A renewed approach to architecture and urban planning cannot be initiated solely by centralised structures and governmental bodies. Doina Petrescu highlights the importance of ‘other spaces’, the temporary appropriation and use of leftover spaces and urban interstices, spaces of relative freedom, where rules and codes can still be redefined.
continue>www.re-public.gr
Categories: architecture · autonomy · city · common subconsciousness · culture · development · guerilla action · happiness · health · politics · protest · sensory architecture · society · urban planning
Tagged: city space, community commons, Doina Petrescu, psychosocial space, urban planning
As architects we often get frustrated by building codes. Finnish building codes are strict, and cut in stone, there are no excuses made. A step higher than 40-50 cm; has to have a safety rail of 90 cm high. Apple trees in apartment building gardens; forbidden, raw apples can be toxic if consumed in huge quantities (and I mean HUGE). A staircase cannot be too narrow or too steep - ever. Etc, etc. By all these rules we think we make the world safer. But is safety first right? We are actually by eliminating risk, also eliminating part of life, and the process of learning. Learning gives you joy and confidence. And arent small risks so much more fun than someone telling you “play NOW!”.//aito
A major study by Play England, part of the National Children’s Bureau, found that half of all children have been stopped from playing; climbing trees, playing conkers or taking part in games of tag or chase. Some parents are going to such extreme lengths to protect their children from danger that they have even said no to hide-and-seek.
‘Children are not being allowed many of the freedoms that were taken for granted when we were children,’ said Adrian Voce, director of Play England. ‘They are not enjoying the opportunities to play outside that most people would have thought of as normal when they were growing up.’
Voce argued that it was becoming a ’social norm’ for younger children to be allowed out only when accompanied by an adult. ‘Logistically that is very difficult for parents to manage because of the time pressures on normal family life,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want your children to play out alone and you have not got the time to take them out then they will spend more time on the computer.’
Voce pointed out how irrational some of these decisions were. Last year, almost three times as many children were admitted to hospital after falling out of bed as those who had fallen from a tree.
The tendency to wrap children in cotton wool has transformed how they experience childhood. According to the research, 70 per cent of adults had their biggest childhood adventures in outdoor spaces among trees, rivers and woods, compared with only 29 per cent of children today. The majority of young people questioned said that their biggest adventures took place in playgrounds.
Voce said Play England was determined to spread the message that children ought to be taking risks and that it is ‘not the end of the world if a child has an accident’. The latest study will be launched on Wednesday to coincide with Play Day, when hundreds of events will take place across the country to celebrate children’s right to play. It will show that play providers also feel the opportunities for children to ‘test and challenge themselves in play involving a level of risk’ have reduced over the past decade. They blame overcautious health and safety officers and the fear of litigation if children have accidents.
link> The Guardian
Categories: architecture · autonomy · collective knowledge · common subconsciousness · future · happiness · health · housing · politics · sensory architecture · society · urban planning · youth
Tagged: children, eliminate risk, growing up, overcautious parents, play, safety
Vaarallisia ajatuksia - Dangerous Thoughts - that is something the guys at Demos like. Imagine year 2050 they say: most of the worlds population will live in “slums”; self-built cities. `This is our salvation!´ the men state. Wait a moment?
Wikicity is the city of voice. It’s the place of opportunity superior to the gold paved streets of another utopia, it is where opportunity is something you create together. It’s the place where man (hopefully woman, too…) can create his own surroundings. It is organised anarchy - extremely alluring. Dangerous? Risky? Naive? Optimist? Innovative? Hopeful? Progressive? Unpredictable? Brilliant? YES!
Look at what we have as an option: people more and more disengaged in decisions on their own lives, more and more distrustful of neighbours, more and more alone, embedded into a blanket of that everything in life is -so well organized-.
Roope Mokka of Demos Helsinki wrote an article on “Thinking Cities” for the Monocle alongside Alain de Botton, Richard Florida, Jonathan Raban, Ricky Burdett and Richard Alston. //aito
The idea of self-built cities is the greatest promise for urban development. The idea is that we open up the creation of cities in the same way we have opened the compiling of encyclopedias and online-media to allow anyone to contribute. It’s the same principle that many industries are using to open up their R&D, design and marketing processes to their customers and which also inspires “open source” software development. Co-creating cities is one of the few positive developments in a problem-ridden tidal wave of urbanisation in the 21st century. And it’s one that could make us happier.
