DESIGNER OF NEW UKRAINE

 

Designer of New Ukraine

Architect Marco Casagrande got involved with the crisis areas of East Europe already at high school. Now he operates in a significant role in Ukraine, with focus on the reconstruction of the cities.

Hanna Freyborg HS
27.7.2025

ARCHITECT Marco Casagrande comes to Karjaa train station dressed in black. Walking, since he lives next to the station with his family.

Casagrande, 54, has designed a house to his family, which sits in the pastoral summer landscape as it would have always been part of it. The house is made of wood: birch and pine.

” I would prefer that everything in Finland would be constructed out of wood. This house I drew on snow, literally walking the floorplan on snow. I don’t even know, how many square meters does it have”, Casagrande laughs.

INTERNATIONALLY awarded and respected Casagrande is specialized in sustainable urban design and has now operated a year and a half as Professor of Architecture in a Kharkiv university (O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy) in East Ukraine and King Danylo University in West Ukraine.

When the university in Kharkiv first time contacted Casagrande, he was asked to start lecturing remotely on biourbanism online.

“I said it would not work. I needed to be present physically.”

TIME to get straight into business. We must talk about the war in Ukraine, especially about Kharkiv, a city with more than a million inhabitants, a city close to Casagrande’s heart.  

“War has given Ukraine a certain gift, it has united the East and West Ukraine together”, Casagrande begins.

That is his only positive comment of the full scale Russin attack.  

Before the war the border city Kharkiv was close to Russia also mentally. After the Russian attack the city is severely damaged, but it has also changed, it is now breathing Ukrainian patriotism.

The distance from the city to the front line is around 40 kilometres. Some of the regional cities and villages are practically on the frontline.

“When a missile hits an apartment building, the site gets cleaned up immediately and everything that can be fixed, will be fixed. The Ukrainians have zero tolerance for war debris on their streets”, Casagrande says.

Casagrande visits Kharkiv every three or four months. He stays a couple of weeks per tour, transportation takes time. Casagrande flies to Warsaw and usually takes a train to Ukraine from there.

In Kharkiv the university has provided him everything needed: local fixers and assistants, accommodation. Depending on the situation he can rely on a safe house in the middle of a forest, a location hidden from the Russians.

“I get all the intelligence and support from the university that I can think of. Nevertheless, I operate in Ukraine independently. Main thing is to keep safe distance regarding the artillery”, Casagrande says.

KHARKIV was before the war one of Ukraine’s most important industrial cities. There is no going back to the Stalinist architecture though, and the Ukrainians do not want that either.

Casagrande’s vision is to develop Kharkiv into ecologically sustainable so called Third Generation City, the very contrast to the Soviet time concrete brutalism.

“As an architect and am Animist, I believe in nature. Architecture is the art of reality, and for me nothing else than nature is real. The ideal is that the city learns to become part of nature.”

Essential part of Casagrande’s work is to redesign vital social infrastructure buildings destroyed in bombings, such as hospitals, underground schools, and rehabilitation centres.

He is using Finnish timber as much as possible and recycling destroyed buildings as much as possible.

REHABILITATION is needed for the wounded and war invalids, but also for the returnee children from Russian captivity.

There are up to 105 000 disabled orphan children in Ukraine.

” They have possibly never received any empathy, and therefore the buildings must be able radiate empathy.”

Casagrande calls this phenomena Skin-to-Skin Architecture, where the buildings have a skin.

” A successful building is like a warm hug” he says.

Before the war, the orphans were kept out of sight in Ukraine. The war has changed the attitude.

” It is sad that we needed a war to give visibility for the orphans in society,” Casagrande says.

Universal design is also incredibly important regarding the tens of thousands of disabled persons because of the war.

The war can still last a long time, which also must be taken into consideration. To minimize material losses the buildings are design to be mobile so that an apartment building or a factory can be relocated, Casagrande tells.

He wishes Finland to focus especially on the rapid development of the underground schools. Finland has the expertise.

” But the construction must start immediately. The need is excessively big.”

