macro
Productive people, happy people
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location:Amsterdam, The Netherlands starting date:April2017 completion date:July2017 type:Competition, Europan14 (Shortlisted)
team+:R.Gkaitatzis typology:Architecture, Urbanism key words: Infrastructure Node, Urban Spine, Productive Spaces
Modern ways of living, innovative materials, the millennials generation, new industrial sectors, contemporary productive and sharing spaces, new means of transportation and communication and the new “standards” in human relations and societal values, are gradually but strongly generating new urban images.
Focusing on the train station, as the primal factor and generator of the urban environments in the area, our strategy develops between the three existing urban squares. The pedestrian and cycling flows and functions meet the transition that happens firstly through the station and secondly through elements of space that need to be adjusted and integrated in the urban fabric. The new developments in the area and the future goals, impose a new character that creates a fertile ground for urbanity and form the base for a long-term vitality. The strategic long-term design, regarding the new connections, negotiate between those elements that can be fixed and integrated (pedestrian bridge) and those elements that need to stay flexible to anticipate future changes (new station, new tracks etc.) Therefore, a new identity is established, based on the extension of the surroundings and street networks but also reinforced with new programmatic clusters, green and new visual connections.
The transformation of the current programmatic needs (new housing, casino, Media College etc.) and socio-economic circumstances are also taken into consideration in pursuance of a flexible public space. There are no unattractive entrances in the area or undefined urban edges. New infrastructure focuses in connectivity while avoiding fragmentation of the existing and future urban fabric. At the same time, shifting from heavy infrastructure to “heavy” nature, the new green is not isolated but knitted with the existing and the future program. Redesigning democracy means in practice that our common city spaces, are the right place for a collaborative production of public life, goods and services. The flexibility in “including” is a key aspect for the long term prosperous continuity of an urban environment.
Publications:
Europan.nl
team+:R.Gkaitatzis typology:Architecture, Urbanism key words: Infrastructure Node, Urban Spine, Productive Spaces
Modern ways of living, innovative materials, the millennials generation, new industrial sectors, contemporary productive and sharing spaces, new means of transportation and communication and the new “standards” in human relations and societal values, are gradually but strongly generating new urban images.
Focusing on the train station, as the primal factor and generator of the urban environments in the area, our strategy develops between the three existing urban squares. The pedestrian and cycling flows and functions meet the transition that happens firstly through the station and secondly through elements of space that need to be adjusted and integrated in the urban fabric. The new developments in the area and the future goals, impose a new character that creates a fertile ground for urbanity and form the base for a long-term vitality. The strategic long-term design, regarding the new connections, negotiate between those elements that can be fixed and integrated (pedestrian bridge) and those elements that need to stay flexible to anticipate future changes (new station, new tracks etc.) Therefore, a new identity is established, based on the extension of the surroundings and street networks but also reinforced with new programmatic clusters, green and new visual connections.
The transformation of the current programmatic needs (new housing, casino, Media College etc.) and socio-economic circumstances are also taken into consideration in pursuance of a flexible public space. There are no unattractive entrances in the area or undefined urban edges. New infrastructure focuses in connectivity while avoiding fragmentation of the existing and future urban fabric. At the same time, shifting from heavy infrastructure to “heavy” nature, the new green is not isolated but knitted with the existing and the future program. Redesigning democracy means in practice that our common city spaces, are the right place for a collaborative production of public life, goods and services. The flexibility in “including” is a key aspect for the long term prosperous continuity of an urban environment.
Publications:
Europan.nl
Aesculapius
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location:TrondheimNorway starting date:November2016 completion date:January2017 type:Competition team+:P.Sala, D.Lambert, F.vdKlundert(as Urbis) typology:Landscape, Urbanism key words: University Facilities, Program Extension, Urban Development
The future university campus does not belong outside of the city. A city itself is a real “living lab”, where you not only learn but live, shop, meet and relax and especially experiment. A living lab, which is not isolated, but is a natural part of the urban fabric where science is flourishing in an environment where inspiration and exchanges take place with all residents of Trondheim.
By 2025, most European cities, and thus also Trondheim, will be fully driven by car traffic. It is a challenge that requires a solution, especially for Elgesetergate street. Today, this is still a street designed to get to the center in the fastest possible way. The area is barely benefiting from its stunning location with the quality of the university, green areas and Nidelva River’s beach banks. As isolated islands, these qualities lie around the main street, without even mutual contact. In order to improve the prospects for the whole area, a long-term vision, also in the area of mobility, is highly desirable.
