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Foreword: three connecting themes
Europan wishes to encourage the expression of a certain form of architectural and urban innovation. With each competition, Europan also works toward implementing these prize-winning ideas. To make sure this very complex process is taken into account by the representatives of the sites proposed during this eighth session, Europan organised in November, 2004, in Ljubljana (Slovenia), a forum with the participation of all the cities and city planners concerned. The goal was to engage them in debate, to explore precisely the logic through which this interlacing of multiple representations could take place, through which exchange systems and site variations these ideas are transformed into concrete projects.
This debate is focused on the major themes facing everybody in very diverse urban situations. They must expect innovative responses, sometimes surprising projects, that they will have to manage. These themes can be present in every Europan session: program stakes, questions of scales and relationship between city and nature.
These themes also concern every candidate, and that’s the reason why the synthesis of the three debates held during this Forum of sites offer a broader reflection on the session’s cross-disciplinary framework.
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SCALES OF INTERVENTION: CITY / ARCHITECTURE |
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Didier Rebois, general-secretary of Europan
The second theme, which is about interlacing of different scales within a project, is unquestionably the most transversal because it concerns most of Europan sites, which are proposing at the same time an urban scale, even sometimes a territorial one, and an architectural scale of proximity.
It is without any doubt by taking into account that urban/architectural articulation that these projects may become strategic ones, bringing interesting answers which are playing with these scales, at a time when the division between urban planning and architecture is called into question. The stakes are important, because it’s all about getting out an urban planning of the plan, both technical and functionalist, to introduce another urban planning, which is tri-dimensional and reflects the city in its visible and sensible effects, which integrates both the complexity of what already exists and the scale of time. How to think the territory, how to figure it in its lines of force and articulate the representation of a landscape with that of a group of buildings? In the contemporary city, these perceptional questions regarding a site’s future in its context are related to the question of urban mobilities, which strongly alter the way of thinking and constructing the city.
To illustrate this main problematic, two different examples have been presented during the Forum of sites. The current urbanisation of the city of Copenhagen, which, from a city-suburbs relationship is evolving towards a development in “territorial urban corridors” linked to mobilities, will be presented by Jens Kvorning, urban planner and professor at the Architecture School in Copenhagen. He will show how that the new city « in dots and lines » poses some questions about the relationship between urban form and built-up spaces. Then, basing himself on the prize-winning project for Europan 6 in Villetaneuse, France, Djamel Klouche, from AUC, will introduce an interesting approach to reflect precisely on the city on several scales: structuring line of forces to link the ”islands” born of suburban zoning, limited and flexible operations strategically positioned for urban opportunities. |
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Pascal Amphoux, geographer, teacher, member of Europan Scientific Committee
First of all, talking about scale means talking about a relationship, a connection between two dimensions, a link between reality and its representation, like the cartographic scale, a representation of the territory. But what is the scale of the project, when it doesn't exist yet ? We will have to intersect different scales to express within the project what the territory will be.
But the mere notion of scale cannot be reduced to the spatial question. The urban project characterises itself by the fact that the spatial scales take us back to social development, be it at the neighbourhood level, or at city level, and even at the level of the architectural object which will be meaningful from an usage point of view. In all Europan competitions, one may talk about social scale, not in the sense of social classes, but rather in terms of sociability scale to be taken into account in these projects, and which is dealing with the type of various social interactions in different sites.
The time scales are quite another dimension. The urban project today, in comparison with the classical project, is characterized by a new way of taking time into account, a way of reflecting on the project not in terms of contiguous objects or in terms of zoning a territory as a whole any more, but as a way of promoting some parts of a project which will evolve following different rhythms. |
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COPENHAGEN, SUSTAINABLE MOBILITIES, LINES OF FORCE AND URBAN MORPHOLOGY
by Jens Kvorning, urban planner, professor, Copenhagen (D)
When we are talking about post-modern era cities, we must talk about urban strategies, not as such, but relative to something else. My intention is to make easily the process and the parallel strategies which are currently underway in Copenhagen.
First of all, Copenhagen, historically, is a center city, the old medieval town, then its extension around the first harbour, during the Renaissance. From 1860 to 1960, the city has extended itself introducing new typologies, like the villas which today occupy half to the city’s territory. In the course of the XXth century, the modern city has organized itself around parks and large green open areas.
After the Second World war, and managed on a regional level, following the famous « finger plan », a fingers of a glove plan, according to which the city should develop itself in five lines from the central nucleus. The industrial programs have introduced a quite new scale, several great operations have been rapidly built up, thus creating different zones in several parts of the city. This development was conceived in a dynamic way, as a reflection on the modern city. Today, we are confronted with a problem: how to link this modern city with the historical structure, which is a more static city. From a wider point of view, the question arises to know how the city might assume new structures?
