INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP III: Fertile grounds emergent ecologies and commons

In the search for new fertile grounds in the urban fabric, the Intensive International Workshop will focus on strategies of landscape osmosis and revitalization.

The workshop is aiming for ‘new fertilities’, both in a conceptual and in a literal meaning, in order to insert landscape values and social interaction in post-industrial environments or in urban environments in transformation.

picture by Sara Bartumeus

Having as an initial and experimental purpose to redefine the borders between the urban and the natural, the workshop will investigate sustainable solutions for livable human ecosystems.

Landscape design as a philosophy of urban transformation is able to reconnect and act as a creative mediator for the community’s expressions.

 

How can the landscape project—with ecology and commons as design tools—reinforce the identity of a neighborhood? Is a landscaped public space a fertile canvas for human social performances and actions? Could new centralities be ‘seeded’ by cultivating urbanity and commons in post-industrial or peripheral districts? Through the design of intermediate natures as infiltrating systems, the workshop aims to reveal opportunities for landscape connections and community networking in the neighbourhood of Poblenou.

By re-connecting people, nature and fabrics, the landscape design project—with ecological emphasis and goals—can become a catalyzer for improving livability and for recovering/reimagining the district’s sense of place.

 

METHODOLOGY

The students’ groups will research on:

• detecting “cracks” in the urban fabric that could act as catalysts of public space’s reactivation: discover hidden-unclaimed landscapes, neglected public spaces, interstitial spaces
• crossing scales: from the larger scale of the district to the intermediate scale of the various

neighbourhoods, and to the smaller one of each specific urban “episode”

• dealing with connectivity issues: establishing movement and circulation’ s hypothesis to reinforce

people’s the appropriation of the non-built environment by establishing networks

• revealing potential district’s commons that could claim back the built environment in favor of the

citizens

• reinforcing the genius loci of the neighborhood, the local atmosphere and the memory of the place
• proposing a new materiality and alternative scenarios to impervious urban surfaces
• implementing ecological – bioclimatic design strategies- Sustainability