From a list of 25 finalists released in May, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) has announced the winners of the 2016 European Prize for Urban Public Space. Awarded since 2000 to recognize “transformations and improvements in the public spaces of Europe,” this year’s prize names two joint winners along with four special mentions. All 25 finalists will have their work featured in an exhibition that will tour Europe over the next two years, and also will be published in an online archive that features past finalists.
Continue after the break for images and descriptions of the winning projects.
Joint Winner: Recovery of the Irrigation System of the Spa Allotments, Caldes de Montbui, Spain / Cíclica + Cavaa Arquitectes
During the twentieth century uncontrolled urban development of the periphery of Caldes de Montbui seriously damaged the Hortes de Baix (Lower Orchards), more than three hectares ancient agricultural land which, for centuries, had been irrigated by the town’s surplus thermal waters. Bad smells and health risks resulting from the contamination of the irrigation system by sewage, together with partial covering of the main canal, inaccessibility of the orchards and bad management of wastewater from private spas ended up causing a rupture among the community of farmers using the irrigated land and the eventual collapse of the agricultural system.
However, after 2012, the town council introduced a participative process which brought together more than seventy horticulturalists. With their agreement, the sewage was properly channelled, the old irrigated land was supplied with clean water and a new network of accessible paths connected the orchards with the old centre of town. The land is now once again a productive space, keeping the horticultural tradition of Caldes de Montbui alive, contributing towards its food sovereignty and raising awareness among the town’s inhabitants concerning the importance of democratic management of the public good of water resources.
Joint Winner: Przełomy Centre for Dialogue in Solidarność Square, Szczecin, Poland / KWK Promes
Solidarność (Solidarity) Square was a physical expression of the historic fracture in Szczecin after the Second World War. Named in memory of sixteen workers who were killed in 1970 when they demonstrated against the Soviet regime, the square had little relevance beyond this purely commemorative function. Its urban surrounds, anonymous and featureless, had not recovered from the massive destruction of allied bombing attacks at the end of the Second World War, after which the city went from German to Polish control, whereupon its entire population was replaced, with all the tragic effects of such a change. The square, which recently recovered its lost centrality with the construction of the new Szczecin Philharmonic Hall, has been completely refurbished. It is now the site of the underground “Przełomy” Centre for Dialogue, a branch of the National Museum, which aims to heal the wounds of collective memory. Meanwhile the sloping contours of its roof offer the city a public space for intensive, vibrant use in its everyday life.
The restoration of this pre-existing home aimed to create architectural harmony and open up its interior and connecting spaces. Full advantage was taken of natural light and the relationship between different spaces by giving them new uses and maximizing the potential of the surrounding garden.
Previously, the main entrance area was semi-circular with a roof that sloped towards the main living room. The space was surrounded by a semi-circular pergola of round pillars, none of which were related in any way to the concept of the new project. The main entrance is now marked on the outside by a large refection pool, (which mirrors the form of the bedrooms), and highlights the new façade rendering (grooved slate), in this area. Inside, the entrance hall has been transformed into a large, double-height, open space; its ceiling lifted and windows inserted all around the edge, flooding the atrium with natural light.
At the intersection between the two perpendicular sections of the house (living rooms and bedrooms) there was previously an office/library (set over 2 floors) – this was demolished due to its awkward configuration. Most of the windows in the southern and western facing façades had to be resized and light wells created in the main sitting room, winter garden and bathrooms.
The area of all the rooms – both bedrooms and communal living rooms – was increased and private areas separated from guest areas. The communal areas are now contained within one large open space, divided by split-levels, the fireplace and the winter garden. This opening up of space created new visual connections and strengthened links between the indoor and outdoor living areas, all compartments enjoying direct access to the garden. Along the southern side of the house was built a large covering, with a partially open ceiling, which functions as an extension to the interior spaces (living room, dining room, TV room), and provides a huge exterior sitting area.
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The various outdoor spaces have different ambiances and varying levels of privacy depending on the rooms that surround them. For uniformity, the swimming pool has the same proportions as the living rooms and outside roof covering, and extends right up to the main bedroom, emphasizing its position of importance.
Following the news last week that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will abandon plans for their Chicago location, OMA has released images of their proposal for the museum, which had been beaten out in the original competition by MAD Architects‘ Volcano-like entry. OMA’s design attempts to preserve as much of the lakefront park space as possible, lifting the majority of gallery and educational spaces into the air and capping them with a sky garden enclosed within an ETFE envelope. The plan would have offered up to 8 times more public space than the footprint it occupies.
