Chapter IV - A New Connecting Wall

PARTICIPANTS:

Maïa Tüür (EE), Yoann Dupouy (FR), Winner in Marne-la-Vallée (FR) with "Ville N(M)ature"
Iris Chervet (FR), Pierre Chastel (FR), Winner in Saint-Brieuc (FR) with "Landscape Focus"
Roberto Carlucci (IT), Alessandro Labriola (IT), Winner in Azenha do Mar (PT) with "Limenochora"
Federico Sercis (IT) Winner in St-Pölten (AT) with "Ju(mp) in the Water Kiss That Frog" & Runner-up in Azenha do Mar (PT) with "Second Lines"
Lucía Martínez Rodríguez (ES), Runner-up in Santo Tirso (PT) with "3tirsolines"
Ander Bados Sesma (ES), Winner in A Coruña (ES) with "Nice to 'Sea' You"
Robin Soendergaard (NO), Runner-up in Bergen (NO) with "Møllendal West"

Coach: Bernd Vlay (AT)

SITE 2 - CITY & NATURE
Which Limit Between City & Countryside?

The site South of Olivenza includes the extensions of peripheral housing districts in direct contact with the nearby agricultural fields. The landscape looks like a flat land with green scars and is made of valleys running towards Lisbon, linking the waters of Olivenza to the Atlantic sea; hills and towers act as high points “controlling” the territory until the limit of the horizon, while large “enclaves” –cloisters & arenas– are embedded in the historical limits of the bastion elements, inducing a (non) dialogue between the open agricultural land and the mostly residential outer edge of the city.
The group had to develop scenarios to create an interface between build town & agriculture, without preventing the residential extension but including it into the agricultural natural landscape. Three topics rose from the reflections and subsequent questioning: the complicity of topography and water, or how to bring back the element of water as an identifying element to Olivenza?; the Limit as an objet trouvé, or how to turn the accidental city/walls relation into an added value for the city and the countryside?; and "100% Coexistence and 0% Interaction", or how to re-establish the power of the limit as a connecting medium? Through a rereading of the past the three “obsessions” discovered a wonderful “already there” to offer new pathways to Olivenza’s future.

Chapter IV - A New Collecting Wall

Download the PDF here

What if Olivenza’s unique limits became the place of a productive rendez-vous? What if we regenerated the limits’ abandoned power through a radical conversion, turning defence into welcome? What if we integrated Olivenza’s contemporary outer limit into this concept of welcome to create a new awareness about the site specificity?
The historical limits physical elements –walls bastions, gates– are manipulated to become tools for a unique intervention concept: deep walls introduce the wall as an interface programme; inward bastions intensify physical and programmatic town/countryside relationships; and connecting gates form new threshold conditions, ranging from micro- to macro-scale. “Chapter IV” brilliantly acknowledges that, today, the limit has become a space beyond its own limit.

Download the PDF here
 

Relational transition

 See other projects on the same site:

See the other sites:

- Olivenza 1 – Acupuncture
- Valencia de Alcántara – Uses & Rhythms