The sustainability debate dictates that not only what is worth preserving should be preserved, but also what can be preserved. Because the buildings on site certainly can be preserved, they are being integrated into the much denser new concept for the site. The fact that no more than just under half of the existing buildings can be preserved is due to the circumstance that the current buildings are too bulky on the site: The distances between them are too narrow to place new buildings next to or between them, while the distances to the streets are too wide to fill the street space and ground floors with urban life.
The denser the urban fabric becomes, the more clearly the open space territories must be allocated. Today's buildings do not distinguish between front and back, formal and informal, inside and outside. However, if significantly more than twice as many people want to make this place their own in the future, comprehensible urban spaces must be created, with clear dedications, robust settings and simple rules. This requires a fundamental change in the understanding of urban space as it characterises the place today. Instead of buildings that shape the urban space, it is the urban space that shapes the buildings!
If you want to design urban spaces in a comprehensible way, you avoid abstract categories such as «space» and «time» and instead focus on conventions – street, alley, courtyard, square, forecourt, park – that any layperson can name and knows how to behave in them. In addition, such robust open space frameworks are much more tolerant and integrative than precariously balanced, abstract constellations of buildings.
