In times of growing climate challenges, biodiversity loss, and accelerated urbanization, the need for ethical spatial transformations is becoming increasingly urgent. Contemporary urban planning practices often fail to find solutions to excessive land consumption, construction speculation, and the deepening of socio-environmental inequalities caused by models of unlimited growth. Both urban planning and design practices are therefore faced with the challenge of creating more inclusive ways of spatial planning, management, and design by recognizing the presence of more-than-human communities.
The search for new ways of operating is approached through three scales: planetary, urban, and local, with insights at each level informing and shaping those at other levels.
This thesis first presents a theoretical framework in the planetary context that encourages a rethinking of the relationship between humans and nature as dynamic and interconnected, moving away from domination and extraction toward care, responsibility, and coexistence.
In the following, the thesis focuses on the potential of spontaneous nature in cities, which I recognize as a driver of ecological and cultural regeneration as well as the establishing of resilience and diversity in cities. The focus is on green spaces through the confrontation of two spatial paradigms: on the one hand, the established spatial practices of the city of Ljubljana, and on the other, alternative approaches that propose new ways of interacting with urban nature – I call them transformative spatial practices.
Using the Krater area in Ljubljana as an example, one of the possible strategies for integrating spontaneous ecologies into urban arrangements is tested. Krater+, as a new community center, represents the next development phase of this area, establishing new relationships with the wider urban space and simultaneously supporting the values of the existing ecosystem.The project emphasizes material reuse by incorporating existing city materials and thus becoming a material experiment capable of responding to any given material conditions and needs. Rather than defining a fixed beginning or end, the project is designed as a framework that supports the nature of the constant transformation of space.
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