Can infrastructural complexes become an incorporated part of the city and help build a community.
Why are crucial infrastructural buildings treated as degraded areas that need to be eradicated from urban areas and transferred outside of cities where they destroy vast rural landscapes? Because a city cannot live without this areas, our project treats them as organs in the human body. We are capable of regenerating them and give them a second life where they keep the city running and also become an integrated part of the communitys fabric.
Local
Slovenia
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Valentin Last name: DOWHYJ Gender: Male Age: 22 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 Nationality: Slovenia If relevant, please select your other nationality: Argentina Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Langusova Ulica 35 Town: Radovljica Postal code: 4240 Country: Slovenia Direct Tel:+386 41 242 039 E-mail:valentindowhyj@gmail.com
First name: Dana Last name: Čuk Gender: Female Age: 23 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 Nationality: Slovenia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Kettejeva ulica 15 Town: Sežana Postal code: 6210 Country: Slovenia Direct Tel:+386 40 120 607 E-mail:cuk.dana@gmail.com
First name: Lucija Last name: Lisjak Gender: Female Age: 24 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 Nationality: Slovenia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Saksid 1 Town: Dornberk Postal code: 5294 Country: Slovenia Direct Tel:+386 40 819 929 E-mail:lucija.lisjak15@gmail.com
Our main guides are threefold. It is based on the reclamation of land and returning it to nature, thus creating a multilayered community equally respecting the needs of the citizens and nature; to alleviate the housing problem which many cities face because capitalist developers only build quality architecture curated for the rich and powerful and forget to create affordable, quality well-being areas; and to create an alternitive to consumerism, an alternative programme which does not spend but it creates financial, social and environmental sustainability for the community. Therefore our goal is to create a symbiosis of programmes and to fully develop leisure, culture, production and recreational activities with the related infrastructure. The point of architecture is not to demolish and rebuild. Like an organism, the city must continuously renew itself by upgrading the system of the activities that already make it thrive and function. With re-imagining the tipology of infrastructural complexes we can create quality urban spaces for the community and also spread ideas of responsibility, building tight relations and respect with dose crucial workers who serve to keep our society running and functioning.
Production as a key component of social cohesion
positive impact on the urban heat island, the urban lungs
a place not based on consumerism
transform urban infrastructure into quality urban spaces for the community
building green systems and creating an interconnected city with nature
Our concept achieves sustainability at a natural, economic and social level.
Instead of using expensive technological systems to achieve the energy efficiency of a building, we are creating architectural solutions that are both more ecological and more efficient than the conventional technologies currently on the market. By introducing double facades with a green corridor, we achieve energy efficiency, ventilation and also create a quality living space that protects the users from external factors such as heat, wind, noise… while simuntainesly allowing a close connection with nature and the neighbourhood. The use of concrete is reduced to the minimum necessary just to adapt the construction of the existing infrastructure, which allows us to freely construct a modular wooden grid above. Self-sufficiency at an economic level is also achieved through the introduction of food production. So the coplex uses what it produces throughout the year. By using modular wood panels, the most common local material, we impact the production cycle by minimising cost and drastically reduce the carbon footprint of construction. We are also tackling the greenhouse gas problem by returning large areas of built-up land back to nature. We create a close interplay between the urban and the natural. The wild vegetation that was present on the site before human settlements allows for a rich biodiversity and thus the self-sustainability of other species that form a key part of the community. The deciduous trees also reduce the impact of the building on the urban heat island through natural shading. At the urban level, the Coplex comes to life as the lungs of the city.
Aesthetics and quality of life are achieved by creating an environment where you can live according to Tolstoyan principles. Every day you can do something good for your mind, your body, and your community. We are creating an environment where people can be free and not permanently financially constrained, a place where they can build something and grow with the project over time. A place where people are reminded that they are more than just machines in the capitalist system and can be free, valued, and a very important and valuable part of the community.
The city is full of certain infrastructures that allow the city to function properly every day, so that people can get from point A to point B, have electricity in their houses, hot water... All these infrastructures work because of hard-working people, who are neglected by society as inferior professions. We highlight their importance by bringing people closer to this infrastructure, closer to their workspace, creating a symbiotic complex so that we can open the world's eyes and let them see how sacrificial these professions are and how we would be able to live without them. This puts people in direct contact with the "organs" that keep the city alive therefore making them more integrated and important in society by highlighting their presence, rather than moving them away from people and hiding them from the eyes of the world.
