relating to university uses. Furthermore new connections within the area can be established. A connection to the rest of the city will be provided by keeping the industrial atmosphere and by recycling the old structures. Pictured as a development

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Image: concept

Image: layers of the area

Image: land-use plan

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Image: new working areas

process, several steps to create this new UniverCity Hall are proposed. The ground will be left as it is with all its rail tracks so that nature can grow in-between. During the first step some of the tracks are used as path filled with stones, concrete or wood. On platforms in front of the buildings and in the area students can have open air spaces for work, exhibitions or relaxing points. The recycled and reused buildings are one possible connection from the upper to the lower level. In the buildings the university uses should be located like workshop rooms, research activities, exhibition rooms and cafeterias for the students. The idea is to create a bigger sports area, not only for studies but also for the studentsÂ´private use. The idea is accomplished by running paths in some of the tracks and sport platforms with open-air sports equipment. In the end this railway deposit could stand for an innovative way of recycling old structures while creating a new centre for young people in the city of Genoa. If this area is used as a campus, it can be an example of the potential of underused industrial urban spaces, that are renaturalized for places with a contemporary character, ecological and economical thinking.

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07 PARCULTURE Lisa Leitgeb Fabio Torterolo > MULTEDO SESTRI

1_5.000

Image: Masterplan

The project PARCULTURE DEALS with the huge area of Sestri. It starts with recycling and the reactivating abandoned buildings. It implements former cultural uses and associations that encouraged people to cross and stay at the site: new spaces for music, art, photography, architecture, poetry, learning and culture are installed to work as creative catalyst for all these huge empty spaces. The surrounding areas and the buildings, are benefitting in reverse from the the new activities and the creative boost on the sites. The new functions are integrating a new way to relive the times of the industrial spaces. These new activity nods are connected by a path, which is making use of the abandoned railways and derelict sites.

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empty industry buildings with long history

new public use

receive building elements in a authentic way

identity by historical recognition

Image: concept

te act e area:

e &

at o a

Image: connections

Image: seperation housing - industrie

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Image: culture on rails

It guides through a journey through the different areas of the cultural recycling. The cultural park system is an open system, which in future will be able to connect with other urban devices, by integrating its service network in a natural and beneficial for the city, as it is able to exploit the opportunities offered by the disposals in a simple way and immediately.

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08 GO(A) TO THE NEXT LEVEL Giulia Ferrari, Sara Guasco, Lena Rospunt > MULTEDO SESTRI

Image: masterplan in 3 steps

Three parts are building the base for the project GO(A) TO THE NEXT LEVEL.The first step would be to tear down the barrier of the tracks. Additionally a new function would be assigned to the former industry buildings, to connect the city with the seaside. A new implemented bridge would improve the accessibility to the area. The huge and empty buildings will be reused as cultural and social places. The area becomes an attraction pole near the sea for the citizens of Genoa. To remember the industrial origin and the importance of the harbour for the city, some former ship containers complete the design of the area. These interventions are low cost, movable, flexible and durable. The project aims to reuse old existing structures and to transform them into new individual, interesting and attractive elements.

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09 REMAKING LAB Laura Nazzari, Martin Paladey, Benedetta Pignatti > MULTEDO SESTRI

PRESENT

Image: underused industrial buildings

The Vision is to reactivate the area in three steps. The two abandoned halls and the square in-between will be occupied. First of all the drained soil is opened up and grass is planted. Therefore a place to meet, to spent time and to relax is created. A second opportunity to enter the area in the future could be a tunnel under the tracks. In the second step, common fields grow, educational fields for school-classes get installed, playgrounds, ateliers and exhibition-rooms take place in the halls. The final step plans a photovoltaic roof to generate electricity for the reused halls to make them autonomous from other supplies. The last free spaces in the halls are reserved for conference rooms. They can be rent for workshops or other meetings and gain money for maintenance. The area should work autonomous and as a creative lab for the city.

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10 R(E)INVIRONMENT Karolina Kernbach, Henri Mezini, Mirko Roselli > MULTEDO SESTRI

Image: Vegetation near the harbor

Above the Multedo Area at Sestri Ponente, the vegetation flows towards the harbour, but is held back and cut by the main street and the railway. The project conceives this cultural landscapes strips as high potential for the area. The horizontal boarder divides the city from the harbour and the seaside. In addition, there is no access to the water and no possibility to swim in the sea for the inhabitants of this part of the city. The industry is still a barrier between the city and the sea. The goal is to connect the city with the harbour line and to create an environmentally friendly space, a path of reactivation and education. The entrance to Genoa in the west is framed with two vacant buildings. These two former corten factories, could implement ideas for a greener future.

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GOA GREEN museum history of industrial sustainability

evolution in process

container

former ressources

swimmingsea swimming in a small sea

harbourlab in progress research of sustainable solutions

sustainable energy

Image: Enironmental education

One example of a new functional implementation is a museum, that deals with the history of industrial sustainability. Container from the harbour and inhabitants of Genoa reactivate the vacant industrial space through environmental education. A harbourlab in progress offers a platform for sustainable ideas. Therefore containers invite to discuss about the future of the harbour, the city, the nation and our own future. Vacant buildings in the East of Multedo offer an attractive location for a â&#x20AC;&#x161;swimmingseaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with clean seawater and the skyline of an industrial harbour through green arcades. Energy for cleaning the water is generated out of solar energy from the top of the bordering building. To reactivate the harbour a skater park and a gym are created out of waste materials from the sea. Through environmental education children, teenager and their parents are given an impulse to make their surrounding a greener place and benefit from it. The vision is that these green ideas spread and leave inhabitants that reactivate the harbour with itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s various possibilities, and take as well those green ideas back home.