The core issue is that cities no longer enable us to live out our dreams. We have changed, but the cities haven’t. They remain the final bastions of modernistic design where users are seen as the masses and individuals are an obstacle. Even suburbia (on the surface a tasteless, mundane, hypermarket-bound high-carbon lifestyle) offers more potential for self-expression. That is why we fleeing cities. To lure us back we need cities that give us a voice. We need to take democracy to the next level, where it recognises our individual needs and dreams.
Demos NOW, an urban think tank, has created the concept of City 2.0 (PDF) - an urban ecosystem of social innovation, governance and social risk funding. We want to turn the Helsinki Metropolitan Area into a self-built city; a hi-tech low-carbon “slum” with an unforeseen and unpredictable quality of life. A Wikicity.
Categories: Helsinki · architecture · autonomy · business · city · culture · development · economy · future · happiness · health · innovation · politics · protest · society · urban planning · work
Tagged: Aleksi Neuvonen, city 2.0, dangerous thoughts, Demos, Happiness Index, Helsinki, NOW, open source city, participatory democracy, Roope Mokka, the city of voice, vaarallisia ajatuksia, Wikicity
The regeneration of London’s Bankside quarter, most famous for the Tate Modern, is being accompanied by a public space strategy with an ecological approach.The Bankside Urban Forest is a proposal for a wholly new concept of urban green space networks and linkages.
This scheme for the London Bankside urban renewal has grown out of a strong sense that local residents perceive the area described in the scheme as being “calm”,“safe”, and enjoying a strong sense of local identity already. It is not the case, however, that labyrinthine means dangerous, as local residents confirm. Conventional public space strategies are often informed by safety concerns which suggest that large open spaces and long straight vistas must invariably feel safer. Yet many people find large, hard-surfaced landscapes threatening by their sheer lack of incident and anonymity. Local residents around Bankside find no contradiction between describing the area as feeling safe, along with praising the irregular network of streets and back doubles. What they do fear, however, is the “Manhattanisation” of Bankside north of Southwark Street, and the forest concept is one which it is intended will weave human scale and engaging pathways and networks linking old and new Bankside together. Local residents interviewed for this study have confirmed the importance to them of the distinctive irregular street patterns of the area, together with the many courtyards, railway arches, viaducts, bridges and alleyways. Thus, there were great strengths in respecting the existing labyrinthine set of streets and settlements, which inspired the idea of the Bankside forest.
Bankside is a densely populated and historic quarter on the southern bank of the River Thames in London.The area is being regenerated, with about 50 projects currently under consideration. Several illustrative projects (dark green) have been proposed to help bind the public space network together.
This proposal imagines the Bankside public realm strategy as an urban forest rather than a park. There is an important difference. The term park originates with the Latin parricus or French parc, both meaning enclosure. The early English deer-parks were royal hunting grounds and strictly policed, for instance, whereas the forest has always been regarded as a place of liberty and without distinct boundaries.
Over time, “forest space” has acquired a set of architectural and topographical associations with a sense of open-endedness and permeability, a place that can be entered or exited at any point at its edges, and which visually changes and re-configures itself as the traveller moves through it. Because of their organic origins, forests offer a multiplicity of paths, routes, changes of direction, as well as clearings, copses, streams, rides and allées. “A person should be able to walk through a forest on the way from home to work,” the architect Alvar Aalto once said.
“If forests appear in our religions as places of profanity, they also appear as sacred. If they have typically been considered places of lawlessness, they have also provided havens for those who took up the cause of justice and fought the law’s corruption. If they evoke associations of danger and abandon in our minds, they also evoke scenes of enchantment. In other words, in the religions,mythologies an literatures of the West, the forest appears as a place where the logic of distinction goes astray.”
Thus, there were great strengths in respecting the existing labyrinthine set of streets and settlements, which inspired the idea of the Bankside forest.
Though the forest idea introduces elements now associated with “greening the city”, and largely determined by ecological imperatives – to counter CO2 emissions, to lower ambient temperatures, to increase surface water retention and avoid flooding – there are equally important social and economic imperatives in the forest strategy too.
The intensification of existing public spaces allows for a hybrid of new urban forms. In Flat Iron Square, the existing café could be turned into a woodland hut built around the trunks of the mature plane trees.
In addition to strengthening the historical jigsaw of spaces and places, the forest concept also introduces a slowing down of time, based on the experience of irregular pathways and frequent and engaging visual incident. Urbanists have for some time now been drawing attention to the “overscripting”of public space in many urban regeneration schemes, so that all conflicts and loose ends are designed out, and the public are organised into patterns of use and timetables decided elsewhere. This disallows for that sense of wandering and of discovering a neighbourhood by serendipity. The very qualities for which we admire historic European towns and cities.
