2010 Urban change : The prospect of transformation

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/1789

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Browsing 2010 Urban change : The prospect of transformation by Author "Durate, Rui"

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    DSR : Sound and space
    (AESOP, 2010) Durate, Rui; Gubic, Ilija; Jankovic, Natasha; Moritz, Suzanne; Tusinski, Olivia; Wolff, Manuel
    ‘What? What did you say? I can’t hear you. Please repeat!’ Wrocław’s downtown road is an example for such a statement. The city planned the new ring road (DSR) to remove traffic from the inner city and connect the eastern inner city with the west, partly on existing congested roads, partly on new segments which will increase noise levels. How do people deal with noise in daily life? How does traffic noise influence the use of adjoining spaces? Our proposal concentrates on noise and how to treat sound as a positive feature of spatial strategies. Will the ring road become an insuperable divide of the urban fabric and communities, including through noise, or could it become an opportunity to improve the quality of spaces alongside? Traffic noise is disturbing older housing along the road in the east and travels through neglected open spaces between tower blocks to affect low rise housing in the west. Traffic noise is overpowering many different sounds: conversations between people, church bells, rock music from garages along the road. Conversely, green spaces further apart are rather calm where voices of people can be heard and even animals.
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    Industrial heritage: Hutmen
    (AESOP, 2010) Durate, Rui; Gubic, Ilija; Jankovic, Natasha; Moritz, Suzanne; Tusinski, Olivia; Wolff, Manuel
    Hutmen is a large industrial site of 39,2 hectares located 1,5 km south-west of Wrocław city centre. Established in the early 20th century, the site has been constructed to create better working conditions, health care and amenities for workers. The steel foundry forms the traditional core of industrial activity, accompanied by additional small businesses (manufacturers, radio stations, car services and light industrial). Hutmen’s distinctive industrialism with its central location, distinctive architecture, excellent transport connections to the city centre, city bypass, and airport, public transport infrastructure has become a heritage interest. Preserving industrial and light industrial functions, the relocation of the steel foundry has become a priority for both the company and the city ranging from high rise to detached housing and services of Wrocław. The site is surrounded by vast garden landscapes (allotments) and Grabiszyn neighbourhood with 14.000 residents.
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    Wrocław filling in the gaps
    (AESOP, 2010) Durate, Rui; Gubic, Ilija; Jankovic, Natasha; Moritz, Suzanne; Tusinski, Olivia; Wolff, Manuel
    This group took an original narrative approach to under¬stand Wrocław and its regional con¬text as a basis for their proposals of desirable change. The narrative – of which an extract is given below – was interspersed with the description of Wrocław and its re¬gion, included in the introduction to the third student task of understanding Wrocław as a whole and addressing overall city structure. Wrocław has a clear typology of urban patterns, each with its advantages and gaps which influence economic, social and cultural opportunities. The city centre provides spaces for diverse intermingled economic and social activities. A second typology consists of modernist tower block housing estates with vast open spaces between them where social interaction is taking place despite the surroundings. The third major typology consists of linear and mono-functional business developments, characterised by large scale building blocks constructed along main roads, isolated from existing surroundings with minimal opportunities for common space and social contact. Linear and large scale development patterns are currently the most common form of development in Wrocław. This new trend can be interpreted as a new form of ‘main street’ writ large, where the car replaces the pedestrian, and the ‘shopping shed’ replaces small scale shop fronts. This fabric has gaps of social interaction and cooperation. The further from the city centre, the more ‘gaps’ become apparent, such as time taken to reach new destinations, larger building blocks preventing penetration, longer gaps between developments, fragmented disconnected land use, such as industrial parks and shopping centres located next to vacant agricultural land, villages from another era, gated business premises and enclosed technology parks.