Clockwork City — a productive housing estate in Warsaw

Phase: competition design: Europan 14, 2017

Design team: Ewelina Siestrzewitowska, Mateusz Gierszon

energy standard: energy-efficient

additional: renovation and conversion of existing buildings, productive city, urban food production, support for local exchange, participation in designing and building part of the objects; the project was preceded by gathering opinions of residents of neighbouring estates via surveys

Main project premise:

Productive city = Human city

Main method of operation:

Multi-level connection of the city / City 3D

Main proposal for the plot

: Urban Crafts Centre

Universal proposals for creating productive estates:

mixing social functions with manufacturing functions everywhere on the plot + 'forcing' movement and activity near production functions by appropriately routing the main pedestrian flows

vehicle circulation around the plot, vehicle servicing on cantilevers, the ability to walk between buildings on the estate without crossing the street

combining functions: warehouses/production halls + offices; car service + warehouses/production halls; flats for young people + crafts; crafts + event spaces; marketplace + urban farm;

main square = urban laboratory = local centre: modifiable structures that can serve as pavilions, city-media outlet points with the option of connecting temporary containers, connection of the urban-laboratory square with enclaves of greenery/nature

use of building ground floors: intersecting streets – the main square and streets along it – services on the ground floors; transverse streets – craft streets – craft points on the ground floors

office zone on the 1st floor of residential buildings along the estate's main spaces

building the city vertically – combining functions in 3 dimensions – vertically combining productive functions with functions that impose spatial quality (e.g. offices) and crowd-generating functions (e.g. services/market/catering)

'drawing' level -1 into life through large daylighting cut-outs in the square/street slab and locating vegetation and trees at level -1: exposure, sufficient daylight, visual connection and humanisation of level -1 allow additional productive functions needing large back-up (e.g. parking) on the same level – such as mechanical workshops – while ensuring them good working conditions;

productive street – an accumulation of productive functions, mixed with social and quality-imposing functions, activates all the estate's spaces (the human-city factor) and brings more clients to the clusters of a given product (the productive-city factor)

2 parks – on the ground and on the roofs:

park on the ground – public spaces between residential complexes and group spaces in the complex courtyards

park on the roofs – public, group and private spaces – mixed, connected by wide green footbridges – terraces, gardens and private food farms

ecology is also production – a sunken water reservoir on the square, a solar chimney, food production, a roof park, the use of all production and office roofs for solar and photovoltaic panels

use of as much existing infrastructure and as many existing halls and buildings as possible

the simplest possible connection of the plot to the railway line (productive-city and human-city factor), the city ring road (productive-city and human-city factor) and the metro line (human-city factor)

use of the plot over time – using the existing halls and buildings as building-material warehouses and site offices during the estate's/complexes' construction

social participation – designating complexes or buildings on the estate that can be built with the participation of future users

Proposals arising from the specifics of the conurbation scale (Warsaw):

CONTEXT:

80% of enterprises in Warsaw are one-person businesses (GUS and ZUS data, after: 'Report on the State of Entrepreneurship in Warsaw', SFOP 2014)

the need for craft incubators in Warsaw – the widely known story of the self-organising craft incubator in Praga Południe on Podskarbińska Street; small crafts particularly need cooperation because of the need for various kinds of machines, joining materials, etc.

an attempt to revive forgotten professions in Warsaw

CONCLUSION:

we propose creating a CRAFTS CENTRE:

a cluster of craft workshops – a craft incubator, combined with:

spaces for organising events, craft and design fairs, conferences, training and workshops, also places for workshops and learning hobbies and trades for children and youth, used daily as a community centre

a marketplace – a sales outlet on the estate and city scale

warehouse-and-production hall spaces – enabling cooperation between companies

office spaces

an urban laboratory – a square equipped with several open modifiable structures with city utilities supplied, intended for temporary modifiable pavilions that can be combined/changed/removed; the laboratory square with its pavilions is to serve as a place for presenting and testing prototypes and innovations

small flats for rent

Proposals arising from the specifics of the strategic scale and project-site scale:

the plot's convenient location near the railway line and ring road gives hope of including it in the city's future circulation system once a circular-economy-based system is implemented in Warsaw, which allows production and workshops based on the waste/semi-products of other industries to be planned on the plot, as well as future ecological recycling and productive use of waste generated on the plot (examples in the diagrams), and a smaller anticipated need for warehouse space in the future

use of existing buildings – 2 production halls, steel cranes, silos and 2 buildings – for social, residential and production functions

SURVEY – an online opinion poll of the local community of the residential estates surrounding the plot was carried out – the most important conclusions are the need to create a local centre, a park, and social-and-service functions, particularly catering

creating a local park-and-city centre that also functions as an urban laboratory (described above)

a pedestrian circulation layout and orientation of the main public spaces facilitating the connection of the designed estate and neighbouring estates with the metro, railway station and bus stops, creating an interchange hub on the estate's entrance square from Górczewska Street

the nearby allotment gardens being a component of the decision to create a marketplace, an urban farm and additional private farms on the roofs of residential buildings, jointly forming a working LOCAL FOOD PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE SYSTEM

and a related food-waste use system