127 development strategy;
- Integrated systems for the rehabilitation in order to recycle the existing architecture must take into account the urbanistic and the landscape context in close relation with the former socialist collective residence quarters. The Collective Living concept in this case belongs to the transdisciplinarity sphera, crosses a wider domain, refering to urban planning, social and urban psychology, antropology, engineering, philosophy, semiotics, economy, geography, aesthetics.
3. MAIN FINDINGS
The paper configures an architectural and urban strategy, analyzing and finding some innovative ideas for some former socialist collective residential quarters, as well as for some old urban areas, proposing:
- Landscape interventions in order to recreate green areas, to prolong the green system;
- Design interventions for the re-naturing the envelope of the building, enhancing the performances of the building.
Vernacular architecture offers solutions and ideas regarding the modes of intervention in concrete case studies, in order to integrate and valorize natural resources as solution for energy access in the architectural - urban dynamic, to affirm a new model of slow development in resilient cities.
„A mistaken concept of universality would have led me to apply my mental categories of history and progress outside the context in which they developed, a grave error”. With these words mentioned as he was invited to design a cultural center in New Caledonia, Renzo Piano was not the first modern architect to discover and to acknowledge the relevance of vernacular architecture to his design ideas and practice.
Le Corbusier made his journey to the „East” as he visited Romania, Serbia and Greece, impressed by the konaks, the wooden houses and the whitewashed walls and enthused over the decorative power that people and things take on when seen the white of peasant rooms.
Refering to European and Japanese vernacular architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote:
„folk building growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment by people who knew no better than to fit them with native feeling”.
The result of the human – environment interaction constitutes culture and has led to the development of a multitude of cultures by different people in different environments. Vernacular architecture is one of the most concrete manifestation of this interaction, that not only solved the climatic problems, but did so with a combination of beauty and physical and social functionality.
128 Le Corbusier, La ville verte, 1935
Vegetation role in the Urban Design http://ocs.editorial.upv.es
Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, 1934 – 1935,
The sinuous geometry of natural elements merges with the regularity of built context https://www.iconeye.com/opinion/review/ite
m/10315-frank-lloyd-wright-and-the-city
Today, the loss of environmentally and socially conscious urban design also has to deal with the effects of climate change, which is becoming more aggressive where resource consumption has been the most furious and disordered. Modern landscapes measure dramatically the spatial success of such dynamics and the repercussions that these changes have on the life of cities and their inhabitants. The vulnerability of the city as read through the landscape should be confronted by designing innovative social, economic, and environmental responses that allow them to endure and form the basis for new landscapes. This means configuring and connecting fragments of the city together without nostalgic unitary visions or the fear of overwriting in order to reorganize the pieces, rereading and reinterpreting their connection to the context, recreating new places.
Resilient cities of the future must face several major challenges, which range from overcoming risks due to climate change (closely connected to progressively developing ecological imbalances) to the search for better energy conservation in the urban machine; from improvement in the quality and quantity of open spaces to returning residual areas (neglected areas, urban remnants, etc.) to the city. Thus far, there has been a lack of global solutions to improve the vulnerability of our cities or counteract external stresses that cities face now and will face even more in the coming decades. Faced with these profound changes, the rationalistic urban vision is no longer current. It is based on the monofunctional division of human activities and has led to the definition of plans and projects that are neither very effective in managing urban and territorial phenomena nor very adaptable in terms of external shocks caused by sudden climate, ecological, and economic changes.
The Landscape concept in the spatial development moreover in the collective residential areas, implies a double aspect: lecturing and percieving the landscape but also conserving, restoring and designing the landscape, involving the concept of common good. were considered to be examples of commons goods: landscape, historical / artistic / cultural heritage, biodiversity, water, cultural diversity. They have been the entry point to the cultural transformation of people, through the reconstruction of a link between these and the territory. The redevelopment of architectural and cultural heritage is a source of attraction of additional demand. Thus, the
129 landscape becomes an instrument of planning and designing the territorial spatial slow - development. The philosophy of slow city is precisely to offer a new path for local development trajectories compared to traditional development based on the centrality of “commons goods”.