One can say there are two types of cities currently defining themselves and which work on opposite ways: a modern city essentially built around the traffic and a city centre where more than 50% of the traffic is reserved for bicycles and pedestrians. But the improvements in urban organisation have especially affected the suburbs, in an attempt to reach a new quality.
At the end of the Seventies-Eighties, Copenhagen experienced a large industrial crisis, which led to a post-industrial situation. Some vast spaces became voids. And it is from these abandoned industrial sites that the contemporary Copenhagen began to redynamise by transforming itself in a city of another type. Some agreements between the Danish and Swedish governments recently allowed the construction of a bridge linking Denmark to Sweden, and this altered the development process of the city, focused around this new international corridor linking Hamburg to Malmö. And it has been decided on the creation of a new urban district, whose purpose will be to connect the historical and commercial centre to this new corridor.
In the center of Copenhagen itself, a great empty space left out after the abandonment of the harbour facilities allowed the inner renewal of the city, by integrating many new programs. A competition has been launched to look for solutions regarding the harbour, which in the past, has had an all-important economic influence although without integrating itself in the city. To integrate the harbour in the everyday life of Copenhagen inhabitants, it has been decided to establish cultural institutions. Private investors have been invited to intervene to accompany this development of former harbour industrial zones. The government has launched a new competition for the creation of a business centre, with new technologies and a university and research centre. To appeal to the sponsors, the landscaping aspect of the new area has been taken into account as well as public transportation, especially with the construction of a subway line.
To attract inhabitants to the harbour’s site where they were not used to go, the chosen strategy was to establish the architecture, dance and cinema schools as vectors of vitality. Many students going only by bike came to settle themselves in that area. A private company financed a new opera house. All these new activities, essential in the everyday life of a city, found their place around the harbour. Therefore, private investors have been also attracted, the idea being to build up a mixed space, half dedicated to institutions, the other half to dwellings…
But that gentrification tended also to privatise the area and the rich inhabitants wanted to control the public spaces and the choice of activities. The harbour became interesting for the everyday life of the inhabitants thanks to the setting up of a large shopping mall on the harbour waterfront, which welcomes more than four millions customers each year, being not only intended for this new population living on the harbour site.
To connect the new international corridor to the city centre both via the former harbour transformation and the development of a new town, Orestad, today the private real estate market has been approached to build programs to erect a post-industrial city.
The sustainable development have been taken into account with the territories regional planning: the city has made many investments in new infrastructures, motorways connected to railways, creating several intermodal platforms inciting the habitants coming in by car from the suburbs to use public transport only. Sustainable development must be social and cultural also, and it is important to develop some public spaces open to every citizen. We then managed to develop several beaches open to all, and huge investments have been made to purify the harbour waters, in which you may now swim.
Gradually, the harbour has retained a very special meaning and today its usage has become that of a cultural and leisure centre, for everybody’s pleasure. In a few months’ time, it became a very important nodal point, a vital central organ for every citizen. For the city of Copenhagen, the challenge was both to open itself to all socially and to succeed in its post-industrial conversion. |
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Pascal Amphoux: Copenhagen is rapidly transforming itself by evolving from a center / suburbs logic, where the city is developing around its centre, to a logic of development as a way of connection to this new corridor linking Denmark to Sweden. This is the growing mobility of exchanges that gave birth to these new axes of transportation and favoured a task of networking around a new urban line, punctuated by micro-polarities switched on in relation with one another. There has been a change of shape in the city structure. |
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Pierre Pribetich, deputy mayor, in charge of urban planning and great projects, Dijon, France: The mobilities and logics of fluidity, whatever the transportation mode that is used, do generate urban development, but what is the most interesting with Copenhagen, it is also the necessity to have focal points attracting exchanges and thus allowing to have this fluctuation inside the city. Since mention has been made of a notion of scale intervention, on must integrate its capacities so that, in our modern societies, the project could be both supported by decision-makers and the population. This is the role of elected representatives to reconcile “the time of the inhabitants” and “the time of the project” within different scales of intervention, with temporary public authorities due to the democratric process.
Con Zaat, urban planning department, city of Zwolle, The Netherlands: Is there in Copenhagen some secondary centres which would have developed in the Sixties and Seventies?
Jens Kvorning: In the Sixties and Seventies, there was construction in the periphery of large buildings, secondary centres where a whole lot of commercial and tertiary activities have been transferred, accompanied by large investments in infrastructures. But ever since then, it is the harbour area that has become the main attractor for investors. And today these developed zones are not receiving any more investment.
