LANDSCAPE URBANISM / GROUNDLAB IN NAVARRA

AALU/Groundlab exhibitions is open at the School of Architecture in the Universidad de Navarra. The show will open from 12.05.2006 to 29/05.2008 and features the research based work of Ma Course Landscape Urbanism altogether with the professional approach to city design by Groudlab collective. Landscape Urbanism exhibition shows a selection of the student production during the years 04-05 (based in Mexico City), 05-06 (based in Sri Lanka) and 06-07 (based in Dubai-Oman), as well as several competitions form Groundlab including the winning entry for Longgang city masterplan.A lecture will be closing the event on the 29 of may at the Aula magna ETSAUN.

LECTURE RESCHEDULED

LANDSCAPE URBANISM LECTURE SERIES

Architecture today is obsessed with icons. To be iconic or not to be, that is the question for more and more architects. But as we get accustomed of seeing our weekly starchitect masterpiece announced for Astana, Dubai or Taipeh, we wonder whether the contemporary architectural spectacle has a mission that goes beyond celebrating the egos of the client and the architect – what about program, place, politics? If it is true that the icon building is an inevitable condition for the possibility of architecture today – because it is seen as architecture’s unique selling proposition in our neoliberal economy – couldn’t architecture define a more active stance toward the icon, appropriating it rather than succumbing to it? While the icon so far mainly serves as a propaganda tool to affirm the self-image of power-hungry corporations and political dictatorships, it could in fact be cast as generator of social space – a performative environment of a democratic society, rather than a dubious monument of control. For this, however, it will be necessary for architects to apply the iconic no longer to the object, but to space. Public space, for a change.

AALU_GROUNDLAB_METROPOLI WORKSHOP, SITGES, SPAIN

Landscape Urbanism students and Groundlab members finalised a one week intensive workshop in Sitges trying to come up with readings of the territory and new ways of re thinking the future of this coastal city in Catalonia. The event is part of a long term engagement of AALU + Groundlab with the Fundacion Metropoli, which fosters innovative research and cutting edge practice in urban design and planning. The work was presented and discussed with the Major of Sitges and other key decision makers during a final presentation. (images attached).

“[Scenarios] combine the rigour of theory and statistics with the essential flair and imagination necessary to the future of multifaceted issues embracing economy, society and the environment… Decision makers frequently blend scenarios …to generate hybrid policies…Used in this way the power of evidence based scenarios lies only partially in their accuracy: more significant is their capacity to stimulate ideas” Carrington, K. Alison McIntosh and Jim Walmsley, The Social Costs and Benefits of Migration into Australia. Department of Immigration and Citizenship. 8/8/2007
http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/social-costs-benefits/index.htm

12 PUBLICATIONS FOR LU

A dozen architectural publications (both paper and online) have recently shown a growing interest for the work done by Groundlab in the recently awarded competition entry for the development of Longgagn City Centre Regeneration.
PRINTED: Poloxigen (Australia), 306090 (USA), New Geographies (USA), Arca (Italy), diseñart (Spain), Mark (Holland), AJ (UK), AA Projects Review (UK)
ONLINE: Plataforma urbana (Chile), E-architect (UK), Baunetz (Germany), Arcprospect (International)

DEEP GROUND PROJECT MOVES FORWARD

Members of Groundlag chaired a five day workshop organized in Longgang and Shenzhen with the objective of pushing forward the development of Deep Ground Masterplan into the next design stage. The event included different stakeholders and decision makers within the political landscape of Longgang, as well as academics form ShenZhen University and members of Groundlab and InGame. The design team conducted a series of talks and discussions around strategic issues regarding design and management of public space, design concepts such as thickened ground and relational urbanism as well as infrastructure constraints.

LONGGANG CITY WINNER: DEEP GROUND

Deep Ground project designed by Groundlab Collective, has recently won the design competition for Longgang Centre and Longcheng Square international competition. The project deals with the regeneration of 11.8 Km2 of the urban fabric in the centre of Longgagn, north east of ShenZhen in the Pearl River Delta, with estimated population of 350,000 and 9,000,000 m2 of new development. The design of the project is strongly based in the methodology currently proposed by Landscape Urbanism, ranging form spatial concepts such as thickened ground, bottom up approach to reading the territory and deployment a relational urban design models. Collaborators for the competition stage include Arup ILG providing input in the infrastructure and InGame as local office.

http://www.groundlab.org/

DEEP GROUND: URBAN VILLAGE MANAGEMENT

The urban villages are a central part of Longgang district but also provide the site with certain characteristics and differentiation which will be the key for the success of the city as a whole. There is a set of urban villages which have been identified as potentially interesting to be preserved. This project proposes the use of these areas as part of a strategy for generation of various brands across the site. The purpose would be to facilitate as much as possible a similar process to the previously mentioned in the Dafan Oil Paining village effect. In order to do this, a research process should take place during later stages of development, which would include consultation and engagement with local communities to try to understand which are these potential themes or anchoring brands which would emerge out of the villages.

DEEP GROUND: LANDSCAPE AS INFRASTRUCTURE

Longgang River is located at the heart of Longgang city but is radically separated from the it with no interaction or relation apart from being used as a back yard and wastewater sewer The infrastructural landscape project used this contradictory condition to propose the recovery of the river triggering the revitalization not just of banks and surrounded areas but of the whole city , driving the landscape strategy, greenery and river as one interactive and in­terconnected system. The infrastructure designed along the river will serve as an anchor point to deploy cleansing strategies, rainwater collection and flooding defence while creating green areas, ecological corridors, public open spaces, sports fields and leisure areas. The landscape network creates a major frame­work to articulate the urban fabric, the public areas and the infrastructural equipment of the city and will be able to generate a great variety of programmes which do not exist or are in poor conditions, linking the river to the neighbourhoods and with the city. This in fact will generate ecology inside the city, highlight­ing the presence of the river in the city not just as an aesthetic element but as a strategic, active and vital for the present and future viability of the city.