BANKSIDE URBAN FOREST, SOUTHWARK, LONDON, UK
Client: local stakeholders led by Better Bankside BID Company, including the
London Borough of Southwark,Tate Modern,Transport for London, Cross River
Partnership, Land Securities, GC Bankside LLP, the Architecture Foundation
Architects: Witherford Watson Mann, London, with Ken Worpole
Area: 1.7 square kilometres
Witherford Watson Mann were one of eleven competitors in an invited
competition.The framework was completed in March 2007, and launched
in September 2007.
Categories: architecture · business · city · common subconsciousness · culture · design · development · environment · happiness · health · nature · sensory architecture · the sublime · urban planning
Tagged: Bankside plan, Bankside Urban Forest, Ken Worpole, London, Tate Modern surroundings, Witherford Watson Mann
Grow your own food!
Would you have ever thought it conceivable to grow vast amounts of produce in the heart of densely populated cities ?
The concept of eco-tower “Tour Vivante” aim is to associate agricultural hydroponic production, dwelling and activities in a single and vertical system.
A continuous agriculture, emancipated from seasons and climatic hazards (drought, flood, weather), which provides a production 5 to 6 time better than open fields cultures.
Tour Vivante allows a local production and to wipe out transportation needed for food supply and thus, the process of the very energy-consuming preservation.
The hydroponic agricultural production purifies the districts air by the provision of plants oxygen.
An efficient use of salvaged rainwater is transformed into drinking water by the evaporation/respiration of plants.
Tour Vivante generates a large amount of methane or electricity by the fermentation of food waste and vegetals.
Located at the top of the tower, two large windmill directed towards the dominant winds produce electricity facilitated by the height of the tower. The produced electric power is about 200 to 600 kWh per annum.
4 500 m of photovoltaic panels included into the facades generate electricity from solar energy.
This tower will have as well : Rainwater and Black water systems, Ecological or recycled materials and Thermal and hygrometrical regulation.
Vertical farming could revolutionize the way we produce food. This new model could replace, traditional farming methods. This is one idea where the sky is truly the limit.
Categories: architecture · autonomy · city · design · development · economy · energy · environment · future · health · housing · innovation · nature · technology
Tagged: farming inside, green architecture, green housing, grow your own food, la tour vivante, local farming, soa architectes, the vertical farm
Regardless of whether you are an urban, suburban, or rural dweller, there is inevitably a patch of neglected turf in your neighborhood that might need a bit of TLC and greening. If you see hidden gardening potential between sidewalk cracks when others see decay and abandon, well then, you might be a budding guerrilla gardener and not even know it! The guerrila gardening phenomenon is currently sweeping the globe as folks are finding innovative ways to come together for the optimization of neglected land and paved surface area. It’s a turf war for some, or a poetic gesture for others, but either way, citizens are rolling up there sleeves to create gardens in the most unlikely spaces and places.
The term ‘guerrilla gardening‘ might scare off some, but the practice has a long history of both radical and community-building tactics. Liz Christy and the Green Guerrillas transformed an abandoned lot in NYC’s Bowery during the 1970’s and as the BBC recently reported, guerrilla gardeners are ’sowing the seeds of resistance’ in South London. Many ‘resistance gardeners’ consider themselves to be vandals of sorts but with plants or seeds as weapons, often operating covertly at night in empty lots or on public property that otherwise remains unkept or barren.
The Guerilla Gardening website has a friendly though subversive sort of tone, as it has gone from tracking the activities of “illicit cultivation around London” to being a “growing arsenal for anyone who is interested in waging war against the neglect of public space.” It’s troop digs are warm and inviting and ultimately about reclamation, beautification, and even growing food in public spaces (a political act in and of itself as we re-educate ourselves about viable land use). The lighter side of the guerilla gardening campaign would probably be community gardens or grassroots gardening, which also brings folks together (during daylight hours) for neighborhood improvement and local food security. Whether as collective green graffiti or as an attempt to reclaim the neighborhood and make improvements for all, guerrilla gardening is a form of eco-activism that is catching on despite its controversial methods.