The vision for the transformation of urban infrastructure is primarily a response to the growing needs of the city's inhabitants, around whom many apartments are growing at the expense of the destruction of green public spaces for which Ljubljana has been many years famous for and the relocation of city infrastructure. In addition to giving a piece of land back to nature and people, the project goes a step further by using urban agriculture as a dynamic living laboratory for innovation, interaction and education, bringing a piece of the countryside into the heart of Ljubljana's most densely populated neighbourhood. However, a hydroponic hybrid is not just a factory for food production. The ground floor creates a strong public space that celebrates agriculture as a key component of urban growth.
The interactive greenhouse, aquaponic showcase and festival marketplace are an attempt to educate generations of children about where their food comes from. The restaurant, apartments, co-working concert hall and green public spaces represent a desire to create a dynamic and active mixed-use environment that is a far cry from traditional, sprawling rural farmland.
To develop the concept of revitalisation of the Šiška bus station, we had to contact LPP - Ljubljana Passenger Transport and get help from them in order to decide what can actualy be done in the area and confirm that our idea can be executed with the already established safety norms. A great help was offered from engineering professors who helped us develop a simple and flexible/adaptable construction system which can fit many other locations and not just our bus park and also unite a "brutalist" building such as city infrastructure with the gentleness of nature and the local community.
We also had to do make extensive questionares to the local people asking them what they truly need in there lives, what they miss from the past and how this area was used before the construction of the buspark infrastructure. That allowed us to create a prototype concept that has a very high chance of functioning and become truly integrated in the fabric of society if the idea is realised.
To develop the concept of revitalisation of the Šiška bus station, we had to contact LPP - Ljubljana Passenger Transport and get help from them in order to decide what can actualy be done in the area and confirm that our idea can be executed with the already established safety norms. A great help was offered from engineering professors who helped us develop a simple and flexible/adaptable construction system which can fit many other locations and not just our buspark and also unite a "brutalist" building such as city infrastructure with the gentleness of nature and the local community.
We also had to do make extensive questionnaires to the local people asking them what they truly need in there lives, what they miss from the past and how this area was used before the construction of the buspark infrastructure. That allowed us to create a prototype concept that has a very high chance of functioning and become truly integrated in the fabric of society if the idea is realised.
With our project, we have been raising awareness of global problems that are currently unknown to the public, in addition to the ones that are already known. It is too late to build self-sustaining architecture because the environment is already too degraded. We need to start giving back what previous generations have stolen from nature with the endless expanding of urban areas. We need to help nature regenerate itself through various interventions. By listening to the conditions dictated by our pre-settlement environment, we can achieve quality architecture that grows and thrives with the natural fabric leaving a minimal footprint. Instead of moving infrastructure buildings (large bus garages, tram and other urban transport garages, power stations, heating plants, etc.) outside the city, where they will further degrade the countryside due to perpetual urban sprawl, let's create a new concept of the city. In this concept, humans are just another layer in a complex ecosystem, helping to build a rich biodiversity. We are proving that humans are capable of living in community with each other and with other species in harmony, not as a dominant species that subjugates everyone else.
Our prototype project targets urban transport infrastructure, but we develop a simple formula (degraded areas + vital city infrastructure = potential locations to develop our hybrid complex) that helps us to identify other potential locations that occur in all cities around the world. We can share our knowledge in the development of aquaponics and hydroponics through various workshops or at the Faculty of Architecture. At the Faculty of Architecture, the design studio Žnidaršič and Zorec is already working along similar lines, trying to give the Union Brewery factory another life in the city centre. Through Šiška has already started to spread the knowledge of a productive community through workshops on food production through aquaponics and hydroponics, where the city and the community are gradually shifting towards being based not only on consumption but also on production.
Our local solutions can also have a big impact on the world and globalisation. Primarily by returning the land to nature and creating an interplay between the human and the natural, we drastically change the impact of the urban heat island on the environment. Moreover, at the same time, this allows us to create a protected natural environment where the need for false technological ecological solutions is not necessary, because nature and simple architecture drastically reduce the problems of energy renovation, because it does not resist nature, but lives in harmony with it. By using only local materials and by producing locally and involving the users themselves, we can reduce our carbon footprint by removing transport from the production chain. In addition, by slowly making people aware of how the world works and the effort that goes into a product, we build respect and awareness, which can gradually begin to develop and spread awareness of a responsible society.
