Cities targeted during the Kosovo conflict are ready for regeneration. What infrastructure do war torn cities need to sow the seeds of development and civic life? Arts / culture / sports / commerce / roads and rail transport at one extreme; tourism / oil pipelines and other resources / freight and freeways / foreign investment / military bases at the other.

CHARTING:
Investigate the socio-political-geographical by graphical means of expression. Communicate the maximum message through minimal means: diagrams / charts / images / words / phrases. Examining – Geography / History / War / Geopolitics / Infrastructure / Capital. Students will contribute a set number of pages of urban research to be compiled into a booklet of three parts. Urban research and design propositions from a continental to civic scale.

DESIGN-A-STATE:
Can a country be designed as a single urban concept? Kosovo is the world’s newest nation. At 10,887 square kilometers, it is 1/4 the size of the Netherlands and 15 times the size of Singapore. What type of networked urbanism would suit a country of this size? Is it heavily centralised such as France or the UK with magnetic centres of Paris and London? A constellation of cities like the Ruhr region? Dispersed sub-cities of Switzerland? Or a borderless Schengen connecting regional capitals?

NETWORKED URBANISM:
Post WWII regeneration developed the centre-less suburban city. Post war regeneration of Kosovo requires a different kind of urban mediation; intervention of the city centre and connection to the wider of network of cities / neighbouring regions + Europe. Development at breakneck speed in the wake of massive economic growth has been the focus of urbanism in the last ten years. However there are other models of urban regulation such as the adjunct cities of Morocco, edge city of the Netherlands and the city state of Singapore.

by RMIT Architecture / Click above to ZOOM

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