Mickaël Minghetti
Public Building
Student: Mickaël Minghetti
Tutors: Henk Bultstra (main mentor, A), Jelke Fokkinga (second mentor, BT) and Nathalie de Vries, Paul Kuitenbrouwer, Sang Lee and Nicola Marzot, MSc3)
Title: The New Green Cross
Studio: AR3AP131/AR4AP100 | MSc3/4 Public Condenser, The Hague - Copenhagen
Semester: Fall 2019 – Spring 2020
Abstract: How to conciliate social progress, urban mobility and ecological enhancement?
The abundant public spaces in The Hague Zuid-West lack certain qualities in order to stimulate social cohesion and wellbeing in the district. These public spaces - well over the city’s average - are largely concentrated in a large central park called the Green Cross. The park is mainly used for sport activities and allotment gardens, and offers limited uses for the general public. The sport fields occupy 40% of the park while wetlands and forest area occupy merely 14% and 8% respectively, limiting biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Moreover, the park is divided by a motorway on which 15,000 vehicles pass each day, not an ideal situation…
The assignment was to redesign the park by improving the circulation and ecological conditions while keeping the sport equipment and transport infrastructure in use for longer, enhancing the productivity of the existing resources.
To do so, I adopted several guiding principles from “Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning” by Dramstad, Olson and Forman1. The result is a new continuous landscape, under which several public functions are placed, such as the tram station, two sport halls, an art centre, an auditorium, a childcare centre, a canteen. The landscape and building are conceived as a hyper-accessible public condenser.
1. Dramstad, Wenche E., James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Forman. Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996.
Mickaël Minghetti graduated cum laude in the Public Condenser - The Hague Studio, under the supervision of Ir. Henk Bultstra and Ir. Jelke Fokkinga. His design manifesto was completed under Dr. Nicola Marzot and his research paper under Dr. Sang Lee. In his project, Mickaël aims to reconcile social progress and ecological transition within the built environment. By combining various tools, such as mapping, statistics, photography, physical model, CAD and rendering, the project explores the theme of multiplicity in both research and design. Before his studies at TU Delft, Mickaël obtained a BSc from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and gained experience in several architecture offices in Japan, Vietnam and Switzerland.