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INTERNATIONAL RECYCLE APPROACHES

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Barcelona from above Photo by Nicola Canessa

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01 EIXAMPLE AND FOCE: RE-NATURALISE URBAN PLOTS BCN-GOA Manuel Gausa > UniversitĂ degli Studi di Genova

Reactivate reality involves recognizing our surroundings with the intent of introducing positive action in them: actively equipping them for new information on the relational level. "Resonating" with substantially the same condition - and potential - with conviction and transferring them to new dimensions of space and environment, associated with processes of redefinition, restructuring, re-use or recycling. This multiple action of redefinition and / or restructuring â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the level of architecture, but also at the level of the city and the territory, the landscape and the representation of technical materials and conceptual approaches - defines most contemporary research related to the exploration of the various factors (RE) called to formulate (re) - i.e. (re) cycling - qualitatively the same reality ( (re) know, (re) think, consider (re), (re) define, (re) evaluate, (re) structure, (re) guide, (re) nnovare, etc.). In a new scenario of meetings, exchanges and crossroads, perhaps the biggest challenge of the ancient disciplines of space is the contemporary twofold desire to "coincide" with the same reality that surrounds us and, at the same time, to develop "a positive action" (critically positive) on it: accept it and transcend it.

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How to recognize the reality and, at the same time, transform it qualitatively? Probably acting through the combined action between collaboration and modification. In this double pulse the "resonance" and "passing" and "acceptance" and "improvement" of "collaboration" and "modification" of "tuning" and "processing" would be the biggest crossroads of contemporary design. The interest in trying to "resonate" with the current processes of development of contemporary reality (urban, social, cultural, productive, etc.) would not respond to a simple desire to speculation but will sound positively activist: addressing and analyzing the same processes, operating now in progress in order to design more effective, functional and cultural redefinition of new qualitative parameters and / or restructuring associated with a respectful, empathetic and sustainable development. The interest in exploring this new nature and in outlining devices to "reactivate" it lies in that contemporary technological and cultural action, that would extremise "design" intervention and requalification (new information and a new impetus at the same time ); explaining his relationship and his character will positively activate (and activist) at the same time. Operate the reality and turn it on. Reactivate it. Giving a new impetus. In a new informational context - real and digital - this kind of architecture can cross make over times, places and scales. It refers, therefore, to his new condition and interaction implying a device reports and translations - a transfer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which is able to record, process, manipulate and cross the "messages", "data", "codes" and different "meanings" - conditions and situations, levels of reality - and to synthesize trajectories (or construction) of synthesis - redefining them - to work with its multiplicity and configuration and information at the same time. BCN-GOA RECYTING Working in Barcelona and Genoa (or between Barcelona and Genoa) involves recognizing the importance, at different levels and scales, of the (RE) factors of re-induction and re-formulation, of urban and regional planning, in two surroundings with substantial similarities and different logics, contextual, environmental and cultural. 1 - Urban Attractors. In both cases, they are ancient ports of the central Mediterranean. Commercial ports vocation with economic and financial

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Gausa + RAVEAU actarquitectura, GIC-Lab in 2010 Barcelona Eixample Multistring Green Centrality. Basic grid structure with global road and Possible Haces green. Extension of the green claw discontinuous Central (Central Park Multistring) and the New Town. Basic scheme and scheme with deep urban fabric and details.

predominantly entrepreneurial processed in industrial scenarios, the first-generation engines, which are subject to significant - and conflicting - morphological transformations and materials, but also important assets - often temporarily concealed - and with enormous latent possibilities. Ports-doors later (re)converted to tourist destinations, (re)discovered in creative surroundings possible with obvious attractive strength, today they are representatives of important processes of of local and global revitalization. It is clear that, in the case of Barcelona, one of the world's first seven Dream Cities, the growing tourism profile of the city post-Olympic (1992) is more evident than in the case of post-Columbian Genoa ('92). However, the importance of always more connections crossing both cities - both the port of Barcelona and that of Genoa are among the most important

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ports in Europe - increase in travel and visitors, but also students and new creators, confirms the growing "nodal" vocation of these two destinations. 2 - Structural models. Barcelona and Genoa have - from their underground complex - a clear morphological structure with shared models, similar to those of some Mediterranean city-ports. The proximity of the coastline and the mountains, states in both cases with horizontal corridors associated with major expansions in delta waterways, to / from which they develop the main urban densities and "occupational" tissues. This macro facility, in the coastal fringes of the base (a coastline that runs parallel to the coast-mountain range, closer in the case of Genoa and wider in the case of Barcelona) is completed with the "taper" of the vertical lines Sea-Mountain - associated the ancient rivers, streams, and currently the meshes of avenues perpendicular to the sea - creating a double matrix of natural/artificial horizontal-vertical axes, broken by geographical accidents and/or interference from buildings and ancient mega-structures imposed. In the case of Barcelona, this structure in horizontal coastal bands and pre-coastal mountain ranges, green fingers and plugs avenues is clearly recognizable in the overlapping of "string", "strings" and "fringe" of development. In the case of Genoa, this reading is more rugged - the topographical point of view - but no less decisive in the impulse of new processes, local and global "directional" restructuring. 3 - Large scale. In this sense, Barcelona and Genoa, like other "nodal foci" of the Mediterranean, maintain a close relationship with their polycentric wide area of influence. An area developed linearly, like a rosary singular syncopated - discontinuous- squeezed through the narrow corridors of the fringes of the coast mentioned above. In both contexts, the margins of the different urban center ramifications extend widely and are gradually branched. The thrust of both cities gives impetus to the territory, but it's more or less the same balance that affects decisively different realities which shape the new city. The limits of the ancient municipal perimeters seem very integrated into a wide network of connections, and polynuclear structures, which require new logic inter capable of ensuring concerted development regions, besides the usual operations of luck and accumulation that tend to add up.

