VICTORY HILL

The brief called for a traffic infrastructural solution to remedy a highly congested urban node. After careful analysis it became apparent to us that conventional methods would only reduce, but never remedy the site. Our proposal, whilst bold, would offer the site a long lasting urban qualities for decades to come. We proposed a park that would cover the entire infrastructural node creating public space and democratizing the area to include all citizens and neighbours.

There is nothing more romantic than finding a hill in the center of a clearing in the woods: we all remember that joy with which we would run up such hill as a kid, drawn by what we were to discover at its peak. The urge to go further up and up came out of a deeply rooted sense of discovery and play that we all share. By the time our little feet would breathlessly reach the top, we would suddenly realize it was not the cross on the top that pulled us upwards but rather the view of the surrounding that surprised us as it revealed itself on the other side. We could look back down to where we started, proud of our achievement, and at the same time we could get a glimpse of the many places further ahead of us that were yet to be explored. It is with this spirit of youth in mind that we present to you this simple but dramatic proposal that has the power to bring back a contemporary character to a square of which the name and meaning has changed so heavily through time. The victory that we refer to here is not that of of a nation, of a state, or of a political ideology. Instead, it is the personal victory of exploration and discovery.