FREESPACE
Location
Client
Montenegro
Biennale di Venezia
2018
Pavillion
Year
Program
Status
Area
Competition
140m²
Abstract - The sun and sea are not usually a difficult concept to sell. Throw in the occasional charm of old Venetian streets and Balkan cuisine and you have Montenegro’s coast in a nutshell. Parallel to this, the land pulls steeply out of the Med, giving rise to breath taking landscapes and jaw dropping valleys.
The latest in Europe's hot list of summer “Leisure Cities” Montenegro has it all to offer. If the price is right, you can even own a piece of it yourself...
“Budva was President Tito’s Benidorm”
Adrian Mourby, 2016
Preface - Tourism makes up 20% of Montenegro’s GDP, and is rising fast. Behind it has rushed a storm of developers, trying book to push through eye gouging blocks of faux contextual mass to shelter the masses during this summer pilgrimage. The quality of the urban fabric though has not reciprocally improved. Neither have the landscapes which encompass them.
A lack of cohesive planning and control has meant that there are an in-numerous amount of inactive and lost landscapes.
For an economy so driven by tourism, why not accentuate it?
The ‘local’ has already been diminished. Attempts of faux contextual development has done nothing but dilute the quality of the existing context, blurring the boundary between them. The damage already done is irreversible, with the skeletal remnants of giant developments dotting the coastline.
The solution, pump up the volume.
Density should be encouraged within defined urban areas by all means. New life and quality can be created for Montenegro to develop while its landscapes breathe and create a counter balance and contrast to this new found density.
