Kosovo Architecture Festival. Workshop: Retrofit for Purpose – Boro and Ramiz. Dates: July 08 – July 09 2017. @ Rilindja Warehouse
Kosovo Architecture Festival
Future Architecture Platform
Workshop : Retrofit for Purpose – Boro and Ramiz
Leaders:
Dimitris Grozopoulos and Fani Kostourou
Dates: July 08 – July 09 2017
According
to David Kincaid, the most sustainable built forms are those well-designed
buildings which have such an aesthetic quality that people prefer to adapt
their activities to fit them rather than change them either slightly or
extensively. Stewart Brand calls these buildings ‘high-road’, referring to
buildings of permanence, high intent and aesthetic value as well as
long-lasting sustained purpose. He argues that high-road buildings are always
being noticed, looked after and preserved in successive refinements. The only
actual threat of high-road buildings over time is the shifting real-estate
market and/or sudden disasters. Otherwise, the buildings grow “by stages with
constant minute refinement and breezy innovation comfortably expressed by the
attentive intelligence co evolving with the building” and “the result is human:
a building by the people, for the people and of the people within.”
This
is the case with the Palace of Youth and Sports also known as Boro and Ramiz in
the city of Prishtina, in Kosovo. It was built in 1977 by the architect Živorad
Jankovic, as a symbol of brotherhood and unity between Serbs and Albanians who
constituted the majority of the population in Kosovo. The complex consisted of
two arenas, a shopping mall, a library, two convention centres and an indoor
parking. The main building sheltering the two large arenas, was developed as an
asymmetric structure with a central core serving as a main access to the
complex. In 2000, the palace was heavily damaged in a fire. Since then and
despite its partial renovation, the large arena and convention hall have been
abandoned. Yet the lesser area has been used by the Sigal Prishtina basketball
club, but has also hosted other sports events, various concerts, exhibitions,
fairs, conventions, and congresses.
During
the first stage and prior to the workshop, a social media discussion platform
will be established for crowdsourcing ideas from interested parties. Local
groups and individuals interested to be part of the discussion about the future
of Boro and Ramiz will have the opportunity to express their views and debate
other people’s suggestions.
In
the second stage, the workshop participants will be invited to respond, develop
further and ‘render’ some of the crowdsourced ideas. Through visual
representations, line drawings and physical models, the participants will
explore a series of already generated ideas regarding how to activate Boro and
Ramiz. The objective of both the crowdsourcing and the workshop outcome is to
propose a new dynamic urban node on the site of Boro and Ramiz and ensure that
a building of such architectural and cultural value will remain
fit not only for its
purpose as a mixed-use development and symbol of societal unity, but also for
the people and the city.
Dimitris
graduated from the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
(2014) and continued his studies doing an MA in Landscape & Urbanism in
Kingston University London (2016). Within the last few years, he had participated
in numerous workshops, exhibitions and competitions projects that have been
awarded. Urban voids, brownfield sites and regeneration strategies constitute the
heart of his ongoing research, which has been published and exhibited in
numerous occasions (Greek Pavilion of Venice Architecture Biennale 2016,
Think-Space Unconference-Zagreb 2013, etc.). He is founder and editor-in-chief
of archstudies.gr platform (2011), through which has curated lectures,
competitions and architectural exhibitions in Greece along with the other team
members. He is currently based in London.
Fani is an
architect and urban designer. She studied architecture at the National
Technical University of Athens (NTUA), and holds a MAS in Urban Design from ETH
Zürich and a MRes in Spatial Design: Architecture & Cities from The
Bartlett, UCL London. Her design work has featured in publications such
as “Minha Casa, Nossa Cidade: Innovating Mass Housing for Social Change in
Brazil” (Ruby Press, 2014) and group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York (2014-15), Columbia GSAPP’s Studio-X in Rio (2013), Museu de Arte do
Rio (2014), X São Paulo Biennale (2013) and XV Venice Architecture
Biennale (2016) among others. Recently and as part of her studio teaching,
she has co-edited two publications on “E-merging Design Research” (The Bartlett
2015, 2017). Currently, Fani is an EPSRC funded doctoral student at The
Bartlett School of Architecture, Associate Fellow of the Higher Education
Academy (UK), and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at The Bartlett School of
Architecture, and Development Planning Unit, UCL. In April 2017, she joined the
MIT Department of Architecture and Computation as a visiting PhD student.
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