Empowering Resilient Communities

Resilient Communities | Comunità Resilienti

Following earlier presentations of the Design of Public Space research group from Delft, Maurice Harteveld participates in the ‘Empowering Resilient Communities’ event organised at the Italian Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, on Friday 12 November, from 2 pm. As part of the international scientific committee of the pavilion, he will reflect on various Italian projects, which will be presented in this session. His review relates to a broader inventory of actions, which are being currently taken in the networks of public space to strengthen community resilience. Rotterdam serves as an exemplar, and as such these actions challenge the design of public space, and with that among others the disciplines of urban design, landscape architecture, and architecture.

The Italian Pavilion has organised the event as an opportunity to present and discuss some of the experiences already included in the research project Mapping Resilient Communities, while providing a platform for knowledge transfer and capacity development, especially in most vulnerable areas, in Italy and beyond, with the participation of UN-Habitat.

when:
Friday 12 November
14:00-17:00h

where:
17th International Architecture Exhibition
Italian Pavilion
Venice
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Design and People

 

Lecture

Design and People
Bringing the Urban and Architectural Together

on invitation of
Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

18 April 2016
14:30h

Faculty of Architecture
University of Zagreb

Room 422
Andrije Kačića Miošića Street
Zagreb, Croatia

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Predavanje

Dizajn i Ljudi
Objedinjujući Urbanistički i Arhitektonski

na pozivu
Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

18 Travanj 2016
14:30s

Arhitektonski Fakultet
Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

Učiónica 422
Ulica Andrije Kačića Miošića
Zagreb, Hrvatska

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EAAE GA and Conference 2016

For Example Delft: A Case Study discussed in the Context of Institutional Profile(s) and the Future of Architectural Education.
31st August – 3rd September 2016

Conference registration starts 10 April 2016
Find the link on the EAAE website

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Publicly-Known Space

 

Delft University of Technology
Oxford Brookes University
University of Zagreb
and
University of Rijeka

Exhibition

Hartera/Školjic/Rijeka
Could it be…. this too?

on invitation of
Association of Architects of Rijeka
Department of Culture
City of Rijeka

17-27 October 2014

Association of Architects of Rijeka
Ivana Dežmana 2a
Rijeka, Croatia

Four European universities explored the revitalisation of the former paper factory in Rijeka within the entire zone Školjić. For a large number of people from Rijeka, this former industrial zones, including zone Školjić does not exist in their mental image of the city or they are perceived as areas without access. The purpose of this exhibition could be seen at least a three-fold: to introduce the younger generation of citizens of Rijeka with its own city throughout its coverage; show them a way of growth and development of the city; affect the development of sensitivity to the construction heritage not only the representational type but that is often considered to be the not worth watching.

Technische Universiteit Delft
Oxford Brookes University
Sveučilište u Zagrebu
i
Sveučilište u Rijeci

Izložba

Hartera/Školjic/Rijeka
Moglo bi… i ovako?

na pozivu
Društvo Arhitekata Rijeka
Odjel za Kulturu
Grada Rijeke

17- 27 Listopada 2014

Društvo Arhitekata Rijeka
Ivana Dežmana 2a
Rijeka, Hrvatska

Četiriju europskih sveučilišta istražili revitalizacije bivše Tvornice papira Rijeka i cijele zone Školjić. U mentalnoj slici vlastitoga grada većeg broja Riječana bivše industrijske zone, uključujući i zonu Školjić, ne postoje ili ako postoje, percipiraju se kao zone bez pristupa. Svrha posjeta ovoj izložbi mogla bi se vidjeti u najmanju ruku kao troslojna: upoznati mlađe generacije Riječana s vlastitim gradom u cijelom njegovom obuhvatu; pokazati im jedan od načina rasta i razvoja grada; utjecati na razvoj senzibiliteta prema građevinskom nasljeđu ne samo onog reprezentativnog tipa nego i onog često smatranog ne vrijednim gledanja.

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Abandoned Area

Rehabilitation of Hartera

Only a few people live and work in Hartera. It used to be a vibrant part of the city of Rijeka where hundreds of people were flocking in and out every day. Today, this area largely abandoned. Its famous paper factory closed its doors about a decade ago and since then the area fell into decay. Nevertheless, despite its decline, Hartera is all but forgotten! On the contrary; Hartera is in the minds of many people. Locals will relate the area to its rich industrial heritage, unique buildings and great views to the hills. Some people refer to its annual music festival, current grassroots events, and emerging cultural scene. Although Hartera is known by most people, seldom it is used by many. The challenge for the public government of Rijeka and many other actors is to make this area public with respect to the multiple images people have of the site. This area can become publicly-used, not just publicly-known. A spa facility or entertainment park will not be answers for this particular side, nor will it be for example a shopping mall. Those kinds of development stimulate appropriation of the space by special target groups, blocking the way for others, and/or they change the identity of the area so drastically that people will change their perception of the area and neglect the newly developed as soon as it will becomes out of date again.

