Many cities are struggling with lack of space, high demand for using attractive locations and costs of properties. Closer look to the urban structure, its historical development and current state might reveal empty spaces, that are left unused for a long time. Large areas like brownfields are often part of the whole city masterplan or intention of big private investors. Smaller plots from street gaps to hardly buildable lands in a dense structure might be left unused for complicated building conditions as well as various ownership reasons. The abstract explores the theme of unused small plots and their potential to become helpful contributions in the neighbourhood by strategic steps and different architectural means of exploring land use possibilities. Those small empty sites are often surrounded by fence and waiting for a better condition to increase their economic value. Some of those plots are used by makeshift objects with lack of valuable purpose. Furthermore, those objects are often not building up on the site potential or solving problems. Nevertheless, temporary objects might be the first step to fully engage complicated and empty plots to the liveable city structure, serving residents by different types of temporary or even pop-up structures of different content. Even the mode of using instead of leaving empty plots behind the fence might increase the vitality of the neighbourhood, foster the community, and test the possibility of more permanent site usage. To follow the sustainable development of build environment, empty lands in urban fabric can be a chance to deal with growth, especially increasing number of cities´ s population. Smaller plots located in the stabilized historical urban structure are often subjects of different requirements. On the other site those smaller unused sites might be considered as one of the few opportunities to improve the liveability of a certain part of the city. A strategic approach that involves stakeholders like city planners, architects, community groups, residents, and professionals from different fields of specialization, can move forward engaging urban gabs to the whole urban form with positive impact. The way those small empty sites can be used might be different than just constructing a building. One of the well-known examples is Aldo van Eyck´s work on playgrounds in Amsterdam during 70s and 80s of the 20th century. Van Eyck used to propose playground objects placed on empty sites or fulfilling street gaps remaining after destroyed houses during the Second World War. Some of the contemporary proposals use the same scheme of turning the empty plot in the historical urban fabric into playgrounds, e.g. Paris' basketball court Pigalle Duperré. What are the other options, architectural means and which fully described scenario with consequences helps to engage small unused plots in an urban structure?
Publikace