CASAGRANDE got interested in the East European crisis areas during his high school in Karjaa.

In December 1989 he was 18-year-old and working in the local newspaper Etelä-Uusimaa, when the revolution broke out in Romania. He was asked if he would like to report on the situation. The task was to follow if the humanitarian aid convoys reached their destinations in Romania.

Casagrande went to the journey, contrary to his parents wishes. In Romania he witnessed with his own eyes the chaos the country had gone into. The main feeling was not fear though, but curiosity. Senses sharpened up. He felt alive.

Marco Casagrande esittelee alasammutun ukrainalaisen hävittäjälentäjän äidin kirjailemaa paitaa, eli vyshyvankaa. Kuva: Outi Pyhäranta / HS

YEAR 1993 Casagrande had finished the high school, the compulsory army (Finnish Defence Forces), and begun his architecture studies, when Bosnia started calling. He had a girlfriend in Croatia and Yugoslavia was breaking up in war.

Casagrande volunteered to Bosnian Croat army (HVO Croatian Defence Council) the same year. He returned to Finland only to get back to war.

He wrote a war memoir Mostarin tien liftarit / Hitchhikers on the Mostar Road (WSOY; 1997) with pen name Luca Moconesi. Helsingin Sanomat reported in 2001 that the war crimes described in the book led to two police investigations, which were both cancelled due to no evidence of crime.

Was the controversial book an auto fictive novel?

” Something like that. It was not a documentary, but not everything that I wrote of could be created only by imagination either.”

According to Casagrande writing worked as therapy.

“War is always traumatizing. Soldier is like a high tuned machine, which after the war becomes a moped. Something is not right with a person if the war does not leave a mark.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

終極廢墟

文／艾帢米克 Edzard Mik

譯／吳介禎  Wu, Anderson C. J.

英文版原刊於 荷蘭archidea magazine #56

 

Photos: AdDa Zei

很難想像〈終極廢墟〉的木構造屋頂、樓梯、牆、板凳、通道可以在一個建築師事務所的辦公室裡構思出來。然而細緻的外觀與細節，顯然還是經過深思熟慮規劃出來的結果。因為它們太奧秘、帶著太多暗示、具有太多主動性，設計無法在繪圖桌上或在電腦裡執行。它們有機地生長，就像〈終極廢墟〉周圍樹林裡的植物與藤蔓，進而包覆原來就在那裡的農舍殘跡。

事實上它們不是被設計出來，而是由芬蘭建築師馬可．卡薩格蘭與事務所同事們，對基地與廢墟即刻反應，進而而創造完成。從各面向來說，〈終極廢墟〉是馬可．卡薩格蘭工作方針的體現：放棄人為控制以開啟或創造可直覺接近、可聯繫建築與自然親密感的空間，以及實際在場作為感受基地動能的方法。更該強調，基地上所有棲居者的生活，都不能也不該與大自然的戲劇表演分隔，包括它的生命力、腐朽與死去。

〈終極廢墟〉是一家人的會所，偶爾外借舉辦會議。地點在台灣台北，位處一片梯田與樹林的交會處。馬可．卡薩格蘭稱這件作品為「弱建築」，空間規劃遵循他的開放形態原則。根據對於周遭樹林、廢棄的紅磚農舍與在地知識的直覺反應，在基地現場即興設計。

複合式的建築物有各種空間與平台，提供從起居到冥想等不同功能。介於室內外之間的空間連續性富有變動彈性、相互交織。房子深入樹林，樹林也伸入房子。這個把室內帶到室外，把室外帶入室內的方法，使〈終極廢墟〉成為調節自然與人最極致的建築工具。房子不需要封閉，不需要與自然隔絕。住在裡面的人必須與自然相處，珍惜自然的戲劇性與自然之美。

超越人為控制，〈終極廢墟〉是個有機的意外。馬可．卡薩格蘭放手建築設計的操作，迎接自然，容許人的錯誤發生。在他眼裡，建築不是獨立的語言，也不是大多數建築師所相信的自言自語。他認為建築需要自然，以成為自然的一部分，所以稱〈終極廢墟〉是一種後廢墟狀態：人們回到廢棄的房子裡，並與叢林與大自然共享空間。