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The Curse of Bigness

There are some who glorify the state or quality of bigness. This seems to be something characteristic of the modern age – the first hosannas began to resound around the dawn of the metropolis. We see it in the writings of Louis Sullivan and in the statements made by Le Corbusier. They like buildings to be big. Bigness is their quality. The notion of ‘bigness’, as pushed forward more recently by among others Rem Koolhaas, is based on complete disconnection between the interior and the exterior. “Bigness is no longer part of any urban tissue”, he thinks. Context – the relationship with the building’s surroundings – is supposedly irrelevant. Nonsense! His theorem is contradicted by studies of existing cases. When a building exceeds a certain size and becomes a large-scale structure, public interiors are created. The increase in the number of people using both these indoors and the outdoor space links big buildings closely to their surroundings, more then do small-scale buildings, and thus far from being isolated, big buildings become more connected. In their urban environments, the interaction becomes visible and multi-level or privately-owned public space is created within big buildings. New public interiors extend the outdoor network and thereby give the building a fine-meshed structure. In essence, as the interiors become more public, the small scale is introduced into the building. The building may be big purely in terms of size, but in many ways it is quite as diverse as any part of the city.

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Spatial Metro

On Routing and Orientation in City Centres

The chair of Urban Design at the TU Delft is participating in the Spatial Metro project on routing and orientation in city centres. This project focuses on the improvement of city centres. Other partners are the cities of Norwich, Bristol, Rouen and Koblenz, the University of East Anglia, the School of Environmental Sciences and the School of Computing Sciences, the University of Koblenz and the Swiss Pedestrian Association.

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European Publicity

In October 2004, the cities of Delft and Antwerp were the scenes of the EAAE conference and the ‘European City’. This conference, organised by the Delft University of Technology and the Antwerp Higher Institute of Architectural Sciences Henry van de Velde, focused on the interaction between ‘architectural interventions’ and ‘urban transformations’, both now and in the past. The typological evolutions of the arcade and the mall exemplify this interaction and as such are put forward in the paper European Publicity, Learning From the Evolution of the Interior Public Space. They both illustrate how interior public spaces came to acquire their dualistic nature: both city and building, both urban and architectural design. By learning from their history, the contemporary design tasks of public interiors can be understood and (re)defined.

At a certain point in the evolution of public interiors, buildings can become part of the city or else parts of the city can become buildings. The result is confusion. Disciplinary borders do change, but the key force behind the current confusion is twofold: urbanism defines new types of public space while architecture defines them as new building types. It is both.

From the perspective of interior public space, the European city need not be content with enclosed autonomous projects, hence an independent architectural approach with its focus on the interior programme, climate and experience only, like in the case of some malls. This forecasts ’empty boxes’, abandoned objects, such as emerging in North America. The position in the city and the urban context are highly relevant, and thus is the urban design task just as crucial. Although designing interiors is traditionally the task of architects, in the case of interior public space it is therefore high time to share that task with urbanists. This is what we can see in the other case of arcades too.

See:
Harteveld, Maurice (2005) European Publicity, Learning from the Evolution of the Interior Public Space. In: Claessen, Francois en Leen van Duin (eds.), The European City. Architectural Interventions and Urban Transformations. EAAE Transactions on Architectural Education No. 25. Delft: DUP, pp. 223-231

About the European Association for Architectural Education
The European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) is an international non-profit association committed to the exchange of ideas and people within the field of architectural education and research. The EAAE aims at improving the knowledge base and the quality of architectural and urban design education. It is a bi-lingual English/French association.
Founded in 1975, the EAAE has grown in stature to become an institution fulfilling an increasingly essential role in providing a European perspective for the work of architectural educationalists as well as concerned governmental agencies.
The EAAE counts more than 100 Active Member Schools in Europe from the Canary Islands to the Urals, representing almost 5000 tenured faculty members and more than 100000 students of architecture from the undergraduate to the doctoral level. The association is building up associate membership worldwide.