Categories: autonomy · city · culture · environment · guerilla action · happiness · health · nature · politics · protest · sensory architecture · society · urban planning
Tagged: urban planning, city, law, Guerilla gardening, urban gardening, urban nature, parks, planting by night, growing seeds, own city garden
The idea of `The Squatted Office´ touches me because of several issues; first, it continues my theme of Forbidden Places. It also comes close as to the personal experience I have on being offered (the now almost a rule) part-time work and work contracts of 3-6 months, and the problem of expensive housing costs in relation to wages. But the idea and the fact of working only part-time also describes the feeling of freedom you get from being able (albeit economically barely) to not dedicate your entire life to work controlled by somebody else, and the freedom of not being dictated by the mindless squirrel wheel.
Mind you, as this article shows, the time not working for your bread is not spent idle, this time gives one the opportunity to work and study something that really interest you without fear of not following the company agenda. One is free to concentrate on what one loves, and interests of love are seldom treated lightly. This kind of passionate work is much more productive than work done only for money.
Progressive working environments are starting to grasp the idea of “working for love” slowly. There are some books (that immediately became cult books) on the issue, for example “The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida” a book that keeps coming up on seminars time after time. One can hear the cry in the air for a solution from companies and government on what to do when educated people will not dance after the same steps employers have made them dance the past years. What will companies do, when money is not any more the primus motor of the creative class they need so badly?
`The squatted office´ is also close at heart because it brings to mind a friend of mine who as early as the 1970-80´s turned his government work place into something that I could now call a “creative nest” (…or borderline “anarchist nest”). Imagine one of those city bureaus of monotonous facades and people in cubicles (koppikonttori), and suddenly one cubicle with a grand piano in it, music, books not directly related to the work being studied, and an employee not following the 9-17 time scheme. Of course in those days in ultra-conservative small town Finland it was bound to create a lot of stir…well, in most of the Finnish governmental offices it would still do that, when even trying to get the time card coded not to call security after 20.00 is impossible. The rise of the creative class has not by far yet entered our governing institutions.
The issues brought forward by the article touch also on many flaming themes in our society. Not long ago, the press announced that manly because of high housing costs, to be able to live in Helsinki, a family needs to earn minimum 3000 euros/month. This exceeds the earnings of many. Could squatting your work place be part of a solution? If you feel at home on your work place, if you also could bring family and friends there, spend time and cook there, could it replace some of the costly space in your big home?
Employers should take a close look on the concept of work attached living (tulevaisuuden työsuhdeasunto). //aito
Romantic Stories from the Revolution in the Attic
This just in from our friends in Bulgaria. We thought it was worth sharing here as an Eastern European counterpoint to the article about squatting one’s workplace that appeared in the first issue of Rolling Thunder.
This story starts a little before the end of my last term in the university. I’d spent four really crazy years in the students’ hostels in the well known “Students’ Town” in Sofia. The end of the term was coming and my life in the students’ hostel was about to end, too. I had to find a new place for living very fast if I wanted to stay in Sofia. I thought over a lot of options for renting, but all the rents were very expensive for me. I was working for a web page at that time. The job was pretty nice—I used to write news and concert reports, prepare photos, and do kind of a primitive book-keeping at the office. The best thing was that I had one or two free weeks every month and I was able to travel all around the country during this time, but the bad thing was that my salary was very low. It appeared that if I wanted to rent a lodging I had to find more “serious” and well-paid job. For me this was like putting a chain around myself and working the whole month only to get enough money to pay my rent and food, and hopefully to save some money to enjoy the weekends. I didn’t like this idea at all, because I didn’t want to sell my leisure time for a wage.
Then a great idea dawned on me. I thought of squatting my workplace. My boss was living abroad and he was staying in Bulgaria only for some periods of time. I had nothing to lose, so I decided to try it. The office was an attic with two rooms and an anteroom. I had little baggage in Sofia at that time, because my future was unclear and after I left the students’ hostel I was sleeping at the homes of my friends. With my backpack, I was like a snail with my home on my back. So I quietly moved in my office and hid my stuff in a cardboard box. >continue
Categories: autonomy · business · city · culture · development · economy · future · guerilla action · happiness · health · housing · innovation · society · urban planning · work
Tagged: creative class, freedom, squatted office, working environment
CrimethInc on really Free Markets. //aito
Once a month two hundred or more people from all walks of life gather at the commons in the center of our town. They bring everything from jewelry to firewood to give away, and take whatever they want. There are booths offering bicycle repair, hairstyling, even tarot readings. People leave with full-size bed frames and old computers; if they don’t have a vehicle to transport them, volunteer drivers are available. No money changes hands, no one haggles over the comparative worth of items or services, nobody is ashamed about being in need. Contrary to government ordinances, no fee is paid for the use of this public space, nor is anyone “in charge.” Sometimes a marching band appears; sometimes a puppetry troupe performs, or people line up to take a swing at a piñata. Games and conversations take place around the periphery, and everyone has a plate of warm food and a bag of free groceries. Banners hang from branches and rafters proclaiming “FOR THE COMMONS, NOT LANDLORDS OR BUREAUCRACY” and “NI JEFES, NI FRONTERAS” and a king-size blanket is spread with radical reading material, but these aren’t essential to the event—this is a social institution, not a demonstration.
