Di Stefano Boeri Architects I take care of it occasionally: I don't hide my admiration for the mental clarity that seems to inspire the studio's solutions. Sometimes it even seems to me to be the architectural equivalent of this site.
Stefano Boeri Architects and the Albanian construction company SON-Group have unveiled plans for Tirana Riverside, a sustainable district in the Albanian capital designed to meet post-pandemic needs. In other words, a neighborhood resistant to coronavirus.
The plan calls for 12.000 residents on a publicly owned area next to the Tirana River.
The Boeri studio declared “this is the first neighborhood in Europe designed in agreement with the government and city authorities capable of responding to the new needs of the post Covid 19 pandemic phase. It also satisfies all the sustainability requirements required by the current climate crisis ”.
The coronavirus-resistant district
Tirana Riverside is one of the three main plans commissioned by the Municipality of Tirana for a notable area. 29 hectares on which it intends to build housing, offices and shops.
For the design of the coronavirus-resistant district, Stefano Boeri Architetti and SON-Group aimed to create an open, sustainable and viable place without a car, with intelligent technologies and large hanging gardens. An airy place designed to help prevent the spread of covid and any future similar viruses.
This moment of great difficulty has clarified the need for a change of perspective. Humanity is forced to deeply review its relationship with nature and the spaces it inhabits.
Stefano Boeri and Francesca Cesa Bianchi
We must think of a new era, more ecological and without fossil fuels. Far from the normality we knew before Covid-19 spread. The normality that unfortunately contained the factors that contribute to the situation in which we find ourselves now.
The ideal district contains green spaces that are open and accessible to all citizens, reduces the need for large journeys with private petrol vehicles and favors gentle and gentle electric or physical mobility. An immediate solution to reduce emissions.
To build resilience to coronavirus, Tirana Riverside residents will have access to all “essential services” within walking distances. Along with offices and housing, the complex will include a school and university center.
City of healthy neighborhoods
We must consider the "trenches" between the private sphere and the flows of the city as the first line of prevention that makes a place resistant to the coronavirus.
Ground floors for shopping and health
We can imagine active ground floors for the reception of goods, with vending machines managed by operators in the agri-food sector or small health clinics for each neighborhood. Roofs as landing points for the reception of goods by drones, and as collective green spaces for crafts, domestic agriculture, leisure and sport.
The courtyards of the future
Roofs, well connected to each other, will become the future equivalent of our residential courtyards: places of intense collective but not public life, generous but not codified, outdoors but not exposed.
As part of Tirana Riverside, large parks designed by landscape architect Laura Gatti will be built. Plants will be incorporated into common areas, building facades, rooftops and pedestrian bridges.
The cities of the future. After the virus, in addition to the virus, regardless of the virus.
Cities must become active nodes of ecological corridors, absorbing nature and becoming part of an environmental, economic and integrated production with protected areas, woods, mountain and agricultural areas.
The direction to take is to reduce urban congestion, expand common areas and bring "outside" what is today "inside", providing every commercial reality with an outdoor area, with an even wider sidewalk, wider cycle paths, narrower vehicle roads.
Cities must rediscover open spaces even more, creating an interconnected future. The goal is to better distribute the pace of the city, avoiding large flows of workers and improving the green spaces that make it healthier.
