First Award | Urban Design
Breathing City
Why do cities exist? Generally, they are aimed to produce health and happiness. To raise culture. To keep nature. Well, isn’t that necessary? And isn’t that enough?
For healthy citizens we require a healthy environment. City is a constantly changing and breathing organism. Stretching and rotating, fluctuating and shivering, rising and declining, thinning and plumping never end here. All these processes are coordinated according to the city calendar.
Participant Name: Anna Andronova
University: Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering
Country : Russia
Breathing city is determined not only by the physical movements, but also by time, light, sound, surface or cyberspace “waves”. Creation and Destruction. A city is pierced by “physical forces” like natural sources and energy and “spiritual forces” like science and arts, which intertwine and create productive clusters. Connection and disconnection processes work in one great wasteless cycle of reusing and rethinking.
Stretching and Compression. The urban environment must consist of adaptive architecture, responsive to the environmental changes and human needs. There are different rhythms of changing, from day-night (earth) cycles, ebb- flow (moon) cycles to summerwinter (sun) cycles.
Exterior and Interior. Artificial nature condenses on the bottom and unfolds to public spaces on the top. Balance of density and sparcity of material change the nature of experience the city.
Dream and Memory. City exists in the eternal union of old and new. It keeps information about history.
Natural and Artificial. A human has two opposite inspiring sources: nature and culture. They both are blurred in one great megapark – web of public spaces, offering unique experience for each citizen.
Physical, Emotional and Intellectual. The key to happiness lays in balance of these spheres. The city should give that opportunity to its citizens.
On the extremely dense areas appear urban nodes, or “chakras”. The pulse of the city is beating right there. Each of them caters for a specific prevailing purpose, but with the remaining opportunity to transform and keep functional balance. Chakras have a multidimensional perception: a point, a line, a surface, a volume and time. Breathing city promotes culture of a daily change, where each day is unique and important.
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