The Fres(co)h Model:Participatory architecture and activities for a collective use of a urban street
"The Fres(co)h Model" is a participatory architectural experimentation within the "Baltea Lido" project. Promoted by Via Baltea community hub co-managers, the project aims to transform the street in front of the community hub into a pedestrian space, accessible and suitable for everyone. An urban road that turns into a public square thanks to flexible temporary installations inspired by the theme of the seaside,to activate an open, green and pedestrian space for all citizens.
Local
Italy
District: Barriera di Milano
City: Turin
Region: Piedmont
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Collettivo Fresco Type of organisation: informal collective of architects, planners and facilitators formed by: Giulia Damiani; Silvio Pennesi; Camilla Quesada Pinna First name of representative: Emanuel Last name of representative: Falappa Age: 30 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: group leader Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via jesi 337 Town: osimo Postal code: 60027 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 392 566 9923 E-mail:collettivofesco@gmail.com
What is a project? We believe it is a process that involves multiple subjects more than a completed product. For this reason we devoted the first part of our work to listen and play with the local community.
"The Fres(co)h Model" is a participatory architectural experimentation within the "Baltea Lido" project. Promoted by Via Baltea’s community hub co-managers, the project aims to transform the street in front of the centre into a pedestrian space, accessible and suitable for everyone.
The context in which we operate in Via Baltea is an informal and open space that fosters citizens’ participation and enhances collective cooperation. A place that answers to citizens’ needs as well as to more structured requirements that come from informal groups and associations.
Taking part in the daily life of the centre helped us greatly in creating a relationship of mutual trust that informed the development of multiple project proposals.
The project proposed in the end is based on shared values of social promotion, activated through strategies of social exchange and mutual aid. The idea is to have a local community that takes care of a shared public space establishing a relation from which both sides benefit. The results are creative and responsible approaches to common space management.
Our design originated from an analysis of needs in terms of space and reversibility. So to generate a new type of space, allowing the community hub to show their strong identity, consolidating their social role in the neighbourhood and involving the inhabitants.
The proposal translates into a flexible temporary installation that was developed to evoke a waterfront environment, shaped as an open, green and pedestrian space for all citizens.
co-design process
Urban regeneration
Bottom up
Community
Temporary architecture
Our main goal is to inspire and enact a responsible change in society. The project shares the values of the NEB community and follow some of its key principles such as:
- SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Making public spaces more accessible and safe fosters aggregation and integration opportunities for all citizens. This activates recovering processes in terms of improved neighbourhood relations and mutual aid. Aspects of life that urban environments sometimes erase, generating loneliness
- CIVIC SUSTAINABILITY
Creating bonds of affection and respect between citizens and the public realm increases a shared sense of protection and care. As a result areas otherwise intended for vehicular use and/or abandoned get re-populated
- ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY (use of innovative materials and technologies)
In Via Baltea innovation occurs in social terms. This aspect is explored through the combination of traditions and technological innovations that take into account all the consequences in social, environmental and economic terms.
The proposal originates from the idea of creating a "container" able to answer to contextual needs such as: Reversibility; Disassembly; Lack of internal space in the hub; Mobility; Less impact on the road; Safety; Visibility.
Our current construction hypothesis is structured as follow:
- Supporting frame made with hollow steel elements;
- External cladding made with natural materials or derived from recycling waste materials such as: plastic or rice.
- A base featuring lockable wheels to easily move the microstructure.
In relation to materials, especially for the external cladding, we are working with local companies, izmade; plastiz and ricehouse, just to name a few. We are exploring different possibilities using innovative panels, produced re-using waste or secondary products. A concrete contribution to circular economy processes that minimise waste production and environmental impact.
Design as an inclusive practice is one of the cardinal principles shared by the architectural project and the civic centre’s philosophy.
Via Baltea is a community hub opened in 2014 in Barriera di Milano, a rather central district of Turin that activates urban regeneration processes with strong social and cultural impact. A community space that promotes collaborative practices based on participation and mutual collaboration involving more than 100 associations and local authorities.
For this reason, the project is based on shared values of social promotion, activated through strategies of social exchange and mutual aid. The idea is to have a local community that takes care of a shared public space establishing a relation from which both sides benefit. The results are creative and responsible approaches to common spaces management
Listening has been a key activity for the project and participation worked as a tool in the design and verification process. Awareness about needs came out from the analysis of current conditions, brought to light by those who live these places daily. For this reason, even at the end of the process, the project and its effects should get verified and adjusted according to emerging requirements
The project supports the coordination of social and cultural events to enhance collective participation and to build shared awareness. Workshops,courses and educational activities will involve local cultural associations, schools and organisations that promote social integration. This apparatus together with families and hub’s co-inhabitants will promote innovative multigenerational and multiethnic approaches.
