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Venice Biennale 2000 The City-Third Millennium

2000 PROJECT

Open Grid is the competition project that deals with urban systems. Unlike the utopian concepts of the Modern Movement, where there was a clear distinction between urbanity and ÔnatureÕ, the city of the 21st century needs to address the continuous field of the built environment. Nowadays, urban agglomerations are almost completely built; townscape and landscape have nearly been transformed into a uniform structure. This structure lacks the shape of a continuous field and could be compared with an archipelago of the isolated points. Contemporary economic and social conditions favour decentralized growth of the city, resulting in a range of individual and unconnected interventions. The vast areas of this development type can hardly be identified by what is built. They are recognised by their leftover spaces: empty parking lots in richer countries and eroded landscapes in developing ones.

The project establishes an open polycentric system that modifies the existing growth model. Open Grid is a self generated polycentric system consisting of nodes that are connected with infrastructure. The nodes represent present developing units: hybrid structures of some 100,000 - 300,000 m2, organised in a pedestrian neighbourhood. The model is based on the rule that each new unit is connected to at least two existing ones. This simple rule enables the creation of a system that maintains neutral system of the open relationships of the generic grid, that gradually take over an area as in HilberseimerÕs model. The grid does not precede the units; it is a result of their growth. Space between the nodes is left untouched. With the increased density of nodes it becomes a public space that is gradually colonised with the programmes from the development units.

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