Landscape and interstice: project of vertical accesibility and mechanized pedestrian movility
Juan Ramirez
Guedes. PhD Arch.
The project is
defined as an expert diagnosis and an ideas proposal action for vertical
accessibility with public mobility mechanized devices. lt's situated in the area
of the south historic cornice of
the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,Canary lslands, Spain, along the scar
left by the topography that runs lengthwise almost through the holecity completely
separating the historical lo\11/er town, from the most recently expanded upper town. That way this
urban gap has an important landscaping
meaning and it's responsible for generating the image of the city.
Las Palmas de
Gran Canaria, because of its difficult
topography and also because
of the absence of a good relationship between sorne of its urban
spaces(that makes them disconnected from each other),has pedestrian
accessibility problems between some areas of the lower and the upper
parts of the city. The keys for a successful development of a
city are, firstly, a good communication of its different areas and, secondly, a
good way of moving through the city for its pedestrians.
Moreover, two "default" trend processes take place in the city.
They coexist but are antagonistic. One is the inertia of the overall geometry
of the city: the more general traces that
formalize the relationship/separation between public and prívate space, have
great resistance to change. That "skeleton" tends to remain. The
other process, along and within the first one, is a number of dynamics produced
by the simultaneous action of many agents. This dual mobility, within the trend
to immobility or vice versa, is
what characterizes the contemporary city as an open system but tends to stay in
time in its fundamental traits.
Hence the need to tackle a project (whose outlines are the subject of
this study) that, intensifying potentially dynamic segments of space, tends to
offset the deficits in terms of vertical pedestrian accessibility. This matter is of great importance
in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for the better integration of its
public space and for the adequate and sustainable practicability of it.
A first determination of the study, in view of the needs and of material
conditions, landscape, topography, geometry of the space, etc. and according to the intervention
capacity determined by the ownership of the land in each case, is the
establishment of a series of networks that solve connectivity in certain
segments of the cornice object of this study, improving its vertical
accessibility, interfacing urban areas of difficult access with implemented
procedures, conventionally or through mechanization. The devices used are, depending on
the case, elevators, ramps or mechanic stairs, escalators, all with a public
character. Sorne of these elements are already built in their project locations.
On the other hand, this
new vertical accessibility, besides
improving connectivity in functional terms, introduces a new transversality between
adjacent urban areas that now are disconnected because of their topographical
differences. This new transversality generates new paths,
making pedestrian communication more efficient, but also bringing a new reading
and interpretation of urban space through the fabric of these new networks,
whose interconnectivity is not only manifested as mobility flows, but also as
flows of functions, of images and landscapes,
etc.
These networks are not uniform: they contain density differentials (scale
and power of their formal settings) and intensity (scale and power of their
interactivity and "instability"
understood as potential development). These relationships
can also be considered as "interferences", relations which are
manifested "between" the different situations of urban space.
The different project devices can act as "interfaces" that
articulate an organization of the space, not apart from complexity, but
precisely starting from it. The basic formal matrix of the project can rely on
the image of the filament of fluxes (spatial, functional, landscape ...). These filaments, vertical, horizontal
or inclined, seek to increase the degree of interconnection and thus increase
the complexity and efficiency of the
urban network of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This network is formed by the
system of public space and what we understand by collective space, a territory
of extreme functional complexity, full of interstitial situations where the
space composition and the temporal activity pattern generate large combinations
and overlays. In those interstices, the project will strengthen spatial and
functional relationships, particularly articulating a complex network of urban paths through its
adaptation and empowerment.
Entradas
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