Fragility as Resilience: Designing the Balance of the Natural and Built on the example of an Open Competition for the Wider Area of the Hippodrome in Belgrade

Abstract

In a global and local context today, it is difficult to recognize let alone to design a sensitive balance between natural and built, which will enable further development of human activities while developing awareness of the importance of preserving nature, its processes and balance. We must regulate the indisputable pressure to build new capacities of urban tissue with strategies that intertwine built and unbuilt, manmade and natural, into a single mechanism of interaction.

The design concept, which puts the fragility of the named balance in the foreground, enables the spatial-program scenarios of life in cities to be placed in an interdependent relationship with the nature so that the concept of built structure does not rest on the strength of architectural form or technological solution. As a testing ground for studying these issues, we take the winning competition proposal of the urban-architectural competition for the area of the Hippodrome. The competition site belongs to the wider spatial area "Topčider", an especially significant and authentic space since it unites the city's natural, historical and cultural heritage. The competition proposal examines the possibilities for the development of the interconnectedness of nature and the city through the concept of fragility.