Dystopia of The Urban block

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2016 | THE ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS

The new reality the current generation of architects faces is the reality without big icons. A Dutchman would only affirm saying that “ninety-seven percent has been already built”. The cities are completed, infrastructures are developed, museums and other institutions already standing for years, functions redistributed. “Tabula rasa” is no longer possible.
The task is now the expansion from and within, to densify what is already dense, and reduce what is already sparse. But more than anything else, and perhaps more than ever, it is to design the relations of the existing.
The urban heritage as we know it is what came out of the conflict between different ambitions and ideas. Remnants from different periods however share the same status as they appear fragmented and disorganized. Innercity and suburban neighborhoods have become parts of the same urban composition. The suburb has become a part of the city. Skillfully crafted buildings stand next to mass-produced buildings, uniqueness contrasts with complete blandness. The dividing line between high and lowbrow culture is becoming blurred more than ever before.
The question is how can we as architects understand the urban conditions that are often portrayed as undesirable or architecturally weak. Because even these environs are utterly important parts of the modern city as they convey memories and expectations of the people who live there with all their associated emotions of happiness and sadness, hopes and fears.
This project investigates the potentials of the form of an urban block that is both, a representation of the idea of order, and an implicit acknowledgment of its opposite condition: instability and chaos. Building on a conflict between two contending powers, it tries to explore the very fruitful tension between the dense city and landscape, solid and void, fragment and whole, openness and enclosure, incident and norm, reality and vision. Prior to the actual project is a short essay that serves as a brief introduction of three precedents of urban blocks through which the modus operandi is developed.
Please, feel free to read the essay and browse the project on the link below:

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Source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/32188869/Dystopia-of-The-Urban-block by https://www.behance.net/bousepavel is licensed under cc by-nc-nd (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_US)

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