A Liveable City

Developed in collaboration with Richard Rees Consultancy | London, UK year: 2014 – 2017

STUDJURBAN’s strategy for Valletta has always focused on what works in the city: successful places, active frontages, important connection points, existing built and unbuilt assets – together with recent and ongoing interventions and the critical social enclaves that need to be urgently addressed. Our research, which revealed a significant imbalance between Valletta’s western and eastern flanks, helped us identify the need for better connections. We proposed St. John Street as the main transversal axis linking the two ferry points and St. Christopher Street to knit in the western and eastern social enclaves together and as a result, Valletta City Gate and St Elmo would become urban catalysts that reach out to the surrounding areas. The open space apron lying in front of Fort St. Elmo provides the potential to tie the lower residential communities with the rest of the urban fabric and the Fort’s envisaged interventions, opening them up to the residents. At the upper end, the opportunity to formalise the current disjointed green assets in Floriana and the entrance to the city could create another enclave beyond its gate. We also proposed ideas on how the roofscape of some city blocks could provide two levels of new accommodation, gardens, recreational space, and energy generation that could transform the economic value of each block without damaging the overall profile of the World Heritage setting.