© Ian+ . Pubblicata il 02 Febbraio 2006.

In old Europe, the river rapresent the centre of cities development and public functions on the embankment revitalize the urban space.

© Ian+ . Pubblicata il 02 Febbraio 2006.

Riga has just entered the European Community and it is not difficult to foresee its development on the big scale in the years to come.

© Ian+ . Pubblicata il 02 Febbraio 2006.

The issues linked to traffic and historical center congestion will, in short time, reach the dangerous levels of other European cities. To defend the historical center means to preserve the empty spaces of the embankment ant to think it as a public connecting space.

To defend the open space facing the old town, we thought to enforce the relationship between the historical center and the city on the other riverbank.

We therefore conceived the stone bridge, which is now an infrastructure conveying urban traffic towards the center, as a new functional city extention.

The stone bridge is a link between the two parts of the city and the enmbankment is not just a place to stay, is a connection place.

The re-functionalization of the bridge has been carried out transforming the bridge itself in a building engulfing also public connections.

The bridge, as a building, hosts a library, a museum, a shopping center and some open spaces, allowing a horizontal development of the town of Riga, maintaining its typical skyline and promoting a strategy of public mobility, which enforces on one hand the links between the two parts of the city, and on the other the mobility and transformability more and more characterizing urban life with an analogous transformation of places and their uses.