An adaptable waterfront public park as a common habitat
Sava Activities is an adaptable waterfront public park project aiming to reintroduce the riverbanks of Zagreb’s Sava River to the daily life of the citizens. Exploring resilient and ecological solutions through participatory co-design processes, the project prioritized natural preservation; developed socio-cultural density without being necessarily urban; and envisioned providing a mutually harmonized common habitat balancing human use and natural processes.
Local
Croatia
City of Zagreb - City Office for the Strategic Planning and Development of the City
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2019-07-01
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Carlos Last name: Zarco Sanz Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Joaquin Costa 4 Town: Madrid Postal code: 28200 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 626 19 77 58 E-mail:carlos@openact.eu Website:https://openact.eu/
First name: Zuhal Last name: Kol Gender: Female Nationality: Turkey Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Joaquin Costa 4 Town: Madrid Postal code: 28200 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 682 43 88 09 E-mail:zuhal@openact.eu Website:https://openact.eu/
URL:https://www.instagram.com/openact.studio/?hl=en Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): @openact.studio @zuhalkol @carloszarcosanz #savaactivities #openactarchitecture #ljetonasavi
URL:https://www.facebook.com/openactarchitecture/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): @openact.studio @zuhalkol @carloszarcosanz #savaactivities #openactarchitecture #ljetonasavi
Sava Activities is an adaptable waterfront public park project aiming to reintroduce the riverbanks of Zagreb’s Sava River to the daily life of the citizens. Exploring resilient and ecological solutions through participatory co-design processes, the project prioritized natural preservation; developed socio-cultural density without being necessarily urban; and envisioned providing a mutually harmonized common habitat balancing human use and natural processes.
Unlike other European capitals where rivers are highly constructed and urbanized, Zagreb’s Sava River as the wildest branch of Danube preserved its riparian green corridor due to the historic memories of destructive floods. However, right in the middle of the city, it was never able to interact with the citizens as a green public space. Responding to the quest of the City to transform the floodplains into a waterfront public park, the project capitalized this unique offering of Sava as an opportunity to create a 7 km-long, large-scale riverbank park that preserves its dynamic ecology and explores alternative ways to generate active public space when the city and natural ecosystems intersect.
As an adaptable multi-layered project, the processes embodied open and participatory co-design strategies to not only welcome the ever-changing forces of nature but also, encourage modification according to the ever-changing needs of the citizens. Employing an open spatial framework with scaffolding pavilions of various programs, the project generated an adaptable recreational park that is assembled and dismantled seasonally according to the changing water levels. With this low-cost, low-ecological impact, and innovative architectural solution from a common reusable material, the clustering of pavilions created a dynamic landmark inviting passersby to the numerous cultural, sports, and arts activities.
The project was the winning proposal of Europan 13: Adaptable City international competition organized by Europan.
Nature preservation
Active public space
Citizen participation
Adaptability
Co-habitat design
From large-scale to material scale, the project embraces ecological and social sustainability as the main drive.
In almost all European cities around a river, rivers had been profoundly constructed along their edges destroying the riparian and aquatic ecosystems, whereas Zagreb’s Sava River due to its history with floods maintained its green buffer away from the urban sprawl. The project interpreted this unique offering of Sava as an opportunity to create a large-scale riverbank park that preserves the dynamic ecology of its floodplain and explores alternative ways to generate active public space when the city and nature intersect. Inspired by the resilience of river floodplains, the design of the master plan proposed the temporary use of floodplains during dry seasons with changing programs in each assembly cycle. Thus, instead of an urbanized riverbank park, the project aimed ecological preservation and concentrated on discovering non-invasive socio-ecological encounters to design for this valuable natural environment. It envisioned providing a mutually harmonized common habitat balancing human use and natural processes.
Secondly, creating a public space without any impact on the natural environment, the flood-related challenges, and the ephemeral nature of the project required thinking beyond traditional building materials. Rented scaffolding steel tubes were selected as the main structural system in a way to easily construct and disassemble without any waste while recycled wood was also used for surfaces. All selected materials belong to day-to-day routines, which makes them 100% reusable and recyclable, aiming for a low ecological footprint with high social impact.