〈終極廢墟〉根基於自 2009 年起，持續不斷地與業主對話。最早的建築介入，是一張可以讓建築師與業主坐下來談的桌子。接下來是提供桌子遮蔽的結構。其餘的部份都從這裡開始一點一滴地成長，對話也一直持續，〈終極廢墟〉也一直有機地發展。建築是開放的，永遠不會停工，也永遠未完成。

"IF YOU ARE NOT CONNECTED WITH NATURE, YOU PRODUCE POLLUTION"

INTERVIEW WITH MARCO CASAGRANDE OF CASAGRANDE LABORATORY

Edzard Mik, ARCHIDEA #57 / 2018

Marco Casagrande considers himself an animist architect. Architecture shouldn’t impose itself on nature. Physical presence is the key. “I like to build a fire before I start constructing. Sleeping at the site also helps me to get connected with it.”

Photo: Ville Malja

The sensual entanglement of ruins and wooden structures, refurbishing an abandoned building with provisions for trees and plants, an organic structure of willow branches in between depressing residential towers: what stands out in the provocative architecture of the Finish architect Marco Casagrande is an ambivalent attitude towards design. His designs have a sophisticated quality, yet he also seems to criticize design in his work.

“I am not comfortable with architecture that has become design,” he explained. “To me that kind of architecture feels like pollution. Architecture should be connected with reality. Design stands on its own. It tries to replace reality and to be independent of it, solely expressing the designer’s point of view. I cannot put my thumb on the precise reason, but I feel that design is my enemy.”

How can you possibly escape “design” while making architecture?

“I always try to ruin my own design. Architecture, real architecture, is not about imposing an artificial order on reality. It is about digging it out like an archaeologist. Therefore I work on a project until it starts to become itself. Sometimes, while designing, a moment comes when I feel that it is 'there'. Often it has to do with the site. I work at different places. I am like a parachutist, I am dropped in somewhere and then I have to open myself up to the place, to break myself open, to exhaust myself, until I reach a state of feeling the site. It's essential to get that feeling and to keep it. What I should do or shouldn’t do then starts to reveal itself. This process is not at all easy. And it isn’t necessarily pleasant. It can even be painful, especially if I try to rush at it. But I know that my own project first has to die. Every good project has to die at least once, and then it gets the chance to become more than you ever could think of beforehand. Of course, it mustn't die completely. But it has to die in such a way that you lose control over it. Control is another enemy, besides design.”

Drawing: Marco Casagrande

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Photo: Sami Rintala

Do you have particular strategies for giving up control?

“I like to build a fire before I start constructing anything. Besides, I need a fire because I have to eat, dry my clothes and repel mosquitoes. Building a fire is a powerful method for connecting with the site. It means that I have to find out where to gather wood and I have to check the direction of the wind, before I can decide on the right place to build a fire. It often turns out in a later phase of the project that this place is  a meaningful place in the building. Sleeping at the site also helps me to feel the connection. It teaches me where insects are coming from and how the wind changes during the night. It generates encounters, for instance with local people who sneak through the site, a grandmother who takes one brick because she needs it for something.”

                Can you apply that strategy equally well in the city?

“It definitely works in the city too. In the Ruin Academy in Taipei, in an abandoned building, I took away all the windows. But while sleeping there I found out that I had created an unpleasant acoustic situation. The rooms echoed with noise from the traffic. So I had to grow bamboo in the windows and make wooden structures to damp out the echoes. Physical presence is the key. You can be present mentally, but you have to be present physically as well. Site specific conditions materialize in your body; you can only understand them through your body. Being together with others physically, working and sweating together, is a significant tool for communication because we all share a similar body. We share the same physical sensations, independently of our culture.”

Treasure Hill, Taipei, Taiwan (2003). Photo: Stephen Wilde

Photo: Marco Casagrande

But in the end you are constructing something, which means that you create a projection for the future, beyond your presence in the here and now.