Courtesy of OMA New York
OMA’s proposal was inspired by its site’s history of sky-reaching structures. During the 1933 World Exposition, it was home to Skyride, an aerial tramway supported by two 628 foot (191 meter) tall towers. Drawing from the ambition of the towers, OMA’s Lucas Museum features cables extending from the building’s peak to the edges and key points within the gallery plate, suspending it in mid-air. The entire structure has been rotated 45 degrees to provide direct lake and downtown views and create clear entries from surrounding pathways.
Courtesy of OMA New York
The core of the museum has been filled with vertical gallery spaces that support the elevated horizontal gallery plate, kept as open as possible for maximum flexibility. On top of the horizontal gallery, the ETFE-enveloped sky garden provides display space for artifacts and serves as a social space that is freely accessible to the public.
The ETFE membrane is fritted so it can be used as a screen for projections from both inside and outside the structure. This allows the building skin to become an interactive part of the museum experience from within, and serve as an outdoor cinema for the park. Theater and lecture halls are included in the tower’s base, allowing for separate entrances to the museum and sky park. The park and gallery levels are accessible by a series of escalators, with an event space and observation deck connected by a elevator bank.
Courtesy of OMA New York
The surrounding park space is designed to be as flexible as possible, which would allow the area to continue serving as a tailgating area for Chicago Bears games at the adjacent Soldier Field. The park could have also become the setting for a range of new public events and activities, framing the building as the backdrop for the city’s cultural loop.
Courtesy of OMA New York
The Lucas Museum is currently searching for sites in California.
When we started talking about migration [as a conference theme], everybody said ‘don’t do it, it’s too controversial.’ We said that’s exactly why we’re going to do it.
This defiant attitude was how Martin Barry, Chairman of reSITE, opened their 2016 Conference in Prague three weeks ago. Entitled “Cities in Migration,” the conference took place against a background of an almost uncountable number of challenging political issues related to migration. In Europe, the unfolding Syrian refugee crisis has strained both political and race relations across the continent; in America, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has led a populist knee-jerk reaction against both Mexicans and Muslims; and in the United Kingdom—a country only on the periphery of most attendees’ consciousness at the time—the decision in favor of “Brexit” that took place a week after the conference was largely predicated upon limiting the immigration of not only Syrians, but also of European citizens from other, less wealthy EU countries.
In architecture, such issues have been highlighted this year by Alejandro Aravena’s Venice Biennale, with architects “Reporting from the Front” in battles against, among other things, these migration-related challenges. From refugee camps to slums to housing crises in rich global cities, the message is clear: migration is a topic that architects must understand and respond to. As a result, the lessons shared during reSITE’s intensive two-day event will undoubtedly be invaluable to the architectural profession.
In her opening keynote, sociologist Saskia Sassen outlined what was perhaps the defining theme of the conference: that migration is not a random event, but something which is caused by the actions of governments and citizens. “Migrations are made, they don’t just happen,” says Sassen. “There are conditions which cause them,” many of which arise as a result of the capitalism which enables our current lifestyles. As a result, it might be argued that we each have a responsibility to engage with the challenges involved in migration.
Building on this statement, Sassen identified different types of migrant: the first was the political refugee, those fleeing political turmoil in their homes; the second the economic migrant, who seeks a better life in a new country. But while these two types of migrant are widely discussed, Sassen argued that the third type of migrant has barely been acknowledged—this is what she called the “economic refugee,” a class of people who are fleeing the “massive loss of habitat” catalysed by economic activities such as corporate land-grabs and mining, or by encroaching environmental disasters.
In addition to Sassen’s three types of migrant the morning’s other keynote speaker, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, adds a fourth type: “an often unrecognized but large class of middle-class, educated, mobile people who choose to see different parts of the world and live in different places because they can.”
While Kimmelman expects that we will continue to see high numbers of political refugees and economic migrants, he also believes that the 21st century will also see a dramatic rise in these middle-class migrants, and in those fleeing environmental disasters. Indeed he made the threat of climate-driven migration a key part of his message to the conference. Speaking to ArchDaily he summed up the issue rather pithily: “We may be building new towers in Miami, but if the seas rise they’re not going to be occupied in several decades, so we’ll be talking about the migration of people from Miami. We need to think about that much more seriously.”
For Sassen, taking these migrants seriously means recognizing their existence and instituting legal mechanisms, similar to those available to political refugees, to enable their protection. But it also means taking seriously the role that cities have historically taken in empowering migrants. “The city is a space where those without power get to make a history,” she says, but the current trajectory of our cities threatens to put this at risk. As many global cities continue to prioritize the concentration of capital, those with less capital to offer are threatened with marginalization. Highlighting the world’s top 100 cities, Sassen points out these places host 10% of the world’s population, but a full 30% of its GDP, saying simply: “that’s too much.”
