How City Cortex explores the urban intersection with Cork?
The exploration of the intersection between contemporary urban contexts and cork aims to understand the city as a living and dynamic organism.
City Cortex is an international program with cultural roots produced by Amorim, that explores the intersection between contemporary urban contexts and one of the most versatile and sustainable raw materials that Nature has to offer: the cork. This project perceives the city as a living and dynamic organism, and meets the urban challenges of the 21st century, where topics such as security, protection, social cohesion, comfort, fruition, participation, sustainability and resource management are absolutely essential.
Through engagement with internationally recognized architects and designers, City Cortex aims to create original projects for public and semi-public spaces, from different cities. When starting your search in the Lisbon metropolitan area, participants reinvent and test the possibilities of using Portuguese Cork, and the respective processing industry, and exceeds its current limits.
The studios invited to start the research are Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Gabriel Calatrava, Leong Leong, Sagmeister & Walsh and Yves Béhar.
Cortex e City Cortex:
The cortex positions itself, at all levels, as the protective barrier of organs essential to the survival of a biological organism, giving it resistance and stability.
The origin of the word cortex is found in a Latin declension, meaning bark or cork. More comprehensively, in the world of botany, the cortex is the soft or rigid tissue that encapsulates a plant or tree – the outer layer that protects it. This concept was also adapted to anatomy. It represents the outer layer of an organ or biological structure, like the kidneys or, in its best known form, the brain.
Large metropolises organize themselves, move and function at a speed and complexity that resembles the neurological activity and composition of the brain. City Cortex looks at the city as a living, dynamic organism, where public space and common use plays a fundamental role in the social relations of citizens. Public space planning is decisive in security issues, in the efficiency of mobility and the management of large flows. It must be sustainable, through intelligent use of resources, as a response to the great urban challenges of this century.
O City Cortex also seeks the playful component of the common space, taking over the city while playground, with the aim of promoting inter-social relations, generating memories, references and affections.
Through a very stimulating sensorial material, City Cortex promotes brain relationships, emotional as well as social. The program transposes these ideas to the urban context.
Just like in the brain, There are countless possibilities for connections in the city, between people and spaces and creative thinking itself.
What is the focus of the city cortex?
- Expand the possibilities of using a sustainable and natural material in urban contexts;
- Promote greater awareness of sustainability in the development of contemporary urban landscapes;
- Inspire innovative thinking, marked by ideas and intersections that offer a positive and useful contribution to our experience, as a community and interaction with the natural environment.
In addition to exploring the potential of matter itself, This program seeks to make the user experience playful, offering the urban space of common use the possibility of being a playground, a space for multidisciplinary and multicultural interaction.
City Cortex has the support of Artworks for production. Curated by Guta Moura Guedes and development of experimentadesign, The results of this program have already been presented to the public in Belém and Trafaria.
In addition, a book is published about all the projects, which will be released in September 2024, in New York City.