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4 - Historic Centres. Barcelona and Genoa are respectively recognized as important historical centers, placed in the middle of their urban areas and generated at the time, within the precincts of the ancient walls with dense building construction and compact tissues, equity and obsolete at the same time. These central spaces are nevertheless recognizable in their perimeters, highly significant and densely built (crossed, both from the characteristics of gutting operations of the twentieth century, those of the Via Laietana in Barcelona and the Via San Lorenzo in Genoa), which now require new rebuilding renewal and enhancement operations; sensitive at the same time. These operations relate to a respectful reconsideration of the existing reality (formal, typological and equity), but at the same time open to any redefinition of morphological operations, technological innovation and infrastructure and informational reactivation: spatial and functional "networks". 5 - Expansion. Barcelona and Genoa, on the other hand, have an important "pre-modern" extensions, which is paradigmatic and recognizable by their urban pattern (the Eixample in Barcelona, La Foce in Genoa) associated with the development of the industry during the XIX century (1860 and 1874 respectively). In the case of the Barcelona, the Eixample stretches widely and isotropic on a quaternary geology, developed centrally and frontally, between the old city and the mountain. In the case of Genoa its expansion zones cover an area of the river delta, leaning against the side of the historic city. In both scenarios, the "grid" is rational and substantially uniform, shaped by a pattern of perpendicular streets and avenues that form blocks of different size and density. 6 - Perimeters. These recycling processes and reconnection are particularly important in urban areas unless other "approved" (port districts and peripheral sets-residential, industrial estates modern, etc) clear characterization of urban and strong social identity but, nevertheless, subject to loss-making processes, both at the functional and environmental level. It is often space development located on the edge of a historic centrality but recognized that owns assets (historical, cultural, sensory, etc) appropriate to "revitalize" through new storylines and narrative structuring, articulation and quality orientation.

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7 - The sea, new territory. Barcelona and Genoa urgently need not only to see the sea, but to penetrate it. Be seen from the sea. Not only timidly - or contingently - but decisivly and ambitiously. Some coastal and port facilities, high-impact civil structures - docks, factories, storage areas - are transferred oversee (in new logistics oriented platforms) freeing central port areas, combining this with the dynamic creation of new land for civic activities, recreational and residential, generating, thus, new waterfront indoor / outdoor for urban use and exploitation. 8 - Infrastructure. The change in the infrastructural scale products of Barcelona in the 90s of the last century with the construction of tunnels and Rondas del Vallés (and his plan of "jewelery" urban "engineering and architectural design," a model of interaction between all nodes, ropes, belts and avenues integrated into the very structure of the city civil) contrasts with the epic power and infrastructure of a reality like Genoa’s, with a force directed, almost brutal - and brutalist - in its expression and urban expressiveness (from the large deck Morandi, the concrete slab that appears to float in the air, until the flyover, that tape that crosses the height of the line port and connotes an unusual air size). The importance, in both cities, played by the new challenges and connections in the metropolitan areas and also those related to the arrival and impact of high-speed train and the transformation of the old railway areas recovered (like disused industrial land suitable for new real estate, green and / or collective uses), is equally crucial. The great "lateral" and "wedged" land between the Torrassa and La Sagrera in Barcelona resemble the virtual central belt (Central BELT) that surrounds Genoa (a chain of spaces that crosses the city between the two railway stations of Brignole and Piazza Principe). 9 - Mountains and valleys. The relationship between the mountain and the two urban realities is, in both cases, particularly intense and connotative. Genoa has colonized the mountain doing the same fund and a plan, building a large “fractalized” cliff section as the plan for th ecity. This section of the urban area converted into a large three-dimensional bichromatic chessboard, is its greatest sign of recognition. The great street of the ring (over Paganini, Corso Magenta, Soferino

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Gausa + Raveau actarquitectura: Barcelona in the bands slip strips (in Gausa, Manuel, Multi-Barcelona, Hiper-Cataluna, ed. List, Rome, 2010

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course, etc..), which is at the same level "union" between the lower town and the upper town (with its lookout, its lift and funicular, the its means of ascent and descent, its simultaneous access from the ground floor and the roof system), configure the sinuous line teacher of a large thick expansion, vertically extruded. In the case of Barcelona, the relationship with the mountain has more filaments, the city wins the steep and topographic slopes almost to his shoulders; slips and adds to it but through discrete operations, low particle size and diffuse structure. This creates friction zones and particularly significant meetings in a topography which is more far away from the center than in Genoa, but just as effective. 10 - Design green public space and new "eco-smart". The plots of central Barcelona and Genoa are among the densest in the world. In a strongly built structure, even punctual green spaces, often mountainous, are postulated as authentic urban parks (MontjuĂŻch and la Ciutadella in Barcelona, Villa Piaggio, Villa Gruber, Villa Doormat, Villetta di Negro, etc.. in Genoa) and can be considered green spaces within the built fabric. The importance of conceiving new schemes capable of connecting a series of parks and gardens included in the central fabric - existing or design - and those new green axes generated from the elimination / recycling of some roads movement converted into possible pedestrian streets and, by implication, also new parks linear ("linear-squares") could provide virtual re-naturalized networks - or bundles of "strings", using the same core of urban matrices to renew from transverse and eco-global criteria, as well as the traditional division between typological construction, street and garden. The reconsideration of the road as possible "green space" would re-evaluate, in fact, the ancient separation space between the street and the building volume, integrating the latter (buildings, blocks, blocks, etc..) in new and virtual hubs in the green - such as road, built, gardens and living in new areas with striking green: new Block-in-Parks or eco-efficient Super-Manzanas. A more detailed study of this type of proposal would allow both cities to have a new and ambitious ecological plot, able to regenerate the quality of its fabrics from reading new parameters in accordance with new relationships with nature and the environment, essential at the beginning of

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this century. Multi-production and multi-programmed; able to combine the plastic expression, discreet, flexible, imaginative with the integration of certain installations, permanent or temporary, for leisure, shared sport, little cultural activity, socialization and, ultimately, the "projection" of citizen; but, also, through the integration of devices with sensors, sensitive to the collection and management of information and energy, water, etc.. And their local integration in the form of lighting, irrigation management, intelligent transportation, the flow, communication, etc. ... We have to move from the ancient idea of public space to relational space. An active space that more representative and soft - yes, decidedly soft and flexible, green, soft, sensory, expressive, more sternly than "hard" - not only designed as "contemplation" and "representation" but rather for the collective enjoyment and recreation; for real social exchange. We have to think about a hyper city - we have to outline re-articulated, re-naturalized, collectively re-sponged and revitalized city-friendly landscapes.

