Urban Kintsugi; Reframing urban voids as sites of potential

Abstract

Urban voids is the term used to describe neglected leftover spaces that emerge through processes of urban transformation. These spaces, ranging from vacant lots to brownfields and underpasses, are often times framed within planning and development discourses as useless or dysfunctional - “problems” requiring resolution through redevelopment and/or programmatic activation. Architect and philosopher Ignasi de Solà-Morales proposed an alternative read ing of urban voids, through the concept of terrain vague. Viewed through a terrain vague-lense, the word “void” signifies not absence, but possibility and freedom. Urban voids are thus interpreted as autonomous territories of indeterminacy - spaces that exist outside the rigidity of conventional urban planning and therefore remain open to informal, spontaneous occupation and appropriation. This thesis accordingly frames rupture in the urban fabric not as a defect to be resolved but as fertile ground for open ended and alternative forms of urban life, that defy strict programming. It explores how architectural intervention can engage such spaces without neutralizing the ambiguity that makes them meaningful, and proposes a design approach that draws conceptual inspiration from kintsugi - the Japanese practice of celebrating, rather than concealing, fractures. Gamlestaden in eastern Gothenburg, consists of a very fragmented urban landscape, ridden with urban voids. A specific void, inhabiting the space beneath Gamlestads bron, is examined and analyzed as a representative terrain vague and serves as a site for a number of design experimentations. These experimenations build on reference projects set in urban voids and on design concepts derived from academic literature on the concept of terrain vague and its possible integration with architectural design. Acknowledging the planned demolition of the bridge and the disappearance of the site, these experimentations also reflect on memory and change, and explore the possibility for traces of past fragmentation (in the spirit of kintsugi) to be integrated into the future evolution of the area.