Honorable mention (ex aequo)
category: diploma design work
5 000 PLN
author
Natalia Torbiarczyk
title
"Neighborhood of the edge: spaces between the city and the countryside, Wroclaw"
university
Faculty of Architecture, Wrocław University of Technology
promoter
dr Ada Kwiatkowska
Jury Opinion
The Jury of the Competition awarded this distinction for taking up and interesting solution to the subject of development of exemplary spaces of the suburban zones of Wroclaw as a problem of uncontrolled development of these areas, resulting in spatial chaos and urban sprawl.
The development of the outskirts of cities and rural areas located in the vicinity of the borders of urban structures is a significant image problem for every city in our country.
The almost out-of-control investment activity in the sphere of individual single-family housing, results in the emergence of development complexes with a structure incompatible with a sense of spatial order, and the social profile of their residents, proves the inability to create a community character of the communities living there. The suburbs of cities, which are a showcase for any visitor, demand to be seen as an important element in building a distinct character of urban structures, and therefore have identity significance. The distinguished project of dependencies not only notes these, but, what is important, is a proposal for the creation of individual development complexes, which can be considered a model solution of a neighborhood settlement, functioning on the basis of the principle of community of residents.
Thanks to the proposed solutions, the author, protecting the existing cultural, social and landscape contexts, conducts a kind of functional-spatial experiment. Drawing its premises from the compact urban development and, respectively, from the open character of rural development structures, and introducing an extremely diverse configuration of the settlement community, she achieves the goal of a valuable offer of living in a development complex with an unambiguously and well-composed spatial structure, underpinned by the expressive character of the architecture of the complex. And thanks to the proposed program concept - housing for family structures of various sizes - from units for singles to those for families with many children - it correctly responds to the need to seek a community from the social point of view of the character of the complex.
An additional, but at the same time significant value of the work is the quality of the proposed architectural solutions. These, through their expressiveness but also conciseness and the conscious use of natural or recycled building materials, exemplify the possibility of achieving significant architectural values in the conditions of low-budget investments.
The project is a good example of an ensemble solution capable of satisfying the currently noticeable need to "escape" from the city to a space that preserves its social and functional value, but at the same time offers the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of being close to the natural landscape.