Research coordination: Manuel Gausa + GIC.lab (N.Canessa, E. Nan) GIC.Lab Team (Manuel Gausa, Nicola Canessa, Emanuela Nan, Paolo Capuano with E.Cagelli, S.Leone, G. L. Porcile, and G.Grossi, V. Ortalli, E. Sommariva, J. Sordi) with the collaboration of IAAC (referent: Mathilde Marengo)

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Llobregat Photo by Guilia Brizzolari

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02 LLOBREGAT AND ALBENGA: RECYCLE METROPOLITAN PARKS BCN-GOA FACTORS (RE) Manuel Gausa Nicola Canessa > UniversitĂ degli Studi di Genova

In recent years cities have developed a series of models based then in "furniture" urban, in environmental "embellishment" or charming "trademark." In the nostalgia of the old civic space of harmonic desire (recreated by small domestic evoking aesthetics) or in the collective charm of import through the appropriate official catalog of "patent" or "signatures". Internationally connected to the momentary good fortune of a "late-urbanism" fin de siecle made of "para-architectures", commercial glamour, "vedettista" tertiary temptation and tactical marketing. Often large areas such as agricultural areas adjacent to the city become important elements for the renewal and recycling of the neighboring urban areas. These mechanisms of recycling of those areas that are identified as metropolitan parks become increasingly important elements in the dynamic mechanisms of development and settlement of territories and cities. The Plains Agricultural Albenga and the Llobregat Agricultural Park are two examples of recycling and renewal that allow you to reactivate territorial dynamics of transformation of neighboring areas. These elements of activation of territories and cities may be called (RE) factors. In any case, today urban questions are not about contructing or recon-

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structing, drawing or to managing, but about revitalizing and reactivating the city. The main question is how to promote - and integrate - incentives and references, productive energies and "collective projections", economic and spatial, social and cultural rights. Today there is the need to shift from a model of development to a restorative re-impulsive model. Integrative. Called just to integrate project - and re - the city to make it a real round, generator, capable of promoting the transition from a merely figurative, or productive, logic to a decisively relational logic, generating relations of coexistence between the city and its territory, but also between the city and its citizens (stable and visitors), their desires, their activities, their living spaces and their interactions with the medium. We could talk about a new kind of urbanism: a more empathetic urban planning, and more precisely, more integrative, in interaction with the environment (sustainable), with the context (most sensitive), but also with the individual (and more involved) and with the same contemporary culture (ie with a new society, the exchange of creative and playful). The contemporary European city, thanks to the energy you can count on, can become a real polarizer energy, an authentic and rich nodem generator stimulus and trade - economic, intellectual, (inter) cultural, tourist and scientific - more than just a "game table and opportunity," or a mere fad or fashion scenario and iconographic object. This entrepreneurial and innovative challenge, sustainable and energy, can not be addressed only with technocratic or technologic criteria but it has to coexist with urban poetry, with the friendliness and well-being, with the pleasure of living in open spaces and all the imagination, senses and feelings, and the fresh and spontaneous designed aesthetics. This sensitivity to the financial statements should be integral and not just a condition, but above all it should be conceived as an opportunity for economic development and shared creativity. It is the civic and operational synergies, strengthen confidence and the ability to create processes required to combine the famous triad of "3 T" by Richard Florida (Talent, Technology and Tolerance, or creativity and innovation, social well-being and balance) with another triad (TourismTerritory-Time) and a transversal projective which is not less important. Advantages and interconnected - physically and relationally-existing infrastructure (linked to the heritage and culture, memory and sensitivity to

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BANDAS FUNCIONALES

CIRCUITOS INTERNOS

VECTORES DE FUERZA

BARRERAS Y FILTROS

RED DE CONEXIONES SOCIO-ECONĂ&#x201C;MICAS

CONECTAR

RECONVERTIR LOS LĂ?MITES

COMPENETRACION ENTRE LOS SISTEMAS

JUNTAR - RECOSER

Gausa + RAVEAU actarquitectura, GIC-Lab in 2014 Llobregat territorial readings.

the environment, but also to research and entrepreneurial capacity) and supporting, in turn, new emerging spaces, associated with the creation with criteria designed to involve not only a respectful appreciation of existing assets, but also an ambitious desire to bet, referential innovation and projection. The European city should encourage this potential, and thus promote itself as a genuine business around in all the economic, innovative and cultural facets, interpreting innovation and creativity as true engines of productive energy generators, stimulus and knowledge, but also proactive self-esteem. In this sense it is necessary to focus on competitive quality generators of fields of knowledge, sufficiently rooted in local tradition, through incentive programs correctly formulated by public entities. Scientific and creative urban clusters are needed, in this regard, as a reformulation of qualitative urban structures and references. This also implies a renewal of the current complementary academic and cultural, through the promotion of centers of excellence and the incorporation of new energy and new proactive responsibility. The combination of an offer production (clear and varied), the presence of an attraction and a spatial quality in the collective imagination, defines the