In Copenhagen, the problem is that these areas have been developed following a very liberal logic without any strong intervention from public authorities, taking advantage of the parcelling in small suburban conurbation towns with an absence of regional power able to maintain the control of urban development.
Mia De Coninck, architect, urban planner for the city of Kirkenes, Norway: When did you acknowledge the construction of a bridge towards Sweden? Has the city been able to react in time? |
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Jens Kvorning: The creation of that area linking the city with the new communication line Copenhagen-Malmö was initiated by the national authorities. The municipality has shown itself a bit slower to understand and perceive the real significance of the new city structure.
Alain Coquet, Europan France Secretariat: What consequences did this complete renetworking of the city have?
Jens Kvorning: It all depends on the market’s reaction. There has been a time in Copenhagen when every private investor never wanted to invest in anything else than offices, because they could not see profit anywhere else. But this approach has changed and several new housing programs appeared, destined to form new residential zones financed in great part by private investments. We evolve towards a more balanced solution between different functions in the city. We currently see a very intensive “gentrification” of certain council housings areas which are transforming themselves, comparable with many other large regional centers. It’s one of the effects of planning to counter this trend by using the public spaces to attract the city’s inhabitants.
Pascal Amphoux: The change of scale thematic is in fact the thematic of the articulation of these scales regarding a strategic objective. At the territorial level of the metropolis, between Copenhagen and Malmö, this strategy is orienting itself towards a logic of corridors and clusters, around lines that become the catalysts of development. They are networking between different polarities. But if we focus on another scale, namely one of proximity, inside the corridor itself, there are more architectural scale programs, catalysts of a development, be it the university or several other major facilities. And it is this interlocking of levels, from the territory to architecture, which is interesting.
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VILLETANEUSE : FROM ZONING TO URBAN DYNAMICS BY Djamel Klouche, AUC, Prize-winner Europan 5, architect and town planner
The project, for which we have been prize-winners of Europan 5, is located in Villetaneuse, a small town in the north of Paris, with 11,000 inhabitants, on the interface between the dense part of the inner suburbs and the most suburban part of the Ile-de-France region bordering towns. The sector in competition was very special, a planned complex of the sixties/seventies, with a university, a very present element on the site, another complex of subsidised housing, the Cité Allende. The city centre is deploying itself more to the north. A freight railroad line intersects the two parts of the city, and in the years to come this line should become a public transport line for passengers, plus a streetcar on a separate site, from suburb to suburb. The question posed by the Europan competition was to know how to take advantage of two new infrastructures to come, the train station and the streetcar to Saint-Denis, as a way to redynamize the urban development of Villetaneuse.
I would retain a word from the previous debate, which is “urban corridor”, a central theme of our project, called the « anti-Potemkine corridor », a reference to Potemkine, general of Catherine II, the empress of Russia, who put up fake cardboard building facades to give the impression the Empire was thriving in a sound way.
Our first hypothesis of work has been that it was not necessary, around that new transport infrastructure, the streetcar, to build a kind of fake urbanized wall, an urban frontage masking the heterogeneity of all its bordering fragments. For us, the true question, more complex, but also more interesting, was to know how to precisely manage several spatial and temporal scales.
The competition, won in 1999, was legitimized by the quick implementation of this tangential line and by the tramway. Yet, five years later, none of them have been built, and their implementation has been postponed, 2008/2009 for the streetcar and 2012 for the train. This tends to prove that the temporal dimension of this project is essential.
There is a scale that has been not very much discussed so far, the scale of responsibilities, because several players were intervening on the site, the lesser of the subsidised housing complex, the railroad public utility, namely the SNCF, which is carrying out specific reflections on this tangential line, the municipality of Villetaneuse, which wants once and for all connect its city centre with the university, with its 14,000 students. In Villetaneuse, there are more “inhabitants” in the university than in town, and that fact only explains very well how difficult this urban context is. Thus, that little suburban town suddenly finds itself with a rather important infrastructure that is not adapted to its size and standing, and this may create some conflicts, particularly in terms of services and organisation of the city. The last player is Plaine Commune, a community grouping several towns in the area, responsible of the development on a large scale.
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When we superimpose the different responsibilities, the temporal scales and the spatial scales, the mega structure of the Seventies with small detached house and allotments, one realizes that everything is working by fragmentation.
