Guben, Germany

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Europan 10. Guben

Francesca Pignatelli, Anna Arioli, Simone Ursini Casalena, ALA-G :::::: alessandra giannini

White Wires Guben /Gubin

To Create Urbanity: Revitalisation – Connecting the station with the centre

The request is to make an architectural and urban project that could revitalize the city of Guben/Gubin and to solve a difficult situation. We cannot invent a secret recipe, secure and problem solving, but we can imagine new scenarios and suggestions trough architecture, parts of a longer process that can also auto-generate, in a local and specific perspective. The general strategy points out some key-points on which we worked on in the general thought not to change completely the city but to find out the possibilities and the potential, underlying the specific features. -The station, now far from the center and lost in the lines of the tracks and the fluxes; (III) -Some industrial dismissed areas, between tracks and the river; (IV) -The presence of Nature, so rich and blossoming, as in the river banks, in the wood and in the green areas; (IV – V) -The urban gardens that edge and structure the tissue of the city; (III – IV – I) -The car crossing on the tracks and on the river that now connects Germany an Pollen; (III) -Some portions of urban blocks less structured and with dismissed buildings (I-II) These are the existing places that are put into a new dynamic system: we build scenarios and relationships between the parts of Guben, we work on the crossings and on the fluxes on a very wide net, that cannot be simplified in an unitary action, but deeply treced on tot he history and into the identity of the context. The strong sign is that of the linear infrastructural park, that departs from the station (III), on the ground tongue of the car way and arrives to the street above (the park itself changes height and intersects the street), it then become lower and goes down (to area 1) and meets the tissue of urban gardens, and the low density tissue of houses in which new small commercial points grow naturally, referring and taking strength from the new public building, the “farmer’s market”. The linear path is made by long strips with a spontaneous look, tongues of green, as the urban parcels of the urban gardens, as the existing cycling paths. They are colored (by an accurate use of vegetation) or green, in a more natural and spontaneous way, they go up and down at different levels and in some points they depart from the straight line between the tracks: the axis becomes a net and it divides in many directions in the cluster points. The two terminal heads of the linear park are in balance and in communication to each other, there is thus a complex relationship between city and territory, infrastructure and agriculture, artificial and natural soil. The relation between Guben and Gubin is not a straight relation but it is complex and transversal: from the mail axis depart the smaller paths as the benches of a tree, the green paths in the river park on the north, conceived as a wider area, revitalized also by a specific work on the industrial archeology that are standing now in the nature, the paths of the dwellings, hoses in the park and in the wood up to the river, molding into the traditional system of the urban gardens (dwellings and working areas, open spaces, they represent a wired system, a capillary system) the paths that from the farmer’s market reach the smaller shops for the detail resell on the place. It is between the area III and the area IV and V that the project starts and mainly takes shape. From this part of the city (between the station and the river) we can think about a stronger connection with the city center: nature realize a boundary and a connection with the strips of the linear park, the smooth dwellings (void in the area IV), the paths in the green that reach the industries still active and those dismissed, ( the former fish market, the benches on the river) and the paths in the park river, more savage and wild than the first, meant as “third” (cfr. Gilles Clemént). The linear paths and the curved paths articulates to structure the project area and to connect the parts of the city. The infrastructure and the Nature go in to the city and tie up with the architecture, thy relate to each other starting a process of renewal and urban regeneration.

Europaconcorsi Beta

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