Paper - Pause and think - ECLAS - Hamburg (D) 2013

“Pause and think on/over ruins” paper presentato alla conferenza internazionale “ECLAS 2013”, pubblicato nel 2014 in “Specifics: discussing, landscape, architecture”, di C. Sörensen e K. Liedtke per Jovis, Amburgo (D).

Autore: Chiara Sonzogni Data: settembre 2013

PAUSE AND THINK ON/OVER RUINS COLLECTIVE APPROPRIATIONS AND LANDSCAPE PLANNING

KEYWORDS: Experimental /// micro-urban plans /// ruins /// opportunity /// quality

The object of this debate is the present and visible loss of balance in the system of the urban landscape, which is meant as a live being, made up by networks and symbiotic contradictions.

The decay emerging from the urban fabric calls out for explanations while solutions are being explored to provide the basis of quality in urban life. In order to do this a critical analysis of the present situation, which dwelled on every feature, is needed. Therefore, now is the time for changing approaches: large scale land organization plans will need to go alongside land management schemes to allocate resources and take microurban plans into account.

The need will become an opportunity to take care about small details and nuances; the decay itself may become, through interpretation, the potential solution - a blank paper available to anyone willing to intervene on the urban system, to draw the lines of change.

Portugal is experiencing urban landscape decay due to a large emigration which sees small and medium town and major city centers abandoned. The need to curb this growing trend is generating creativity and ferment in the most disadvantaged environments which provide fertile ground for debates. Oporto and Guimarães strategically experimented spontaneous and temporary use of small-scale abandoned places, simple interventions which stimulated reflections upon the way to act on the urban landscape. Indeed, setting the basis for the town to get in touch with its fragile places, a debate opened on the importance of quality void spaces as an opportunity for the town to pause and think on the regenerative potential of its undefined being and its micro-intervention being collective and self-managed.

I intend reflect on the permanent traces left by temporary interventions in the urban landscape and in the way of living it. I would present the results of the projects, realized in 2011/2012 in ruined spaces and decadent surrounding in the city of Porto, Aveiro and Guimarães, and their effects produced on the environment and on people involved.

In fact, caring about the damage to the urban fabric and alleviating the fragility underlining its potential, you find out that the urban landscape is shaken by the sensitivity of the people who live in it. Simply offering a void place generated in a small surrounding of a few hundred meters various single and collective reactions. This lead to an important change and the effects of it set in motion dynamics which beyond being “good or bad” enriching the town, express its needs and give it the courage to start a change from the bottom up. The city is a tailor made suit, made by the inhabitants themselves, therefore they need to receive the instruments to work on it.

Hence the need to think the landscape, as a need and an opportunity to understand and meet the demands of contemporary life. interpreting it in the right way will favour successful interventions, tailored for the town, the neighbourhood or the street.

Starting to live the urban landscape again, assessing it, instead of judging, is the right approach to produce new quality?

Is taking care consciously about the landscape a value?

Is surgically intervening on the landscape, giving oxygen to the urban system, an environmentally friendly strategy?

Is the present crisis of the town an opportunity for redemption?