And lastly, the planned activities of the project offered an abundance of nature-based socio-cultural recreation and education opportunities through programs such as river plants workshop with kids, litter-pick activity, geocaching, kayaking, running, biking, and guided Sava nature walks.
Emerging as an ephemeral architectural landmark, the project manifested new ways of experiencing Sava River and provoked passersby and the community with a dynamic visual invitation. Aiming at accommodating a great diversity and simultaneity of actions and programs, the project employed scaffold structures as a holistic aesthetic common while allowing each individual, group, or program organizer to customize their module according to their unique expressions or requirements. Human users of the project created spaces with wooden volumes and surfaces adding warmth to the overall atmosphere of the design while the use of textiles for shadings, lounge chairs, and hammocks also increased the variety of textures for different activities. On the other hand, non-human users such as weeds and shrubs encapsulated the structure; birds rested and perched on the scaffolds while spiders net-casted and nested in between. The resulting outlook was the spatial and visual translation of the participatory, democratic, and open processes embodied by this adaptable project.
Visitors could traverse Sava’s new landscape paths to explore various programs and enjoy the new encompassing vistas of the river and the city offered by the higher terraces of the pavilions. Designed as inhabitable three-dimensional grids alongside the outdoor program surfaces, these scaffolding pavilions incited a new beginning for the shores of Sava as a recreational space and hosted more than 150 activities including concerts, summer cinema nights, kayaking and rafting tournament, paragliding, yoga days, river plants workshop for kids, Museum of Contemporary Art painting workshop for kids, Sava nature walks, hiking, Sava banks bike tours, beach football, beach volleyball and beach badminton games, yoga and tai-chi workshops, litter-pick activities, horse-back riding, seminars and many more.
The project was operated through participatory processes during all phases. The procurement method was an open international competition through Europan with a diverse jury from different disciplines and focus areas. The winning proposal was selected due to its innovative strategy to involve the citizens in the design and decision-making process, and therefore, creating a project that is adaptable to the needs and tendencies of its users including its flora and fauna. As the temporary structures would be assembled and dismantled each dry season periodically, the project proposed the citizens to co-design which program pavilions and which activities will be combined around which neighborhood of Sava River. These open strategies of the project allowed to create a new model for the design of urban public spaces where the agency is shared and the project continues adapting and evolving with the engagement of the river’s human and non-human users.
Starting from the competition process, the project was introduced to the citizens through exhibitions, community workshops, tours, presentations, and media interviews; it was a collective effort that was designed and documented based on the feedback of these democratic gatherings. The activities and programs were planned through an open call to individuals, organizations, and institutions, and the resulting programs included activities for all ages and social groups promoting equity and education on diverse themes such as sports, arts, and culture experiencing Sava through its water, land, and airscapes.
As the design consisted of low-cost, common, reusable and easily accessed materials, the tender of construction encouraged the participation of local constructors and providers with local workforce.
While the project ensured physical accessibility to the site with ramps on embankments, it also provided affordable accessibility by creating a waterfront public space for those who spend their summer in landlocked Zagreb.
As an adaptable, open and multi-layered project, the processes embodied participatory design strategies through workshops, seminars, exhibitions, interviews, and roundtable discussions to co-design, plan and schedule the activities, decide types of pavilions for each programmatic cluster area, and brainstorm on the location of interventions. These gatherings and discussions initiated a collective reconsideration and reidentification process for Sava River’s empty shores where citizens have been refraining from due to the memories of the historic floods. However, as the project employed technologies of the 21st century coupled with an ecologically resilient urban design approach, the collective process evoked a paradigm shift and the citizens jointly welcomed the potential of a different Sava.
The feedback and opinions enriched the diversity of programs while detailed suggestions from the neighbors adjusted the project with local characteristics; the specific offerings of each neighborhood manifested themselves on the shores of Sava as activities. For example, Bundek borough famous for its Hipodrom, offered professional trainers and horses to teach kids horseback riding; Savica neighborhood known for its famous arts center bolstered the project with Summer night cinemas and art workshops; adjacent primary schools displayed their end-year performances on the stages of the project; Mladost Sports Center extended their existing sports activities with the project’s beach sports fields located on the shores while rafting club used the duration of the activities to hold their tournament and gain more support for rafting, kayaking and canoeing in Zagreb. Adjacent primary schools displayed their end-year performances on the stages of the project. The variety of proposals and contributions from different neighborhoods not only generated an embraced active public space but also, sparked a conversation in between the neighborhoods through the commons of Sava River.