In Aesculapius, Elgesetergate is still the main route in the area, but now it is much more focused on pedestrian scale, experience and accessibility. A true city street is the newest development revolving around the tunnel axis, creating a lively area where learning with clear structure, housing, work and recreation finally goes hand in hand and the existing qualities are better reflected. This development will take place in a number of steps, whereby the entire transport system will be rebuilt, meeting and accommodation facilities created or improved, and new developments will contribute to densification also in the east-west direction. This creates a spatial framework that allows great flexibility for development.
The future university campus does not belong outside of the city. A city itself is a real “living lab”, where you not only learn but live, shop, meet and relax and especially experiment. A living lab, which is not isolated, but is a natural part of the urban fabric where science is flourishing in an environment where inspiration and exchanges take place with all residents of Trondheim.
By 2025, most European cities, and thus also Trondheim, will be fully driven by car traffic. It is a challenge that requires a solution, especially for Elgesetergate street. Today, this is still a street designed to get to the center in the fastest possible way. The area is barely benefiting from its stunning location with the quality of the university, green areas and Nidelva River’s beach banks. As isolated islands, these qualities lie around the main street, without even mutual contact. In order to improve the prospects for the whole area, a long-term vision, also in the area of mobility, is highly desirable.
In Aesculapius, Elgesetergate is still the main route in the area, but now it is much more focused on pedestrian scale, experience and accessibility. A true city street is the newest development revolving around the tunnel axis, creating a lively area where learning with clear structure, housing, work and recreation finally goes hand in hand and the existing qualities are better reflected. This development will take place in a number of steps, whereby the entire transport system will be rebuilt, meeting and accommodation facilities created or improved, and new developments will contribute to densification also in the east-west direction. This creates a spatial framework that allows great flexibility for development.
Sequences of Culture
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location:Tirana, Albania starting date:September2016 completion date:October2016 type:Competition, 1st Mention
typology:Architecture, Urbanism key words:Community, Spontaneous Development, Light Structures, Urban Core
The project suggests the creation of a typological Urban Core, a concept in which the city could gain an organic entity, through sequences of culture - primary - but also sequences of urban space, arts, materiality, social and economic development.
Following the emerging tendencies in Tirana, the project narrate through the spatial sequences the story of each space and time, that have created a rather spontaneous and uncontrolled urban pattern that needs rather to be studied and underlined, but also to be introduced as an design element on the new vision of common urban space. The single line on paper that, finds the lines of the existing buildings, becomes a stoa and later connects the urban voids, is used as the narrative that could be a useful tool for other neighborhoods as well. Start-up co-working, art and exhibition centers, hostel and youth activities are some of the programmatic sequences.
The identification of the area can show the possibilities for the needed transformation. Unlayering the site itself and after urban volume and typologies studied, without wiping out urban life (culturally and artistically), it is intentional to enrich the unity in the urban structure formalising the “spontaneous culture of buildings”. Existing functions, shapes, voids, centralities and densities are used as tools for guiding the design process, focusing at the same time on what there is and what may come.
The design intentions, with the basic and free floor plans, and the programmatic strategy to have functions that are renewable and merge with the economic tendencies of the new Tirana, led to avoid having a centralized program, but also to create a network of sequential levels, that are connected by material, typology and program. The insertion of a temporary key element to the remaining urban void, in both interior and exterior of the urban blocks, combined with the gradual demolition of spatial borders, allows for more open and flexible spaces. This continuous urban gesture (stoa), manifests in a cloister within each city block and provides an opportunity for socializing, working and collaboration - an essential means of development and creativity.
The developed spatial relations, go beyond the traditional segmentation of public and private, but refer to the flexible undefined place where human creativity and collaboration occurs. It is a move away from spaces which are highly defined for particular functions, established by pre-ordered conditions, social norms or hierarchies, but the community of operating citizens at large. The new common space integrates and unifies without loosing the elements that make the site unique.
Publications:
Tirana Architecture Week
typology:Architecture, Urbanism key words:Community, Spontaneous Development, Light Structures, Urban Core
The project suggests the creation of a typological Urban Core, a concept in which the city could gain an organic entity, through sequences of culture - primary - but also sequences of urban space, arts, materiality, social and economic development.
Following the emerging tendencies in Tirana, the project narrate through the spatial sequences the story of each space and time, that have created a rather spontaneous and uncontrolled urban pattern that needs rather to be studied and underlined, but also to be introduced as an design element on the new vision of common urban space. The single line on paper that, finds the lines of the existing buildings, becomes a stoa and later connects the urban voids, is used as the narrative that could be a useful tool for other neighborhoods as well. Start-up co-working, art and exhibition centers, hostel and youth activities are some of the programmatic sequences.
