Alzira (ES)

Urban City Strategy

At facing new challenges and social dynamics, the Alzira Municipal Council ambitions exploring new ways towards urban and environmental sustainability by innovative means that will favour its resilience. It aims at solving problems inherent to disseminated suburbia, alike the isolation and disconnection of the existing neighbourhoods El Torretxo and l’Alquerieta, prioritizing its articulation and urban contextualization. Inclusivity, accessibility and equity must stand as the singular objective of the proposed intervention.
This peripheral condition also offers the possibility to rethink the municipality’s connexions, suggesting new accessing possibilities to the city and the main hospital, integrating diverse pre-existing realities and generating a new urban landscape that emerges from a multi-scalar analysis..

Site Definition

The city of Alzira awaits an exemplary action in terms of environmental, social and economical sustainability, responsible with the environment and having a direct impact on the citizens’ life standard. The site englobes an unbuilt ground zone, abandoned agricultural fields located in between the degraded urban fabric of the Alquerieta neighbourhood, together with the disseminated residential buildings of the Torretxó that characterises periphery. This enclave is a strategic hinge between pre-existing and consolidated fabrics. Furthermore, it represents a unique opportunity because urbanisation will permit relocating lots to a flood-free height and enhance matters relating to mobility and connectivity. Public titularity of most of the ground offers the possibility to develop this sector with a holistic project that considers residential uses, allocations and public spaces, starting with a thought on matters such as the city limits, its integration potential and the enhancement of its resilience capacity.

How Must Metabolism and Inclusivity Be Developed and Connected?

The proposed site is located in a free urban land sector that the municipality is currently developing. This growth area is being incorporated to the urban system, bringing the opportunity to integrate the different pre-existing urban fabrics within an equipment program and by prioritizing connexions with the county hospital, as well as the city’s accessibility.
The sector location in relation to the consolidated city implies connecting the necessary elements to obtain an adequate integration, based on sustainable urban mobility on different transportation means (prioritizing intermodal nodes and pedestrian and bike mobility).
The limits of the proposed lot aim at assessing the efficiency and efficacy of the transformation processes. The point is to minimize environmental impact through bioclimatic strategies applied to the project and its construction, and to optimize the passive reaction of the climatic environment through the building's program, its shape, orientation, resorting to natural ventilation.
This proposal sets the starting point for a dynamic, inclusive plan that spans several zones of the city with different economic, social and cultural profiles. The mix of uses and the set-objectives of design innovation and the sustainable materiality of the building will contribute to this plan.