Public space, Public space
Living Heritage - Urban regeneration of the Tragel Zuid area
Project description
A series of research questions were used: Who has the right to the city? Are cities for people, for profit or for all living within? How can a productive city embrace adaptability to achieve resilience? The project’s main idea was the weaving together of different strands of production, land uses, habitats - for people and animals in an ever-adapting tapestry centring the river. Thus, the City as a common good theme can be found not only in its integration of all living within, but also in its holistic approach to the productive city. A dense living environment with a mixture of residences, retail, community services, parks, meeting places, offices and other non-disruptive activities that generate life and movement throughout the day was proposed. By accommodating a variety of businesses and services, both blue and white collar, the area is neither unilaterally dependent on one industry nor caters to a single demographic thus reducing its vulnerability to cyclical fluctuations and structural changes. Providing numerous housing typologies and viable live-work opportunities ensures a diversity of future residents, income, lifestyle, age and background wise, contributing to social cohesion and an inclusive, integrated, equitable neighbourhood. A knowledge and creative-driven productive neighbourhood, our proposal weaves a dense urban environment, attractive through its range of urban qualities, integration of environmental and natural considerations, flexible in implementation and adaptable in nature, safeguarding long-term sustainable use of land, water and physical environments, from an ecological, social and economic aspect. Two urban toolkits are proposed rejecting the classical urban planning approach to empower private owners to collaborate and adapt to an ever changing physical and economic context. Each toolkit, the Tabula plena for urban conservation or Living quays for riverfront redesign have 12 alternatives to be chosen from based on the area of implant. For a nature inclusive design, a holistic vision to combine architecture with the landscape, buildings as part of the urban ecosystem were needed. Plants and animals have always fought for their place among the cracks of the built environment. Why don’t we fight for them as well? We proposed a network of different urban biotopes along the green corridors unified by the river. As runner up to Europan 16 – Aalst, the Living heritage project and its authors will contribute to the area’s master plan.
Author's presentation text
Marius Găman and Ana-Maria Branea work under the :STUDIO name as a research and experimentation laboratory focusing on understanding and exploring urban patterns and parameters, transformations and planning practices, architecture and design. :STUDIO is dedicated to creating sustainable interventions and projects, developed mainly for competitions or academic research. These investigations and experiments have been published, awarded, and exhibited nationally and internationally.