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true attractiveness of a city and the success of a certain idea of positive "urban brand". In fact, many of the most important contemporary cities seek to be identified by this desire to be considered as "visible marks" in a process of positioning the city as a destination attraction and attractive - Inter-exchange-tourism, culture, goods, etc..-; a positioning completed today by a new role "to and from" the territory. But the real "significance" of an international country or city is not configured only through the simple idea of "brand", but through a particular combination of environmental quality and quality of relationships, spatial quality of infrastructure, cultural quality and social quality, creative quality and generative quality. Barcelona and Genoa are trying to project themselves at an international level, such as environments and recognized brands of quality and comfort at the same time. They should also make it as business contexts, creative, productive and generative, able to create authentic references for a new leisure society and knowledge, through positive interaction (with the environment, society, culture and technology) and a new more innovative sensibility, empathetic and sustainable. This is the real added value to share for a competitive future. New Rules Despite the current economic difficulties, and from a new urban thinking, civic and transdisciplinary, now can begin a new stage for the contemporary city and its (re)size metro, according to a new equation between "economic development (innovative) urban quality + socio-cultural (interactive) boost." The urban project, combined with a strategic and transversal dynamics for - and from - the city is able to re-establish, in this sense, the possible horizons shared through exchange processes are open, positive and proactive, beyond the guidance of a single leader (master or reverential) and overcoming disciplinary unidirectional fields (schools, ideologies and power groups). This is not to impose new rules of action, but to propose new rules for the game, new shared complicity. Allow you to work with policy action and at the same time open to sharing processes and plural variables. The new urban development of the city should be encouraged as a team (with efficient teams), starting with clear criteria and a generous spirit and positive and, at the same time, attentive to the assets of the city (people, places, experiences, references) and the energy of new talent and new bets.

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Gausa + RAVEAU actarquitectura, GIC-Lab in 2014 Albenga territorial readings.

Factors (RE): (re) activate the city In recent decades, the postmodern city has developed a series of models based on the reconstruction (revisionistic), on furniture (aesthetic), management (technical) and marketing (economic), supported by a formal design, a detailed catalog of franchises commercial, glamour images, from a tertiary charm and an iconic collectible import. Some "taste" (and some passages) were especially fortunate, others less so. It is not just about rebuilding, drawing or managing, but rather it is about to (re) vitalize. (re) activate the city. To encourage ideas and references: productive energies and collective illusions, economic, spatial, social and cultural rights. To switch from one model to a restorative re-impulsive (aimed at re-boost), associated with a new urbanism empathic and interactive: an urbanism that interacts positively with citizens (and more involved), the environment (sustainable) and the environment (most sensitive), but also with the same contemporary culture (i.e. with a new society, the exchange and innovation). Urbanism (re-active) (and (re) activator) notes, and finally integrating: urbanism of 7RE +.

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1 - urban (Re) cycle: reading-oriented city, rehabilitation and regeneration of the artifacts, redefinition of the strategic restructuring / the fabric / s. Reassessment of identity (promotion, protection and preservation of cultural heritage, social and environmental attention to the elements of identity, contexts and aspects sensitive to the uniqueness and the potential, ultimately, to the urban memory); but also necessary reversibility of certain scenarios deficitariamente conceived, designed and / or manufactured. 2 - (Re) connect local and global connectivity and cross-interaction, "multi-membership" between neighborhoods and town centers, prioritization and rationalization of mobility (intensification and / or limiting road-conversion). Re-territorial structure: network support inter-and multi-core dynamics (exceeds local intermarriages and of unifocal and centripetal dynamics); affirmation of an intermediate size of the city as a whole and, at the same time, as part of a new type of multi-city region - or geourbanitĂ - diverse and interconnected. 3 - functional (Re) balance (and residential): mixitĂ¨ programmatic, typological variety diversity of uses and activities. Re-building and formal reinvention. Generating new urban pushing operation and induction. Old fabrics rehabilitated and new landscapes inhabited as collective scenarios, mixed, life, and exchange. 4 - (Re) naturalization central (and environmental): green factor, new "landscapes" internal active treatment and spongy public space as relational space; recovery of some streets and avenues as parks (linear squares) or transversal axes of civic connection. Re-efficiency (emissions 0, Agenda 21, the global eco-efficiency), the reconquest of the edges and margins through the enhancement of urban green offshoots "external-internal", interpreted as eco structures and agro active (promoting communal gardens, the Klein-Garden and urban gardens), as well as through the possible redevelopment of the waterfront - the recovery of the docks, the design of new eco-coastal districts / coastal affirmation of the concept of the urban beach (urban beach) - understood as large landscapes of "water-land" frontier.

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5 - collective (Re) affirmation and social (relational) strengthening of a new social conscience and ethics, interactive increased civic ties, bet for a culture committed to active and interactive, relational, sensitive to the coexistence scenarios, the poetic urban well-being and enjoyment of life, for the imagination, the senses and feelings, to a projected fresh and spontaneous ethics and aesthetics. 6 - (Re) boost economic and entrepreneurial bet generational, which includes support to business creativity - the small and large scale - supporting the visibility and promotion abroad - encouraging innovation clusters and synergies between companies and creative groups - using talent through incentives, sponsorships and new forms of philanthropy; not only the ability to attract investment, but also to pay attention to them, not only as economic but rather as economic "generation". 7 - (Re) search investigation, innovation, information: trust in the research and exploration, to support experimentation, pilot projects and advanced models of excellence, support innovation and respect for the memory and tradition. Re-invention of creative and proactive (projection and celebration communicative and participatory, local and global, of a new creative and resourceful "urban spirit"). Re-Intelligent Information: qualitative and effective management of information through a new "sensing" - and interaction - the environment (smart-environment)

