its structure and its functions
pathway with attached water wall
The group of specific public facilities to achieve the strategic aims of the project in the long run is called Milla Digital Campus, in agreement with the proposal made by the MIT in the document, “Zaragoza * Milla Digital: Designing a new century public realm” (2006), carried out by the MIT School of Architecture and Planning under the leadership of Dennis Frenchman and William J. Mitchell”.
The idea of the Campus helps prefigure an urban scenario designed so that different innovative activities are carried out in it. It is a people’s Campus, open to everyone, with proposals for everyone, a new urban and cultural experience. At the same time, this concept refers to the subjacent idea that the different public facilities of the area form part of a network with some common elements as regards objectives, management or activities.
Obviously, the idea of the Milla Digital Campus takes on its whole visual expression and creative force in the linear park that will make up the spaces of Portillo and the Almozara park. This space is destined to become the main visual, singular and identifiable expression of Milla Digital per se, as a pathway (Paseo del Agua); a link between the city centre, the AVE and the Expo; and as a gateway to Zaragoza, both welcoming its visitors and as a virtual and physical connection with the Knowledge-based Society. This identification purpose will be channelled above all through the two cultural facilities (Milla Museum/Mediateque at Portillo and Centre for Art and Technology in the Almozara Park) and by the three digital public spaces suggested by the MIT.
The drafting of the execution project for both facilities (Milla Museum/Mediateque and Centre for Art and Technology) will be commissioned by the City Council of Zaragoza to the winning team of the call for ideas launched by Zaragoza Alta Velocidad for the design of the Portillo-Almozara Linear Park. The proposal selected was “Open Site” presented by the team Colomer-Dumont Arquitectos, Agence TER, BRL Ingenierie and Procam Ingenieria.
(Link to PDF).
The contents of the two facilities will be designed by BICG (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) and Ingeniaqed.
These two facilities are different, but are conceived and designed jointly, due to their functions and characteristics, but also due to their spatial location, providing a kind of armature, which secures, marks and defines the two parks as a whole from their ends.
Both facilities will share the characteristics of permeability, flexibility and visibility.
- Permeability: they must be constructions that permit and favour the transit of pedestrians from one neighbourhood to another; they must invite to a certain cultural vagabondage, being able to stroll without a fixed destination in the hope of finding something of interest. As we are talking about environments that intensively use new technologies –which sometimes create mistrust or rejection in many citizens-, these facilities must be open-ended, showing everyone that there is nothing to hide or hostile.
- Flexibility: the specific programmes of these facilities will be defined with this tender but, above all, in the case of the Centre for Art and Technology, it is an ambitious initiative that must be developed throughout time, due to its complexity and the need for learning-based growth. The design of the spaces, therefore, must be flexible, and be able to adapt to the evolution of the institution. Furthermore, the actual basics of the Milla Digital idea include the vision that technologies permit going from the traditional spatial zoning system to a time zoning system. The spaces, for economy, efficiency and sustainability reasons, must be able to be used for different purposes, by different people, depending on the time of day, calendar date or specific social needs. Flexibility is, then a beginning and not only a technical solution to the project uncertainties.
- Visibility: again due to their location, but also due to the function they can satisfy on a city-level, their innovative nature and the role they must play to act as a catalyst and driving force for the whole Milla Digital project, the Campus facilities must be approached with aesthetic ambition and appropriate singularity.
Another common characteristic to both facilities and one that must become an essential element in their design is their link to the outer space. Obviously, like any building of a certain importance located in a place of special relevance, these facilities will generate a certain public space around them. This, however, must be an objective in itself and not just a consequence to be managed. Furthermore, it must be one of the main identity marks of the whole action.
As indicated in MIT’s study, which is used as reference, one of the key elements of the Milla Digital project is the creation of a new type of public space that is able to reinforce the characteristics of the traditional public space of the Mediterranean city by using information technologies.
This “digital plaza” must form part of the Centre for Art and Technology and the Milla Museum programmes, with the relative implications with respect to the proposal of uses and contents, design, urban furniture and use of technological innovations on the façades that create that plaza. It is not a question of generating an open place “attached” to the building, but of designing this space, bearing in mind its potential to house uses and activities both inward and outward (sometimes, at the same time).
