Charging Walls

Abstract

The infrastructure systems, which include highways, rails and tram have always been a major artery of every urban carpet, it moves economic, culture and other resources to where they are needed or where they wanted to be. From point A to point B, they moves through network of roads and rails. Cities depend on the infrastructures. However the infrastructures have the double contradictory role of maximizing the movement of a selected population — one that uses a vehicle — between the city and its suburb while simultaneously being an obstacle to all movement perpendicular to its own, thus acting as a form of wall dividing the urban carpet. The urban populations, in particular the lowest social classes that do not necessarily own a car, find themselves detached from the the city they live in, trapped by these axes of segregation cutting the urban fabric like canyons. The speed of vehicles, its rigid and cold materials are also contribute to hardness feels of the urban canyons. Therefore, cities are divided physically and mentally by these lines. The Charging Wall project deals with an increasing pressure of the unbalanced growing between the infrastructure and the urban fabric that has been going on in various developing countries including Casablanca, Morocco. Based from the studies of van Eyck and Kahn, the Charging Walls aim to explore more into the capacity of walls in reweaving its urban fabric created by the urban canyon effect in several scales. The in - between city which act as a cushion between hardness of infrastructure and softness of people with the help of three wall typologies; the Bone, Joint and Tendon. Each one has its own scale, form and character which intended to encourage different interaction between people and infrastructure. The Charging Wall is a new city located above the line that not only would help improving the surrounding neighborhoods with its existence but also generate more questions on what extent can a single wall be. The role of a fundamental architectural elements; the wall that is once considered solely as a dividing tool could also take parts in connecting between the two opposite realms. In order to achieve that, the project would focus on the fundamental architectural elements and shapes to perform an active mediating role between different urban grains, degrees of hardness or speed, which will be deliberately designed responding to the differences from its context.