REFLECTIONS
STRATEGICAL APPROACH The Municipality’s idea of creating a green belt that can feed and relieve in the same time the hustle and bustle of this traffic orientated city was branched from a previous urban development stage of the city. In the past, the Municipality wanted to develop along the ring road a complex average rise residential area formed by big concrete blocks, but unfortunately for that period and fortunately for today they didn’t achieved their goals, fact that enables them today to readdress the empty areas in the extend of creating an enormous green belt that is going to surround the city. The West 8 approach was following their intentions and in this way we wanted to create new addresses for the existing residential areas, but also for the new development. Moreover, the first project phase consisted in developing a unitary concept that was folding both the landscape design of the new green belt and the urban design in the shape of creating new urban neighborhoods. In the second phase the main focus was of developing a coherent master plan in terms of achieving through the design these visual and cultural connections between the surroundings and the new green belt. The third phase was based on the detailing of a certain area from the master plan, brief that was decided by the Municipality by splitting the master plan in important pieces between all the participants (6 architectural and urban designing studious). The fourth phase is more focused on the details, after which only one of the participants will be declared the winner.
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EXPERIENCES ON THE WAY