Tales of the River | E13
Europan 13, Zagreb (HR)
Does the contemporary city still need for public spaces? Can we still think the city as the place of coexistence between the binomial public/private considering its new meaning? Is the emerging and increasing demand of public space a realistic issue, already able to assume the gap compared to the past? Or is this demand only a simplistic way to find a slogan for urban spaces which transformation is no longer convenient, no longer monetized?
We believe the city doesn’t need for public spaces, but still need for collective places. The collective is the category we have to consider (due to the fact that public has lost its original meaning) and the places are what we have to project (due to the fact that space is a concept referring to a Neo-Illuministic echo).
Zagreb and its relationship with the Sava river represent the ideal condition to test reflections and ideas on this issue.
We believe that conceiving the project as a series of punctual and isolated interventions in areas far away each other is not the right answer to the problem.
We believe instead that our task is the project of the whole river. The Sava river can become a great linear collective place, a moving and changing whole made of spaces for collective rituals.
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT PUBLIC SPACE
In contemporary society there is a sort of conceptual dissociation between the increasing attention towards public space and the real understanding of the concept of public.
In the latest years public space has regained centrality in the cultural and political debate due to its becoming the place of representation of conflicts and contradictions of late capitalism (like in the Occupy Movements) on the one hand, but also the place of representation of dissatisfactions and oppositions to totalitarian systems (like in the Arab Springs) on the other hand.
Even though this increasing attention, there is however a undeniable gap between a “real” interpretation of public intended as collective and a “virtual” interpretation of the same concept intended as shared.
The complexity of the concept of public space that, due to its nature, is an amalgam of various and/or opposing interests, explains only partially this dissociation. To understand its real reason, we have to analyze the real cause: the misunderstanding of the dichotomy public/private and its erroneous association with the binomial collective/individual.
The society of late capitalism and the rhetoric of hyper-connection lead us to think that not only is possible but also desirable to make collective our individual experiences. Technology allows us to share our experiences in real time. We can let know easily the books we are reading, what kind of music we are listening to, how much kilometers we run in our weekly workout or how much kilometers we make in our bicycle tour etc. We share daily our ideas and opinions. As Dave Eggers sharply highlights in The Circle, any experiences that today is not made public and shared is considered negative.
The rhetoric of sharing is however based on a voluntary omission. The omission regarding the existing distance between the public and the collective and between the private and the individual. Even though we think simply to make collective what is individual, actually we are making public what is private. In this resemanticization, the binomial public/private has been deprived of its original meaning losing any reference to human condition and preserving only a meaning related to the economic property.
Throughout history the binomial public/private was completely comparable to the binomial collective/individual. In the past the distinction between public spaces and private spaces ratified automatically their belonging to the realm of collective or to the realm of individual. Public space were collective, private spaces were individual.
Nowadays this comparison is no longer possible. By the time public spaces are places where we can carry out personal activities and private spaces are now totally externalized due to a process of continuous sharing. So the binomial public/private is no longer able to describe the real essence of the city. It represents only a mere aspect related to the idea of property that cannot influence the notion of what is individual and what is collective.
Do then contemporary cities still need public spaces? Can we still consider the city as the place of coexistence between the public and the private? Is the increasing demand of public spaces in contemporary architectural debate a realistic issue, or is it only a simplistic way to elude the lack of convenience of new developments in the building sector?
Throughout these questions we ask ourselves about the meaning of architecture and the role of architects in contemporary city. What can we do? How can we act? Must we agree explicitly or implicitly with the power system in force? Or can we take the opportunity of the crisis, often misinterpreted, to re-think the city and explore new trajectories for architecture?
We think that architecture is a political act whose aim is the creation of spaces for people.
For this reason we believe that the city doesn’t need public spaces, but it needs collective places. The collective is the category we consider (where the public has lost its original meaning) and the places are what we project (where the space is only a concept with a Neo-Illuministic echo).
Collective Places.
ZAGREB AND THE RIVER
Zagreb and its relationship with the Sava river represent the ideal condition to test reflections and ideas on this issue.
Zagreb was born and developed far away from the Sava. Its original urban centre was concentrated in the north and when the urban development arrived at the riverbanks in the south, the city was not able to find a new gravitational axis, still clinging to the old core. As a consequence of this incomplete development, even though the Sava river crosses the city all along the west-east direction, however it does not influence anyway the citylife, still remaining a silent and weak presence within Zagreb itself.
In addition to the marginal condition of the river, the four project areas are now abandoned areas. Areas previously addressed to future developments that financial crisis transformed in no man’s land, terrain vague that not only are not able to connect themselves to the city but also create instead a further caesura between the city and the river.
Is then possible, only by intervening in these areas, to give back the river to the city? Is it possible to move the gravitational axis of Zagreb from the north to the south, recreating the relationship between the city and the river like in many others European contexts?
We believe that conceiving the project as a series of punctual and isolated interventions in areas far away each other is not the right answer to the problem. We believe instead that our task is the project of the whole river. The Sava can become a great linear collective place, a moving and changing whole made of spaces for collective rituals.
The project is then composed by a series of moveable interventions. These interventions are conceived as “Characters” that, moving along the river or within the four areas, allow us to tell stories, forgotten stories about the city and its inhabitants.
There are two kinds of characters, the Characters of Water and the Characters of Earth, and due to their nature, they are moveable, itinerant, ephemeral in time and space, but always recognizable.
THE TALES OF THE RIVER
a. The Characters of Water: the Barges of Forgotten Desires
The main part of the new ecology conceived along the Sava is the project of 16 little itinerant interventions, that like in an endless procession, cross the city from west to east, creating continuously new geographies. These 16 interventions are the Characters of our tales, 16 barges of 15X50 meters that represent places for collective rituals, micro-activities conceived as “forgotten desires” of the inhabitants of Zagreb: to see the sunset during summer solstice, to swim in a pool that moves continuously following the river flow, to shelter from the weather watching the flow of life along the water, to climb a little mountain to enjoy the view of the city from the peak, to walk in the shade of palms within a hortus conclusus…
These are then little interventions that avoid the functionalist interpretation proper of the public space, preferring the poetic, imaginative vocation proper of the place.
The barges rewrite river’s geography, showing time after time its different aspects and features.
b. The Urban Rooms and the Characters of Earth (the tower, the trees and the houses of the desired solitude)
The earthly counterpart of the barges is represented by heterogeneous characters that populate the areas along the riverbanks. As the Characters of the Water, they are also moveable and temporary.
The Characters of Earth have their action ground on the land. They move within 4 Urban Rooms located in the riverbanks. These rooms define a category parallel but complementary to the system of the barges and all together they generate the new ecology of the Sava river.
The 4 Urban Rooms are places to rest from the itinerant experience offered by the barges. They are the points of access to the itinerant system but also the places of exchange.
In these places people could get off from a barge and get on another one or they could decide to spend their time there before coming back to the city. People could also consider the 4 Urban Rooms as the main attraction of the ecology and use the barges only as means of transport to travel along the river and to reach the rooms. All the rooms are connected to the river by docks that allow barges to stop.
The rooms are archetypicall and absolute topoi and represent the earthly version of Forgotten Desires. They are from west to east:
- The Wood of Moveable Trees
- All Along the Watchtower
- The Lawn
- The Precincts of the Desired Solitude
