HONORABLE MENTION
VP030 – VOLKSPARTERRE
Manuel Collado (ES), Ignacio Martìn (ES), Diego García Setién (ES), architects Contributors: Alfonso Aracil (ES), Efrain Redondo (ES), students in architecture, Gonzalo Used (ES), architect
Madrid
Contrary to the approach of „H URBS“ (W16) the strategy of Volksparterre could really work as a step by step procedure, identifying progressively a new future for the site. The project creates excellent relations to the neighbourhoods on different scales with a variety of content and action: private/collective gardening, educational gardening (integrating the close gardening school). The choice to start with a reflection on the culture, the role and the potential of landscape within the city is promising and site specific, relating to the dominance of green-popular-culture, as it is expressed by the neighbouring Schreber-Gardens. The project ironically appropriates the anachronistic aspect of the high-culture-green of Schoenbrunn- Castle that has today become a popular object for all kind of tourists. It introduces a subversive reading: what if the emperors’ ‚Par-Terre’ becomes a Volks-Parterre? Volks-Parterre proposes a new idea of green environment for a residential project, offering various options of use to its dwellers as well as providing a structure for identification and built development. Parts of the jury dislike the ironical attitude of the strategy: using vegetation to create urban space is a highly contemporary tool, but the intellectual approach limits the inventive potential of the landscape: vegetation could be used in a much more interesting way provoking higher intensities in use and quality. Does the vegetation create a quality? Why not densifying the Schoenbrunn gardens in themselves? Nevertheless, the way how to use the tools is innovative as it integrates the transformation of cultural landscape-issues in the development of the new residential area.