From competition to implementation, the project was a collective effort realized with active involvement of diverse stakeholders. The European level stakeholders were Europan as the organizing platform of the competition, and the international jury, which led to the selection of a design team from Spain with their winning proposal. The regional and national body stakeholders were the City of Zagreb (Grad Zagreb) as the main client and responsible authority, Croatian Waters (Hrvatske Voda) as the jurisdictional authority, Europan Croatia office as the local Europan communicator/organizer, and Zagreb University Faculty of Architecture as academic partner. The local stakeholders consisted of project engineers and planners, Zg Forum Citizens Participation Office, City Office for Economy, Environmental Sustainability and Strategic Planning as the main procurer, and Zagreb Sports Facilities Administration as the main responsible party of maintenance, whereas Zagreb City Acupuncture team, constructor Agram, Zagreb Kayak Canoe Club, participants of the activities open call and the voluntary citizens who attended the meetings alongside all citizens were also part of the stakeholders.
The inclusion of Europan opened the local question of the use of Sava’s shores in a European platform and allowed local authorities to receive various design solutions from all around Europe. As the winning team started working with the local organizations and citizens, the project process periodically was also presented at the international Europan Forum communicating local and international feedback reciprocally. The inclusion of academic institutions alongside government bodies allowed the project to propose innovative solutions and test their potential for ecological future scenarios of riverbanks. The open framework of the design team enabled the citizens to co-design the project and their further adaptations created versions of use that were beyond what the designers had foreseen.
Due to the vast complexity and uncertainty of the project such as flood-related characteristics, vulnerable ecosystem, and budgetary limitations, an international-local multidisciplinary approach was integrated from the initial stages of design, involving disciplines ranging from architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, naval engineering, structural engineering, electrical engineering, emergency evacuation and safety engineering, environmental engineering; as well as communicators for citizen participation, city representatives for the cultural, sports and other activities, and academicians.
Participative meetings, gatherings, seminars, events, forums, and exhibitions engaging all parties involved were essential to deliver a cohesive response to the challenges of a project built on a floodplain. As it was dealing with seasonal changes, adaptability became a requirement, therefore, creating innovative strategies for uncertain changes was the main task for all disciplines in this team. The use of modular scaffold structure was a collective solution both to architecturally create an open, participatory system, but also, to devise a fast, safe, and consolidated construction technique to cope with the emergency flood protocols.
Collaboration and active participation of governmental institutions such as Croatian Waters, Strategic planning office, sports office, and cultural events office were key for the successful socio-management of the project with the citizens. This interaction continued and intensified with more participatory events and exhibitions creating an endless feedback mechanism for the project.
This holistic collaboration strives to capitalize on the strengths and meaningful points of intersection, participants and professionals may find that views they once thought to be conflicting are in fact, complementary.
As the wildest branch of the Danube, Sava River historically had harmed and destructed Zagreb; with its expansive marshlands, it was either a natural border as a war front, or its shores were execution sites away from the sight of the city. The negative connotations especially those regarding the dangerous stories of flood had settled in the urban memory rendering Sava’s shores avoided desolate terrains when it could perform interactively as a large-scale waterfront public space in landlocked Zagreb. The adaptive and open design framework of the project operated through participatory design processes and ecologically resilient urban design approach enabled the city and the citizens to regain a conversation with Sava to shift its identity and create new positive memories. During this process, the inclusion and engagement of the citizens and local institutions played a vital role in transforming the prejudgments about this space. As the project was a collective effort of co-design, Sava created a community of its own; the citizens embraced this waterfront public space that they co-created, riverbanks of Sava have been thus reintroduced to Zagrebians and their daily life.
The innovative design solution of the project to temporarily transform the floodplains in dry seasons, instead of constructing a highly controlled, permanent, and urbanized waterfront park instigated conversations about ecological preservation and common-habitat creation for a future where urban and nature reciprocally belong to each other. In the light of these conversations, the project became a precedent that is featured in academic curriculums in architecture, planning and landscape architecture schools, research papers, theses, international roundtable discussions, seminars, and journals.
