TBIH2023 | PAX-Patios de la Axerquía
foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] how are you hello how are you yeah I'm very good it's very nice to have you to join us today and we all look forward to hearing a story about your project in Cordoba so but before this interview I would suggest that we can quickly introduce ourselves so I will go first my name is Hong XI Chao programs manager of War monuments found or WF uh which is the international organization uh devoted to the safeguarding children places in the world since 1965 and with headquarters in New York and graffiti office worldwide uh up to date we have been working with our local Partners communities to conduct more than 700 projects in 112 countries so okay now uh it will turn quickly introduce yourself to our audience hi thank you for for this invitation it's pleasure for me and my name is architect PhD from the Polytechnic of Milan but I live in between Milan and Cordova in the south of Spain where I teach also in the University of Sevilla and I'm here because we uh in we started with a governance called the strategy packs that is that tried to recover the Historical Center with Innovation processes great thank you so I believe our audience are eager to learn from you and your experience so first uh could you briefly introduce the background of this project yeah we started the we are two architects and an anthropologists and we we started thinking about our city and especially it's as you will probably know it's a city of 300 000 inhabitants the south of Spain there's four declaration UNESCO so we thought that there will be a problem in the next future uh called over tourism about related to to Heritage and urban Heritage in this kind of historical and very beautiful medium-sized City and we thought that we had to implement strategies that have to be new governance to share with people and to with the Heritage Community a new desire for the future of our city because as you know many processes in this kind of uh context such as like Venice Barcelona or whatever that have a very beautiful German Historical Center normally suffer this kind of phenomena that surely some unbalance the relation between City and community so that's what agenda 2030 called that it's we want to have a more sustainable City within a resilient Community that's why we started with this project we called it the strategy of urban regeneration with social Innovation processes and basically we in four years we just start as an association we are a non-profit institution but we really play as facilitators of connection between public administration social Enterprises University and citization to to share this future that we hope will not be the the ones that Venice for example has great uh yes thank you uh I think that we know more about this project but can you also specify a little bit about the project rationale the objectives and your approaches yeah we have different we we play in different uh Fields one is creation we somehow help the local community to be able to re-uh use the quotas that are very typical in Cold War and all the Mediterranean City the courtyards are multi-familiar places architecture of the historical City that come from the domus Romana and then was really were used during the Islamic period and it's settled fully in Cordova as it was the capital of alandalous in the first century so we are using somehow technique techniques that try to discover which are the buildings that are empty in the historical City and how to make local labs to improve and establish new groups of people that want to live in one of these buildings as Cooperative the second element is a work with on all these [Music] important theme and issue with universities and we are studying the the case of Cordova as a labor a laboratory of both ecological and sociological point of view the third is dissemination we work with on both local and global scale with our Challenge and we want to discriminate it both in in all these case and and the first issue and challenge is training we are working with young people discovering from all over Europe this this argument and they will received them in pakista and we try to train them in the same time to establish relation with other cities such as the ones I was told in before like Venice or or many other that are suffering the same phenomena yeah at least a very nice guy so uh could you also share the particular qualities and Innovations of this project and then we will know more about how this project can win the European Ultra price yes I think that there is no many other uh non-profit institutions that are trying to do uh to we work on in the Innovation for us is in two levels the first one is on the urban scale we work with the neighborhood association where the citizenship and we try to create also within other stakeholders and partners like public institution we want to create these consensus about the necessity to care about our Urban Historical Center um because as I said before the tourism industry is very hard to resist to uh but on the second level we work in the architect architectonical scale so we use when we create or we are able to um create or facilitate a group of people on the local scale that want to share a quotas we use the Cooperative housing Cooperative as a tool to reuse and actualize updates somehow uh in in our contemporary time that multi-familiar cultures so if we if we don't use this tool that it's a legal and economical tool it is very possible for local people to make and afford this kind of renovation that are quite big for each one single singular family that they they live in so in this case for us the most important innovation is to be deserve the community and to help the empowerment of the Heritage Community as the Council of Europe and UNESCO that group of people they're recognized and Heritage value but want to reduce let me say for the future of the Next Generation so to update that Heritage and memory in the Contemporary not just to fix in the past but to be contemporary yeah I say I say great so I know you have uh mentioned it a little bit but throughout this project have you ever encountered any significant difficulties and what were your solutions to make this project possible and successful yes you know maybe in Spain we lived something that we called the real bubble so during 20 years people has been used to think about housing as something that should be new Flats outside of the city with parking so this let me say a kind of way of living in in the like each one on their own so separating people within the buildings so that's quite a cultural problem to reintroduce people in living in the historical City with that it's actually it's the real 15-minute City let me say because it has a very comfortable and friendly Dimension but we have in this moment many empty building things because of this process called real estate bubble that's quite important to to change in people's mind and just to reuse their memory as in the past we really was able to live there on the