location: Maribor, Slovenia
client: Municipality of Maribor
area: 5 km

competition: 2019, wit Maruša Zorec in ARREA arhitekti
design period: 2021-22
implementation period: 2024 / 1. etapa, 1 of 5 km /
project team: Ana Kučan, Luka Javornik, Tomislav Krnač, Lara Gligić,
Danijel Mohorič, Aljaž Babič, Anja Žaucer
retention walls: Matevž Kralj, Megalit cycling path: Proinfra

In 2020, on a basis that Studio AKKA was a co-winner of the competition in 2019, we were given the task to optimise – read: lower the cost – the Drava Cycle Route project on the right bank of the river, in particular the construction of the retaining walls. Our idea of the optimisation was based on two principles: the first objective was to minimise the intervention to the site (and thus reduce the cost of the investment). Aware of the fact that the Drava in Maribor is an entity with a strong natural and symbolic presence, and that the city is constituted in different ways in relation to the river in different parts of its course, the second objective was to preserve the distinction in ambiental character between the left and the right banks of Drava in the centre area. The left bank of Drava is very urban, reaching out to the river, while the right bank, on the contrary, is very green, has an attractive, mysterious character and is seemingly separated from the city. This is partly because the city on the right bank, due to the morphology of the landscape shaped by the Drava river, was established on a terrace high above the river.

Aiming to preserve this character as much as possible and contrast it with the urban character of Lent, we looked for the ways to accomodate the required widening of the Drava path into a pedestrian and cycling corridor that would keep the space as green as possible. We were invited to participate quite late in the project, in 2021, and some of the parameters of the initial project could no longer be changed. In addition, it was difficult to reconcile the requirements of a cycle thoroughfare with the municipalitiy’s ideas of a promenade. Out of these constraints, the limitations of the site (steep banks, gravel soil) and the desire to preserve some of the urban wilderness that had previously dominated the area, the decision was made in dialogue with the engineer Matevž Kralj from Megalit, to use a pilot wall construction and derive the aesthetics of the entire trajectory, from Maribor Island to Melje, from its structural features. The pilot construction, in addition to lowering the investment cost and reducing the amount of excavation, allowed us to enrich the layout by inventing a design language with which to transform the vertical support structures into horizontals that follow the river.

As for the planting scheme: perennials and climbers are planted under the retaining structure; the site is ungrateful, shady and dry, the bed is shallow and narrow. Hardy species were chosen, which look wilder than the usual garden and park perennials, are more weed-like and will, we expect, retain some of the character of the preceding urban wilderness, which will gradully become considered as beautiful. As we explore ways of adapting to climate change the aesthetics of the landscape is also changing.

The section from the Main Bridge to the Railway Bridge has been completed, and the next section, from the Splavarska to the Studenška footbridge, is on the way.