Garden and Agora
Review of some avant-garde projects for public space drawn up in Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
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«It’s necessary to get people involved in the process of creating public space»
Interview with Marina Tabassum
MarinaTabassum says that the design practice is changing everywhere. Now fewer and fewer architects can impose their ideas about what a public space should be like.
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«Public space is a place to play out who we are as a society»
Interview with Michael Kimmelman
Kimmelman draws attention to the symbolic nature of public space and emphasises the importance of ordinary spaces which are often unappreciated even though they are a true magnet attracting community life.
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“Everybody who wants democracy should defend public space as space of everyone”
Interview with Carolin Emcke
Carolin Emcke reflects on shrinking public spaces for people that are perceived as others and warns of proliferation of radical movements that are taking public space.
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Cuypers passage as an urban interior
The Cuypers Passage is an underpass that offers the shortest connection for cyclists, and pedestrians, between Amsterdam’s historic centre and the waterfront and the ferries to Amsterdam North. Put his way, it is just another regular piece of infrastructure that eliminates what Dutch cyclists like the least, which is being forced to make a detour. But the tunnel is not only the desired shortcut but also a remarkably dignified space.
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The square, the power, the citizenship
Skanderbeg Square is in the centre of Tirana, the capital of Albania. And it is rather more than a square since it is a kind of mirror which reflects the history of the country and also one where Albanian society can see itself.
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“It is important to understand that the square is also a political statement”
Interview with Erion Veilaj, Mayor of Tirana, and Johan Anrys, architect and author of the winning work of the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2018.
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“Public space should be seen in in its dual symbolic and material dimensions as a common good belonging to citizens.”
Interview with Raquel Rolnik
Professor Rolnik warns of the dangers of losing public space in cities governed by the logic of privatisation.
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The Cities We Need
With the threat of climate change and the exponential growth of cities, Michael Kimmelman, art and architecture critic of The New York Times , calls for a twenty-first-century model of the city that is more responsible with its environs and towards the people who inhabit it.
home-projects-module Portlet
Highlighted works
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Zollverein Park
Essen (Germany), 2019
After two decades of work, an old mining operation which was closed at the end of the twentieth century and subsequently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site is now a large park combining industrial archaeology, green landscape, leisure installations, and cultural facilities.
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Stage
Dnipro (Ukraine), 2017
Several cultural groups of musicians, poets, and visual artists organise to carry out a temporary renovation of a Stalinist-era amphitheatre in the city’s central park by means of crowdfunding, collaborative design, and “self-construction” teamwork.
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Cuyperspassage
Amsterdam (Netherlands), 2016
A new underground tunnel, more than a hundred metres long and decorated with Delft Blue tiles representing fragments of Dutch naval history, provides cyclists and pedestrians with a connection from the old city centre to quays on the IJ River waterfront.
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Renovation of Skanderbeg Square
Tirana (Albania), 2017
The main square of Tirana has been renovated with multi-coloured paving made with stones from different parts of the country.
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PC Caritas
Melle (Belgium), 2016
Somewhere between a closed building and open space, an old psychiatric hospital pavilion has been partially saved from demolition to offer a peaceful refuge for patients, their families, and people walking in the public park surrounding it.
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Poblenou "Superblock"
Barcelona (Spain), 2017
A series of tactical urbanism operations has pedestrianised a “superblock”—nine blocks in the grid-designed Eixample district—in a pilot test of a future large-scale strategy for reclaiming public space from private vehicles and making it available for public transport, bicycles and pedestrians.