Thanks to our monthly ’Free Markets, everyone in our town has a working reference point for anarchist economics. Life is a little easier for those of us with low or no income, and relationships develop in a space in which social class and financial means are at least temporarily irrelevant. >continue
Categories: autonomy · business · city · culture · economy · happiness · health · innovation · politics · protest · society
Tagged: free market economy, parecon, social economics
The Danish architect professor Jan Gehl gives Helsinki´s startegy on cars low points. Jan Gehl has much experience in making city centers more pedestrian friendly and active; he has developped these issues in for example cities like Melbourne, London, Zürich, Edinburgh, Rotterdam and New York. In many other bigger cities politicians have woken up to develop the city chore for people, by reducing cars. This boosts business and also tourism, the professor points out. People are drawn to cities because of their quality of urban life. It is not a question of banning cars, Gehl says, but the stategy to put traffic first is devastating for city centres. In Helsinki, instead of developing the city centre into a more pleasant place for people, political decisions on planning force the pedestrians underground into tunnels and spaces without daylight, Jan Gehl criticizes.
The newly appointed Helsinki Mayor for City Planning and Real Estate Hannu Penttilä does not want to comment on Jan Gehl´s views. He needs time to study the case, he says. We hope to hear his opinion one day soon. //aito
Allt fler stora städer gör det, gör tillvaron sur för bilarna i innerstan och tar tillbaka rummet för mänskligt umgänge. Det säger danske arkitekten Jan Gehl. Köpenhamn är föregångaren, Sydney ska ta efter men Helsingfors går sin egen väg.
Jan Gehl har ägnat nästan femtio år åt att skapa mer mänskligt, fotgängarvänligt livsrum i storstäderna. Han är arkitekt och professor och har varit engagerad i starten av förändringen i Köpenhamn. Där insåg beslutsfattarna redan i början av 60-talet att det var dags att återerövra staden och skapa miljöer för människor som möts till fots eller på cykel.
- Utvecklingen har visat att Köpenhamn inte valde fel. Jämfört med mitten av 80-talet rör sig nu fyra gånger fler fotgängare i innerstan och 36 procent av köpenhamnarna åker cykel till jobbet. Innerstan pulserar av liv. Av mänskligt liv.
Köpenhamn ordnade om sitt centrum utgående från fotgängarna och cyklisterna, befriade torg och kvarter från bilar och gjorde allt besvärligare för bilisten.
- Det handlar inte om antingen eller. Men bilarna ska inte få dominera, de ska inte uppta allt rum, fylla alla trottoarkanter och alla torg.
Han skrattar högt åt det ständiga påståendet om att innerstans varuhus och butiker går i konkurs om folk inte kan köra i centrum i egen bil och parkera överallt.
- Tvärtom, och de flesta storstäder upplever samma trend. I dag har folk mera fritid, studerar längre, lever längre, reser mycket, skaffar barn senare och är allt starkare urbant orienterade.
- Folk är inriktade på att njuta av livets goda och söker upplevelser och umgänge i det urbana landskapet, de väljer platser som lämpar sig för möten mellan människor. Människor trivs bland människor, i kvarter som håller liten, mänsklig skala, kvarter som är fyllda av visuell mångsidighet, aktiviteter, museer, kaféer, krogar och biografer, säger Gehl och tillägger att all den där shoppingen kommer vid sidan om.
Han tar också kål på myten om att de stora shoppingcentren i förorterna konkurrerar ut shoppandet i innerstan.
- När du har besökt ett stort shoppingcentrum har du besökt dem alla. De är alla likadana. Och de bjuder aldrig på upplevelser som flanerande i urbana kvarter. Han säger att den ekonomiska utvecklingen i städer som Köpenhamn och till exempel Melbourne som har satsat stort på att förbättra fotgängarnas livsrum är god.
- Tillströmningen av folk till innerstan leder till nya jobb och värdet på fastigheterna stiger.
