Symbiotic Fabric

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Pablo Magan Uceda (ES) – architect; Associate: Laura Huerga Cadenas (ES), architect
Contributors: Sophia Arbara (GR), Oscar Ruiz Niezto (ES), Ventouris Pavlos (GR), Javier Lopez-Menchero Ortiz De Salazar (ES) – architects; Marcello Felice Vietti (IT) – urbanist

Hypersite, Rotterdam (NL)
+31 638 48 33 98 - info@hypersite.eu – www.hypersite.eu

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^{O.Ruiz Nieto, P. Ventouris, P. Magán Uceda, L. Huerga Cadenas, M. Vietti, S. Arbara}

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW

1. How did you form the team for the competition?

Common experiences along with our studies and professional carrier motivated us to team up together, sharing a similar and transversal approach in combination with complementary skills. Regarding the theme of Europan, the site and its challenge we asked different specialists in the field to collaborate with us in order to create a multidisciplinary team and give the proper answer to the site.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic: the place of productive activities within the city?

The main objective of the site introduced by the competition brief was “to create an urban concept for the project area […] The different sides of the rail line should also be better connected to one another”. The answer of the proposal lies in identifying the social, urban and landscape assets of the site and enhancing them together to the next level, conceiving the interaction between them as a whole and holistic strategy for Hyvinkää city centre – the Symbiotic Fabric. This way, interactions between nature, urban fabric and human scale are interlinked in the third space in between. This third space can be defined on different scales of the project: on the territorial scale by the new identity of the city; on the urban scale through the loop boulevard; and on the human scale with the urban typology.

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

The city of Hyvinkää was established in the 1850’s when the first rail line was built. This fact determinates the city centre character, located on two sides of the main rail line in Finland. Nowadays it is mainly dominated by transport infrastructure, and its Eastern side is more developed than the Western, which lacks identity. The proposal develops a simple and straightforward, strategic approach in order to create a cohesive and weaved urban fabric, that sees both sides of the railway as a single whole. A series of interventions which promote and drive production, working and housing functions strengthens the key linking areas identified within the city fabric. This way, the city is transformed into a vibrant, busy and dynamic urban environment.

4. Have you treated this issue previously? What were the reference projects that inspired yours?

We have treated the topic of creating proximities in our previous professional experience, where we worked on projects from urban to architectural scales. The flexibility for answering to the unexpected, the paradigm shift from global to local, the stakeholder strategy consideration, and the anticipation of future scenarios have always been topics that we have introduced in our projects. References of different nature always came up in relation with these topics: the inspiring space of the courtyards within the building blocks of Berlin or in the Netherlands, which brings nature and a community feeling to the city; the flexibility in the masterplan growth found in Balkrishna Doshi’s Aranya project (IN); of the lively shared space street found in the New Road, lying at the heart of Gehl’s Cultural Mile in Brighton (UK).

5. Urban-architectural projects like the ones in Europan can only be implemented together with the actors through a negotiated process and in time. How did you consider this issue in your project?

A new circular boulevard is proposed as the first intervention in the project, where future developments can be integrated. From this point, flexibility is one of the main tools to deal with different future stakeholders and unexpected challenges. Flexibility is achieved thanks to the highly conceptual and strategic approach of the proposal, which allows local actors and objectives, together with present and future needs, to be integrated into the vision for further development.

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

It is the first time that we have been rewarded in Europan. This opportunity is really helpful to grow our professional career, having the chance to keep exploring and developing our own ideas. We believe in an inclusive process to share and develop our proposal with different actors (administration, experts, citizens, developers...) as a main strategy to implement our vision in a mid- and long term.

TEAM IDENTITY

Office: /
Functions: Architecture, urban design, landscape, visualizer
Average age of the associates: 32 years old

Has your team, together or separately, already conceived or implemented some projects and/or won any competition? If yes, which ones?

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