BCN-GOA | Llobregat e Albenga: Recycle metropolitan parks Manuel Gausa and Nicola Canessa Research coordination: Manuel Gausa + GIC.lab (N.Canessa, G.Grossi, M.Marengo, E.Nan) GIC.Lab Team (Manuel Gausa, Nicola Canessa, Gaia Grossi, Emanuela Nan with Valentina Croci, Ezequiel Torea Olego and B. Amoretti, A. Ronco Milanaccio) with the collaboration of IAAC (referente: Mathilde Marengo)

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Spine Bianche Quartiere dello Sfollamento dei Sassi (C.Aymonino, G.C. De Carlo, 1955) Photo by Michele Cera

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03 RE_FORM MATERA RE_USING THE MODERN Maria Valeria Mininni > Università della Basilicata

“It’s the city that finally intends to move towards countryside, in order to heal a secular fracture” Musatti R. (1956), ‘Commissione per lo studio della città e dell’agro di Matera, UNRRA Casas, Roma

The history of the city of Matera can be read as the continous search for a process of contamination over time between the reuse, recycle and downsizing of the processes and materials of nature, urbanity and countryside. In the history of the Mediterranean, as Braudel reminds us, fortifications were continuously built, demolished and rebuilt. The urban walls, that represented a huge effort for the citizens, over time became obsolete, useless as bulwarks but still usable as quarries, providing stones to be shaped in new construction materials. Likewise, in Matera, the transformation of the slopes karst in inhabited grottos, as well as houses for animals and humans, shows a strategy of reuse. The UNRA CASAS (Marshall Plan)1 social survey and the recovery of the “Sassi” – the traditional houses of Matera excavated in the rocks - after World War II, showed the possibility of reusing-recycling 2/3 of the existing houses, keeping the Sassi alive instead of abandoning them in favor of new expansions, as it was actu-

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ally done. Today, after the mills have been transformed into houses and squares, the Sassi, the cave houses, have been transformed into tourist postcard image, transforming underdevelopment into folklore. However, in Matera, before thinking of giving a new life cycle to materials, there is the legacy of the Modern, not entirely exhausted an calling for a critically reading, beyond historiagraphical rethorics and rather towards design, focussing on the possibilities of growth and development, not only shrinking. In Matera there is the actual possibility to develop re-use strategies based on the re-interpretation of some of the premises of modern architecture, and in particular on: - returning to reflect on the relationship between the city and the countryside from the urban point of view, aiming to solve the housing problem linking the themes of the Grande Ricostruzione2 and Riforma Agraria3 interpreted as a very current urban-rual strategy; - recovering a diagolue between urbanism and architecture in the examples of decentralized dwelling, focussing on the new lifestyles that producerural land with agriculture and new rural stakeholders; - reusing materials conceiving them not as waste ruins of modernity, like the villages of Riforma now uninhabited or less inhabited and abandoned, but outlining instead greening strategies (economy and social) for new post-rural lifestyle, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;new Riforma Agrariaâ&#x20AC;?, and urban countryside design; - conceiving the university as a laboratory city, that, apart from conducting basic and applied research, would become a producer of usable knowledge, activating laboratory, trainee and stages activities where the students face problem solving tasks in the real spaces where the decisions will be taken and choices made. The city, the University and the territory in Southern Italy4 There is a particular interest surrounding the history of cities, linked to the transformations in their role and the weight that the Universities have gained in policies to promote culture. It highlights the history of the images evoked by the relations between the city and society, between culture and society, a history that forged a solidarity between the destiny of the cities with their higher education institutions, powerful actors and action factors more than context factors.

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If it is true that the University can be an important actor in urban transformation, driving spatial and social processes and acting as a quality factor in the policies that produce them, then urban policies drawn up in collaboration with University policy can be the making place (generator of places for the enjoyment of culture) not the selling place (producer of sales points). In this case cultural consolidation, as well as institutional consolidation, of the Matera pole of the Lucanian University could become a case study of how a good integration between the city and University, between cultural policies and urban policies within the framework of a territorial development model based on knowledge based economies, can orient the social image. It can improve the quality of services and embody an innovative idea of welfare, in a climate that in Matera today has once more, as in its illustrious past, become open to social mediation in the debate as to the use of space. How can Matera contrive to fulfill its promise as a candidate city for the 2019 Capital of Culture, with the aid of the University and the many creative private enterprises blossoming in the peculiarities of this city where they are based? In June 2012, thanks to the opportunities offered by the new University Law Reform that allows a greater autonomy and organic organization to Departments that replace the previous Faculties, a new Department was instituted in Matera, which embodies a cultural approach profoundly rooted in the historical vicissitudes of the city and its peculiar historical and geographic context. In the institution document, the founding mission of the Department is described as the innovation and integration of different cultures, ranging from architecture to cultural heritage, landscape and tourism, based on the important experiences made since the 1990s in the fields of engineering, agricultural sciences, letters and archeology. The name of the Department, Dipartimento delle Culture Europee e del Mediterraneo: Architettura, Ambiente, Patrimoni Culturali (Dicem), summarizes the planning intents, embodied in the skills of the Department members and the fields of education and research that they will address. A focus on Mediterranean Europe is the springboard from which Matera aims to achieve internationalization. The doctoral research program Cities and Landscapes: Architecture, Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, History and Resources, is now in its 29th cycle. The redefinition of the cultural orientation on these same lines, has created a laboratory of ideas and a gymnasium in which

