Ziepju, Riga, Latvia

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With up to 6000 modernist block buildings up for renovation and energy efficiency improvements in upcoming years Riga is in dire need to kickstart a cross disciplinary discussion and re-evaluation of existing renovation practices in order to find affordable and context-sensitive approaches.

The operation of the building in Riga, Ziepju street 11, began in 1970 when it was used as a service hotel for the employees of the nearby trolley bus park. It was built as a five-story building of brick and panel construction with a basement. The building has been empty since 2018. In the same year, a decision was made to rebuild the building into a multi-apartment rental residential building.

Through another initiative, the process has begun to locally adapt the principles of material and construction circularity to refurbish a derelict Soviet building to modern living standards while striving for small innovations for municipal social services that build on the strengths of the community and neighbourhood. The project will house families with physical and mental disabilities opening the ground level to a variety of social services and community centres for the neighbourhood thus forming a symbiotic relationship between different groups.

See more below the slideshow and the video!

What makes a desirable courtyard to support social and inclusive housing? Workshop in Riga, August 2023

On August 10 2023, Riga Municipality facilitated - with help from Aalborg University, Denmark - a workshop to explore what makes a desirable courtyard to support social and inclusive housing?

Participants included existing and future inhabitants and a mix of elderly and families, creating an atmosphere where diverse perspectives on the topics and design proposals were represented.

Through participatory formats, we explored the potential and challenges of the courtyard as it is and together we collaborated on creating and presenting various design opportunities that offer a great starting point for the further development of the Ziepju site. Have a look at the photos from the workshop and see the suggestions for the area.

Photos: Rudis Rubenis, Project Coordinator

Credit: Rudis Rubenis, Riga Municipality

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In Ziepju (@riga.lv - Latvia), an old Soviet social housing block needs renovation. The site will experiment with a new way forward in public renovation and transformation projects, building on inclusion and circularity, with the aim of transforming the old housing area into an attractive living environment. At our partner meeting in Amsterdam in May 2023, we asked Rudis Rubenis from RIGA CITY COUNCIL to tell us about the work. Press the icon at the bottom right of the video to expand the image and see the entire video.

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The project serves as the city’s attempt to re-evaluate the qualities of socialist architectural design and its form and function based social programming within modern socio- economic and ecological context.

In the race for the a ordable energy e ciency solutions the aesthetics of modernist buildings are neglected thus producing masses of identically looking, poor design neighbourhoods. In turn, such negligence continues to further erode the communities, local identity, and place attachment.

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The future vision must merge the ideas of local stakeholders, social workers, sensitive groups of future inhabitants and clients with architects, designers, planners, landscape-architects, and artists for cross-disciplinary and innovation.

Up until know there was no scenario detailed with landscape taken into consideration, so we must work on incorporating surrounding landscape with similar approach. Deconstruct limitations of the building by expanding functionality outdoors – adjust stakeholder needs, wishes with sustainable, biodiverse landscape that can tackle climate change induced di culties. By looking at housing projects and surrounding environment as complex picture, we can achieve even better use of materials, compatible solutions for stormwater management and elevate not only living conditions for inhabitants, but also improving city`s green and blue infrastructures.