With such a range of different causes of migration, one thing that was clear from the conference’s opening was that at the level of cities, the key question of migration is how diversity is acknowledged, respected and accommodated by the built environment.
One of the most striking examples of a city accepting migrants and embracing diversity is perhaps New York City, as evidenced by the closing presentation from Carl Weisbrod, director of NYC’s City Planning Commission, in which he discussed the city’s commitment to low-income housing under Mayor Bill de Blasio. One component of this policy, and perhaps the most interesting interaction between architecture and city policy presented at the conference, is New York’s experiment with micro-apartments in the form of nArchitects’ Carmel Place. Conceived as a way of providing cheap, single-occupancy apartments in the very center of a city that has an overabundance of homes designed for families or the super-rich, Carmel Place is largely about preserving and encouraging the diversity of Manhattan.
“It’s incredibly important to keep [the cores of the cities] as diverse as possible,” explains Mimi Hoang, principle of nArchitects. “I think the warning signs are here in Europe—the warning signs are in Paris, where they tend to put immigrants in this kind of immigrant belt, the peripherique, in the banlieues. This obviously create feelings of ostracization and marginalization for some in society. We have our own problems in the States of course, but the reality is that if the working class is in the peripheral of the city, that is creating a hotbed of resentment.”
And though micro-apartments are of course envisaged as just one part in enabling this diversity, that does not mean they have been without controversy. In a recent piece appearing on ArchDaily, Jesse Connuck argues that such apartments may risk legitimizing a “new normal” of tiny, substandard apartments. In responding to this argument, Hoang’s usually soft-spoken demeanor breaks into something considerably more animated. “We’re worried,” she says, “and we’ve certainly had our fair share of calls from interested developers, and if we think that they’re only calling us because they think that we can squeeze more apartment units onto their plots, we’re not interested. We’re interested if they’re interested in creating community, if they’re interested in creating a new kind of living experience.”
For Hoang, an important part of nArchitects’ decision to engage in micro-apartments was the underlying complexity of the issue. “What bothers me is that the issue is always discussed in isolation of a lot of other issues,” she adds. “But you have to think about all the other tangential, ripple effects of not doing it. Not doing it means people having to commute an hour in; not doing it means there’s increased cost to the taxpayer for road infrastructure and public transportation; not doing it means loss of talent in the city, because plenty of people, especially creatives, are leaving New York for cities like Philadelphia.”
Representing a very different side of migration to that explored by Mimi Hoang was Catalytic Action, a non-profit whose work in places such as Lebanon has focused on lean solutions to providing schools, playgrounds and other crucial spaces for refugee camps. Among their current projects is the Jarahieh School, a plan to create a school building in Lebanon by adapting Save the Children’s pavilion from the 2015 Milan Expo. Joana Dabaj, Catalytic Action’s principle coordinator, believes that this model could provide an example for future exhibitions, biennales and the like in Europe. “There’s huge opportunities when it comes to exhibition structures because usually they have been done in a temporary way,” she says. “When dealing with the crisis and urgent situations there’s also this requisite that you need temporary structures—because for example in Lebanon you cannot build permanent structures for refugees. So it also fits the same design guidelines of the building: temporary, it can be disassembled and assembled.”
The concept is, at its base, a simple act of recycling. “Recycling is not a new concept,” Catalytic Action’s Executive Director Riccardo Conti tells me. But he adds that “what we maybe should try to push a bit more is to recycle almost at a global scale.” The project also implies that Western countries could examine where they are producing waste and think more carefully about how they could design their products to have a useful afterlife.
A playground designed and constructed by Catalytic action in Bar Elias, Lebanon. Image Courtesy of Catalytic Action
Of course, one school, adapted from a single expo pavilion, will not change this situation alone. But Catalytic action is hoping their example will lead to greater change. “The reason we’re called Catalytic Action is because we believe in an intervention that would catalyse a bigger impact,” says Dabaj, and Conti adds an example of when this has happened in the past: “the first project on the playground, it raised awareness of the need for these spaces in Lebanon for refugee children. After that, of course we were able to do more projects, but there was also a very nice thing that happened in the same village: another organization built a school, and they included a playground in the school—without us pushing the idea, they knew about our work and they said that they understood the importance.”