Design outcomes have been conceived to assure safety for users, while a site specific design method helped us develop an architectural model suitable for public use. As a result our micro-architectures avoid the risk of endangering people and do not represent a barrier for children, elderly and disabled people
Pandemic conditions have highlighted the critical importance of public spaces, especially those outdoors, as collective ground to favour sociability and health.
Making the neighbourhood more people-oriented, the project aims to transform a vehicular road into a small pedestrian urban beach. The new pedestrian area will take away space from traffic, producing spaces for collective activities. In aid of this ambition, our small urban beach will be populated with various movable furniture such as deck chairs, umbrellas, games, plants and colours.
Our public square, with its marine character, will serve as a traffic-free meeting place for everyone. It will be animated with artistic and cultural events that provide opportunities for recreational activities and social improvement.
The beach cabin is the architectural archetype used to evoke a certain waterfront atmosphere. Our prototype reinterprets the classic shape of beach cabins and gets implemented with portholes placed on the short sides to emphasise its marine design. The “cabins” substantial funcion is to set up flexible scenarios for activities and to contain all furnishings at the end of the day.
The beach cabin is the architectural archetype used to evoke a certain waterfront atmosphere. Our prototype reinterprets the classic shape of beach cabins and gets implemented with portholes placed on the short sides to emphasise its marine design. The “cabins” substantial funcion is to set up flexible scenarios for activities and to contain all furnishings at the end of the day.
The daily use of the pedestrian street and the activation of participatory processes, have the goal of stimulating a sense of belonging to this place. The local community, by taking care of it, is encouraged to feel more responsible. This is an essential aspect for the feasibility of the transformation process.
The project developed primarily thanks to the interest and perseverance of the co-inhabitants of Via Baltea
During 2020, in full lockdown conditions, the community hub of Via Baltea, aware of the importance of open space, organised more than 100 events closing the street temporarily. On these occasions many neighbours, inhabitants and Turin citizens came to play, relax, watch a film or listen to music.
The experimentation carried out by closing the street to traffic allowed us to get in touch with neighbours, discover needs and observe spontaneous uses of the space. At the present time Turin’s Municipality has granted the temporary use of the pedestrian street until July 2023. This represents a precious opportunity for boosting participatory processes started back in 2020.
Between June and September 2022 we fully experienced this space through various on-site meetings and three participatory activities. The core purpose was to co-designing and discuss our transformative proposal. Two activities were carried out during the neighbours' party along Via Baltea:
- Decorate the cabin - with the local community we assembled small replicas of our prototype to be used in the internal spaces of Via Baltea: one as a moneybox for users to support the project and another one as an information board at the entrance.
- Draw your own pedestrian street - A participatory activity addressed to residents, friends and neighbours to imagine together a series of drawings to colour the large sunscreens of the building.
The co-design of these transformative operations carried out with the residents has proven useful to strengthen a shared sense of community as base to envisage the future of the project.
The project team was constituted specifically to participate to Bottom UP! 2022: a call for designers launched by the Turin Architecture Foundation to establish a link with community spaces with open doors initiatives. The team is made up of the FRESCO Collective and the 11 co-managers of the cultural centre “Via Baltea 3”.
-Step 1: meetings with Via Baltea’s hub team
We started from the analysis of surveys collected by Via Baltea 3, between 2020 and 2021, that gathered several residents' opinions on the temporary pedestrian street. Then we started engaging with this space and we developed a first draft proposal together with the co-managers.
-Step 2: Engaging with the neighbours and local companies
We perceived a strong interest in our work during all participatory activities and the number of subjects involved increased in the process of verifying the feasibility of the project. We spread our local network of connections to find building materials and companies that could support us in the construction of our micro-architectures.
-Step 3:Experimentation with the prototype
This is an ongoing phase that involves the municipality and stakeholders. The goal is to gather the resources necessary to realise our project and activate the temporary use of this space. We got in touch with the municipality to extend the pedestrian use of this street, to stipulate a collaborative management agreement between the community hub and local residents. At the same time we worked to involve other subjects such as cultural and professional associations, schools and social cooperatives; to promote the use of the project once completed. It became essential to learn from others in the field of temporary architecture, looking at those architecture firms that have shown creative and dynamic approach in similar contexts. Hence our eagerness to involve the Portuguese atelier “Collettivo Warehouse '' to inaugurate a potentially fruitful collaboration for the construction phase.
Collettivo Fresco was born to experiment participatory approaches to architecture, testing methods and skills acquired during the professional training of each member. This technical ground was then enriched by our personal fascinations and work experiences.
Multidisciplinarity is a prerogative in our methodology and our calling card in the attitude with which we engage problematic urban scenarios. Collettivo Fresco is a group of architects, planners and facilitators that developed interest in participatory processes. For us collaborative architecture is the key for the re-appropriation of spaces by citizens and for the activation of regeneration paths in our cities.
