Young Architects - Space to Culture, Bologna

TEMPORARY USE AND ITS IMPACT ON BUILDINGS The post-industrial change in European cities created many social, economic and spatial changes in the urban space. In the last 40 years a radical urban transformation took place and produced unused industrial areas and vacant places. In the industrial Fordist growth model of the past, cities were firmly embedded in the regulatory and redistributive framework of the centralised welfare state. In the transition towards a 'flexible accumulation regime' (Harvey, 1989) operating on a truly global scale, this has become dysfunctional. The temporary use is very much linked to the 'creative industry' and their interest in getting affordable urban space. Temporary uses are often associated with crises, a lack of vision and chaos - yet can become an extremely successful, inclusive and innovative part of contemporary urban culture. [Urban Catalyst Research Team, 2003]Space to Culture Bologna is a competition entry by UNO (Ulloa + Nocker) for the Young Architects programme in Bologna, 2014, proposing the adaptive reuse of a post-industrial factory complex as a multi-typology creative commons. Four spatial typologies - studio, workshop, performance, and market - are distributed through the existing industrial shell, connected by a light steel and fabric circulation system that preserves the industrial logic while creating new spatial relationships. The project engages the European tradition of temporary use in vacant industrial spaces: the creative industry's relationship to affordable urban space as both economic necessity and cultural generator. Young Architects Competition, Bologna. BfNA reading: this project is understood as a case study in movement, orientation, accessibility, safety, social mixing and collective behaviour. It extends beyond architectural production into environmental intelligence / how design decisions can support human adaptation, social responsibility, ecological performance and future evidence-based practice.