At first, the provision of schools, playgrounds and social spaces to refugee camps might seem a world away, both literally and metaphorically, from the work being done by architects in the world’s global cities to accommodate the ever-increasing influx of people to the planet’s social and economic centers. But on closer inspection, refugee camps may have more in common with places like New York than we think. “There’s a deep urbanizing impulse which I think is a basic human desire,” Michael Kimmelman explains to me. “If we begin to think of those camps—where people on average spend sixteen years—not as temporary, stop lying to ourselves and instead think of them as new cities, pop-up cities, which should benefit the people who live there now and in the long-term benefit the host countries as well, that’s a whole class of cities which we can develop from scratch.”
A playground designed and constructed by Catalytic action in Bar Elias, Lebanon. Image Courtesy of Catalytic Action
Viewed in this way, the work of Catalytic Action and other organizations in the refugee camps of Lebanon might be seen as the first urbanizing actions in the birth of new cities—cities which are much more aware of how migration fits into both their past and future than many of today’s mature cities.
The collection of perspectives presented at reSITE’s 2016 conference was full of lessons for planners, politicians, and policy-makers. But perhaps the greatest lesson for architects was summed up by Michael Kimmelman: “I think the whole question of migration allows us to rethink what cities should look like. There’s never been a moment when there’s such a demand to think on such a large scale about how we build our cities and build the world. For architects and urban planners I would think this is one of the great moments to be in the profession.”
Client: Municipality of Medellin – Secretary of Education and Culture
Work Team Company: General Manager Urban Development Enterprise; Eng. Cesar Augusto Hernandez Correa (current), Eng. Maria Margarita Ángel Bernal 2012-2015
Design Directors Architects: John Octavio Ortiz Lopera (current), Gustavo Restrepo, Juan Mejia
Transformation of Medellin, education and culture have been the main platform for true social changes, where physical infrastructures are essential in the inclusion of quality policies in areas where state hasn’t been before and low levels of human development are common. These spaces are operated from Educational Ministry and Citizen Culture, seeking mainly to improve the education quality to reduce dropout and repetition rates in early grades in elementary school. This project it’s about how to contribute to citizen encounter, integrating these infrastructures to the city, to its inhabitants and the recovery of public space.
MEDELLIN Transformation has given the public space and the public building, the most important value to build a place for the citizen encounter and the best scenario where it is possible to build a society that based on diversity, is recognized and accepted as the way to a better living.
State coordination with its programs and projects in bounded strategic territories that allows integral transformations of high physical and social impact, where planning and urbanism is the vehicle.
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The design conceived from the Urban Development Enterprise – EDU through its design workshop, realized that the impact on the transformation of neighborhood and their inhabitants was successful through the gathering of programs and projects compactly, linking it to the development of public space for community encounters. The challenge for EDU was to consolidate under the strategy, new educational centralities, the united work of different government entities, Buen Comienzo, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Culture and Secretary of Environment, to focus all joint actions in the same territory. A Urban design created in turn by the hand of community and its ideas, which guaranteed an identity and ownership by them.
Architecture and urbanism as platforms for meeting among the state with its programs and projects and communities with their dreams and ideas achieving social innovation.
We learned how to listen to our main customers, citizens.
This project was placed precisely on the footprint of an old billiards factory located in an antique farm called Montecarlo, a vacant lot in the neighborhood Las Granjas at the comuna 3 (Manrique) in Medellin. One of the challenges was to concentrate a number of facilities that would lead a training process for the community, from the attention to pregnant mothers until training future musicians for the city. This allows us to conclude that not only projects are undertaken, but profound social changes are made.
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Public architecture should celebrate the combination of ages, cultures, lifestyles and activities, along with animation provided by streets, squares and informal life that contains and act as a facilitator.
This project articulates a program composed by a kindergarten, a quality high school and a music school, which were involved in the middle of a recovered forest that becomes environmental park for the community. In short an Educational Centrality that respect environmental pre-existences and incorporates them as a fundamental part of its urban plan.
Respect for nature. Trees, shrubs and existing plants are the basis of design, architecture link up and involve them. Each on increases the value of the spaces generated.
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This is a new version of facilities for Medellin were conceived from the “Containers knowledge” concept, the idea of a school that must be opened for changing the paradigm of limit instead of space of transition between the public and the school, change the grille for public hall where the community and the scholars is welcome. For this centrality it is about to form a large cover that allows the basic act of educating and get together students and the community around knowledge.
“Architecture without limits; public transformations erase barriers and reject “locked” spaces favoring open spaces. Buildings that get up on the first floors, generate thresholds, and ensure that buildings are the enclosure itself. “
These facilities are located strategically on the first floor of the architectural programs intensively used by the community, which are borrow by local people for training and leisure, the computers room, the recreational area (soccer field) and school restaurant among others.
