Cities and Desire #4. FEDORA

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1 Cities and Desire #4. FEDORA In the center of Fedora, that gray stone metropolis, stands a metal building with a crystal globe in every room. Looking into each globe, you see a blue city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today. In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe. The building with the globes is now Fedora s museum: every inhabitant visits it, chooses the city that corresponds to his desires, contemplates it, imagining his reflection in the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up), the view from the high canopied box along the avenue reserved for elephants (now banished from the city), the fun sliding down the spiral twisting minaret (which never found a pedestal from which to rise). On the map of your empire, O Great Khan, there must be room both for the big, stone Fedora and the little Fedoras in glass globes. Not because they are all equally real, but because all are only assumptions. The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later is possible no longer. Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities

2 u r b a n-a r c h i t e c t u r a l c o n c e p t d e s i g n f o r t h e BADEL SITE r e d e v e l o p m e n t _Premises. FEDORA 2.0 Thoughts for an Urban Ecosystem The project proposal is outlined by a set of visions for the city of Zagreb, through interpretating the complex intertwined spatial and chronological dimensions that connects its past, present and future configuration. The projects goals are indeed established according to a preliminary analysis driven by the working group in order to outline Zagreb specific potentials to develop as a European smartcity. The future entry of Croatia in the European Union on 2013, as the 28 th member state, will entail the necessity and opportunity for this country to tailor its own national targets in the five priority areas (employment, innovation, education, social inclusion and climate-energy) that EU has adopted to underpin the development of a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy for its member. Gathering in this new European arena, in the next years Zagreb will deal with the possibility to contextualize its own urban growth in a wider developing scenario. This means that the city could reinvent its role as European/Croatian/ Zagabrian urban player, through repositioning its social economic and cultural development perspectives within the three following mutually reinforcing priorities: Smart growth (developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation); Sustainable growth (promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy); Inclusive growth (fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion).

3 _Chapter 1. VISION Towards Desire-scape Fedora 2.0, urban design proposal for Badel Block redevelopment, moves from a larger scenario.we approach the concept design considering the ability of the block to become a catalyst both at the site and at the city scale:the block is thus intended introduce and support over time new streams of smart, sustainable and inclusive development for the city of Zagreb as a whole. Scooping its own metabolic vitality from the nearby historic market place and factory building, the Badel Block represents a zone of transition to canalise urban energies from the periphery to the center and viceversa. Through its history of important industrial district, it will progressively reveals its capacity to inject new socio-cultural and economic vitality into the whole city (eco)system. The popularity and widespread consideration of the local product market makes the Badel Block able to support vital and energetic development for the entire trading area.

4 _Chapter 2. GROUND PLATFORM Social interaction and trade connections Looking to a social and functional mixité goal, the functional program is based on synergic interactions between different city uses (cultural, education, residential, trading) and users (local, urban, foreigners). This proactive and multipurpose strategy is looking to a flexible and adaptable space, able to receive, accommodate and reelaborate contemporary and long-term needs, based on the interaction between economy, society and urban space. By enhancing the abilities of the Badel Block catalyst to activate the metabolic-vital energies flowing from the market to the block, from the block to the surrounding area and from this latter to the whole city of Zagreb, we state the final purpose of concept design: establish a clear and transparent network of connections with the surroundings streets, the market and the city center.

5 _Chapter 3. FLEXIBLE MATRIX Harvesting the urban landscape In order to reach the connective-goals of the intervention, the team establishes specific design tools, which are all conceived in order to structure a spatial matrix able to carry out the smart, inclusive and flexible strategy. The matrix corresponds to an agri-based matrix, based on the module 6mx4m (the measure of urban orchard surface which is evaluated by our research as necessary to ensuring the food feeding of a single local dweller). By the application of this agri-based model matrix we actually foster the principle that a new form of active and productive urban landscape grid can enhance the global vitalising strategy for such an historical productive urban site. The flexible and reversible matrix allows both pedestrian accessibility and food self-sufficiency. Together with energy-efficiency (photovoltaic, geothermal, solar thermal, roof gardens, high tech ecology), they represents our specific declinations of the sustainability to the Badel Block project. Conceptually the active landscape matrix acts with the same energetic and metabolic efficiency of an ecosystem, permeable and practicable structure: a porous system able to receive and absorb the urban transformations, using resilience rather than resistance strategies. At an urban scale the project will define Badel Block as an individual organism, integrated into a wider and complex ecosystem (Zagreb). It transforms materials, fuel, water into urban built environment and cultural identity.

6 _Chapter 4. HOUSING Inclusion and Plurality Void structure and open air spatial and architectural planning is basically at the origins of design concept for Badel Block, looking to an hybrid system between public and private spaces. The design settles residential blocks in order to increase the social inclusion and connections between different kinds of urban users. The design proposes to define a range of permanent Badel Block inhabitants (about 50%) versus a range of temporary inhabinants (about 50%) to force a real co-living of different social groups. The strategy figures out two different kinds of citizens and families, in order to stimulating plurality: a part of inhabitants coming from abroad (extimated in a range of about 60%) and a local part (about 40%). Mass and material sense modelled by void is underlined by light façade elements: brise-soleil, glass frames and surfaces, that close some of those void spaces and articulate the buildings elevations, sections and volumes. Windows and balconies design, reflects the multiplicity of typological solutions of residences and, dismissing usual hierarchy inside the façade settlement and appearance, is directly connected to the interior residential and domestic spaces.

7 _Chapter 5. UNDERGROUND Soft mobility The design proposal tries to figure out a City inside a City, with human scale voids an relationships places like patios, public terraces, events plazas, pedestrian and living roofs, balconies and connections between residential blocks and public spaces. Typically devoted to create sociality, cultural and trade activities are void spaces between built blocks, like squares, boulevards, markets and natural spaces like parks, public gardens and public porches. In order to propose this kind of eco-friendly and km0-oriented urban structure, the project selects an pedestrian-only strategy for the Badel block. The Parking surfaces are located in two underground floors, directly connected by vertical tubes with retail and housing levels.

8 _Chapter 6. Urban Memories Cultural city life incubator Architecture that designs new Zagreb skyline, impressing in the imagination of its inhabitants an image of a City moved by great aspirations and economic energies, cultural and social references for the future of urban life. Grid that connects past memories to future opportunities, including the horizontality of the Distillery building, through the residential blocks and retail services for the people, straight to the Tower building and beyond, pad for interactions with Europe.

9 _Chapter 7. TOWER Alternative economy and innovation As part of a process of urban renewal, the tower typology responds to new functional and iconic requirements. The volumes required by the program are transferred to a container with precise type tower. New urban Landmark and territorial symbol of a developing City, the Tower triggers interaction at local and regional scale and houses a mix of activities promoting economy and work. Flexible mixed use dedicated, the Tower is by its nature and typology, location of directional and operational units, international Companies headquarters located throughout the Badel Block and bringing in a new Zagreb skyline. Through the settlement of Executive and Trade functions related to the City of Zagreb by means of the new South Urban Gate, the mixed use Tower revitalizes the axis Zagreb-Europe redeveloping the urban area, connecting to the European scale. The business of the activities located in the nearby urban blocks and small and medium neighborhood services and retails, will resume to flourish and grow thanks to the catchment area led by the project. Conclusions Resuming the general guidelines, the plan for Badel Block area can operate as a pilot project for further urban operations. A living platform, throbbing with activities and functions, established as a new infrastructural and trade hub, stands a realistic chance of boosting redevelopment of the block and contributes to the growth of the whole City of Zagreb.