Famous examples of plottings from interbelic periode as Jianu plotting, reconsidering the typology of garden
surrounded by built space opened to the garden
https://www.oar-bucuresti.ro/buletin oar
Vatra Luminoasa plotting, 1933, Established system inspired by vernacular rural typology housing, as an optim relation between architecture and urbanism,
resource for contemporary approaches
https://www.oar-bucuresti.ro/buletin oar
„ Regarding his tradition and his climate Bucharest should become a real urbs in horto and not hortus in urbe”, says urbanist Cincinat Sfinţescu in 1932.
The old areas, that survived from the agressive demolishing process in late ‘80 in Bucharest, let us discover the typology of the gardens surrounded by built spaces, a truly green scenery.
130 Dynamic of limits of built green spaces in relation with green spaces
Chlorophyll sceneries in the old area of Bucharest, Source: author
Traditional models for houses and inns: virtual transparence, arches, porches, specific details Source: www. word press
Many times solutions for a sustainable urban life are to be found in the experience acumulated in vernacular architecture and traditional building techniques. Contemporary architects such as Alvaro Siza, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, Eduardo Soto de Moura, Peter Zumthor etc. are in a constant search of traditional principles to be applied to their projects, generating what we may call „the contemporary vernacular”. Also some solutions which proved their functionality can be adopted from urban patterns that have been constantly repeated, such as interior courts, covered galleries, opaque walls covered with ivy etc. Here are some categories of traditional urban solutions possible to be applied in the new strategies of development of the urban cities:
I. Vegetation. Sustainability is automatically associated with „green”, therefore vegetation, chlorophyll. About 100 years ago, in Bucharest there was a common practice to plant ivy or decorative grapevine on the blind walls (normally facing the north). The Saint George castle in Prague is a place that can be hardly imagined in autumn without the coloured vine covering the walls everywhere. Now we rediscovered „the green walls” in a much more complicated and expensive formula (for instance see the green wall at Caixa Forum in Madrid, by Patrick Blanc,
131 whose maintenance cost makes us wonder whether it is really sustainable). To go back to the traditional solution of planting climbing plants that grow spontaneously could be a a challenge bring several advantages but also some threats. The advantages consist in: improving the microclimate of the building envelope, such as the surrounding area, aesthetic values and urban identity, including the building in a local „ecosystem”, creating more intimacy to living spaces, a chromatic relationship with the year seasons (in case of the blind walls covered with vine).
Some threats brought by an excessive use of climbing vegetation are: excessive shading, avoiding direct sun, roots that affect brick masonry and the mortar deeply, keeping humidity in the mass of masonry, covering of some interior spaces, creation of a spatial network that can be accessed by animals or people.
Bucharest, Popa Nan street 32, the last dwelling of the famous singer Maria Tănase
(Source: http://www.b365.ro/atractii-verzi-in-bucurestiul-gri-casele-imbracate-in-iedera-de-prinbucuresti-care-atrag-privirile_213958.html)
Other possibility to bring vegetation in the city is brought by „the garden roofs”, considered to be modern as defined in the theory of Le Corbusier. However let us observe the multitude of examples of traditional housing covered with straw or green grass – a prototype of the partially buried house that is found in several areas of tempered climate from the globe (from the Viking world to Japan, with a variation to be found in Romania with the name „bordei”). A contemporary attempt of reinterpretation for the green roof and offer it to the city as an element of public space has been conceived in 1993 by the architect Philippe Mathieux and the landscape artist Jacques Vergely that proposed an intervention of almost 5 kilometres of green itinerary at the height of the Parisian roofs of the XII-th arrondissement: Promenade plantée.
