Between port and city
A water complex in Genoa
Kim Wandel (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Alper Alkan – Mentor
Niklaas Deboutte – Mentor
Gilbert Koskamp – Mentor
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Abstract
Genoa is positioned on a very narrow piece of land, squeezed in between the mountains and the sea. This provides a topography in which the port and the city are forced to live very close to each other. Whereas in other port cities the port recedes itself from the city center, this is not possible in Genoa due the the mountainous hinterland. Thus the large-scale port is directly adjacent to the medieval city.
On the dividing line between port and city is an elevated road located, the Sopraelevata, a transborder that has somehow also become a boundary, but an unclear boundary that is sometimes easy, but sometimes impossible to cross. The area of the Sopraelevata, the interweaving of the two worlds is what creates the interscalarity: The intermediary between two scales. What are the consequences of a wrangle between port and city, between large port objects and small residential buildings, for Genoa? What happens on this division line and how can architecture be implemented?
Reprogramming this line in order to enhance new public functions might be a solution to make the bridge between the different scales. The public building as an interscalar program in-between industrial and residential buildings.