second hand it's also there are some problems about the community ownership as the Cooperative is because many of Spanish people and in general in south of Europe people are used to be owner of their own flat there is no culture of tenants for example of rent and while in the north of Europe it's much more used to have both rental Dimension with housing or cooperative processes or for sure in otherwise it's very very common the use of property there's a normal tool of community property not the ownership not rental these two aspects can be sometimes we have to work on them but we just succeed with the first pilot so it was it was very important for us to make sure that we could be able to do one building so as we did one we think that in the next future would be easier to do it surely the neighborhood association are working with us and also the public administration there before at the beginning it was not very comfortable with our poisons now they are starting to think that it's possible to reuse our Historical Center within the local community I see I see great so um do you think uh if this is possible that the multi-dimensional ecosystem or packs uh could be duplicated in other places where also have the rich Urban Heritage while facing similar challenges yeah I think yes not everywhere because we think that many of these the system that we could create it as I said before it's like a linking public administration University local Enterprises and citizenship including neighborhood association for sure uh our our goal is to make link and and in this sense it's very important that Cordova let me say is like a police in the Greek sense so if the Historical Center is third thirty thousand inhabitants so the way that people have or can understand what we are doing have some techniques for the dissemination um but we think that having done this first step of our implementation in in the city of kodua that we think it's really an urban heritage heritage laboratory we think that even if uh we uh think that the best way to reproduce and scaling up our strategy is in another Mediterranean City with similar problems and similar Dimension and similar type of people living there we think that it's not only referred to Mediterranean cities but with similar processes and for sure not so small and not so big we think that our best city to reproduce is something similar to this one but for sure we are trying and we are doing it with some partner a similar strategy in an Italian city um so we know that the site has been listed on the uh World Monument watch in 2020 this is Ws Flagship program in the world so uh do you do you think it lays any impact on the site yeah fluores it was a very big surprise that a woman fund the dedicated its attention because really uh uh [Applause] um proposed to woman and fund to recognize not only the audience in the actual care as tangible Heritage but also that's the one that UNESCO declared that it's the intangible value of this way of living inside the courtyards so we propose somehow that we had all together one modern fund and bugs to on GN working on Heritage on the global and local scale to facilitate these processes not only as I said before in what is stones but also caring about people I think it was not so used in the case of uh Walmart on fund that I I think that that it was much more used to renovate building public building while we propose to preserve a tangible and intangible private human scale that is the center of Cordova that was for us absolutely important and from the beginning we started working with war Monument fund as in in many other activities and all of them are trying to connect and to facilitate this Heritage Community in the local and global scale we also appreciate the opportunity to work with you and our local Community Partners so my last question today uh we know that this project received the best practice in your cities and also the city of cultural heritage action so in the future how would you like to share your experience with other cities and and yes what's your next steps for us it was very beautiful to be recognized in in the case of ever City creative Heritage in action in 2023 for sure to have the the to be awarded by the European Heritage award um Awards last year and last but not least to be a member of the federal convention network of the Council of Europe that occurs and and make a network about good practices all over the European scale about this bottom-up processes that tries to to recover heritage for us it's important because as I said before we want to work on the scale local scale with people in Cordova but also we want to think about how we can learn in the Cordova land to help other city or to be helped by other a good practice good practices so all these International award for us or network that we can establish are on both side a way for us to be to to learn about other experiences and at the same time we really use this International recognition award to be able to make it to be influencer in the local scale because many times people and especially especially public administration do not understand really what is gentrification what is certification and how we have to care about the co-management of mechanism that allow us to balance the touristical and the cultural value of our past for be able to be sustainable in the future thank you uh so uh I think now our audience uh know more about the project the site and I believe they can wait to visit to pay a visit to pass so if you have anything any information we need to know before we go there yeah I think it's quite interesting for us this uh in the first step of our life the first three years more or less we could establish the network and we could realize the first renovation of the first quartiles that surely you can see in some videos that I will send you if you want to use it it's the first Cooperative of six families and it's it's quite interesting because it's a very beautiful 18th century building very historical in the in the case of Cordova the noun has a new life with a Pax cooperative and also secondhand The Next Step will be working hard in the investigation with Horizon Europe project we belong to about how Heritage can be very useful to improve health and well-being in our citizenship so it for us it's very interesting to study with a from both quantitative or quality tools how we can live better in the courtyards and in such a 15-minute City and third we would like to be able to transform Us in the next future in in a startup of urban regeneration and social Innovation I don't know if we'll be able to do it but maybe it could be an an outs a way to be to make a new upgrade in the next future for sure we are able to receive you and we will be very happy if you if you want to take part in all the meeting that we organize also with women on fund here in Cordova that's great that's really great thank you so much it's really a pleasure to talk to you thank you Gaia and I hope you have a good one thank you thank you bye [Music]
2023-08-11 17:15