The identification of the area can show the possibilities for the needed transformation. Unlayering the site itself and after urban volume and typologies studied, without wiping out urban life (culturally and artistically), it is intentional to enrich the unity in the urban structure formalising the “spontaneous culture of buildings”. Existing functions, shapes, voids, centralities and densities are used as tools for guiding the design process, focusing at the same time on what there is and what may come.
The design intentions, with the basic and free floor plans, and the programmatic strategy to have functions that are renewable and merge with the economic tendencies of the new Tirana, led to avoid having a centralized program, but also to create a network of sequential levels, that are connected by material, typology and program. The insertion of a temporary key element to the remaining urban void, in both interior and exterior of the urban blocks, combined with the gradual demolition of spatial borders, allows for more open and flexible spaces. This continuous urban gesture (stoa), manifests in a cloister within each city block and provides an opportunity for socializing, working and collaboration - an essential means of development and creativity.
The developed spatial relations, go beyond the traditional segmentation of public and private, but refer to the flexible undefined place where human creativity and collaboration occurs. It is a move away from spaces which are highly defined for particular functions, established by pre-ordered conditions, social norms or hierarchies, but the community of operating citizens at large. The new common space integrates and unifies without loosing the elements that make the site unique.
Publications:
Tirana Architecture Week
Looking through the "other" city
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location:Durban, South Africa starting date: October2013 completion date:June 2014 type:Academic, Reseach & Design
typology: Urbanism key words:Informality, infrastructure node, urban identity & diversity, heterotopias, social architecture
South African cities are born, as perhaps no other urban spaces are, of the kinds of spatialities Lefebvre refers to as ‘abstract space’, or ‘representations of space’. This signifies a geometric and homogeneous space of separation and power, built upon a dominance of the visual, of formal relations amongst objects organized on the basis of technical knowledge. It is exemplified by the homogenization and division involved in the capitalist commodification of land and the construction of alienating environments in which the possibilities for alternative spatialities are repressed. (Judin H. & Vladislavic I., 1998, p.165)
It is a challenge to define and research on this ‘abstract’- or as I personally see it - this ‘heterotopic’ space which is an area of variant spatial potentialities. In the post-apartheid era, planners are trying to design with principles opposed to South African cities, principles that have contributed to urban sprawl, poor accessibility and a fragmented environment, problems that are compounded under apartheid by the location of segregated residential areas for the poorest groups on the peripheries of the cities. Whereas, the new South African city can’t be part of the vision - as globalization demands - of a Compact or Sustainable city. Of course many elements of the segregated apartheid city are unlikely to disappear.
The specific context of Durban touches global issues like the crowded, inconvenient shanty towns, the degradation of the suburbs and the implications of the urban sprawl in the cities. The same situations when neighborhoods turn upside down, city centers get abandoned or even the constant shifts of the social functions are happening everywhere in countries all around the world under the new rule of Globalization and fast urbanization. The emerging societies and economies can create informalities in all the scales but also as we see in the particular case of South Africa and Durban, the roles can be easily shifted. The social and spatial boarders are flexible and social integration is a process that goes through the complexity of our cities.
It is, I believe, the model of connectivity and flows which may improve the quality of life for the future’s South African communities. Its dynamics challenges the predetermined patterns of urban life and conventional planning, it offers opportunity for architects and urbanists to rethink alternative approaches and solutions to facilitate the people to make collective choices dealing with the complex urban conflicts. Durban gives me an excellent chance to explore design and equality between formal and informal, past and future.
Instead of trying to change the space of the city - or to design a better one - I try to influence the spatial relations and networks through which they are connected.
typology: Urbanism key words:Informality, infrastructure node, urban identity & diversity, heterotopias, social architecture
South African cities are born, as perhaps no other urban spaces are, of the kinds of spatialities Lefebvre refers to as ‘abstract space’, or ‘representations of space’. This signifies a geometric and homogeneous space of separation and power, built upon a dominance of the visual, of formal relations amongst objects organized on the basis of technical knowledge. It is exemplified by the homogenization and division involved in the capitalist commodification of land and the construction of alienating environments in which the possibilities for alternative spatialities are repressed. (Judin H. & Vladislavic I., 1998, p.165)
It is a challenge to define and research on this ‘abstract’- or as I personally see it - this ‘heterotopic’ space which is an area of variant spatial potentialities. In the post-apartheid era, planners are trying to design with principles opposed to South African cities, principles that have contributed to urban sprawl, poor accessibility and a fragmented environment, problems that are compounded under apartheid by the location of segregated residential areas for the poorest groups on the peripheries of the cities. Whereas, the new South African city can’t be part of the vision - as globalization demands - of a Compact or Sustainable city. Of course many elements of the segregated apartheid city are unlikely to disappear.
