Living with the Infrastructure

Project deals with the expansion of cities and their indispensable demand of infrastructure. Alternative urban infrastructure is proposed within the city by juxtaposition of hard(technical) and soft(social) infrastructure to create self-sustaining urbanities and increase citizens awareness about their own personal impacts on environment.

This project aims to tackle the issue of city’s booming growth and halt this negative cycle of expansion through filling the urban gaps and rejuvenating the reformist/avant-garde “nature” of the city by creating an “alternative infrastructure”. In the city of Bologna, which is famous for its medieval towers, the project introduces a new infrastructural system based on a triad of networks: canals, green, and towers. The tower removes all the functions from the ground and tries to investigate controversial “architectural spaces and urban typologies” by superimposing the living environment with the hard infrastructure, in order to force architects and society to realize their own personal impacts and increase their awareness about environmental issues. The architectural center of the city is the first implementation of this system and the goal is to create a type of museum that celebrates the environment, infrastructure, architecture and innovation.\nThe contrasting characteristics between hard (where resources are generated) and soft infrastructure (where resources are distributed); significant characteristics of the Fiera-Fair District(new) and the old city are decoded through various analysis in different scales and used as a tool and program for the transformation process and upcoming developments. The hard-infrastructural program of the tower is a synthesis of broader functional/environmental technologies. Three main systems are interconnected with each other in a loop of infrastructure in the building: Water treatment plant, biomass power plant and micro algae bioreactors. The spaces of social program and mechanical equipment is inter-linked with each other and other spaces via continuous interior gallery with the intention to strengthen the synergies between the hard and soft infrastructures into the towers. The reinvention of towers in the city fills the gaps between past and future and creates a basis for responsive infrastructural movement in the city. Calling for Medieval spirit and Modernist dream, it leaves the ground as green spaces and water.