URBAN REGENERATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY | Marco Bellotti

The object of my thesis project focuses on the revitalization of the rural town of Gora Kalwaria Poland, through the redesign of a part of the territory now unused.
From a urban perspective the intervention redesigns a part of the city by creating new residential areas and services while the architectural point of view considers the recovery of military buildings now abandoned reused as facilities dedicated to education and research .

The theme of the thesis lies in the enhancement of the historical / environmental territories with bigger attention to sustainability .

As a revaluation of a dysfunctional part of the city, the project develops first locally assigning a portion of the territory now in disuse to the creation a university campus.
and then in a broader reassessment of rural centers .
Poland, in opposition to the twentieth century trend of moving from the countryside to the city, following the European urban development, has started relocating services from large to small cities, in order make small/medium sized metropolitan areas more attractive.

The creation of a campus (University of Warsaw annexe) specialized in research of fruit and vegetables technologies will provide an opportunity to become a multi-purpose active city.
The collaboration with local farms would lead to improvements and transformations in this sector, with the ability to test and develop new techniques on-site.
Moreover, the university would certainly increase population and, as a result, new housing and services needs, as well as an economic return to the community.

The economic benefits could be reinvested in a new social -housing model project, far from what Poland has experienced so far.
Now these type of residences are stigmatized by the population, partly because the buildings remind of the typical Soviet Union architecture, partly because of the state of degradation.

Analyzing the existing architectural styles, redefining the current housing needs and integrating with a system of sustainable green technologies, it would build a modern neighborhood of public housing with high quality standards.
New housing will be designed taking into account the new criteria of eco sustainability itself as new housing model for the lower middle class but also as an example of a new direct approach to the issue of social housing in Poland .

The aim is to verify the results in the relationship between landscape, urban and economic structure, considering the historical and traditional side of the development .

The interest in the redevelopment of this center in Poland comes from my Erasmus exchange and internship in Warsaw, where I attended a workshop on planning the redevelopment of rural areas affected by Soviet military occupation.
After some preliminary research, I found out that some Warsaw universities had already studied the area in order to place in some unused buildings some Faculty annexes or research centers .
With this project I wanted to apply what I learned in different university and cultural environments.