Fragments and city
Keita Tajima, Mo Woonyin Wong
Unit trip and project site: Porto, Portugal.
Unit h continues to explore the city and its fragments through its state of incompleteness. Our aim is to discover our own notion of fragments through space, time and detail together with human inhabitation, and re-invent the connection between them through our own architectural vision into an unseen whole.
This year we will be looking at the future of the urban dwelling in the city of Porto, Portugal. Porto’s heyday was in the eighteenth century due mostly to the trade in its famous porto wine. This wine trade influenced much of architecture in the city today. After a lengthy economic downturn the historic centre is now in a state of decay. One third of buildings are unoccupied many of them residential. In this context we will question the potential reuse of these derelict and unoccupied buildings in the city.
“A house must be like a small city if it’s to be a real house, a city must be like a large house if it’s to be a real city”
Aldo van Eyck
Taking a direct, literal inspiration from this quote we will explore dwellings as urban fragments and re-discover their relationship to the neighborhood in the city. We will explore the threshold between public realm and private/domestic spaces, and envisage the city formed of a meaningful group of fragments that express the sense of neighborhood and invisible solidarity by means of local infrastructure, shared facility and their stories of alternative urban dwelling.
