The future is often predicted in the form of a global sized mega-city, an endless urbanity stretching across all available land. We propose an alternative of remembering that the city can evolve conscientiously and sustainably when it is aware of its boundaries. The boundary is composed of a modular structure that stretches around the city, bringing various functions according to the needs of the periphery adjacent to it, and it serves as a tool for organising and making sense of the currently arbitrary territory of the urban limits.

This porous epiderm draws a clear line between the city and its surroundings, while simultaneously allowing and aiding the transfer of people and goods between the two. The landscape remains undisturbed by random expansions of the urban, whilst the urban learns to adapt to its boundaries through renewal, reuse, and conversion of structures, knowing the value of each element encapsulated inside. The modular structure, as well as the land reserve between it and the existing urban fabric, will allow space for the next necessary steps in the city’s development. This buys enough time for the city within to adapt to a reality of reusing, re-functioning and sensitively densifying. A city of fairly distributed amenities, walking distances, circular economies and responsible decision making.

KOOZ What prompted the project?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM The idea was born in the attempt to answer a question posed through an idea competition: how do you imagine the European cities in 10 years? Such a question brings about variable answers, some desirable, others dystopic, but there was one aspect that seems to be mostly taken for granted: the future holds an increasingly urbanized world, with cities expanding into each other, eventually merging into a global megacity. This brings forth serious issues regarding waste of both resources and territory, unsustainable development, increasing distances, and the loss of an unurbanized landscape. Boundary is a statement meant to challenge this widely accepted presumption, and encourage discussion about alternative attitudes.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM The main goal of the project is to provoke discussion on a subject that is often taken for granted. Currently, there seems to be a certain surrender to the reality of urban sprawl, of cities growing to the logic of individual economic interests, sacrificing and wasting the shrinking unbuilt territory without seeing its real value and its inherently exhaustible nature. Most scenarios even accept a future where there’s no unbuilt, unurbanized territory left, and present it as a resounding victory of human civilisation over the planet.

Our question lies in what are the alternatives to this. We bring only one of many possible answers, one that looks to the past where cities were defined by boundaries, valued the limited available land within these limits, and respected the vast territory that lay beyond them. The extreme attitude of walling the contemporary city is meant not as a literal solution, but as an experiment that looks for answers, sparks discussions and encourages other such explorations.

KOOZ What references/projects informed the project and how?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM In the attempt of imagining various scenarios for the future of our cities, we looked to Italo Calvino and his Invisible Cities. These imaginary explorations create unique situations by focusing on just one clear particularity that governs the logic of each city and simultaneously makes abstraction of all the aspects that could contradict that logic. This exaggeration and omission process can extract essential conclusions from complex situations, a mechanism that we decided to apply to our project. In addition to this, particular cities from the novel talk about the same problems we approached: Leonia, for example, is a city of constant waste that expands by pushing its garbage further into its periphery, until it eventually encounters the expanding suburb of another. Penthesilea on the other hand is a city made up of only suburbs, with no centre and no clear limit. We found the power of focusing such concepts into texts as short as a couple of paragraphs fascinating and inspiring.

We naturally also looked at the famous 'Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture' by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis, as one of the most daring architectural thought experiments of the past century. Similar to Calvino’s cities, their strip over London ventures into the absurd and extreme to discover questions and answers only accessible in such imaginary scenarios. The wall motif and its physical, but more importantly psychological power of separation is explored here, as it becomes a limit within the heart of the city. In contrast, we imagine such a structure around the city, encouraging it to grow and function within clear boundaries. For us, the wall is rather a symbol of protection and togetherness, rather than separation.
Last but not least we drew inspiration from Dogma’s 'City Walls'. Their use of walls as “basic inhabitable architecture”, as well as generators of space and logic within the city are characteristics that we also looked for when designing the Boundary. However, we were particularly interested in their challenge of “the typical centre-towards-periphery movement”. Whilst their project creates urban rooms, we propose an active limit that acts as a second, perimetric “centre” for the city, with all its functional and symbolic attributes, but also as a transition structure, an interface between the urban and the unbuilt territory.

KOOZ How does the project approach and explore the notion of boundary?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM The boundary we propose comes as a bold, drastic measure to address a just as bold and drastic status quo of expansion and urban sprawl. However, it should not act merely as a separator and a limit, but also as an active functioning element of the city. It is composed of a modular structure that stretches around the city, bringing various functions according to the needs of the periphery adjacent to it, and it serves as a tool for organising and making sense of the currently arbitrary territory of the urban limits. It is not however meant to stop in any way the movement of people or goods, it is not a wall in that sense, but rather a skin. The boundary encapsulates transportation hubs, food and goods distribution centres, as well as perimetric circulation around the city. It becomes an epiderm that aids the interaction with the surrounding territory and its resources. The only thing that our boundary limits is the further expansion of the built fabric of the city.

KOOZ How does the project challenge the current trend in the development of our urban sprawl?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM We are aware of the argument that imposing a limit abruptly and disruptively would be counter efficient, the growing populations need space to live, work and exist. However, there are a few aspects to our proposal that exist specifically to mediate a transition from what is today uncontrolled growth to sustainable, sensitive and responsible growth. The boundary is set at a certain distance from the already built periphery. This land reserve could be developed as a regulatory fabric that reacts to and makes sense of the dispersed margins we see today. It also should, along with the usable structure of the boundary, provide enough space for the coming necessary developments. However, the awareness that this is a limited reserve would encourage policies of reusing the structures of the existing city and sensitively densifying it. What the boundary does is that it shifts the present attitude that considers the suburbs as the easiest place to build and expand, and directs the attention of developers and authorities towards smart ways to maximise the use of what already is inside the boundary. The urban will no longer afford to just have abandoned buildings, endlessly vacant plots or unsustainable developments.

As to what lies beyond the boundary, we are faced with vast territories that are no longer threatened to disappear, that still have the potential to nurture us for the years to come, that pays respect to the domesticated or wild nature around our cities. This boundary would be a sign of awareness about the limited land and resources that we have to share and wish for future generations to inherit.

KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?

IA | OCB | OAF | RNS | DVM We will refer here to yet another of Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Fedora is a “grey stone metropolis”, in the middle of which lies a monument dedicated to all possible forms the city could’ve taken if it had not become what it is. Here, thousands of models of ideal cities lie in crystal globes, now mere toys, no longer plausible because the city already evolved into something different. The conclusion comes in the form of advice: “On the map of your empire, O Great Khan, there must be room both for the big, stone Fedora and the little Fedoras in glass globes. Not because they are all equally real, but because all are only assumptions. The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later, is possible no longer.”

We believe that the architectural imaginary is just as valuable as any architecture meant to be built. The knowledge contained within it is very much real and necessary, and we can take Calvino’s advice as a warning, telling us that giving up on the imaginary means also giving up on our real future.