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| The plans of the city are blue coloured |
Why Riga? The city has a magnificient example of Slow Urbanism in the 19th century expansion of the city. Also it offers the speedy developments of par example the Central Business District on the island of Kipsala. Last June we visited the Baltics and also Riga with the Eurotour of the Academy. I was happily surprised by the city-ness of Riga in what we call very empty countries to our Dutch minds. So as I was going to be studying a city for a year long during my thesis the choice was made.
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| The 19th century expansion of Riga |
This summer I had to set up a commission of working architects/ urban designers/ landscape architects who would be able to guide me trough the thesisproces. For I am very intrested in the 19th century area and the identity of the city and how to improve it by Slow Urbanism I chose Rein Geurtsen as a mentor. He is an expert in reading and designing what's called the city's morphological map.
Because Slow Urbanism is much about the flexibility of the plots in a block to adapt to contempary programmes I also needed an expert on this level. Jeroen Geurtsen as an architect designs both on the level of the building as on the urban design. He was my tutor in an earlier successful project (Kennedy Circus) at the Academy. My study area for this thesis is quite big and I needed for this a landscape architects who is used working on this scale. Also the proposed speed (Slow) is very much known to landscape architects. I asked Steven Slabbers because he also designs scenario's from the identity of the place and that's something I also use in my projects to come to an framework for multiple futures.
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| As this flying man (I hope he survived) I plan to have a different view on Riga. With Slow Urbanism I want to make a design for the old industrial harbour and freight train area which you see below on the picture |
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