Implementing urban infrastructures through Themed-Design responses and Time-Based Design scenarios

With the evolution of the needs of the city and the current re-appropriation of abandoned and disused urban spaces, it follows the necessity to intervene on those urban infrastructures that hide a great potential for the cities behind their mere function of physical connection. Representing at the same time a visual and a social barrier, the aim is to achieve such a transformation of an urban element whose presence has sedimented on the collective imagination. To do so, it is necessary to intervene with an incremental approach that, starting from the bottom, aims at gathering the local population for achieving at first small transformations and, gradually, increase their extension both in terms of time, space and type of intervention. This chapter collects different approaching strategy for dealing with this type of transformation. The scenarios of use and implementation have been based on the concept of the Time-Based Design, valuing the temporal aspect as a fundamental requirement that encourage to think and install architectural elements that are adaptable to the incremental process of appropriation of the place. The Themed-Design Responses have been thematized with respect to the main constraints of the area, such as the environmental comfort, the production of energy and the acoustic requirements. Additionally, spatial requirements and the flexibility of use of the space over time contributed in the adoption of an incremental approach, based also on the gradual integration and implementation of the functions.The fallout of this design process in the technological and material choices focused both on low-cost and easy to assemble solutions as well as on the use of innovative materials as light / ultralight components. From the re-use of waste materials to the integration of technical textiles for architecture, this chapter aims at presenting different punctual scenarios of intervention, that could easily be reproduced in similar urban contexts.