CHOREOGRAPHY OF POROSITIES
*the metabolic entanglements of lasnamÀe & its hybrid karst landscapes
LasnamĂ€e, the âLasnamĂ€giâ, sits on a treasure: its hidden karstified aquifers. They were generated over the last millions of years in a dynamic interplay between water, (lime-)stones and organisms, resulting in a wild swampland with monasteries and manors up until the 18th century. In the 70/80s the mass-housing estate was constructed as almost alien like structure on this dynamic and wet ground. We want to challenge that notion and interweave those spheres towards a fluid future.
As starting point for the project, the authors decode LasnamÀe, resp. Laagna, as entangled territory in between time scales, spatial and metabolic relationships. Can we radically rethink and retrofit the challenged LasnamÀe according to its geological logics and by listening to its materials: a geological (landscape) urbanism for a porous city in the Anthropocene?
The monofunctional urban structure is reinterpreted by the hidden carst logic, unfolding a choreography of porosities between the ground, the landscape, and the existing built structures. Laagna as porous mikrorayon is transformed into a laboratory for living within material flows.
We propose deep and productive typologies, opening the ground and interweaving horizons. By translating the metabolic entanglements into interactive and scalable systems, we explore new fluid and rough aesthetics: A web of carst-creeks, the nutrient lines, revives the former main streets into ecological pulses. Nutrient catchers collect the flows of the interwoven karst courts, the new metabolic communities, where a life within flows is celebrated. The LasnamÀe Canal with the Bays and the cable car system, transforms the highway as ecological spine towards the Old City, fed by cloudbursts, ocean run off & greywater influx. Further interactive and sensing infrastructures produce hybrid systems with local food and energy production chains.
A porous LasnamÀe as circular territory demonstrates how a city can feed and sustain itself, celebrates its materiality, and coexists with different lifeforms/times.
