Link city 04/2010
entry for the BNA Jonge Architecten Prijsvraag '10,
presented as 'Threeinateam' (with Giulia Melloni and Simone Pizzagalli)
This project understands the notion of family as a set of social relations. Such connections could take various shapes and change with time resulting in different special necessities. The proposal is built upon such an unstable family structure and takes form in an atypical, but dense urban situation. We propose a structure that allows change to happen. A new form of urbanity.
The first interpretation that we make is on the very concept of ‘family’. As family we understand not necessarily a mama-papa-kind unit, but an amalgam of social relations. Such a structure as an unstable and evolving entity. For this reason it necessitates a ‘building’ that allows change to happen. Not by making the ‘building’ fluid, ephemeral or ever changeable but by providing conditions for the various ‘family’ situations to take place. In this sense the idea of a ‘building’ gets also interpreted. We propose a 3D frame, which due to its modularity becomes a financially feasible construction method. The frame provides the basis for a street to pass through. The street is similar to existing city streets, with all the functions along them, but is folded, vertically, into the 3D frame. In this sense the idea of a ‘building’ that this project is based on is probably better comparable to a neighbourhood. Like in existing city neighbourhoods there is a diversity of social or economical relations. Some functions open directly to the street, while others are accessed via secondary paths or platforms. This allows for a variety of spatial hierarchies, from the very public to the very private, and in this way a variety of urban conditions.
A hierarchy exists not only inside the 3D frame neighbourhood. Each street is in its terms part of a bigger system, that of the bridge. The bridge, because our proposal is placed on water. Often performing the functioning of a divide in Dutch cities, water allows a new type of urban density to take place. Taking Rotterdam as an example, the bridge spans between the embankments of the Maas and connects a series of 3D frames. Linked to the existing urban structure it contributes to the city life of Rotterdam. Besides the bridge there are also other, secondary connections between the neighbourhoods.
The proposed connection does not try to negate water, but on the contrary, to make the greatest use of it. In this project a new bond between Dutch cities and water gets formed due to the recreational activities and energy production taking place along the bridge and at the foot of the 3D frames. In such a way the proposed system becomes a way to densify the city.
private spaces
neighbourhood
relation to the water
relation between neighbourhoods
urban structure
linking the city