The specific context of Durban touches global issues like the crowded, inconvenient shanty towns, the degradation of the suburbs and the implications of the urban sprawl in the cities. The same situations when neighborhoods turn upside down, city centers get abandoned or even the constant shifts of the social functions are happening everywhere in countries all around the world under the new rule of Globalization and fast urbanization. The emerging societies and economies can create informalities in all the scales but also as we see in the particular case of South Africa and Durban, the roles can be easily shifted. The social and spatial boarders are flexible and social integration is a process that goes through the complexity of our cities.
It is, I believe, the model of connectivity and flows which may improve the quality of life for the future’s South African communities. Its dynamics challenges the predetermined patterns of urban life and conventional planning, it offers opportunity for architects and urbanists to rethink alternative approaches and solutions to facilitate the people to make collective choices dealing with the complex urban conflicts. Durban gives me an excellent chance to explore design and equality between formal and informal, past and future.
Instead of trying to change the space of the city - or to design a better one - I try to influence the spatial relations and networks through which they are connected.
Harvesting Cities
info / Text descpription
location:Hanoi, Vietnam starting date: January 2013 completion date:June 2013 type:Academic, Competition between universities (VCA) team+: D. Baltrusaitis, E. Bruck, T. Kalinauskas, W. van Faasen, V. Vaiciulis etc. typology: Urbanism
key words:Satellite cities, social infrastructure, urban identity, urban typologies
Harvesting Cities attempts to facilitate the rapid growth of Hanoi by 2050 while maintaining and improving its agricultural productivity. Embedded in this concept of an economically cohesive Greater Hanoi area are a series of new satellite cities – a strategy proposed in the existing Perkins Eastman master-plan. We elaborate the idea of these cities, giving each one a unique quality and an appropriate location.
Social and economic incubators such as university and research facilities, airport-related logistics, agricultural research and a transport hub are defined according to existing needs in the region. In the new satellite cities, we focus on density, walkability, public space, and program mix rather than generating sheer size.
The new cities inevitably interface with existing surrounding villages, learning more from their openness and communal ties than from the typical tendencies of new developments towards exclusivity. Crucial for this network of new cities is a new concept of harvesting: not just the cultivation and consumption of food, but the planning and provision of everything a city needs: harvesting knowledge, energy, mobility, education, accommodation….
key words:Satellite cities, social infrastructure, urban identity, urban typologies
Harvesting Cities attempts to facilitate the rapid growth of Hanoi by 2050 while maintaining and improving its agricultural productivity. Embedded in this concept of an economically cohesive Greater Hanoi area are a series of new satellite cities – a strategy proposed in the existing Perkins Eastman master-plan. We elaborate the idea of these cities, giving each one a unique quality and an appropriate location.
Social and economic incubators such as university and research facilities, airport-related logistics, agricultural research and a transport hub are defined according to existing needs in the region. In the new satellite cities, we focus on density, walkability, public space, and program mix rather than generating sheer size.
The new cities inevitably interface with existing surrounding villages, learning more from their openness and communal ties than from the typical tendencies of new developments towards exclusivity. Crucial for this network of new cities is a new concept of harvesting: not just the cultivation and consumption of food, but the planning and provision of everything a city needs: harvesting knowledge, energy, mobility, education, accommodation….
3 squares, 1 Axis
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location:Thessaloniki, Greece starting date: January 2012 completion date:April 2012 type: Competition
team+: K. Keventsides, N, Chatzopoulos, D. Choupas, N. Orfanos (as Ektypa) typology: Architecture, Urbanism
key words:Urban life, central axis, public "living rooms", urban game
The idea behind our proposal stands on the assumption and the desire to unify – both conceptually and physically - the city’s public spaces and upgrade them into loci of quality urban life for residents of the areas through which our axis of intervention passes and the re-emergence of the important monuments alongside.
This powerful axis was interpreted as a joint between diverse and different sections of the city, which were resolved with a relatively autonomous manner and character, then linked as parts of a wider walk of archaeological, tourist, recreational and commercial interest, either along or vertical to this bonding line.Our contextual analysis of the wider urban fabric led us to design public ‘living rooms’, gardens and intermediate spaces for assembly which will act as instigators of interaction for citizens, visitors and especially young people.
Our proposal instigates an urban ’game’, which by being included in the everyday routine of the city will assist communication and synergy for residents and visitors. The concept of participation in public space and reciprocal action was key in our design process, creating spaces that are accessible, non-elitist and filled with a beat-like attitude and character.
