Urban Paraphrasis

Long description

Urban Paraphrasis imagines sustainable urban transformation through the potential of localized material reuse and the capacities of citizen empowerment.

The story of Maastricht’s Sphinxkwartier is a common one amongst post-industrial sites in Europe. It is strongly characterized by the remains of abandoned industrial structures and is now known as a place of vibrant, alternative culture nowhere else to be found in the city. After years of neglect, the municipality launched a master plan that aims to revive the district through private developments, and, although the city expresses ambitious goals related to sustaining ability and social inclusivity, it is questionable if these goals can ever be met solely by the market-driven urbanism planners resort to. As a critical response, the concept of Urban Paraphrasis seeks an alternative path to redevelopment, in which social and ecologi­cal sustainability is achieved by working with the city at hand.

Presenting Maastricht as a case study, the project proposes a multi-use civic center that is constructed with reclaimed materials from an abandoned clay factory, engages a local community of squatters, and is built among a former factory site with vacant industrial structures and the remains of a bridge. Embedded into a larger urban strategy, this project makes use of urban mining as a lead­ing concept on how to re-use the vast material stock hidden within structures on site, but also the unique social capacities that are linked to its local communities.

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