Our first hypothesis was to say that the plan is not the most efficient tool to manage all these elements. Therefore, the urban schemes that we produced are not plans, even if the question was to reflect on a way to connect and recompose this territory. On this perimeter, we have 70% empty space. In that very marked landscape, it was difficult to imagine a plan able to absorb 70% of empty spaces. Thus we preferred to work by locating on site micro polarities already present there, generating usages and urbanisation. In fact, our original hypothesis, which with time does not reveal itself as a youthful indiscretion, was that we should inhabit time. The urban project in this area could not be implemented if not in a progressive way and in a relatively long period on time. We could not imagine a finished project that would come to superimpose itself all of a sudden.
After the competition came the time to confront reality, this time of the relationship with the players through a large scale operational study, conducted with Europan France on one part, Plaine commune, the Municipality and the Public Institution. But simultaneously, Plaine commune launched a new competition, on a larger scale than Europan’s competition, to reflect on a great urban universitary project and to know how to connect the city and the university and to put together a new centrality around that future station. Although we did participate in it, another urban planner has been selected and implemented the master plan on which the rest of our work was due to base itself. And the site we finally have been granted to study was dedicated in a great extent to the question of housing. Despite this change of direction and that new territorial distribution, we tried to keep up with our first principles, to see how, in this geography of very planified objects, we might install a new urban dynamic, a new mix, that could prefigure and accompany the arrival of new infrastructures. It resulted clearly enough with a new typology, made of attractors and their links between them.
In a second phase, we essentially worked on a central islet, which will accommodate about sixty dwellings.
Today, the corridor has some limits very clearly defined, between the university and the city, with the localisation on the universitary side of new facilities and, on the Cité Allende’s side, an Employment House is establishing itself, in articulation with the streetcar stop. In that urban, more homogenous vision which has been given to us, our idea is to install interstices of dwellings at the angle of the Cité Allende and to reflect on the frontage of the corridor. We just formulated the idea of housings with integrated services, displayed on the public space like a little domestic polarity.
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In parallel with that housing ensemble, we have studied the question of a reversal of the existing facilities towards the corridor and the exchange centre to come. At the moment, the communal pool is turned towards the railroad, but we gave it an active frontage
For the community pool, not oriented towards the railroad, we gave it an active frontage, combined with housing which would arrive on top of it. Closer to the city centre, we propose once again that the shopping mall should open its main frontage to the corridor. At the time of the competition, we started off more with a strategy of discussion between all the partners than from a frozen urban plan. Today, we are getting a very different plan, but we maintain the idea that we need to sustain and liven this new corridor of life with small things, very simple things, because we are not on a site of development, attracting private investments, but rather on a site in decrease. We try to propose a strategy to reverse that trend with time.
On the architectural scale, in the housing program, we preserve some east-west transparencies, according to the historic city pattern, starting from alleys that insert themselves in the current landscape. The buil-up height is low, R+3 maximum, to satisfy a very strong politic will, despite a very strong density. The tightened typologies form duplexes, superimposed houses with terraces gardens giving a form of alternative density to the existing one in the social housing estate nearby. We identified a contractor for these 60 dwellings, and it only remains to implement this project on site.
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Bernard Reichen, architect and town planner, Paris, member of Europan Scientific Committee: This is a very interesting project, because it shows a new state of mind related to the questions of the territory city around very different scales, between macro-territorial scale and a more localized scale. This is an essential role, for that laboratory called Europan, being able to create a link between these scales through the methodologies and approaches of the projects.
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Damaly Gastineau-Chum, project leader, Plaine-Commune: It is true that this territory represents a case study, with large public expropriations connected with the university, the Cité Allende, a small rural town at half an hour distance from Paris, which finds itself, in that moment of its history, with projects that will considerably transform the urban landcape and its usages.
The risk is, regarding these great planified projects, these public transportation infrastructures, the development of the university with large facilities, considered within five years, would be to maintain purely functional logics, where every contractor taking up its own project and works at his own scale only, at his own pace, in his own temporality. That would increase the zoning phenomenon already experienced by that little town.
That’s the reason why, with all the partners involved, it has been decided to set up a strong urban contracting policy to complete a reference scheme that could act as an organization guide while preserving, when reaching the operational stage, the necessary flexibility as a way to avoid any discrepancy with reality.
The master plan which has been approved is extremely defined, but not frozen. The main urban project’s cornerstones have been laid out, the streetcar line, the creation of the station and the multimodal exchange platform between the north side and the south side of the city, and a large public space serving as a base for the future implementations to come.
After validation of that general intentions scheme, it appeared to us that we still had some strong interrogations about the best way to implement facilities and housing programs and, above all, to know where to position them. We found it interesting to summon the prize-winning team for Europan 5, which had reflected on the notion of multiple attractive centres, because we are not in a town with a unique attractive city centre. How to create an environment radiating from clearly identified micro activities. Therefore we have asked the AUC about the programmatic structure to go with the arrival of these transportation infrastructures.