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dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange, the ambitious Departmental cultural project, are practiced. The institution of the new Department coincides with an important moment in the (already) dense history of the city: the candidature of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019, and shares the same objectives and visions for the future. In the program document for the Dicem, entire passages of the application for Matera's candidature are reported, demonstrating complete agreement, also in view of the fact that the University of Basilicata is a member of the Promotion Committee for Matera 2019.5 The new University pole and the candidature of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019 is the best platform on which to offer space and opportunities to revive urban and cultural policies. Matera, the laboratory of Italian town planning Starting from the problems associated with safeguarding the environment and landscape, the two strategic domains of the Lucanian local heritage that are also issues, in terms of cultural heritage and climate changes, of European strategies in the Horizon2020 objectives, a close and constructive partnership is desirable among the universities, local bodies and private enterprises to create productive clusters that can cultivate a reality that is still weak, as regards economic power and entrepreneurial fabric. In a period of global recession, this could revitalize and improve the poor capacity and entrepreneurial spirit of the local society. Long before it became a University site, Matera, that became famous after the publication of the novel “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli” in 1949, was the center of a cultural debate. As from the 1950s this was focused on the issues of the Great Reconstruction in Italy, when this nation was just starting to enter the modern world. In Matera the critical angle was the “Questione Meridionale” and “Modernity”. A place where experimentation was the rule, a city where the spotlight was on the potential of urban planning, in its first steps under the new law intended to accompany the process of redefining the relationships between space, the economy and society. Thanks to Adriano Olivetti, it became the scenario of a political reform project with a vast bearing that placed this small southern city, neglected by history, in the eye of a national and international storm. From being a “national shame” Matera became a case of regional planning where politicians entered into discussions with urban planners, architects, sociolo-

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Matera: the relocation of the new neighborhoods of Ricostruzione - the 'reconstruction' drawing by Cristina Dicillo

Sassi founded city Neighbourhoods of the reconstruction "Risanamento Sassi" Neighbourhoods of housing between the two wars

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gists, economists, to find a meeting point between reality and utopia. The plan drawn up by Luigi Piccinato (1953-56) attempted, not entirely successfully, to enrich this discussion by showing how urban planning and architecture can be achieved within the framework of the Plan. An case in point is the analyses of the living conditions in the “Sassi” (rough-hewn cave-like homes) inspired by the Geddes social survey that expected to be able to transfer the peasantswith their “presumed” neighbors from their cave homes to modern quarters, designed according to the most advanced, “poetic” compositions of young promising architects such as Ludovico Quaroni, Carlo Aymonino, Giancarlo De Carlo, Federico Gorio, Mario Fiorentino, but also of good local professionals. Together, they worked on designs that allowed houses and districts to be built in a very short lapse of time. Urbanistica and Casabella, prestigious journals that carried the ongoing debate in those years beyond the borders of Italy, devoted much space to Matera, presenting it as a case for comparison with the Olivetti experience in Ivrea, and those across the Atlantic of the Tennessee Valley Authority. In Matera, therefore, culture penetrated the life of the city and of society, the knowledge of the use of space was discussed in the context of transformation, and the debate would lead to the creation of many good pieces of architecture. This demonstrated the technical success of good planning, as Aymonino claimed soon after, but it did not have any effect on the levels of income or quality of life of the inhabitants.6 The Sassi, from being a local issue, came to public attention thanks to an international competition (1974), the outcome of which was numbered among the emblematic cases of recovery of the historical centers of Italian cities. A cultural awareness, that was not only architectural, spread through the city, foreign and Italian scholars and artists settled in Matera and contributed to fuel the climate of high quality critical debate. When the Sassi were declared world heritage by UNESCO, in 1993, the city was definitively recognized at international level. Matera became an open-air museum, a true museum pole at the urban scale that should enhance its extraordinary potential as a natural, historical and artistic exhibit, with a refined culture and professional skills. This brief historical background was owed to Matera, city of culture even before it became a university city. While we lament the inability of the institutional actors to orient ideas and plans for the city, a problem that is even more evident in the South, today Matera is experiencing a period of

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great ferment that will have a strong effect on the destiny of the city, starting from relaunching cultural policies in which the University will play an important part. University spaces and agro-urban recycling policies The birth of the Matera pole was widely supported by local and regional bodies. A new university campus was designed in the area of the old Hospital, which became the site of the new Department (Plasmati pavilion), the students' residences (Stella pavilion) including the green space, the pinewood in which the university is immersed. The new campus area is located on one of the leading structural elements that the Piccinato plan impressed on the city's topography as a function of the modern expansion. This is a green hilly area with a great landscape value, that offers a wide panorama looking out toward the valley of Bradanoe. The site bears witness to the salubrious nature of the place, the Hospital designed by E. Plasmati, the Sanatorium by E. Stella, the Heliotherapy Colony by V. Corazza. Meanwhile, at the foot of the hill lies one of the “crystals” envisaged in the Plan, the Lanera district (1955-1959) created by M.Coppa and M.Fabbri. The choice of the location of the Matera University is an interesting case of reuse of abandoned structures and recycling of the “Modern”, but also an opportunity to reinterpret and update the vocation of the Piccinato plan by incorporating the historical structures in a continuous system of urban parks, creating a specific image enhancing the context values, and redefining the role and tasks of the south-western city sector. The site of the campus on the hilly area, whose slopes have conspired to preserve their destination as urban green belt, and the creation of urban parks climbing up from the city centre toward the hill, taking great care to enhance the natural conditions of the site, the monumental structures like the castle, highlight the linking role and green walks in this area and ensurinb an excellent integration of the old town, the other university buildings, and the museums complex. Only in the City Plan of Matera, the funding for conservative restoration of the Theatre-Library of the Borgo “La Martella” designed by Ludovico Quaroni, as well as infrastructural intervention in the district, building 8 social housing complexes, can the adoption by the city administrative bodies of a more careful social and cultural policy be glimpsed. This could be

