"WASTELANDS" EASA FINLAND 2012 | Adriana Shtereva

Very often we ask which law to be changed in order to live in better urban environment.?!? What can politicians do for us?!? I would rather reverse the question with my project: What can we architects do for the development and unification of the society?!?

       My project discusses the kind of extremely problematic urban environment that separates three different worlds: 1/ Аn architectural school; 2/ Bulgarians who live in a constant fear and 3/ Those of Romany ethnicity that are depressed and isolated from the rest of the world. This buffer zone, which now operates as a wall and splits, I would develop as a unifying element, an attractor that gather the different groups and their cultures, and demonstrates their problems, to create similar to IT world nowadays space for communication.

This project sets one more important in the 21st century problem how to develop a sustainable urban design, not just a sustainable building.

According to my design the landscape would be modified, preserving the existing vegetation and integrating clusters to enable the development of various semi-opened, closed and open spaces. This secondary layer in time will be redesigned by people themselves as outdoor museum of cultures, as pavilion structures for UNESCO`s center, as children's playgrounds, park with bike trails, picnic places, places to ride a skateboard...

The structure, called by me ``in-out`` is a new urban landscape, which gives more visual connections with the existing neighborhoods or isolates areas in order to create more intimate spaces according to the needs. This new urban landscape will reactivate the area and will bring together the interests of the different societies.

This model is an interactive sample, with a clear and simple structure, like a Bulgarian rug or tarot card game, designed to be remodeled countless times by the participants in this debate.