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Archizoom is pleased to invite you to discover and discuss scenarios and design strategies for the recycling and upgrading of cities-territory

15. Mostra Internazionaledi Architettura

Eventi Collaterali

The ENAC School at EPFL presents a major ongoing research on urban issues for the 15thInternational Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, collateral events.

Developed through the work of renown urbanist Paola Vigano and her team (Lab-U, EPFL) in academic context with students of EPFL, GSD Harvard and IUAV, this project is conceived as an incremental pluridisciplinary research to be enriched by actors called to join the conversation. This exhibition represents a platform for further investigations to identify strategies for the contemporary city.

Friday May 27 at 10:00 - Brunch at Certosa. Opening and press event.

Saturday May 28 at 16:00, 18:00 & Sunday May 29 at 10:00Round tables including Paola Viganò, Rahul Mehrotra, Pierre Belanger, Norman Foster, Ricky Burdett, Stephen Cairns, Danai Thaitakoo, Nina-Marie Lister.

Full programme: http://archizoom.epfl.ch/

The exhibition is held on Isola della Certosa Island, at 10’ of the Arsenale with the free biennale boat schuttle.http://www.ventodivenezia.it/

Contacts: archizoom@epfl.chCyril Veillon +41 79 535 00 53 (English, French, German)Martina Barceloni +39 338 11 50 188 (English, Italian, French)Images: http://archizoom.epfl.ch/press

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Press information

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Horizontal Metropolis - a radical projectCurated by Paola Vigano, Martina Barcelloni Corte and Chiara Cavalieri (Lab-U, EPFL)

Two contrasting terms are joined to conjugate the traditional idea of metropolis (the center of a vast territory, hierarchically organized, dense, vertical, produced by polarization) with horizontality (the idea of a more diffuse, isotropic urban condition, where center and periphery blur).

Beyond a simplistic center/periphery opposition, this concept reveals the dispersed condition as a potential asset, rather than a limit, to the construction of a sustainable and innovative urban dimension.

The exhibition investigates the Horizontal Metropolis, its space, traditions and authors; its relevance today as an energetic, ecological and social design issue. It explores scenarios and design strategies for the recycling and upgrading of cities-territory in a radical project.

The Horizontal Metropolis: a Radical ProjectManifesto, 2014 © Lab U, EPFL

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The researchUrban dispersion has always been an anathema for planners, leading plan concepts like the compact city and the green heart, to reflect on the ideal of separate cities surrounded by green open space; today a wide-ning gap exists between these spatial concepts and reality. The form of the contemporary city has changed, and finds its specific configuration in very different contexts around the world.

The Ville-territoire connecting Geneva to St. Gall, the Città diffusa of Northern Italy, the Desakota in Asia, the Radiant Periphery of the fine grain sett-lement dispersion in Flanders, or the Zwischens-tadt in Germany are just some of the figures able to effectively describe the emergence of a new urban condition increasingly related to the dispersion of the urban fabric in the agricultural landscape and where horizontal rather that vertical relationships characterize and articulate the territory.

Closely interlinked, co-penetrating rural/urban realms, communication, transport and econo-mic systems characterize these complex territorial constructions where agriculture and non-agricul-tural economic activities create an original mix.

In this frame of thinking, the Horizontal Metropolis works as natural and spatial capital and as an agent of transformation, it is a support and place of po-tentiality. Working on the Horizontal Metropolis as a specific spatial condition requires pushing the imagination of the architect and urbanist far from any orthodox way of thinking, away from a blind pragmatism, far from theories clinging to few sim-plified, overriding images.

In the effort to re-imagine and reconstruct a diffe-rent design approach, the specific characters of

the Horizontal Metropolis have played an impor-tant role, revealing new territorial representations, while acting as a mainstay for conceptual shifts. The Horizontal Metropolis is a vision for planetary urbanization where processes of polarization and hierarchization are weakening horizontal networks, disconnecting and marginalizing territories and populations; where no ‘outside’ exists anymore and the urban ecosystem is compelled to offer proof of its sustainability.

Despite the number of important efforts made since the nineties in different countries to give an unbiased reading to these figures of growth (as, for example, the work of scholars as T. McGee, T. Sieverts or F. Indovina), a global attempt of understanding this phenomena, able to build an overall and critical pic-ture of the same, has never been made or attained. Never acknowledged as true and proper cities, these territorial figures have never been analysed in com-parative terms.

For similar reasons there is a dearth of strategic pro-jects, capable of tackling the limits and enhancing the opportunities of these territorial constructions, capable of bridging best practices from different but comparable case studies. A new awareness is thus urgently needed to observe and actively interact with these new forms of urbanization.

HM Tangqi - Reinterpreting DesakotaModel, scale 1:877, detailPhoto © Olivier Christinat / Archizoom

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HM Valais - Rethinking the Alpine City-TerritoryModel, scale 1:877Photo © Olivier Christinat / Archizoom

HM Valais - Rethinking the Alpine City-TerritoryModel, scale 1:877, detailPhoto © Olivier Christinat / Archizoom

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WhoEPFL is Europe’s most cosmopolitan technical university. Centered on its three missions: teaching, research and technology transfer, it works together with an extensive network of partners including industry and eco-nomy, political circles and the general public to bring about real impact for society.

www.epfl.ch

ENAC is the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at EPFL, meeting a wide range of challenges, such as population growth, the formation of megacities, land use pressures, increased demand for energy and transportation, the need for maintenance of the built environment and the management of natural and man-made risk. The ENAC establishes links between the disciplines in order to provide students with the tools required to design and build together.

http://enac.epfl.chMarilyne Andersen (Dean)

LAB -U is the laboratory for urban studies at EPFL, developing teaching studios and research programme based on its fields of expertise such as Urbanism, Research by design, Design thinking, Landscape Urba-nism, Urban and Territorial Design, Public Space

http://lab-u.epfl.chProf. Paola Vigano (dir.), Elena Cogato Lanza, Farzaneh Bahrami,Martina Barcelloni Corte, Simon Berger, Chiara Cavalieri, Marine Durand, Matthew Skjonsberg, Roberto Sega, Quiyi Zhang (visiting).

ARCHIZOOM is is the exhibition space of the ENAC School. It produces and hosts shows, lectures and events all related to architecture that suit both an expert audience and the general viewer.

http://archizoom.epfl.chCyril Veillon (dir.), Jean-Robert Gros, Beatrice Raball, Raquel Gagliano.Graphic design: Giorgio Pesce.

WhereISOLA DELLA CERTOSAThe exhibition is held on Certosa Island, one of the largest of the so-called ‘minor islands’ in the Venice La-goon. An historical and natural heritage of great value, the island is at 10 minutes of the Arsenale with the free biennale boat schuttle, and at 15 minutes from St. Marks’ Square with the Vaporetto lines.http://www.ventodivenezia.it/

Isola della Certosa

Arsenale Nord

Railwaystation

Arsenale Giardino delle Vergini

VdVIsola della Certosa30141 VeneziaTel. +39 041 5208588

Free boat shuttle from Venice biennale Vaporetto lines 4.1 & 4.2

Giardini Biennale