COLridor

ve residential areas, the pressure on its building development is high. In 2011 a large apartment-complex design was submitted for permit, arguing for keeping the greenery character due to its green roofs (RH-Arch, 2011). Neither previous, nor recently proposed metropolitan plan lists the area for protection (Institute of Planning and Development Prague, 2016). From the personal conversation with its creators, the Institute of Planning and Development Prague has its interest in increasing city’s density, not extending its bio-corridors and bio-diversity. The plan is neither co-designed with ecologists nor with local communities or NGOs. It is created purely by urbanists, marking the areas in the plan from the table. As also confirmed by the Concept of Metropolitan Plan Justification, the plan does not consider “details“ (Kubeš et al., 2014). It also states that for the reason of being behind the range of land planning, the design is not done in respect of European Commission’s strategy of Green Infrastructure (European Commission, 2010), but instead, the term Landscape Infrastructure is used (Kubeš et al., 2014). First author’s architectural NGO Collaborative Collective (Collaborative Collective, 2012, 2016) fixed through cooperation with second author’s ecology support and evaluation focused NGO CooLAND (CooLAND, 2016a, 2016b) first ecological pre-study (Zímová, 2016) for reasoning its relevance, building on and submitting detailed investigation for funding. Within spring semester 2017 a fully transdisciplinary systems oriented co-design studio course will be led by Collaborative Collective and CooLAND among the Faculty of Art and Architecture at TU of Liberec (architectural and environmental design students), the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences (forestry and wood engineering students) and Faculty of Living Environment (ecology students), both at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, the Faculty of Studies Humanities at the Charles University (students of social and cultural ecology), local community and the local environment. This ‘GIGA-mapping’ (Sevaldson, 2011, 2015) and ‘full scale realisation prototyping studio’ (Davidová & Sevaldson, 2016) will focus on supporting the local bio-tope by building shelters for habitat of i.e. bats, insects or homeless people. The design process, prototyping and further local development will fully engage local specific environment (3) together with the local community. In this sense it is not only participation but co-design (4). Here the co-design method involves both, biotic and abiotic agents within so called ‘Time Based Design’ investigated by Sevaldson (Sevaldson, 2004, 2005, 2017) where the project does not end by the building finalisation. This project is to motivate humans to co-live with other species and among each other across the social differences. The common events such as honey harvest from planned bee-hives should support the eco-system (5) through ‘urban prototypical interventions’ (Davidová, 2004; Doherty, 2005). This ‘non-anthropocentric architecture’ (Hensel, 2013, 2015) was concluded by first author’s previous study on performance to be at the end also most beneficial for humans (Davidová, 2016). It is therefore alarming that though the UN agenda for 2030 sustainable development is calling for collaborative partnership of all stakeholders and fight of poverty while being determined to ensure that economic, social and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature to reach prosperity (United Nations, 2015), its goals are so anthropocentric, that ‘Cities and Communities’ are discussed in separate goal (United Nations, 2015, 2016a) from bio-diversity, discussed in ‘Life on Land’ goal (United Nations, 2015, 2016b). These goals are not in any sense cross-referenced. As opposed to this human-centred approach, this project is to demonstrate the relevance of consideration of human settlements as being part of overall eco-system. Through generating public awareness and pride for the local specificity and community, we believe the bio-corridor will be marked into Metropolitan Plan and no future building development in the precious garden will be enabled. Our politics is going from the bottom up! If you are interested in cooperation on the project, please, contact Marie Davidová at [email protected]
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1 ‘Biotope: A region that has a characteristic set of environmental conditions and consequently a particular type of fauna and flora (biota).’ (Oxford University Press, 2004)
‘Biotope: An environmental region characterized by certain conditions and populated by a characteristic *biota.’ (Allaby, 1998)
2 ‘A point of particular significance is that local extinctions are common events (see Section 7.5), and so recolonization of habitat fragments is critical for the survival of fragmented populations. Thus, we need to pay particular attention to the spatial relationships amongst fragments, including the provision of dispersal corridors. There are potential disadvantages – for example, corridors could increase the correlation among fragments of catastrophic effects such as the spread of fire or disease – but the arguments in favor are persuasive.’ (Begon, Harper, & Townsend, 2006)
3 ‘Environment is physical and biological surroundings of an organism. The environment covers non-living (abiotic) factors such as temperature, soil, atmosphere and radiation, and also living (biotic) organisms such as plants, microorganisms and animals.’ (Oxford University Press, 2004)
4 The division between ‘participatory design’ and ‘co-design’ is used here in the meaning as discussed by Sanders and Stappers (Sanders & Stappers, 2008) and as it is commonly used in Central Europe, where participation means that the related stakeholders are invited to the discussion board, while co-design means ‘co-creation’ (Sanders & Stappers, 2008) where the stakeholders play a creative active role within the design process as co-authors.
5 Ecosystem was described by Allen and Roberts as an ecological system inside the system that includes the geophysical part (Allen & Roberts, 1993).