Co-designing the urban surface as socio-ecological interface in the adaptation of Fribourg’s cantonal roads into multimodal passage-paysages (SURFACE) ‒ CHANGE ‐ EPFL

Fribourg: topography, built infrastructures, cantonal roads (Image credit: ALICE)

In the last few decades, the surface has become a key concept in the transformation of urban public spaces around the world: from foundational projects like Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in Paris to most recent interventions like those of the Belgian office Artgineering and their relevant motto that road space is public space. In Fribourg, a substantial percentage of the city’s available public space is indeed dedicated to its cantonal roads, many of which work neither as roads nor as streets. In Switzerland, cantonal roads have historically connected city centres to their peripheries, recently becoming the territorial backbones of urban densification projects. This extensive road surface has also a determinant effect on soil sealing processes within the region, seriously interfering with rainwater infiltration dynamics as well as the local microclimate and threatening the area’s biodiversity. This means that the urban surface can operate as an interface between the soil and natural rhythms of the territory and the programming of new sociocultural uses for healthier lifestyles.

The use of systemic approaches like Green Infrastructures as Nature Based Solutions (NBS) to adapt these cantonal roads can intensify the benefits of this shift. NBS require transdisciplinary co-production strategies incorporating interdisciplinary researchers, users, stakeholders, and more-than-human entities (e.g., soil, plants) as active agents in processes of urban transformation.

This project will develop a co-design toolkit and methodology that works with the urban surface as socioecological interface to optimize NBS benefits and create systemic, interdisciplinary, and adaptive green infrastructures. The project is a joint effort of CHANGE and the Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace (ALICE). In collaboration with public authorities in Fribourg, the project will deliver a replicable co-design methodology and toolkit with a special focus on ecosystem services assessment, along with a catalog of future scenarios adapting a main cantonal road axis into a passage-paysage with implementation policies and guidelines.

Project duration | September 2024 – August 2028

People | Francesca Bassani

Funding | ENAC Fribourg Grant