Breaking Border

In an urban condition where frontiers have been torn down and cities have become never-ending, the historical and visual limits that used to define urban areas are now hard to read. For example, the conventional borders such as the limit between city and country do not exist anymore. Only natural-physical limits remain, for example, between land and sea. In these conditions, where the border is basically an abstract element, the question is asked about what happens when it is designed or when it is decided to work specifically on the border spaces and their physical limits, with their obvious identification problems.

The study is about how constructing the border can produce a new urban system through an integration of the spaces that formerly separated. Border construction produces spaces and new relationships not only between heterogeneous urban elements, but also between architecture, landscape, engineering and urban planning. On the basis of these ideas, the study has focused on three important cities: Copenhagen and its fixed link (Øresund bridge); Venice and its MOSE project; and Antwerp with its PROAP project along the quays.