EUROPAN 6

Between cities, architectural dynamics and new urban forms

European cities are made up of several cities. Most of them have a stabilised urban centre, with heritage values, resulting from a continuous evolution until the first half of the 20th century. They also have scattered areas, the result of the zoning processes of the 1960s and 1980s, which form juxtaposed or atomised urban fragments between infrastructures - large residential areas, neighbourhoods, industrial zones, "new towns"...

 

However, there are also urban territories of remote origin, produced by the continuous extension of centres outside their primitive limits during the 18th and 19th centuries and in the first half of the 20th century - suburbs, industrial districts, urbanised villages, former fortified and demilitarised areas, etc... These areas, which were formed around a layout that mixed the primitive rural structure and new roads, have today become interstitial fragments located between the city/centre and the modern city. On this structuring grid, building has developed in fits and starts, according to needs, leading to the emergence of spaces in which high-rise buildings, single-family homes, industries, warehouses, contemporary roads... EUROPAN 6 proposes to explore these territories to bring out their latent identity and promote their development.

 

WHY? POTENTIAL USES AND NEW URBAN VALUES

These territories, socially and physically marginalised, forgotten by the urban planning of the expansive city - if not to cross them or use them as service areas - have today become strategic pieces in the process of the formation of the contemporary city/town, for several reasons: because of their location, because of their architectural heritage, because of the growing tendency of municipal policies to mix the social spectrum in the neighbourhoods, because of the new functional offer that can turn these areas into scenarios for a new form of urban life.

 

This is the result of the combination of existing urban values - with their potential for social and cultural memory

- and those resulting from the evolution of urban lifestyles. This change is the result of new social and spatial dynamics that seek to take advantage of the locational and contextual advantages offered by these inter-city territories:

- dynamic of lifestyles with a demand for diversification of peripheral forms of housing adapted to different types of population (young couples, students, elderly people) as well as services such as shops or neighbourhood shopping centres.

- cultural dynamics related to leisure time and the growing importance of urban leisure, with a demand for accessible spaces (cinemas, theatres, cafés, concert halls) and social and sports facilities.

- tourism dynamics if the territories have a history that allows them to be part of an urban cultural tourism route capable of generating interactive spaces. - dynamics of the forms of work related to new technologies with the creation of small leading tertiary businesses, craft workshops that require a certain degree of centrality or home-based work businesses.

- dynamics of urban networks around multimodal transport interchanges (train-tram/car-bus/car-park-and-ride/car-tram....)

These dynamics offer the opportunity to articulate - with different combinations depending on the context - complex programmes where habitat, work, leisure and displacement are mixed.

 

In terms of urban planning, those in charge of municipalities close to the city/centre - political decision-makers, technical urban planning offices and architects - have begun to take an interest in the changes affecting these segments of the city, with the aim of implementing more or less dynamic policies. Private developers, too, are increasingly turning to these areas, with which they can respond to the demand of a new type of customer. In terms of urban planning, these sites offer a good field for research on urban management and implementation processes that can serve as a basis for innovative projects mixing private and municipal investors, i.e. public and private reasons.

 

HOW? REVALUING THE EXISTING AND DYNAMISING THE ARCHITECTURAL PROCESSES

By their road structure and their hybrid spaces, these intermediate sites have an existing heritage, a reflection and memory of a banal urban development, which can nevertheless give rise to projects which, thanks to a dynamisation of their spaces, allow the creation of a complex, intense, multiple, modern and coherent city. This cohesion can be achieved in different ways:

 

Acting in the networks:

- Restructuring the existing roads and the existing grid in accordance with contemporary morphologies and modes of movement.

- By opening up to the wide variety of complementary means of transport: cars, public transport (bus, tram) and bicycles.

 

Acting in the building:

- taking into account the plot and the partial restructuring of the land according to a coherent urban logic

- densifying sparsely built-up areas - inner blocks, vacant lots, areas at the junction with modern networks

- replacing old buildings with new buildings

- restructuring heterogeneous groups of buildings

- incorporating ecological requirements into the architecture

 

Acting on public space and environmental quality:

- revaluing existing public spaces (streets, squares, parks, natural spaces)

- inserting new public spaces that are articulated with the existing ones in accordance with the desire for morphological restructuring

- treating the transitional spaces between buildings and public spaces

- applying landscape values

- managing resources

 

The deterioration of the image of these areas, the deterioration of the image of these areas, often outdated, which are growing out of harmony with the heritage values of the city/centre and the modernisation of functional areas, reveals the need to revalue their identity through architecture, morphological restructuring, typological diversification, improvement of the architectural image and innovative interventions in the public space. This demand gives EUROPAN competitions a strategic role in this "urban market".

 

The sites, all chosen for their inter-city location, can be classified into four categories:

- derelict areas whose obsolete function offers opportunities for development

- the unfinished city: suburbs, old or modern, unfinished blocks, post-war social housing blocks, heterogeneous building complexes that can be restructured.

- absorbed villages: old rural structures engulfed by the city allowing the creation of dense, low-rise residential areas.

- peripheral urban sites, degraded by communication networks, which can be transformed by new modes of transport (car park-roads, tram or bus, train-bus, etc. ...) allowing the linking of means of transport and the creation of urban micro-polarities

add

+info:

EUROPAN / Spain
CALLS: Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA)
IN COLLABORATION WITH: EUROPAN

RESULTS

By categories

Jury

Gerard MaccreanorCarlos Puente FernándezDolores AlonsoEduardo Arroyo MuñozGerardo Mingo PinachoElisabeth Galí CamprubíFrédéric BonnetClemente Lomba GutiérrezJavier MaderueloJuan Gómez Acosta

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