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a step toward taking a critical distance from the “Modern”, inserting the Sassi, that are at the moment the object of excessive media attention and overexposure, in the framework of the wealth of urban histories of Matera that could better recounted. A similar operation could be adopted by the MAM, Museum of Modern Architecture in Ivrea, linking the open-air architectural collection to the history of the city, to Adriano Olivetti’s adventure and his factory. In other words, the university should be made more outlooking, enhancing the potential of the areas, reconnecting the RioneSassi to the modern districts, considered as the historical centre of the ancient and modern development periods, and avoiding an excessive tertiary and tourist focus only on the Sassi and an emargination of the city districts. The aim would be above all to achieve social requalification, thanks also to the addition of the university population, which would improve the quality and care of public spaces, and increase the demand for services. This would offer an excellent opportunity to reinterpret a plastic significance of elevating urban values as public heritagein a contemporary way. The public property of most of the real estate both in the city centre and in the districts is in keeping public housing policies with multiple impacts: on the one hand by restoring existing estate and on the other by exploiting the chance to offer functional mixitè, services and widespread students residences. A cultural policy inspired by taking care of these places could attempt reuse-recycingthe old urban mills, the sign of a factory city in close contact with the countryside, in line with the tradition of revitalizing multitasking spaces for educational, exhibition, trade and gastronomic purposes according to Farinetti's Eataly model, for example, rather than turning them into banal examples of real estate speculative operations. New energies that can take into account the borghi(the traditional settlements) of the reform period, now uninhabited and in a state of abandon, implementing post-productivist strategies in an agro-urban key dictated by greening(economy and social) policies. Possible sites of industrial liaison offices for research, food companies, new post-rural lifestyles, locavore agriculture, they could probe the potential of new agricultural reform and urban countryside policies. The universities, faced with the crisis of traditional social rebalancing systems that is particularly severe in southern Italy, could devise innovative welfare models, integrating education and research with local develop-

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ment policies. The University of Matera could accomplish this “third mission”, to produce and spread knowledge, and in particular, experiment with the theme of integrated sustainable urban development within the smart cities research area. Here it is conjoined with the themes of smart culture and tourism, where there is a risk that traditions and culture - that are smart but don't know it - may be lost unless there is a move toward a greater awareness that only investments in culturecan achieve the aim of increasing the level of maturity of southern Italian civil society.

1. Olivetti’s influence is decisive for the history of Matera, both through the promotion of community practices inspired by philanthropic intents, and with the foundation in 1951 of the 'Committee of Study of the city and countryside of Matera.' In this context the project of the suburb La Martella takes shape, as a first wedge of an ampler experimental program of urbanization of the countries. 2. Plan L.S. 619 of 1952, according in partial way with the results of the Committee, prescribe Sassi evacuation proceeding for neighborhood unity and wishing an 'aesthetical-environmental‘ recovery, just finalized to maintenance of panoramic value of the historical site. The evacuation plan foresees the setup of the greatest part of the inhabitants inside new anticipated districts in the P.R. of Matera and, in small part, in the rural suburbs of new foundation. Piccinato Plan of the '56 substantially translate these aspirations in a coherent sketch, in which the planning of the quarters -submitted to public initiative- draws to decentralization theories, and the organization of the suburbs intercepts the Olivetti’s paradigm based on communities. 3. Agrarian Reform The institution of the Debug Consortia has represented an attempt to regiment the land system with based interventions of territorial restructuring with the realization of infrastructures and nets; the Agrarian Reform of the '50 has modified the land order for the small and mediates ownership. 4. This refers to research promoted by the SIU, Società Italiana degli Urbanisti, on the relationship between the cities and public Universities published in Martinelli N., Rovigatti P.,(a cura di),(2005), Università, città, mezzogiorno, Franco Angeli, Milan, and, in particular to the text by Savino. (2005), Città e Università nel Mezzogiorno: permanenti differenze. 5. Without claiming to be in any way an exhaustive list, the following references are essential works about Matera: Restucci A.,(1991), Matera, I sassi, Einaudi; Fonseca C.D., Demetrio R., Guadagno G.,(1998), Matera, Editori Laterza; Restucci A., (1977), Città e Mezzogiorno: Matera dagli anni ’50 al concorso sui “Sassi” Centri urbani: conservazione e innovazione, Casabella n.428, Piccinato L., (1955), Matera: i Sassi i nuovi borghi e il Piano regolatore, Urbanistica n.15-16, Fabbri M., (1993) Il piano regolatore di Matera di Luigi Piccinato, in Malusardi F.,(a cura di),Luigi Piccinato e l'urbanistica moderna, Officina, Rome; Rota L.,(2011), Matera. Storia di una città, Giannatelli, Matera.

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Finito di stampare nel mese di settembre del 2014 dalla « ERMES. Servizi Editoriali Integrati S.r.l. » 00040 Ariccia (RM) – via Quarto Negroni, 15 per conto della « Aracne editrice S.r.l. » di Roma

Productive Grounds is based on two workshops held in 2014 in Hanover and Genoa and supplemented by a thematical framework provided by the researches of the Università degli Studi Di Genova and Leibniz Universität Hannover. The objective of both workshops was to rethink urban grounds in order to create new relationships between the city and the environment, landscape and ecology. The specific focus regards the re-use and re-including of dismissed industrial areas and vision for infrastructural systems in a sustainable approach. Genoa was taken as a Case Study, because in the current period of economic uncertainty, the city offers a clear potential to think about the recovery of dismissed or underused infrastructures and central, but underused areas. The general goal of the RECYCLE Genoa Lab is to contribute with different visions to the mapping process, currently undergoing within the Italian National Priority Research Project (PRIN) RECYCLE Italy: new life cycle for architectures, infrastructures and landscape, led by Dipartimento di Scienze per l‘Architettura (UNIGE) and supported by Institut für Entwerfen und Städtebau (LUH), with the financial support of the DAAD initiative Hochschuldialog mit Südeuropa. “Transalpine Trajectories” in this context highlight the transfer of researchers, ideas, and themes over the Alps. Clearly a new vision not also of urban situations, but of the European territory in general is formulated as research by design approach in this publication.

ISBN

euro 28,00

978-88-548-7372-8