After being selected by Bottom up! we met Via Baltea’s team, a group of people with different backgrounds that work together on a specific goal: promoting a shared sense of belonging to the common ground they live. To do so is to make it open and functional not only to those who visit it every day but also to those people who want to experience new and innovative public spaces.
Via Baltea is managed by the “Cooperativa Sumisura s.c. - Resources for the Environment and the City” in collaboration with the social promotion association “Sumisura”. Cooperatives that operate in the field of urban regeneration and local development through collaborations with architects and social workers. Via Baltea 3, today can count on 11 subjects that make up the "community of co-managers".
Via Baltea 3 is a place that answers to citizens’ needs as well as to more structured requirements that come from informal groups and associations. A private space entirely self-sustained, which has become a point of reference for citizens and networks born within "Barriera di Milano'' district and the City of Turin. In this way the centre manages to attract and involve cultural bodies on a larger urban scale facilitating encounters between audiences and cultures.
We are witnessing spreading phenomena that limit the creative capacity of the citizen and therefore of their ability to perform in places. Our proposal works as a social project to empower citizens and that translates into spatial transformations as part of a broader approach to urban planning.
Tactical urbanism focuses on key concepts such as cooperation and site-specific design. Explorations carried out through micro-planning and participatory activities allow us to identify potentialities for social innovation within urban scenarios.
The subject of our work are urban and social contexts that call for reorganisation based on forward-looking visions informed by multidisciplinary investigations. The operations we propose work on spaces not as mere containers but as generators of contents.
Another innovative factor in our approach is the effort we devote in cooperating with local authorities (bottom-up methodologies meet top-down restrictions). For us tactical urban planning bridges the gaps that arise from the inability of public administrations to act promptly and effectively on a local scale. Unlike other more radical bottom-up initiatives we always try to establish a dialogue with public administrations, to lay down the necessary preconditions our projects require.
Urban practices are a powerful vehicle to give meaning to complex contexts that necessitate empowering transformations for their inhabitants. A laborious path of renewal, both physical and symbolic, to convert “spaces” into “places” with a strong sense of belonging.
Urban practices thus activated, whether they are more or less organised, result to be imbued with planning principles explored daily by its inhabitants.
The strength of the project arises from the use of a concept model developed in collaboration with the community in terms of use and aesthetic. The process led us to the design of a product aimed at promoting interactions, working both as container (for storage) and content (furnishing element). Over the last few years the Municipality of Turin has shown an ever growing interest in urban regeneration issues. It supported the consolidation of a network of professionals to operate in suburban areas, engaging their inhabitants. The project is aligned with the “2021-2023 Metropolitan Strategic Plan''. This document investigates a globally shared challenge: defining harmonious relations that link urban conditions to the surrounding territory. To do so is to develop new site-specific design approaches that take into account the necessary balance between technical progress and environmental issues. The project addresses the Axis 2 - Green revolution and ecological transition and Axis 5 - Inclusion and cohesion. We also followed the "15-minutes city" model, mentioned in the brief, according to which people in every neighbourhood should be able to find all essential services within 15 minutes, including green areas and spaces for social and cultural gatherings.
The process to promote the crowdfunding campaign let us test and measure reactions on both neighbourhood and city scale. Collecting resources through crowdfunding channels, communications and events, proved to facilitate precious moments of exchange with the citizens. Along this engagement path, citizens are stimulated and, as it is happening for "The Fres(co)h Model", partnerships with other neighbourhood associations and companies can be established. The use of the project would trigger new practices of active citizenship within a beautiful urban environment, improving the quality of life. To experiment similar processes in other scenarios would help us in perfecting a flexible model employable in other contexts
Reshaping our cities by listening to the voice of their citizens is a methodology that is becoming increasingly popular in local, national and European politics. The New European Bauhaus represents a coherent expression of this. Examining successful projects already concluded in other contexts allows us to imitate processes from which both places and people can benefit. Often far distant territories share very similar challenges and from the analysis of local problems we believe it is possible to develop general methodologies.
The “Baltea Model” project is located in a district of Turin with various social fragilities. The aim is to demonstrate that enhancing beauty and inclusiveness within the public realm can lead to an improvement in the quality of people's lives, while also stimulating greater care for common goods.
The project fully embraces a systemic approach in relation to several aspects:
-in the creation of a local collaborative network of exchange, mutual aid and care for the regenerated public space
-in the use of materials from local suppliers
-in the design of micro-architectures in collaboration with local actors
-in the conscious use of waste and ecological materials not requiring specific maintenance taking into account their final proper disposal
On a city scale, the project intends to trigger potential collaborations and positive contaminations, providing a good example for bottom-up urban regeneration.
