HYBRID SPACES_CREATIVE DOCK

Gdańsk Technical University (Politechnika Gdańska), Faculty of Architecture, Gdańsk

Project idea

The theme of the project is hybrid spaces as an answer to the shaping of contemporary urban areas with verification of model's potential on the example of the Nabrzeże Wiślane [Vistula Waterfront] in Gdańsk, Poland.

First of all, can we speak at all about their direct contemporary shaping? When we see slogans, titles of articles or books, we often get the impression of being detached from the past. We live NOW - fast, easy, without consequences or looking blindly into the future, living somewhere above reality, often unaware. We create new ones with a view to creating a monument to ourselves. Addicted to technology, we lose our heads and hearts, we get lost somewhere between these dimensions... But the city also functions as a living organism. It is a complex and multi-faceted process. It exists in the material dimension, it lives in the immaterial dimension and functions as a combination and effect of these two dimensions. It concerns both - the past, present and future - provided that its functioning, problems, potentials and the direction in which it should develop are understood... and if that direction can be determined in any case... ?

Therefore, in this project it was necessary to look for RESILIENT solutions and to refer not only to a group but also to an individual. Resilient here should no longer be understood as just a state, but as a process that seamlessly adapts to the challenges of the area and can be adapted to DIFFERENT SCENARIOS. Nowadays, this process is combined with more stable concepts such as INNOVATION and CREATIVITY as thematic components of this project.

Project description

The main topics discussed in the project were the city and its IDENTITY (here strongly rooted in the theme of post-port areas), the relationship between the CITY AND WATER and the changes in HUMAN functioning and the CHALLENGES it faces.
Here, in response, we are looking for a pro-innovative dimension of space, which includes HYBRID SPACES, which are places of interaction, contained in the blurred borders between public and semi-private spaces, which are a certain transformation of spheres of human activity, spaces for stimulating new ideas, building relationships, in contact with the external environment.
However, hybrid spaces should not be understood in a purely integrative approach, building them is characterised by specific conditions and dependencies. Here, too, we go beyond the framework of the functioning of these spaces purely in terms of an individual and a community, and closer to the concept of PROACTIVITY and REACTIVITY, which was at the basis of conclusions concerning the analysis of the situation in the projected area.

The content of the project includes a plan with the following issues:
_context analysys
_microclimatic analysis
_hybrid spaces idea
_urban strategy
_masterplan
_temporary space transformations
_architectural strategy
_application example

Technical information

Localization: Nabrzeże Wiślane [Vistula Waterfront] in Gdańsk, Poland

Area: 34.65 [ha]

Specificity: This post-port area, seen today as an inner city periphery, may in the future become one of the most important local centres of the metropolis. It should also be stressed that the developed urban-architectural concept is not intended to serve as a finite project of an imposed structure, but to be a kind of thought template defining the framework and guidelines of assumptions in which hybrid spaces will have a chance to coexist. In this sense, one can see that the Vistula Waterfront brings not only a chance for another investment in its economic and physical sense, but also to bring a new quality to Gdańsk taking the FORM OF A CARRIER OF KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION IN ITS MULTIFACETED UNDERSTANDING.