“I am not so sure any more what time means. I used to think of time as being born, growing up and dying. But now I am growing more aware of different time scales, unconnected to my own lifespan. The times of other people, of volcanic rocks and granite, of the ants that crawl through the site and the plants and trees that grow there, of the wind and the typhoons, the time of the Earth and the Moon. Each phenomenon has its own time, and I want to understand them all and let them meet ‒ for instance, to direct the wind so you are touched by it while sleeping. Or to raise the floor so snakes can crawl under it."

Chen House, Sanjhih, Taipei County, Taiwan (2008). Photos: AdDa Zei

Do you mean that you try to orchestrate different times?

“I know something about atmospheric circulation and the course of the sun. But essentially, I don’t know what I am going to do in advance. I trust in accidents. I try to make a platform for accidents. I dig myself in and something gets constructed out of the mess. Treasure Hill in Taipei was an illegal settlement in a complex of abandoned bunkers. The local government commissioned me to develop an ecological master plan for Taipei Basin, while the same government was destroying Treasure Hill. I found Treasure Hill more interesting. I started a farm where a previous farm was destroyed by government officials. But I did it in the wrong way because my model of farming was Finnish, which means you put seeds in the ground and plants will grow. An old lady who used to own the farm passed by and criticized my work. She told me that a typhoon would wipe away everything I had done. She instructed me on the right way to do it. I had to dig ditches and plant the seeds in specific places. Finally the farm began to look like a farm. At the same time the whole settlement was watching me. Together with the grandma instructing me, it became a piece of theatre for them. They realized that she had accepted what I was doing, rebuilding her farm. They lost their fear of the government, showed up with tools and began replanting their own farms. An accidental encounter set off the whole process of rebuilding farms and eventually Treasure Hill.”

Architecture is usually concerned with solving problems. Modernity can be seen in this light too. Do you consider your work as a criticism of modernity?

“Modernity is the aesthetic representation of industrialism. But I try to think positively about industrialism, which is of very recent origin. Maybe it will learn to become part of nature some day. Maybe it will become an organic machine. To achieve that we must open ourselves up to site specific knowledge. I would not call it old knowledge, because knowledge is changing all the time. However, industrialism still assumes that it is independent of nature. Nature is often seen as something hostile, with its floods and typhoons. Through industrialism we create a machine that is completely functional and not related to nature, although it uses its resources. To me, nature is a specific mentality, a mind that thinks of just one thing: to maximize life in the given conditions. If you are not connected to nature, you produce pollution.”

 

Bug Dome, Shenzhen, China (2009). Photos: Nikita Wu

How do you see your work in relation to modernity? Is it a proposal to build differently, or is it a kind of meditation on our attitude towards nature? In other words, is it more like a work of art?

“I consider myself an animist architect. First of all I attempt to connect myself to the mind of a city. Because I can usually communicate only with a limited number of people, I spread rumours through the city. You cannot control rumours. They change all the time. They are like creatures. You can only send them but not control them. Rumours are powerful. I think you could design cities just by rumours. Often my work functions as the source of rumours. People react to them easily. Sometimes I talk about urban acupuncture. That is basically the same. I asked students of the Tamkang University in Taipei to build Trojan horses in order to 'attack' the city. The hidden content was of course not soldiers, but letters from citizens to the mayor expressing their wishes, thoughts and complaints about the city. The rumours spread and we collected thousands of letters. The media became interested. Finally the mayor had no choice but to receive us and to read some of the letters aloud.”

You did some projects with ruins. What do you find attractive about ruins?

“I find them hope-inspiring. There is a lot of hope in ruins. A ruin is architecture that has become part of nature again. Nature reads architecture easily. Mosses start to grow, then plants and trees. To me that that is very beautiful. People usually try to seal their home against the intrusion of nature. To keep nature out of the house, you have to clean it and maintain it all the time. It's a form of control. But if you abandon the house, nature will break in and the house will become part of a life-providing system. I call this second generation architecture. What I am interested in is third generation architecture, when you return and find that the house has become part of nature. How can you live there?  There is plenty of space left over, but perhaps you have to accept that the interior has been penetrated by a tree and plants are creeping out of the cracks. The house is no longer shielding you from nature. It has become an intermediary between you and nature.”

