HERITAGUTOPIA
Personal Info
Name: Luca Donner
Nationality: Italy
Company: Donner Sorcinelli Architecture
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Website: https://www.donner-sorcinelli.it/
Name: Francesca Sorcinelli
Nationality: Italy
Institution: Zayed University
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donnersorcinelliarchitecture/?hl=en
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Donner-Sorcinelli-Architecture-118232568224024/
Website: https://www.donner-sorcinelli.it/
-FINALIST of Non Architecture Award Competition | Category: Aspatial
Historic centers are the sacrificial victims of unstoppable city expansions. This scenario lays the foundations for a paradoxical and provocative question. What if the historic urban heritage were physically marginalized and “expelled” from the city center due to the centripetal forces of economic power? We would come to the paradox that it should find refuge elsewhere and “colonize” precisely those industrial or infrastructural areas that have been abandoned by the real estate development itself. Hence the decision to coin a new word, born from the union of heritage and utopia, that could represent this unprecedented utopian scenario: “HERITAGUTOPIA”. It is not just an etymological exercise, but more a conceptual provocation. We know that any “exile” is a form of negotiation in itself. It is a different paradigm that goes beyond the ordinary status quo and it reveals new possibilities. In this case, the historical and consolidated forma urbis exiles itself. It leaves for abandoned liminal areas, recycles and re-generates itself, giving life to a new and unpredictable evolutionary urban cycle. The morphological dimension of the sedimented city finds support and shelter in disused infrastructures, abandoned industrial buildings, silos or structures of unfinished buildings. Its role suddenly changes, from an obstacle to progress, to a generative factor of a plurality of future possibilities. It sets a new narrative, and precisely in this “new life” the “exiled” historic urban center will find its raison d’etre tomorrow.
Project Type: Utopian
Jury Comments
– Murat Germen
This project proposes to add onto the existing urban texture instead of invading new empty lands which are very valuable outdoor public places that cease to exist in the presence of profit-based overurbanization. There is a decent balance of old-new / industrial-residential / big-small / high-low / historical-modern etc. What results from this multi-layered approach is a pluralist architectural and urban heritage from different periods / folks / income groups that will coexist in the same cosmos.
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