PHILOSOPHY

How can we imagine a contemporary public space into fast growing cities, in between over scaled urban buildings and venues, where open spaces are mainly used by transportation?

The challenge is to fit, into the contemporary realms, a new way of public space that brings back and combines some of the lost urban qualities. A space with its own identity and internal quality.

 

A human scale space that activates public social exchanges. A space in which to stay without any specific function. A space of protection, silence and concentration. A space intimate and “domestic” like a public room into urban fabrics.

A possible starting point, to give back quality to the urban spaces in the contemporary city, could be design a public space a priori, apart from its possible contexts. A public space which can be defined according to autonomous and controlled architectural dimensions and features.

It is proposed, therefore, to approach the design of the public spaces according to a new vision, not considering it as an urban void, but as the project of the void itself, giving it architectural and standardised shape.

 

Like in the contemporary projects of prefabricated architecture, a standardised public space would allow to reduce, considerably, the construction time. But it also permits to control realisation and maintenance costs and, above all, to guarantee high quality design standards everywhere, regardless of the place or the position where it is located. A Prefab Public Space,  indeed, could be provided of different characteristics, from time to time customisable according to the needs of the places. It means to guarantee the quality of materials, of illumination systems or of energetic saving in each situation.

Different PPS modules, moreover, can be combined among them, establishing wider and better articulated systems. It is the answer to different demands, developing  a quality potentially spreadable on the whole territory.

 

PROJECT and FEASIBILITY

Although PPS project is not exactly conceived in relationship with a specific context, its main function springs just in correlation with the different locations where it can be placed.

It means to create a new urban interface that propagates in the context, strengthening and maximising its specificities.

 

PPS  brings silence and peacefulness in the middle of huge crowded traffic roads. If PPS was realised in a large city park, it would furnish equipment and protection. If it was placed inside urban compounds densely built, it would be the venue of the nature where lie down and take time to relax on a fresh green lawn.

The project for the 2009 SZ & HK Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture wants to create a link between the two urban cultures. It consists in the realisation of the first prototypes of repeatable Prefab Public Spaces. The intention is not to design a temporary installation, but to develop the first examples of public spaces completely reproducible, easily settable, detachable and recyclable.                                                            

It means that PPS will be not conceived as a temporary installation, but, in quality of prototype, the project will give the opportunity to investigate the potentialities of materials and technical solutions in innovative systems. In order to reach these goals, the research develops the opportunity to involve interested companies and firms which may technically promote the prototypes. 

 

PPS comes from a planning research that wants to add value and identity to the project of the void itself, dodging the hypothesis that a public space coincides exclusively with the project of monumental spaces or infrastructures environments.

The aim of the project is to give back the structure and the performances to the public space.

PPS aspire to be the proposer of an out and out city mobilisation, involving different venues and  re-creating the relation between the citizens and the architectural project.

 

This research study was developed in the 2009 June for the Hong Kong Biennale concept pavillions.

Laboratorio Permanente, Arch Nicola Russi

with arch. Andrea Matteo Azzolini, arch. Antonio Mannino, arch. Caterina Marra.

 

  

 

 

 

 

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