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Architectures who value the day to day affairs, and enhance the neighborhood life style. To stare from balcony, to descry, to play in the street, to talk on the terrace, to sip a coffee in a corner store, the neighborhood has taught us to value this cultural wealth and how to bring it to our projects.
Four architectural premises structure the idea of these centralities:
1. To create assembly modules: The regularization of replicable building elements permit thanks to its disposal, to build between them some dynamic spaces for the encounter. It’s about to generate quiet architecture systems easily buildable.
2. Integrator Voids: courtyards, walkways, forests, niches, squares, entrances, lobbies, endowed with qualities that stimulate the experience of citizens, producing desire to get in and study.
3. Space + Lived Experience: The construction of educational spaces, recreational places that stimulates to learn at different scales. Color, shapes, textures, dimensions, spaces of interaction and encounter.
4. Sustainability and Clean Buildings: Sustainability is an obligation and duty to the public sector, good architecture itself must be sustainable from the technical, social, economic and environmental.
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From a material point of view, the educational centrality gets to be an icon identified from various areas of the city thanks to the intense colors of its finishing. In the case of the High School and the School of Music, the micro drilled Aluzinc facades sheet become with their covers in an area that wrap the interior and the circulation aisles, just like a translucent shell supported by a structural system of steel columns grouped in corsages that evoke the forest trees. These equally are an integral part of the evacuation system of rainwater.
Public architecture has the ability to become a symbol of the main policies of the city, the public gains values and becomes reference making evident territories for years forgotten.
This veiled container works as a system of extremely high bioclimatic comfort in thermal and acoustic matters and generate spaces. Quad height for the meeting of students, such as the entrance hall and the playground. Under this cover, the architectural program is constructed as simple porticated and serialized modules, with enclosures in masonry concrete block with ceramic aggregates and tile floors of ocher monolithic micrograin. The materials of these facilities are oriented to have a high resistance and few maintenance in time.
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“There are no bad materials but misused. To build thinking for 100 years supporting minimum maintenance works that transcend generations. “
In the case of kindergarten, formal strategy is based on a “Toy Building”, which through modular classrooms coupled to the topography, provides a fun experience for infants a space entirely designed for measurements of children. Here the material changes to a walls system type expanded polystyrene reinforced, plastered and painted which allowed rapid implementation and acoustic and thermal insulation. This building is a bioclimatic lab itself by designing each of its facades ranges as lighting, ventilation and percentages of ergonomic exclusive for early childhood.
The constant challenge is to make architecture that moves, each project is a great opportunity to create spaces of highest quality that that provides to the user and city positive feelings. Public buildings should be urban activators, first floors open architectures that protect and invite you to enter into a friendly content and redefine the places where are located.
Swiss practice Freiluft has inserted a branching concrete structure inside an old barn in Switzerland‘s Emmental valley, as part of its conversion into a pair of apartments. (more…)
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is working with MIT to develop design strategies that enable refugees to solve their own problems rather than relying on solutions provided by aid agencies (+ interview). (more…)
The Kiev building history started when the couple Eduardo and Elen – architects from Arquitetura National – decided to live near their families. They wanted to raise a child who could live surrounded by the grandparents, the same way they had grown up.
The building is set in a traditional district of the city of Porto Alegre which is facing an intense urbanization phase. Since it is closely located to major equipment, it provides the residents with the best alternatives for entertainment, shopping and cultural life, not to mention the excellent quality of life that the surrounding parks add to the neighborhood.
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The project provides excellent privacy: each unit occupies an entire floor, in a total of five apartments – each with 136,70m². The common areas are very optimized, freeing up space for the privacy of each resident.
With the strategic location of wet areas – on both ends of the plan – there’s a great flexibility in the intimate area of the apartment. In a more traditional situation there is enough space for two bedrooms and a large suite. In a slightly different version, it can have a large suite with a dressing room connected to an office, for example.
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The chosen slab for the project was the flat, freeing the apartments from any interference beams – present only in the core circulation of the building, where they are not visible. The ceiling height is 2.8m in the social area, hallways and suite with exposed bare concrete slab. Only a few points of light fixtures were left purposely so that the ceiling was kept as clean as possible, thus valuing the indirect illumination.
One of the highlights of the building are the main frames, which occupy the entire length of the façade facing the street. Each glass sheet has 3,2×2,4m and when open, the living room window has a span of 6.4m. To further enhance the feeling of spaciousness, the frames were fixed on the front of the beam – in this way, when open, not even the window tracks hide the great view.