Jan Gehl och hans arkitekter på kontoret i Köpenhamn är flitigt anlitade i hela världen. De har målat visioner och gjort planer för städer som Melbourne, London, Zürich, Edinburgh, Rotterdam och New York.
New York ska minska trafiken på Manhattan och inför trängselavgifter i likhet med London. Nu har Sydney hakat på trenden och ska åtgärda miljön utgående från en rapport av Gehl.
- Sydney är en skön stad, säger Gehl men ingen är så liten som fotgängaren i centrum av Sydney. Det finns inte en korsning eller gata som inte skulle utgå från bilen och bilisten. Folk som rör sig till fots är hänvisade till smala, trånga trottoarer och trafikljusen växlar så snabbt att inte ens den flinkaste fotgängare hinner kvista över gatan innan röd gubbe lyser. Gågatorna och torgen är bokstavligen underordnade trafiken och under centrum av Sydney löper ett nätverk av promenadstråk med en sammanlagd längd på 2,5 kilometer. Tunga motorvägar löper tvärs över innerstan och nere i den berömda hamnen med det spektakulära operahuset blockerar en massiv tågstation i betong utsikten.
Gehl föreslår att Sydney river den stora motorvägen, bygger torg och breddar trottoarer på bekostnad av bilarna och skapar plats så att folk kan krypa ut ur den underjordiska gångarna. Hans förslag har fått gott mottagande. Kampanjen kallas Take back the city, Återerövra staden.
Även om Sydney med sina drygt 4 miljoner invånare är av annan kaliber än Helsingfors finns ingen anledning till att Helsingfors inte borde se Sydneys innerstad som ett avskräckande exempel.
- Helsingfors är en vacker stad och har all potential. Men trafiken väger tungt och hur förvaltar staden närheten till havet? Var finns de trivsamma torgen och de intima mötesplatserna? Esplanadparken är det lysande undantaget, säger Gehl och tillägger:
- I städer som Helsingfors hänvisar man ofta till klimatet men varför ska man skapa artificiella rum för årets tjugo dåliga dagar när det finns tvåhundra fina. Under de där värsta dagarna kan man väl klä på sig ordentligt.
Han nämner att utesäsongen blir längre om förutsättningarna för umgänge utomhus blir bättre, det vill säga att trivseln ökar på bekostnad av bilarna.
- Förr träffades köpenhamnarna på kaféer och torg mellan maj och augusti. I dag mellan mars och jul.
Gehl understryker att Helsingfors har en hel del att lära av de övriga nordiska huvudstäderna som strävar att fösa bort innerstadstrafiken och upplåta uterummet åt stadsborna. Helsingfors å sin sida leder folk i tunnlar och ger plats åt bilar och p-platser.
- Stockholm införde trängselavgift på prov. Sedan röstade man om avgifterna och valde att behålla dem. Nu njuter stockholmarna. Människan är gjord för att promenera på sina två fötter.
HBL (link)
Categories: Helsinki · architecture · business · city · culture · development · economy · environment · happiness · health · politics · real estate · society · traffic · urban planning
Tagged: cars, city vision, Hannu Penttilä, Helsinki, human friendly city, Jan Gehl, Mayor for City Planning and Real Estate, pedestrians, politics, traffic planning, urban planning
Helsinki needs places - distinct, active, urban, beautiful places; rooms to live in.
Architect Juha Ilonen has mapped some such urban places, that have been neglected by the city so far. Empty pockets inbetween buildings, backyards, gated piazzas in front of public buildings that all provide great possibilities for urban life. In these now inactive spaces, instead there could be cafeterias, galleries, temporary exhibitions, wine bars, workshops open to the public etc. These are spaces that by simple actions (but hindered by a labyrinth of bureaucratic red tape) can be taken into use as rooms for the citizens.
As the City of Helsinki is trying to image itself for example as the innovative “Helsinki Living Lab”, it cannot do this by words alone. Our city culture and space needs to provide the means for innovation to happen. People have to be able to meet, discuss, try out ideas and also fail in an open and flexible city space. We need tolerant spaces to meet.
Please do step on the grass. //aito
The map shows the locations of architect Juha Ilonens city space activation spots. Click on location to see the space:
Helsingin Sanomat article (link)
Categories: Helsinki · architecture · business · city · culture · development · happiness · health · innovation · politics · real estate · society · urban planning
Tagged: active life, bureaucracy, city culture, Helsinki, Helsinki living Lab, Juha Ilonen, Jussi Pajunen, Living Room Helsinki, mayor, meeting place, Olohuone Helsinki, politics, tolerant city, urban space
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