Our objectives:
• To increase the size of public open space.
• To connect the urban center via a pedestrian walkway (Ermou Str.) parallel to the sea.
• To create new landmarks of public space in reference to the history of the city and its new identity as the Metropolis of the Balkans.
• To backbone the ability for cultural events by solving functional and service problems.
• To unite views and pathways towards the seafront and to monuments of the area (Ahiropiitos and Hagia Sophia)
• To assist urban functions and to avoid public space infringements.
• To design in a bio-climatic manner; this apart from natural and economic is truly architectural.
team+: K. Keventsides, N, Chatzopoulos, D. Choupas, N. Orfanos (as Ektypa) typology: Architecture, Urbanism
key words:Urban life, central axis, public "living rooms", urban game
The idea behind our proposal stands on the assumption and the desire to unify – both conceptually and physically - the city’s public spaces and upgrade them into loci of quality urban life for residents of the areas through which our axis of intervention passes and the re-emergence of the important monuments alongside.
This powerful axis was interpreted as a joint between diverse and different sections of the city, which were resolved with a relatively autonomous manner and character, then linked as parts of a wider walk of archaeological, tourist, recreational and commercial interest, either along or vertical to this bonding line.Our contextual analysis of the wider urban fabric led us to design public ‘living rooms’, gardens and intermediate spaces for assembly which will act as instigators of interaction for citizens, visitors and especially young people.
Our proposal instigates an urban ’game’, which by being included in the everyday routine of the city will assist communication and synergy for residents and visitors. The concept of participation in public space and reciprocal action was key in our design process, creating spaces that are accessible, non-elitist and filled with a beat-like attitude and character.
Our objectives:
• To increase the size of public open space.
• To connect the urban center via a pedestrian walkway (Ermou Str.) parallel to the sea.
• To create new landmarks of public space in reference to the history of the city and its new identity as the Metropolis of the Balkans.
• To backbone the ability for cultural events by solving functional and service problems.
• To unite views and pathways towards the seafront and to monuments of the area (Ahiropiitos and Hagia Sophia)
• To assist urban functions and to avoid public space infringements.
• To design in a bio-climatic manner; this apart from natural and economic is truly architectural.
Drift in the City
info / Text descpription
The neighborhood of Exarcheia - constitutes a pilot area for the formulation of my position towards social phenomena - problems, such as lack of greenery and open space in the city, alienation and abandonment of the general center of Athens, traffic congestion, the problem of parking, the fragmentation of the central operations, the loss of city spots and the abandonment of “remaining” space into parking island.
Thus, arises the need to create an Urban Core, a concept in which the city could gain an organic entity and also, to add to the design of the city features such as the daily supply, the alternation of the uses and the common social life. To create a Network linking the open spaces of the city so as these spaces may become an instant destination of the citizens, in order that free - open - space of the city, to be not only the - what we call - public space (squares, parks, pavement). To design public space with alternative sense and philosophy (not another square), with various activities, recreation and rest (social events) in the new center environment of the city center. The lost landscape of the city center may then resurface, setting the issue and the debate on an Artificial Nature. To find more parking areas. To improve environmental conditions in the city center through the varied and continuous use of green.
It is required that this intervention does not alter the local character of the neighborhood that I study and to play the role of an intermediate space of sequential levels and uses connecting the pathways and the functions in an interactive relation with its immediate urban environment. In conclusion, the city through these spaces to be creative and democratic. The empty plots identified in the region and the “dead” buildings (buildings without any use such as preservable buildings, abandoned shells, buildings to be demolished) become the basis of the design parameters for achieving the wider objectives of the review of the public space and returning it to the city.
It is proposed:
- development of the free spaces, turning their dynamics towards the city that surrounds them with the variety of outdoor activities - functions in opposed to the logic and practice of that of valuable consideration.
- creation of “green corridors” flowing and spreading in the city.
- formation of game and socializing point cores tha are unified through the sidewalk and the open-spaced network that either exists or is created after space alienation.
- creation of light (made of metal or wood ), indoor architectural constructions, the Urban Rooms, which being part of each open land, participate in the landscaping through their versatility and their tendency to change acquiring different uses each time.
- regulations of traffic for the controlled use of car, aiming for the proper function of the sidewalk and the open-spaced network.
- creation of two-storey underground parking space.
- inclusion of the “empty” buildings and the other infrastructure facilities, located around the perimeter of the plots, in each land assigning them a use according to the variety of needs.
Publications:
greekarchitects