II. The control of temperature. Microclimate of the building. Maybe no urban solution is more efficient in cooling the space of a house than the historical „patio andalus” – interior court to be found in all houses of Andalusia, a hot region of Mediterranean climate in Southern Spain. The Andalusian patio is a direct continuation of the prototype of the Domus romana and of the Greek dwelling, both situated in warm Mediterranean contexts. The patio is the nucleus of a house, whose spaces are totally opened towards the interior. The key elements
132 of the patio are shading (given by the geometric configuration), vegetation (climbed on the entire height of the interior walls) and water – normally the patios had in the middle a fountain with constantly refreshing water (the fountain with water falling continuously is a microclimatic element in itself, typical for the oriental Muslim world and called selsebil). The configuration and geometric position of the Andalusian patio allows as well a constant air movement, with a continuous catching of fresh air from the street, through the high entrance portico covered with an iron rack and allowing warm air to raise and be eliminated through the high patio.
Patio from Andalusia (Source: https://comunidad.leroymerlin.es/t5/Blog-de-la-Comunidad/Claves-para-crear-un-patio-andaluz/ba-p/54556)
In temperate climate areas, contemporary architecture solutions have brought the idea of the covered ventilated interior court, created in order to preserve energy inside of the building instead of losing it (such is the case of the court of the British Museum in London, whose glass cover has been realized by Foster and Partners in 2000). Actually, while moving from the South to the North, the challenge becomes to preserve energy and increase the quantity of solar heat instead of throwing it away. In this case, the North of Spain brings us the specific model of
„galerias coruñeses” – galleries from La Coruña, completely glazed surfaces orientated mainly to the South, able to capture a great quantity of sun and energy. The same traditional pattern may be discovered in the prototype of the Romanian inn (han), a typical construction with interior court and completely glazed walls that makes the identity of XVIII-th century Bucharest.
The glazed gallery has been interpreted in contemporary buildings as the double facade, a constructive solution applied to the majority of high-rise or public buildings today.
Other solutions related to the temperature control and energy conservation in dwelling spaces can be found in traditional model of the “caserio vasco”, a great one-family house designed to shelter the numerous family from the Basque Country, in Northern Spain. The construction shelters the animals of the family as well in the ground floor, this fact providing
133 natural heating for the main level of the house which is at the 1st floor, immediately about.
Another vernacular heating system coming from Northern Spain is “la gloria”, a system of floor heating based on warm water used in Castilia and Basque Country, a direct heir of the Roman
“hypocaust”.
III. Natural ventilation. Crossed ventilation is probably the easiest way to ventilate a space properly and simply. However there are several vernacular patterns which apply this system – one of the most interesting being the „barraca valenciana”, a type of long rectangular house in Valencia provided with only two opennings on the short opposite facades. A key point is the orientation of the house towards the sea (west side), making possible the circulation of the sea breeze through the house.
Barracas valencianas (Source:
http://adevaherranz.es/GEOGRAFIA/ESPANA/COMUNIDADES%20AUTONOMA S/VALENCIANA/?C=M;O=D)
Another possibility is to use the effect of vertical air circulation, as in the case of the vernacular wind towers developed in the Islamic world and coming from a hot climate. There are several types of wind towers – with simple or multiple air flows, using or not the supplementary effect of water evaporation to refresh the air. The principle has been successfully applied to contemporary skyscrapers provided with natural ventilation.
IV. Protection against the sun. Maybe the most important element giving identity to the Romanian traditional house is the porch (in Romanian prispa). Present in all the climatic regions of Romania, as well in the warm fields of the south and in the hills or mountains, the porch aimed to provide continuity with the interior spaces of the house, offering a pleasant climate, protection from excessive sun and winds and an infinite view, providing connection with the whole surrounding landscape. It is not random that the first prototype of solar house that represented Romania in the international competition Solar Decathlon was called „Prispa” and tried to be a contemporary reinterpretation of this architectural element.
The oriental world created its own way of protection against excessive sun, generating subtle decorative patterns and the prototype of the moucharabie, specific to the Arabian world.
These elements were re-interpreted in new materials by contemporary architects such as Herzog and de Meuron (highest level of the Caixa Forum building in Madrid, with the façade protected by a perforated sheet in corrugated steel) or Jean Nouvel (with his original reinterpretation of
134 photographic diaphragms at Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.)