The C40 Reinventing Cities initiative comes at a key moment: we know that the next decade will determine whether we can avoid runaway climate change. Across the world, ambitious agendas are pursued for green and post-pandemic cities. The aim is to transform worldwide underutilized urban sites into community-focused sustainable projects, to drive resilient urban regeneration and to deliver the city of tomorrow, today.
In this context, participants at the C40 Students Reinventing Cities Competition were challenged to imagine a more sustainable and inclusive vision for cities across the globe, by rethinking how neighbourhoods are lived and imagined, planned and designed. The main goals of the competition are to deliver new approaches for low carbon urbanisation and to support the development of new concepts and innovative solutions that can be rolled out on a global scale. In parallel a forum of academics and students is established to address the climate crisis and envision a future that has climate and social justice at its heart.
An academic interdisciplinary collaboration: DoAUP + UniGe + Harvard GSD
In response to the competition brief, the Coastal Domains Initiative at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras selected Athens’ Kypseli site and set up a dynamic interdisciplinary collaboration with the University of Geneva and Harvard Graduate School of Design. The two competition entries -and eventually the competition winner- were developed by DoAUP architecture students working remotely yet closely -through joint working sessions, reviews and a lectures series- with UniGe social sciences students. Twenty three collaborators, through two integrated masterplans, reinvented Kypseli neighbourhood as a residential, commercial, creative and common space to live, work, and enjoy urbanity.
Reinventing Kypseli, Reinventing Fokionos Negri
The focus of the competition and the studio is the boulevard of Fokionos Negri and its immediate environs, in Kypseli, central Athens. Until the early 20th century, a picturesque countryside with vineyards and pastures, Kypseli within a mere hundred years has become one of the most densely populated, multi-cultural and diverse central neighbourhoods of Athens with old Athenians, immigrants, migrants, students, artists and creatives, innovative entrepreneurs, NGOs, solidarity networks and many community organizations. Years of abandonment, the recent crisis and the current rise in the neighbourhood’s population present an opportunity to revitalise Kypseli as an anchor to foster change in a wider urban scale.
The neighbourhoods’ urban density proved adequate to support a greener and better quality of life through improved urban design, lower carbon footprint and more efficient infrastructures. The two projects reflected upon and tested how upgrades cannot only deliver better quality of life for residents, but also how an urban axis and its supporting corridors can be used to progress climate goals at a metropolitan scale. The since the 1930’s covered Levidi stream that continues to flow beneath Fokionos Negri giving life to its dense vegetation, had a strong role to play in achieving human interaction with natural ecosystems, designing meaningful and engaging public spaces, improving quality of life and most importantly enhancing climate resilience and social cohesion.
Key concepts and actions considered in the strategies include the 15 min city through the provision of high quality accessible services and urban infrastructure available to all; circular economy providing the necessary infrastructure to scale up reuse and recycling of materials, waste and by products and promoting practices associated with sustainable businesses;green design through the adaptation of environmental principles and nature-based solutions that promote climate resilient private and public, built and open space; upcycling of the polykatoikia through the optimisation, repurposing or retrofitting of the existing building stock.
Updated June 2022