Erasmus + ENABLE - [1:500] - Take Care of a Productive Valley

Erasmus course studio Skopje - Vienna:

Taking Care of the Productive Valley

Design studio course for Master students of Architecture and Design

UACS, School of Architecture and Design + TUWien, Research Unit of Local Planning - IFOER

Teaching staff:

Maksim Naumovski, Pavel Veljanoski, Ivan Mirkovski

External teaching staff:

Magdalena Maierhofer, Kerstin Pluch

Studio participants:

Angela Banchotova, Jana Gochevska, Emilija Lazareska, Tijana Dodov, Dragan Milicevikj, Enxelusha Hoxa, Mejada Kalisi, Dema Elmedina, Hristijan Markovski, Ardita Kadriu, Samanta Rama, Elif Beba, Emilija Naumovska, Igor Chemenkoski, Sibel Alijevska, Denis Izairi, Mila Trajkovska

Supporting small production cycles and holding manufacturing or bringing it back into the inner city urban context, is one of the necessary steps for cities to deal with ecological challenges. By the inwards growth and redensification, resources can be used efficiently and a city of short distances is supported. How can we take care of the productive valley of Prilep? How do care and production determine and shape the city structure and the collective identity? What challenges would Prilep face when the mode of production was changing? How can and shall we deal with social, economic and cultural inequalities? How do we shape a respectful future coexistence of citizens and natural resources? What do the needs and forms of housing and co-living look like in an enormously flexible, individualized and globalized future? What role does the need for and the time for community play? How to translate this into urban design projects?

Exposing problems and questioning what is familiar, exploring familiar paths and presenting new ones, putting theory into practice and researching space, learning proven tools and trying new ones. After successful completion of the course, students are able to analyse an urban planning task in the context of affordable housing / production and care and create an integral solution concept.

Contact zone with the city of Prilep and the productive valley

City

The research and inscription method applied in the cartographic materials aims to render visible the processes of today’s natural and constructed territories as a complex socio-natural contexts. Using them we can analytically observe each cartographic exercise as a pretext and open platform that can be endlessly complemented and precede each new initiative. Confronting the totality of the build and natural territory provides information about the first settlements, social dynamics, implementation of plans, changes in the landscape, etc.

Focus

Railway axis (Veles - Prilep - Bitola)

Strong axis of communication and transport infrastructures emerge as the most evident lines of the current unstable and discontinuous condition of the city of Prilep. Once synonyms for continuities are now only remnants of the idea of networked environments. For us, these lines of infrastructure represent reference points conditioned by spatial sequences of new (local) activities. Spatial sequences absorbing overlapping programs that were once exclusively predetermined to formally hierarchical and monofunctional separated plots. By reviewing the initial ideas of these lines of flows we will try to understand their new function. Therefore we propose a map in which we will synchronically position communication and transport infrastructures from three important benchmark: the 1949 Regulation plan from Vlado Antolich (Urban institute of Croatia), 1969 general urban plan from Slavco Vrencoski (Institute of urban planning Prilep) and the 2013 general urban plan for the city of Prilep (The public enterprise for spatial and urban planning, Republic of Macedonia).

The way they appear and coexist with the local interpretations (programs) allows us to define basic operative trajectories that we want to test in the coming semester.

Direct basic regulation – 1949

General urban plan – 1969

General urban plan – 2013/2023

Urban institute of Croatia, Zagreb / Vlado Antolikj, plan manager

Institute of urban planning, Prilep / Slavco Vrencoski, plan manager

Public company for spatial and urban planning / North Macedonia

Provocation

Prilep is essentially positioned on two european corridors (8 and 10), connected on all axes, east-west and north-south, regardless of whether it is a traffic, telecommunication or electricity connection. But at the same time this connection is also an illusion. The railway axis penetrating the city and connecting its oversized production capacities is rendered obsolete. The railway holds the capacity of two trains per day, and the industrial aerials are being abandoned and scarcely repurposed by small production initiatives. In line with the general effort to support small production cycles and holding manufacturing and bringing it back into the inner city urban context we provoke the idea of the 1969 General urban plan initiative to introduce a shorter route for the regional train travel/transport and re-contextualize the existing infrastructure situated in a decaying industrial landscape

Re-contextualizing the existing infrastructure

Investigation notes

Local interpretation of former massive production areal’s

Intermediate places occur at any point where two different environments meet. They are places of constant transformation and alterations. The research and inscription method we applied in the cartographic materials aims to render visible the processes of today’s natural and constructed territories in a complex socio-natural context. We can then analytically observe each cartographic exercise as a pretext and open platform that can be endlessly complemented and precede each new initiative. Confronting the totality of the built and natural territory provides information about the first settlements, social dynamics, implementation of plans, changes in the landscape, etc. By recording and overlapping the autonomous characteristics of the territory, we tried to develop models of documentation that allow for possible progressive transformations.

The topics and fragments are not definite and suggestive. They aim to show the layers that define the topic in the most intense overlap. At this point, their position is subjective.

#1 Spaces of ambiguity

#2 Welfare condition

#3 Spaces of ambiguity

#4 Natural systems

#5 Inherited adaptive capacity

COURSE RESULTS

Spatial conclusion and recommendations

The results from the investigation of the five particular frames along this recontextualized infrastructural axis describe an extremely rich build environment in the fringes, the contact of the city with its productive valley, an intermediate place. It distinguishes, among other things, levels of scale, natural traces, routes of fluctuation, plot pattern and processes of formation and transformation of buildings and voids. This condition is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is a condition in itself, particular for the infrastructural, morphological and programmatic transformations, on the other, it absorbs and reflects the elements of the city and the territory: regional axis infrastructural, the axis of cultural and productive activities, housing extensions and natural elements. The railway axis, once synonyms to continuity and progress are now connecting a decaying and fragmented industrial landscape intertwined with programmatic diversity and typological diversity that offers potential for an infinite extendable network that creates a wider community while also promoting economic growth.

This continuum of overlapping realms allows us to recommend and underline the future steps that should be taken into consideration by any planning initiative:

Adaptive Reuse recontextualized for the new economic necessities
Infrastructure Reprogramming as circuits of interaction grounded in socio-economic realities
Infrastructure Regeneration as Dynamic environments made up of interesting movements and functional overlaps

Inherited Adaptive Capacities - Adaptive Reuse

We promote heritage that is not limited to stylistic evaluations, chronology or cultural regions; we identified the factories and anonymous buildings as something worth preserving for its functional beauty and the capacity to be recontextualized for the new economic necessities. Functionally non-predetermined, but essentially hybrid.

Territorial Institutions - Infratructure Reprogramming

We promote recalibrated infrastructure networks to accommodate smaller and ideally better futures. These infrastructures are not continuous axes, but rather circuits of interaction grounded in socio-economic realities that confront diminished physical landscapes of disconnected capacities of individual or collective behaviors.

Performative Landscape - Infrastructure Regeneration

We promote landscapes that are operationalized for use, function and architecture that simultaneously demonstrate natural and artificial conditions. Dynamic environments made up of interesting movements and functional overlaps strengthening peripheral villages, agricultural activities and natural systems.