Next Vojak / international competition Housing tomorrow 2013. - emerging project

Autori: Ida Križaj Leko, mag. ing. arch., dr. sc. Idis Turato, dipl. ing. arh.
Suradnici: Tomi Šoletić, bacc. arch., Mara Uroda, bacc. arch.

1-fishermen houses, monestary, Frankopan Castle / 2-connection with monastery / 3-1920.-1941. Bulevard / 4-Vojak housing

Vojak as a city block has emerged from a 100 year long history of Rijeka and Sušak. In the period between 1920. and 1941. Rijeka was devided in two cities. One was overwhelmingly Italian, other, its immediate surroundings and the city of Sušak, just across the Rječina River, were part of Yugoslavia. Sušak was the main seaport and the city was growing at an incredible speed. As a ruslt, there was acity structure organically growing with the serpent street joining the monastery with the church on the hill and the seaport in the city centre. The city was characterized by individual houses placed in the greenery. The city’s periphery called Vojak developed during World War II. Italian administration governing the city planned and built residential areas and flats for workers. The building construction was under way. After World War II new government takes over the plan, finishes it and builds a collective housing complex for the new population of Rijeka. In the period between 1960 and 1970 a new CIAM urbanism with skyscrapers intended for housing was implanted among built houses. Underground shelters for people were built in the residential area in the event of nuclear war, which were joined with old shelters located in the monastery with the church and other shelters built before World War II and were connected to a large tunnel designed for railroad climbing from the port towards the hinterland. This underground city became autonomous and little known system of the hidden city.

This project will try to question the urban scenario of Vojak block as city after form and offer the option of making the city grow as a new nature. The city is entirely independent in the energetic and ecological terms and is investigating new housing possibilities.

In Vojak block layers of the new city are performed within existing construction which supports the autonomy of the city as a system. Fields serve as elements of new controlled nature and infrastructure. City layers contain tanks and lakes for receiving water which is channelled and drained to irrigate fields and ecosystems of controlled nature and the underworld where fungi and other species are grown in the dark and damp and are used to feed the local population. The energy of this new city is supplied via solar energy collected in the field of large solar panels.

Such a city is sustainable and autonomous system forming a true 96% nature on the ground floor at a layer of primary and initial city. The nature we know from stories and history. In such a nature primary buildings are being edited and shaped and adapted to housing needs of the future. The future which is generated by extensive planning and layer control of artificial nature, genetically modified nature, artificial intelligence, energy and infrastructure, which is creatively and in a socially acceptable way used in this project.