(Cesena, 22-30 November 2019)
Announcement of the selection of no. 30 students enrolled starting from the Third year of the Master’s Degree in Architecture who wish to take part in the Workshop entitled ARCHEA. Redesigning the medium-sized European city: the ex-market area of Bologna, which will be held in Cesena, Italy from the 22 to 30 November 2019.
The Workshop, which will see the participation of a total of 30 students (6 from the Master’s Degree in Architecture of the University of Bologna – Cesena Campus, ITALY, 6 from the Faculty of Architecture of RWTH Aachen, GERMANY, 6 from the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of Technology, POLAND, 6 from the Master’s Degree in Architecture of the University of Parma, ITALY, 6 from the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Normandie, FRANCE) will be carried out in English and will involve a project for a defined area of the city of Bologna.
The students of different nationalities will tackle the project under the guidance of a tutor. The Workshop will include design activities, lessons and lectures, discussions, and collective reviews of the project. The final results will be assessed by a jury of lecturers, and will be displayed in an exhibition which may travel to the other universities involved and will be included in an international Open Access publication.
The Workshop, financed by the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for higher education, requires obligatory attendance from 23 to 30 November and schedules the first two days of activity in Bologna (arrival expected in Bologna on 22 November, transfer to Cesena on 24 November with departure from Cesena on 1 December).
Participants will be awarded a Certificate of Participation and will receive the ECTS credits provided by each single degree of study.
Participants will be selected by a commission of lecturers in design from each Master’s Degree. The selection will be made on the basis of university education, evaluation of a portfolio containing the main designs made to date and an individual interview.
TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SELECTION, SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER AND SEND A MAIL TO archea@unibo.it BY OCTOBER 15, 2019.
THE MAIL MUST CONTAIN YOUR REQUEST TO PARTICIPATE IN THE WORKSHOP, THE CV AND THE PORTFOLIO OF PROJECTS IN PDF FORMAT.
THE EMAIL WILL BE FORWARDED TO THE NATIONAL MEMBER PARTNERS WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF THE SELECTION OF THE STUDENTS.
Scientific Direction
Lamberto Amistadi, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Cesena Master’s Degree in Architecture; Uwe Schröder, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, Faculty of Architecture; Tomasz Bradecki, Politechnika Slaska, Faculty of Architecture; Enrico Prandi, Università degli Studi di Parma, Master’s Degree in Architecture; Valter Balducci, Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Normandie.
Coordinated and curated by
Lamberto Amistadi
Methodological premise
The ARCHEA project is based on a fundamental premise, namely the recognition of the quality of the Open Space of the European medium-sized city.
Starting from this premise the project establishes an operational comparison between the historical-monumental fabric, the density, the compactness and the spatial continuity of the historical center of the city, on the one hand and the criticality of the peripheral areas, on the other.
This comparison is established through re-drawing. Each ARCHEA project partner is called to re-drawn both the historical center and the study area of the outskirts of Bologna according to its specific approach, ie selecting the elements through which to build an intentional image of the city.
These images will be available on the project's Open Access website by September and will be the base map material for the Architectural Design Workshop.
Learning/teaching activity and research
The Architectural Design Workshop is part of the Intensive Activities for higher education learners foreseen by the ARCHEA project.
It follows the priorities of the renewed EU agenda for higher education, which, in addition to a generic improvement of the student's disciplinary skills, provides for a) “activities based around real-world problems”; b) an integrated educational project, in which the students are involved in the research activity, which is itself “as input for teaching”.
A) This means tackling the project of a specific study area that brings into play real problems but at the same time this project can take on a more general exemplary value in the approach to design of the contemporary city.
The study area in question is that of Bologna's former fruit and vegetable market, between the Navile canal and the Bolognina district. Its interest derives from the proximity to the historical center of the city, on the one hand and with the indeterminacy of its current configuration, on the other.
The area has been the subject of numerous studies and design reflections largely aimed at giving the vast surface the qualities and character of a "city part", starting from the master plan of 1889.
Download the volume "Il Mercato: una storia di rigenerazione urbana a Bologna"
Fondazione Innovazione Urbana: Navile Market
Structural Plan of Municipality:
Dowonload the infrastructural plan of mobility
Download the plan "Città della ferrovia"
Historical evolution of the area:
- 1884-89: Master plan of the city, extension of the city to the north of the railway with a regular grid of 100x140 meters blocks and an average height of four-storey buildings;
- ’30s: the area between the Bolognina district and the north-south railway is destined to the fruit and vegetable market (entry to the market with the water-guard tower, Nervi shelter);
- 1985-89: General urban development plan, provides for the relocation of the market, allocating the area to an important redevelopment and mending area of the urban peripheral fabric;
- 1996: Arranged urban plan by Ricardo Bofill. The project, in addition to including the station, reviews the entire northwest quadrant of the city, providing for the saturation of the ex-market with the continuation of the orthogonal grid of the nineteenth-century Bolognina;
- 2001-03: Detailded plan with the provision of the north-south road link between the historic center and the former market area;
- 2005: Market Workshop, workshop of participatory urban planning of the former market.
The results of the Market Workshop lead to a project that includes, among other things, the maintenance of the existing entrance to the market and the Nervi shelter, relations with the park of Villa Angeletti and with the Navile canal, the connection with the joints of the central station on an urban and metropolitan scale (High Speed), the construction of the new municipal offices.
To cope with the critical issues represented by the lack of green spaces, places for socialization and collective life, problems related to mobility and traffic crossing, the degradation caused by the abandonment of the ex-market area, the project foresees the functional and typological mixité:
- Housing 92,503 sqm (including 6,500 square meters of student residence)
- Offices, commerce 17.159 sqm
- Public facilities 15.700 sqm (hostel 2.000 sqm, school 4.200 sqm, clinic 6.150 sqm, gym 850 sqm, social center Katia Bertasi 1.300 sqm)
- Public parking 19.100 sqm (circa 750 posti auto)
- Public green space 106.000 sqm
B) By definition, the architectural design process is a circular process, in which the research/teaching activity starts with an analytical intention, represented by the different approaches or “styles of analysis” (Gargani, 1993) and ends with the final defined form. The 5 different approaches regarding the Open Space of the European medium-sized city correspond to initial hypotheses that are integrated and verified in the experimental-laboratory phase (the Architectural Design Workshop) and finally produce new theoretical-analytical, transmissible and disseminable results.
These results will not be evaluated with respect to the fulfillment of quantitative-functional requirements or on specific formal qualities, but rather on the internal coherence of the relationship between premise (analysis-re-drawing) and outcome (urban design).
In this way, the relationship between teaching / learning activity and research takes place on a double track:
- Comparison between initial hypotheses and outcome
- Comparison between the historic center and the periphery
The aim is to verify the possibility of reassuming, critical situations, the suburban surroundings, the conditions of morphological characterization and liveability typical of historical urban nuclei.
At this point it is permissible to ask ourselves: should we reconsider the suburban settlement in the key of the historic city, between density and formal articulation, or turn to other compact city models that have nonetheless been tried and realized in the experience of modernity? Or again, might there exist a third way to marry these often contrasting models according to a dialectic operation that also takes into account the contextual peculiarities of each city?