“Grafting”
Giulio Forte, Elisabetta Avallone, Gabriele Pierluisi

Pınar Gökbayrak (PG): What were your motives for registering to Antalya site? What were the appealing and challenging aspects of this site for you?
Giulio Forte (GF): The Kepez district -in relation with its own position in the surrounding landscape encircled by luxuriant vegetation, its nearness to archaeological areas, its strategic position in the new geographic system of Mediterranean balances- is up to create a variety of links with other similar local entities in other neighbourhoods in the same city, in other cities, in other countries.

The site can be read as a “sample” area, -with its typical and distinctive characteristics such as the particular orographic conditions of the land, the relationship with the history, but also the lack of infrastructures and services- to experiment with articulated relations between new strategies, landscape renewal and built systems, by giving new possibilities of development, services and high housing quality.

The design project is based on three integrated functional and figurative systems which, at the same time, concern with both the local condition of the physical space and the global reflection on the urban development and landscape designing themes; the maximum “coexistence” and the maximum specificity…

PG: In your opinion, what is the most powerful aspect of your project?
GF: The project reinvents the conventional concept of apartment block by creating residential organisms in which each space has individual identity. It takes inspiration from the sense of community one can imagine to exist among people who meet in whatever green spaces or incidental gaps around the little houses. The proposal is to graft in each lot -depending on its bigness and density- some URBAN VOIDS/SURFACES, managed by municipality and leaving some other empty space for private use, managed by the owners of the houses or by a condominium. The condominium is the inner empty space of each urban lot: that space is split into different parts referring to the different houses according to the volume of each house.

The void system forms an urban archipelago. Every single void is apt to develop almost in an autonomous way. The individuality of every single void gives strength to the consistency of the whole system. The project delimits every single void with an extreme attention. The planning remains free, adapting itself to different situations.
The present configuration of Kepez district lots, adopts a pattern of an undifferentiated use of the empty space among the houses. This produces the impossibility to manage the “same” space. The URBAN VOIDS/SURFACES are new public space portions for a collective use.

PG: The subtheme of Antalya site was ‘Renewal for Whom?’ An urban transformation is always a very difficult process to handle. One of the most critical issues of an urban transformation project is the risk of creating a gentrification in the neighbourhood. Kepez is at the edge of Antalya city and is not a part of the metropolitan network yet. However, since it is almost the only site for the city to expand towards North, it is probable that after the transformation project, different social groups will move towards the vicinity, as well. What is your point of view regarding gentrification in cities and what was your proposal regarding this issue in your project?
GF: Our proposal is oriented to maintain the existing social groups “in situ” by solving the illegal condition of the property rights, mapping public and private property and laying the bases to a register of the title deed. In this way, it will be possible to distinguish the spaces in different lots: some equipped, managed and maintained by municipality and some others, the remaining quota, managed by private owners or condominium.

The gentrification could be “controlled” by incentive policy aimed at “social mixing” and assisting people in purchasing their own home and the yard spaces. New social groups would move to Kepez, but we do not think it would lead to a total replacement.

Moreover our strategy includes:
- the urban and territorial renewal in order to create a linear park qualified to contain the growth of the district;
-a specific and precise definition of the services programme and, as a consequence, a high quality “design process” system with the purpose of varying and mingling of functions, evaluated through a meticulous level and hierarchical distribution;
- the singling out the main knots where to fit the LOCAL POINTS / TOWERS, structures for high-specialized facilities;
- new housing interventions (collective housing estate / singular housing estate).

We propose to adopt an anti-sprawling model block: a high density building not higher than 15 meters. At the same time it will be possible to build individual houses to replace the ones that have been demolished, or to complete well-balanced lots of singular houses.

This means having a choice of functional programmes that allow the coexistence of very different - but at the same time integrated- life styles, so to define ambits with high attraction capacity and social and urban quality. There’ll be a maximum attention to the system services definition in relation to the current housing demand and the settlement of new urban poles.

PG: The competition was asking for micro decisions in the transformation process of this site. Micro transformations also mean an expectation of great contribution from the local residents and have to be carried on with their willingness. And when the local residents get involved in the design, the projection of an architect may not always be fulfilled. In such a case, what shall be the atittude of the architect and keeping in mind this problem, do you think an urban transformation project may be succeeded via micro interventions?
GF: We think of “strategic project” as a possibility to trigger inside the contemporary urban tissue a multitude of “micro” designing processes which are capable of interpreting the contemporary landscape’s complex structure as a space of relationship where connections between different parts are more important than the parts themselves.

In such a context as the one of Kepez, characterized by a “galactic” urban growth with no hierarchies, it means assuming a beginning for new urban development strategies, through the start of a set of complicated programs capable of defining a different organization system of the town for higher quality living standards.

Starting from the idea that Kepez district presents many positive features; the intervention has been based on an urban level different from the leading plan. In order to exploit the positive features of the mote–like structures, it is necessary that the territorial boundaries qualify themselves giving shape to new limits, where housing is supported by areas and also that the street is combined to the knots.

The project strategy is determined by three different units: landscape border / zones [l.b.z], urban voids / surfaces [u.v.s], local points / towers [l.p.t]. The local residents and the estate owners will have such a strategy -new public spaces equipped, managed and maintained in their lots by municipality- and they will be able to acquire the remaining quota of empty space for their own houses.