Competition: International competition to propose the landscape development design for Osum Island in Berat (Albania)
Placement: 4th place
Year: 2015
Client: Atelier Albania, City of Berat
Team: dsb-Landscape architecture studio – Metropolis – 3TI_Lab
Role: Collaboration for concept, planning, illustration, graphic renderings
The competition area is both a target and a test site at the same time. It is a small island in a historic city in Albania, the city center of which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The island itself is a leftover asset neglected by the city but which nevertheless changes shape time after time because of the changes in river water flows. The strong presence of this asset in the city landscape means that the island can be transformed in a real focal point for the city and particularly for the neighbourhoods at its vicinity. This island deserves design thoughts that will shape its potential.
This international contest is announced with the purpose of connecting the Osum Island to the city of Berat network. This international call is looking for ways where urban can cohabitate with nature and be resilient towards any natural phenomenon.
Our goal was to obtain an original and visionary concept of an architectural and urban character intervention for the test site Osum Island in Berat and come up with some solutions to develop the landscape, or be ‘urban by nature’ and be resilient at the same time.
Despite being central to the city, Osum Island appears to be a separate matter of its own. We decided to work on this weak point.
To integrate it into the city context, trying to intervene in a timely and targeted manner, enhancing existing beauties and not adding superstructures.
The site is known as the 'window city', so it seemed to us to design not only the physical links between the islands and the coast, but to emphasize, first of all, a visual connection between the crucial points.
We have used flexible and dynamic work tools that can easily be adapted to environmental changes to the issues that the site is subject to.
All the intervention revolves around the concept of link:
visual - to enhance the natural and architectural beauty and create a network,
functional - to utilize and relate the various sites currently dismantled to create community-friendly infrastructures.
