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    WINNERS OF RAHOVEC’S THE CENTRAL CITY SQUARE COMPETITION

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    Rahovec’s The Central City Square aspires to generously host annual international festivals, invite regional residents to the city center as a social destination, and animate the quality of public daily life for the immediate multi-generational community of citizens and enterprises. To service these explicit priorities the jury has selected three winning schemes. The first prize celebrates Urban Place, the second Urban Nature, and the third Urban Play while the two honorable mentions may contribute to guide the city’s decision makers in the short and longterm phasing and implementation strategies.

    Our aim with this approach is to encourage and empower the citizens of Rahovec, their public administration and their political leaders to continue debate on the merits of the different themes and approaches. While none of the three winning nor the two honorable mentions proposals shall be considered a ready-made solution, each of them contains concepts, principles or design proposals that merit more detailed analysis and a public debate. This will allow for a more informed decision and a greater ownership of the design solution that will be implemented over time.

    First Prize – URBAN SPACE

    Participants: Thomas Boerendonk, Daniel Arce Chu, Nguyen Duy Minh – MUTUAL ATELIER

    The project builds on the opportunity offered by the relocation of the football stadium to convert the central area of Rahovec into a constellation of well-articulated public spaces. The scheme’s bold approach to urban form – a circle – provides a memorable identity for Rohevec’s city center and public life to thrive. This scheme is able to both unite the whole of the site while creating unique zones for the square’s diverse edge conditions. At the center sits a large circular clearing, a wide multifunctional plaza that can accommodate large events while also providing space for daily functions of multiple actors simultaneously. The bold circular design of the square is supported by a canopy that connects new and existing buildings, offers an elevated promenade, creates shade and rain protection when needed, secures the pedestrian character of the area and allows for a wide range of temporary uses. The scheme’s comfort at both an urban scale of a shared grand room and at a human scale to be meandering under the trees was a natural transition and empathetic to the spatial needs for international festivals and daily needs of moving through the porosity of the site. It creates identity through a robust iconic form, a sense of monumentality, a capacity to transcend a sense of timelessness and to symbolize the democratic character of the central square. It possesses the potential to convert itself into a national landmark and will provide a memorable identity for Rahevec’s city center.

    The project furthermore articulates and organizes a series of secondary public spaces. The green character of the existing park is intensified and extended beyond its current boundaries, providing a renewed sense of climate comfort and connection to nature of the whole area. The “recreational square” is an area that is simultaneously paved and planted with trees, creating an interesting transition with the rest of the city and able to accommodate a wide diversity of activities. While two smaller but distinct public squares are developed around the proposed community center and indoor market, the scheme calls for urban densification of the surrounding areas. This could perhaps lead to a conversation on the opportunity to further develop the areas that are now proposed for parking lots.

    The jury also appreciated the simple elegance of the river being revealed as well as addressing the flooding of the park into a bold feature to punctuate the public spaces transition into the valley’s landscape, the selection of materials and the treatment of urban scale from grandeur to situating micro-climates. The jury believes that this scheme could benefit from inputs of the two other finalists as it could add a bit of joy, playfulness, biodiversity and weaving the urban flows.

    Second Prize – URBAN NATURE

    Participants: Klaudjo Ruci, Adelina Ibrahimi, Zamira Abazi, Zofia Krzykawska

    “LET IT RAIN”

    The scheme’s approach to urban nature both celebrated the need for the urban form of the central square to be both structured and ever-changing. The seasonal change, the celebration of climate, and the human in a daily relation with the city’s fauna and flora was elegantly proposed. The need for large species and biodiversity to be given place in the Central City Square as well as recreational landscapes seemed empathetic to the citizens multi-generational community.

    The human becomes a key actor in the theater of urban nature and the ecosystem habitat of the city stewardship. The need for softscape and hardscape is considered and how water is crafted as rain gardens is a real need of the annual cycles of the watershed the square is situated within. Our discussions find this scheme needs a bolder approach to the market and event culture the city requires. Yet greatly appreciated the human scale approach to meandering, recreation, and giving place to the beauty of the local fauna’s seasonal theater.

    Third prize – URBAN PLAY

    Participants: Van Tan Quyen Le, Thi Anh Nguyet Tran

    The scheme’s approach to public play was unique and sets a tone for our 21st century paradigm of public life. Play and the joy of play and learning, sharing, and community making was expressed in this scheme’s attitude to public life. After experiencing the daily life of the communities this need for life long-play, multi-generational play, and new materiality of public play in urban life seemed to transcend the need for formality into a purposeful destination for the regional residents of Kosovo. An alternative to entertainment as a commercial venture, but as public life expression, memory making, and ever-changing needs as one goes through different cycles of age, identity, and collective imagination.

    The scheme provoked micro-programs, ideas for the city to develop public programs with their citizens, as well as animate a vibrant city center for residents and visitors. The clarity of event cultural venues was present, yet this schemes strategies for the market, provisions for event activities and integration of re-naturalizing the river could be further explored.

    HONORABLE MENTIONS

    Participants: Klejni Feimi, Paola Dalipi, Medjana Elezi

    CENTRAL CITY SQUARE — Consolidating a sense of place

    The scheme’s understanding of the current constraints and ways to take actionable steps towards organizing the Central City Square employed urban forms to give definition and legibility to the whole. The proposal mobilizes a rather classical urban vocabulary that does not seek to affirm itself as an architectural gesture but uses modest and economically viable interventions to craft a series of well-defined and elegantly articulated urban spaces.

    The actional projects like the market, the expansion of the park, and the corner definition with active social-cultural commissions reveal the potential for urban densification and make short-term aspirations of realizing a vibrant Central City Square tangible.

    HONORABLE MENTIONS

    Participants: Diego Garcia da Rosa, Martin Balmori, Miguel Riobo, Maria Victoria Steglich – MNG arquitecura

    RAHOVEC 2.0 — Towards Modern Urban Ecology

    The scheme’s re-naturalizing site strategy and integrated approach to the greater city center was mindful of the very diverse edge conditions as well as long-term potentials for strategic thinking. The bold move to rethink the river as a natural urban feature and to organize small and large public programming around this natural spine has long-term impacts for urban excellence and sustainable futures.

    This celebration of the natural features and detailing of the whole as a land infrastructure resonated with our experience of the city’s unique geographic location and geological formation. It would create a bold identity for the city, is excellent for story telling of the region’s agricultural wealth and could be a role model for how atmospheric water can be central to city design futures.

    Source: centralsquare-rahovec.info