Unlike predominant typological high-cost waterfront public space design projects that heavily construct, ecologically destroy, and permanently urbanize, Sava Activities project innovatively proposed an alternative low-cost solution at the intersection of active social encounters and natural preservation to create a large-scale riverbank park. It aimed to develop socio-cultural density without being necessarily urban; and envisioned providing a mutually harmonized common habitat balancing human use and natural processes.
Inspired by the resilience and changing character of the floodplains, the project proposed changing temporary activities with temporary structures during changing seasons to accommodate the floods, preserve the river’s ecosystem, and also to test the potential learnings of participatory urban design models. The project became the testing ground for conversation between private-public or individual-institution to collaboratively decide the future of a large-scale urban area through participatory co-design processes. While the project welcomed the ever-changing forces of nature with its ephemerality, it also encouraged adaptation according to the ever-changing needs and activities of the public for years to come. It developed an evolutionary design scheme that continues to adapt itself with the city and nature.
Although the banks of Sava were activated with numerous programs, the floodplain was preserved as a natural soft terrain with permeable sand paths. By doing so, the project eliminated any global warming effect that could be caused by the urban heat island effect of hard surfaces. And also, the ability of architectural program units to be relocated, adjusted, and shared offered a new economic model, suggesting an alternative to the conventional approach of construction for urban activation.
The approach of the project and the process concentrates on the transformation of a 7-km long riverside into a long-lasting public space with temporary programming. In this manner, the project was an explorative ground employing approaches, principles, and strategies ranging from ecological to social:
- Natural preservation, low-impact development
- Adaptability to uncertain changes
- Bottom-up practices for decision-making
- Citizen engagement through participation and co-design
- Co-habitat design, awareness of natural habitats within the urban context
Sava Activities is an eco-political project aiming to provide alternative solutions to the global dilemma of urban-nature dichotomy. The idea of creating a large-scale adaptive and resilient riverbank park that welcomes natural changes like flood, or encourages citizen engagement through open design is a valid alternative and replicable solution in all urban territories in the world that are situated around rivers or seas.
This participatory, low-cost, and low ecological impact proposal to a common global challenge is not only a precedent for disciplines of spatial design (architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers, etc), as a process it is also a useful source for local and regional authorities like municipalities and city offices who are responsible from maintenance of urban spaces in terms of how to approach these natural areas, how to co-create with citizen engagement and how to include international, regional, local stakeholders through different procurement methods or platforms. The project is also an open call to legislative bodies internationally as a guiding project while envisioning zoning plans and regulations that prioritize preserving natural resources.
The scaffolding system as the construction methodology on the floodplain is also a transferable outcome as it enables fast, low-cost, highly adaptable, and safe building options for potential high-risk areas. As a reusable modular system, scaffolding structures can be easily dismantled and adapted to other urban conditions and settings while creating ephemeral public gatherings. This methodology shows how flood protection protocols can meet all technical and safety requirements while fostering the generation of socio-ecological public space for multifunctional utilization.
The project offers a new way of interaction between urban and nature by creating active waterfront public space that preserves the riverbanks and the riparian ecosystems without constructing and urbanizing its edges. Everywhere around the world, our urban atmospheres heavily tame and contaminate water resources destroying not only the local ecosystem but the overall water network that the source is connected to. Rivers that pass through cities in that sense suffer the most from these Anthropocene actions. This project aimed to explore alternative scenarios to create co-habitats and offer new typological solutions to this global problem.
Sava Activities experiments on the larger scale effects of relatively small, soft, and temporal interventions that are characterized by participation, dynamism, immateriality, and indeterminacy. The reusable character of the main construction material that is stored and transported from nearby local providers, contributes to global decarbonization. Furthermore, all materials used for the construction will be reintroduced in future phases of implementation significantly decreasing the construction budget that will be redirected to participative activities. The project also deals with equity and social inclusion, generating a sense of community and network through the implementation of these inclusive activities directed to all age groups and social backgrounds.
Active collaboration between stakeholders and disciplines at different levels; institutional and private-public, addresses the prevailing absence of dialogue in our democracies and increases active citizen participation and bottom-up practices in the built environment.