The project presented here has received an unanimous agreement between the different partners and authorities. We have identified a contractor for that operation, and we gave the project management for the implementation of these 60 dwellings as a start to the prize-winning Europan 5 team.
But that work is not ending there, because the matter of the urban programmation was much broader, and we continued to reflect with them about the water sports club reversal, the setting up of new facilities, among others a multimedia library, a congress hall which the city and the university are lacking of. These facilities will compose some new micro polarities that will benefit to various usages, and also to the academic world, with also an opening to the population which feels today a little bit kept in the background of this development.
The issue at stake is evolving at different scales, that of the global territory of Plaine commune, which accommodates two universities, that of Villetaneuse, an ex-rural town now looking for an identity. Although it welcomes 14,000 students, it is not a university town, because the university lives in autarcy. And finally there is the micro polarities scale, to create new social and urban links, which will come along those lines of forces, namely transportation infrastructures.
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Debate with the representatives of sites
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Rodolphe Luscher, architect and town planner, president of Europan Switzerland: The Europan competition is a contest whose goal has always been that young architects and planners could propose an urbanistic reflection, with a more specific sector where they demonstrate their capacity to evolve towards feasibility. That’s the reason why I wish that the contractors involved in Europan 8 might, as far as possible, continue with the winner, with the runners-up, on the trail opened by an abstract thought to go towards reality. Following Europan 5 example, I am asking myself how, starting from the project in competition, a deliberate strategy born of an intelligent and clear knowledge of the site, we could finally produce a master plan so classic, even rigidly set, even if today, through architecture, the winning team might find back again a position in this plan at first sight contradictory with their approach.
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Bernard Reichen: The master plan produced in Villetaneuse is typical of an urban attitude where everything is designed, everything is calculated, where one is looking for balanced solutions between what will be to sell and what will be bought… This is the way some practise urban planning since twenty years or so. But the difference here is that this urban planning is inscribing itself in the framework of a new development method, more flexible, more open to negotiation, a mixture of compromises and relationships private / public. The strength of AUC has been to introduce a logic of streams, a dynamic logic, managing uncertainty in an urban plan which acts as if it doesn’t exist. And little by little, that kind of approach find its place in urban planning. These two attitudes are just five years apart only. Europan’s evolution towards urban issues properly relates urban issues evolution, linked with uncertainties, with a dynamic management of the project. I am extremely optimistic because I think Europan is in some extent the advanced post of this urban reflection. We mus explain to municipalities and elected officials that Europan is taking place in that dynamic vision of urban function and urban management, and that this is the place where to take advantage of it. One should not use it like a classical operational competition, without that large melting pot of ideas and that European debate.
Djamel Klouche: I think that regarding the urban project, with production of ideas by Europan on one hand, and cities and players on the other hand, it is necessary to build a framework to manage the issues generated by the competition. There are quite a large number of Europan sites which are very complex, where the question is not to simply design 50 or 60 dwellings, but rather to know how to settle all those problems of programs, of networks, of multiple partnerships, thus urban problems. We should set up a fairly precise methodology, through that time of the urban study, after the competition, that time of uncertainty. The contractors are often in need of certainties to go further, but I think we must find the space and time that will allow to manage that interface between a complex urban scale and the scale of operational architecture.
Pierre Pribetich, deputy mayor, in charge of urban planning: To come back to that subtle issue of the relationship between the analysis carried during the competition and the realization stage, one must remind that a project is never rigidly set, it must always be evolving. It has been pointed out by the prize-winner that between the time of reflection and the time of a plan’s implementation, several evolutions were followed in parallel by all the players involved. The great interest of that kind of reflection is to follow elements and fundamentals through, but one must not see the implementation like an erosion of the project and the reflection, but rather like the necessity of adaptation. First of all, urban planning is truly a reflection, some concepts which are shuffled and articulated, but it is also the translation at any given moment, by the contractors, of operational projects which take into account the evolution of the situation on site. An operational program, it’s a multiplicity of players, and among them the inhabitants, who have also their own requirements to take into account. Therefore, concertation is of utmost importance, because it allows the plan to evolve.
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Bernard Barre, urban planning department manager, La Courneuve: In Villetaneuse, we are in a situation of very strong land depreciation that allows the public authorities to take their time, to organize processes that reveal themselves too long. We may deal with very diverse urban situations, where there is a sudden increase in value of private property. In La Courneuve, very important industrial expropriations are appearing today on the market, with a very strong pressure. Then our difficulty is to find the time of urban project’s complexity, because the players do not have that time for themselves. |
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