You went to live in a ruin. Can you explain how that worked out practically?

“When I was working at Tamkang University, I told the Dean of the architectural department, professor Chen, that I didn’t want to live in a house any more. I asked for a ruin instead. He found a derelict rice packing factory for me next to a rice paddy. My wife Nikita protested that we could not live there because rain came in through the roof. So my first step was to build a roof above the bed, and the next was to provide facilities for keeping ourselves clean. We could get water in buckets from the nearby river. I fixed up a heater with a gas tank for hot water and cooking. We went from one step to the next until finally we could move in.”

You didn’t design anything?

“I don’t think you can really design architecture. Of course, you can reach a certain level by drawing and making models. But that does not get to the essence of architecture. I only understand what needs to be done once I am occupied with building on the site and experiencing the space growing around me. This teaches me, for example, to make a small adjustment so that I can see the moon at night. If you base the construction of a building only on drawings, you force it to comply with preconceptions. Then the architecture becomes strangely crippled, growing out of nothing. Architecture shouldn’t impose itself on nature. Architecture should be pliant, an undecided form.”

ULTRA-RUIN

ARKKITEHTI 6/2015 Finnish Architectural Review

valokuvat | photos AdDa Zei

teksti | text Marco Casagrande

Architecture gives the commands and architects listen. Actually, nature gives the commands and architecture takes form. An architect is a design shaman who communicates with this reality. Design cannot replace reality or nature. Human control must be opened up in order to let nature step in. Architecture must be ruined. Ruin is when man-made has become part of nature.

Architecture is a site-specific instrument through which the great voice of nature starts to resonate and find form. This great voice is weak and needs great presence, sacrifice and sensitivity to be heard. An architect is one of the sensitive beings to hear this voice and protect the sound. Architecture either is or it isn’t. It cannot be speculated. Architecture is a real reality.

“What really happened to Porcupine?”

“One day he came back from the Zone and became amazingly rich, amazingly rich. The next week he hanged himself.”

– Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

People live in space and this connection can be art, a higher thing than what could be designed. Architecture is an accident, which is a higher thing than human control. In order to understand the accident and to let life run through it, one must be present. To be present is the key of all art. This crack in human control is the acupuncture point through which the organism of architecture can grow. Biourbanism is a city of cracks. Architecture is a mediator between man and nature, connecting human nature with the rest of nature, reality. Architecture is the art of reality.

Ultra-Ruin is a wooden architectural organism growing from the ruins of an abandoned red brick farmhouse in the meeting place of terraced farmlands and the jungle. The weak architecture follows the principles of Open Form and is improvised on the site based on instincts reacting to the presence of jungle, ruin and local knowledge.

The complex has a variety of multi-functional spaces and platforms that can be activated for different living functions as well as meditation. The spatial continuity between interior and exterior spaces is flexible – the inside is also outside and the jungle is in the house. Ultra-Ruin is an architectural instrument played by nature including human nature. The main user is a private family, but occasionally the space is opened up for larger meetings.

a - lower deck, b - courtyard, c - loft, d - hall, e - kitchen, f - sauna, g - pool, h - tower

Ultra-Ruin is more of an organic accident than based on industrial control. Architectural control has been opened up in order to let nature step in and human error take place. Architecture is not an independent language and architecture is not talking alone. Architecture needs nature to become part of nature. Ultra-Ruin is a post-ruin condition, where the human has come back to the ruin-house and shares the same space with the jungle.

