"Adieu Tristesse"

For architects, planners and designers, cities have turned into testing canvases for solutions that lead to both short and long-term changes. The paradigm shift in the built environment switches the narrative of how the public realm approaches complex challenges related to climate, urban sprawl, mobility, housing, among others. The goal of this competition is to experiment with site-specific case studies that can work as open laboratories to test novel approaches on urban transformation. Participants have complete freedom to outline the program, the overall output and the extents of their proposal. Likewise, the size and complexity of the intervention will be defined by each team according to the needs of that specific neighbourhood, plot, city or community.

This competition does not only encourage designers of radical minds, but also those who can unleash their creativity in the most effective way. This competition, collecting projects from the most ordinary to the most unusual sites, is a proof that urban acupuncture is deemed fitting in any possible context.

In line with the United Nations SDG n. 11 – “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, this initiative pictures new creative and innovative proposals ready to make a worldwide impact.

The current trend in tactical urbanism is to contain urban sprawl and the use of virgin soil by reconsidering and rediscovering existing spaces and places: that is, to operate an urban regeneration that is both requalification and reactivation. Thus, the Borgo of Aquileia Street in Udine (Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy) provided an interesting testing ground.

The project includes the implementation of a bicycle and pedestrian path along the entire street flanking the existing structures, thus integrating numerous green and community gathering spaces. The thematic focus of Adieu Tristesse is a vegetation that tries to impose itself within an environment that was rural (at its origins) and later transformed into a highly populated urban neighborhood. The bicycle and pedestrian path is thus used as a strong design tool to improve the quality of urban life at various levels, operating as a connector and aggregator of city lymph, with the aim of making the city more welcoming and accessible to all, encouraging people to move in a more sustainable way by reducing the use of their private cars, and re-establishing a certain degree of “lost naturality” along a city street that is being transformed from a linear axis to an elongated square.

Spatial usability, well-being, and natural harmony applied to urban infrastructure are all concepts that this project aimed to promote, seeking to move beyond the idea of mere ornamental and aesthetic “beautification” of the environment by embracing the full alliance of architecture, nature, and technology.