What are the main challenges for re-appropriation of post-industrial brownfields? The architectural firm iocarydi.com unfolds the priorities behind their winning scheme that received the 1st prize at the “Architectural Ideas Competition for The Urban Regeneration Of 640 Acres of The Former Port-Industrial Area Of Drapetsona” organized by the Attica Region Authority. The winning team narrates how their proposal orchestrates urban regeneration under a delicate balance of history, ecology and program.
The proposed project metabolizes an inherited lag in progressive action, by capitalizing on the comparative advantages of the site that generate added value, to promote a sustainable and self-generated development. The project aspires to become an exemplary developmental framework that fights back the effects of crisis on a local as well as metropolitan level.
The proposed area under regeneration is situated within the Keratsini – Drapetsona Municipal boundaries and aims to offer a comprehensive development and rehabilitation of a large portion of the area’s coastal landscape.
An industrial past of extensive depletion of its natural and ecological assets, led the site through its gradual disconnection from the city, to its current condition of disrepair, pollution and obsolescence. The project proposes restoration of the lost connectivity with the adjacent neighborhoods, through a design approach that integrates environmental, architectural and urban design parameters as well as technical, aesthetic and socio-economic constituents.
The proposed design of the former industrial landscape of Drapetsona aspires to offer an extensive area of urban park that restores the now compromised connection between the city and its waterfront.
The park offers a moment of exception in an extensive and densely built urban landscape and accommodates a range of programmatic functions through a strategy of tactical and subtle insertions of small grain urban fabric in the designed landscape.
The purpose of this park is not limited to the satisfaction of contemporary programmatic consumption but instead, it aspires to become a productive landscape of a metropolitan radiance through absorption of private and public investments for Research and Development, Education, Healthcare, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Culture. In doing so, the project draws from the regional specificities, as well as from the cultural and industrial heritage assets that weave together the physiognomy of local community.
The proposed tactical design interventions employ innovative and cutting edge methods of landscape recovery such as phytoremediation and sustainable drainage systems. Those methods become instrumental and organizational for the restoration of natural habitats and major natural ecosystems that are re-established on site: the sandy-coastal, the rocky-coastal, the meadows and the maritime forests.
Through a coordinated balance of restoration/reprogramming strategies of preserved building stock and new building insertions (55% and 45% of total built surface respectively) the proposal connects significant landmarks that evoke collective memories with contemporary developments that satisfy current needs of local community as well as of the broader metropolitan area.
Responsive building envelops encourage synergies in multiple performative levels to satisfy cultural, recreational and educational needs as well as to provide space for -much needed for the area- healthcare services.
Increased connectivity and integration with adjacent urban fabric and easy access to the site via public transportation create an accessible urban park that offers a range of interesting thematic destination points and promenades. Private car accessibility and parking demand are discretely met, avoiding the negative impacts of thorough flows.
Facts & Credits for iocarydi.com:
Design team:
Lead-Design Coordinator: Dr. Ioanna – Io Carydi, Architect NTUA, MA The Architectural Association
Design Associates: Vasilis Vasiliadis, Architect NTUA, Mphil NTUA, Dimitris Venizelos, Architect NTUA, MAUD Harvard GSD
Urbanism Consultants: Dr Dimitris Balabanides, Dr Elena Patatouka, Alex Karidis
Transportation Consultant: Iannis Nicolaidis
Ecology Consultants: Panos Panagiotidis, Anna Kefala
Graphic Design and Drafting:Demetrios Tzavaras deworks.co, Vaso Kanelopoulou, Andreas Tsokos Pappas
CV
iocarydi.com is an architecture and green planning firm, founded by Dr. Ioanna- Io Carydi. The firm is supported by a multidisciplinary group of professionals and academics, focusing on landscape design and environmental planning operating within the emerging field of landscape urbanism. The firm’s in‐depth technical knowledge and advanced design services position them to provide exceptional added value to large scale landscape projects with a main scope to deliver high‐end strategies for sustainable environments. The firm has gained invaluable experience by signature projects and collaborations on international level (London Olympic Parklands 2012, Zaryadye Park, Montpellier Campus etc.)
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