Ultra-Ruin has been developed since 2009 in close and still ongoing dialog with the client. The first architectural reaction was to build a table around which we could talk, then to build a shelter for this table. The rest of Ultra-Ruin has grown up around this initial impact. We still keep talking and Ultra-Ruin keeps growing as an open form. ark

asuintalo | private house

arkkitehdit | architects Marco Casagrande

osoite | address Yangming Mountain, Taipei, Taiwan

laajuus | gross area 210 m² + 520 m² (terassit | terraces)

valmistuminen | completion 2013

BIOURBANISM OF THE PARACITY

Published in the ARKKITEHTI / FINNISH ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, November 2015

Marco Casagrande

Open form enables the biourban city. An industrial city seemingly independent of its natural environment is replaced by a living organism.

Paracity is a modular urban structure system based on the use of a glue-laminated solid wood grid, a sort of primary framework, within which people can build their homes, create communities and establish cultivations. Organic by nature, Paracity is capable of growing unaided on urban wastelands such as flood lands or slums. This autonomous biourban growth is made possible by modular environmental technology, which provides the necessary ’internal organs’ for the communities created in the process. Paracity is designed to receive, process and convert the waste generated by urban centres into a resource. It serves as an acupuncture needle in the side of a polluting city.

6 x 6 x 6 m Paracity module at Habitare. 

Open form

As it grows, Paracity obeys the laws of Open Form introduced by Oskar Hansen at CIAM in 1959 and developed further by Svein Hatløy in the 2000s. The methodology is based on the idea of communities growing spontaneously through reciprocally stimulating design concepts. Actually, Open Form is very close to the Taiwanese pre-urban tradition of creating self-organising and often unofficial communities. These micro-urban communities are centres of knowledge, which also serves as fuel of growth for Paracity. Paracity is a compost of local knowledge generating the energy that gives birth to urban communities.

Paracity supplies a growth medium for the development of the community framework to which people add their own human elements. Design does not seek to replace reality. Flesh is More. The primary structure consists of a grid of six or three-meter long glue-laminated beams with CLT panels serving as bracing. The beams are inter-connected using wood joints making it possible for people to extend the primary framework as they wish. CLT possesses excellent earthquake and fire-resistance properties.

Originally, Paracity was designed for areas prone to floods and tsunamis. The entire urban structure rests on CLT posts allowing the water level to rise freely up to the ground floor which is left empty. In the dry season, the ground floor serves as a common living area providing facilities for the exercise of tai-chi, meditation, karaoke, boat repairs, midnight markets and other spontaneous expressions of urban energy.

Biourbanism

Paracity’s biourbanism grows to be assimilated into nature – the structure is auto-ruining. Paracity is a human marshland or compost where the various organic levels overlap and mix to create ‘agritecture’ with nature serving as the collaborative architect.

Paracity feeds on the flows of materials generated by the surrounding city. Even a polluted river serves as a source of energy for this biourban internal organ. Paracity lives and breathes side by side with the surrounding city in a symbiosis like slums: the urban nomads purge the city from the slag produced by it. Paracity represents just an enhancement of the process through the use of modular environmental technology. Paracity is basically a high-tech slum.

In the Paracity pilot project we have proposed in Taipei, household and irrigation water is drawn from the polluted local river and purified. Pre-purified water is pumped to the roof terraces where it is oxidised and root-purified by plants selected for this purpose. From the green areas on the roofs, the water flows down to the community gardens and urban cultivations. Paracity’s main source of energy is the fast-growing biomass that thrives on the fertile flood lands along the river.

Once it has properly struck root and achieved its critical mass, Paracity will reach over Taipei’s 12-metre high flood wall currently separating the industrially produced urban housing from the river and its environs. The flood wall will remain as an industrial relic within Paracity while the new organic urban structure permits peaceful co-existence between the industrial city and the river. Paracity will serve as a mediator between the industrialised human environment and nature.

The fragments of Paracity scattered around Taipei form a network of urban architecture that steers industrial development towards an organic machine. By ruining the industrialised city, it seeks to reclaim it to become part of nature and a ‘third-generation city’.

Third-generation city

The first-generation city is a built-up human community living in immediate interaction with and depending on the natural environment. Taipei’s fertile flood lands have offered favorable conditions for compact housing and the river has provided food and a means of transportation while the mountains flanking the plains have protected the city from the full force of typhoons.

