NON PLACES, MARC AUGE

"It was in these crowded places where thousands of individual itineraries converged for a moment, unaware of one another, that there survived something of the uncertain charm of the waste lands, the yards and building sites, the station platforms and waiting rooms where travellers break step, of all the chance meeting places where fugitive feelings occur of the possiblility of continuing adventure, the feeling that all there is to do is to see what happens."

ACCELERATION: Overabundance of events, the image of a world without end.
EXCESS: Progress is the religion: it requires more and more innovation, technology, consumpltion... an excess of time, space and ego.
ANONYMOUS: Alone but one of many. The person tastes for a whlie the passive joys of identity- loss.
DIRECTIONS: The link between individuals and their surroundings through the mediation of words that offer us their "instructions of use".
CONSUMPTION: Do as others to be yourself. The individual is atomised into a single, isolated unit of consumption. The "average man". 
TRANSIENT: Non-places are spaces that direct you to another one, where generally no end-purpose activity occurs.

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Generally, the term Place, as opposed to space, expresses a strong affective bond between the person and a particular setting."if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place" -Marc Auge.

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THE SITE: KISTA

What does Kista need? Explorations in Non-Places.

The E4 highway divides Kista and Sollentuna completly and act both as a physical barrier and as a source of noise and emissions. Furthermore, it creates a large number of "urban leftovers". 
Train tracks / High Voltage Cable / Car Parks are some of the other "non places" recognized in the place.
The claim: a lot of the actions highlighted could easily turn from being a non-place into a place, permanently or temporarily depending on the use at the time. 
The intervention: framing non places while connecting Kista and Sollentuna.

After analyzing and comparing both Kista (corporations and technology) and Sollentuna (young people), we identify their main potentials and propose a solution that would foster creativity.

The objective: advance knowledge and creativity, provide suitable urban conditions.
The program will incorporate parks, offices, culture, shops and housing, through a pattern based on diversity and integration.
Physically, the attempt is to bridge the highway and, thus, join Kista and Sollentuna by proposing connections in both directions. Layers of relations through a tridimensional grid where intersections become principal cores and yards are created by framing non places.

The grid adapts topographically to the context and generates flows of different strenght which give the circulation different jerarchies (main pedestrian connection, cyclist path, green area...) which run above it, while incorporating different activities (culture, shops, offices...) within it.

The yards generated are defined so as to accomodate diverse activities. They become parks, playgrounds, market places...

The highest constructions are the towers which host the housing program creating also visual diversity and multiplicity of not only physical but also visual connections.

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