The second-generation city is an industrial city, seemingly independent from the natural environment surrounding it. In fact, nature seems to be harmful to this mechanical machine, as if the floods, for example, intend to destroy it. To prevent this, Taipei has built the flood wall.

The third-generation city represents the organic ruins of the industrialised city. The existing symbioses between Taipei’s collective gardens, urban cultivations and illegal settlements and the surrounding city are fragments of the third-generation city. These areas serve as the city’s acupuncture points piercing through its industrial skin to reach local knowledge. Drawing upon and committed to this resource, the third-generation city grows to become part of nature.

Urban acupuncture is a theory of ecological urban planning that seeks to combine urban planning with the ideas of traditional Chinese medicine. Fundamentally, it perceives cities as multi-tiered living organisms and tries to identify areas and districts ripe for an upgrade and reconditioning. Projects relying on the local traditions and based on the principles of sustainable development serve as acupuncture needles that stimulate the entire organism by curing parts of it.

A ruin is the catharsis of architecture where something man-made reverts to nature. A ruin is the subconscious goal of the industrialised city and the trauma of modern man. Taipei offers an advanced model for the symbiosis where the mechanised city co-exists with unofficial residential areas, collective gardens, city cultivations and urban nomads. With zoning only half-finished, the final touches to the city are put by its residents.

Paracity is the seed of a third-generation city. A modular biourban organism grows in response to human needs while at the same time ruining the surrounding industrial city. Seeds of Paracity are germinating within Taipei in the collective gardens, illegal settlements, abandoned burial grounds and other undeveloped sites. These seeds will contribute to the biological rehabilitation of the surrounding city through urban acupuncture. From these points, Paracity will spread out along the covered river and irrigation channels. Ultimately, the biourban organism and the static city will reach a biologically sustainable equilibrium that will give birth to the third-generation city. ark

ARK, Finnish Architectural Review

Casagrande shares space with the jungle

Text Francois-Luc Giraldeau
Photos AdDa Zei
Published in MARK Magazine #50, June/July 2014

Early in his career, Finnish architect Marco Casagrande grasped the need to cut across disciplines - in the arts and applied sciences - to give form to his broad vision of the built environment. His current research involves the development of urban interventions on different scales, projects meat to shape and follow the shift towards a postindustrial city: an organic matrix lying in ruin, within which nature and man-made constructions are closely intertwined.

In the Taiwanese jungle, nestled amid a tangle of tropical vegetation, Ultra-Ruin is autonomous and off-grid. The single-family house was designed to give rise to unfettered interaction between natural processes and built form over time. It epitomizes Casagrande's experimental take on architectural conservation and puts a spin on the established view of bioclimatic concepts employed in the design of residential projects. Here the architect shows his appreciation for the tectonic qualities and the promising adaptive possibilities of a decaying brick farmhouse, a building that had fallen into disrepair and that was - and is - exposed to the elements and to wildlife.

Its renovation appears to have come about both organically and fortuitously. The architect drew upon the existing structure, using only minimal methods and resources to achieve tremendous gains in terms of spatial adaptability and flexibility. Casagrande explains that a commission of this kind "usually starts out with rough sketches and goes forward to small-scale physical models". The architect who immerses himself "in the physical and cultural context of the project", he stresses, is "all the more qualified" to execute his plan properly.

Encompassing two levels, Ultra-Ruin is a free-flowing sequence of serene spaces that engender spiritual reflection while mediating the contrast between inside and outside, deftly allowing one to assert itself within the other. Evoking the building's lush setting are several local timbers, such as mahogany, which was used to construct the walkway that leads to the entrance. Other materials, however, provide a crisp, contemporary counterpoint to nature and to the project's rustic appeal.

Casagrande's work seems to be driven by the desire - if not archaic, then at least unconventional - to build shelters, improvised structures that grow from the inside out to gradually shape and enhance the lives of his clients. Poised between construction and destruction, Ultra-Ruin is an emotional piece of architecture rather than a pragmatic piece of convenience.