When the coronavirus exploded across Europe in March 2020, city dwellers throughout Europe began to leave, some to avoid the virus, others to escape cramped and pricey apartments or to connect more with the natural world. Now, nearly a year after the first lockdowns, this The New York Times article reflects on worries of a lasting exodus that are pushing urban authorities to address long-festering problems.
The documentary film produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture follows a conversation between two architects, from Vienna and Los Angeles, who have been searching for long-term strategies for housing the homeless. Focussing on some causes and conditions of homelessness, the film questions the role architects can play toward overcoming the stigmatization of people experiencing it, in order to build more inclusive cities.
The effect that COVID-19 is having on urban planning—promotion of active mobility or renaturalisation of cities—essentially means an acceleration of already existing trends. The urban planner Alain Guiheux would like to go even further and, in this AOC article, calls for a great shared space , an architectural and programmatic project aiming to renew contemporary political public space.
La colección de ensayos del escritor británico Matthew Beaumont, The Walker: On Losing and Finding Yourself in the Modern City , recomendada por el Financial Times como uno de los mejores libros sobre arquitectura publicados este año explora la relación entre el caminar, pensar y escribir. Partiendo de las experiencias de escritores como Dickens, Wells o Woolf reflexiona sobre cómo la transformación de las ciudades y de los vínculos sociales ha cambiado el hecho de caminar sin un propósito. Beaumont reivindica esta práctica ante los imperativos modernos como tener prisa, producir, consumir o estar pendientes del móvil en los espacios públicos cada vez más colonizados por los intereses corporativos.
Interview with
In the Shared Spaces capsule, Tim Ingold argues in favour of physical presence in personal contacts at a time when our communication is increasingly indirect and through digital means.
Gautam Bhan, Teresa Caldeira, Kelly Gillespie and AbdouMaliq Simone
For the majority in cities of the global south, where most urban people in the world live, ‘social distancing’ as prescribed by northern health protocols is just about impossible. In this article Gautam Bhan, Teresa Caldeira, Kelly Gillespie and AbdouMaliq Simone analyse collective life of the urban majority in the massifying cities of the global south where auto-construction, patchwork infrastructure and services, and tacit local economies define the condition of life for the majority. The design of lockdowns, that are impossible to comply in these circumstances, only exacerbate ongoing structural racisms and class and gender inequalities.
The anthropic landscape of the ENCI quarry which supplied the Netherlands with cement for more than a century has been restored in the form of a large peri-urban park with spaces evoking water and vegetation.
The drabness of open spaces in a modern industrial estate has been alleviated with a series of deep slashes in the ground which create a sculpture-landscape representing the topography of the Jura Mountains and offering children a space to play.
One of the many vacant spaces resulting from major changes in the Postblock zone after the fall of the Berlin Wall has temporarily been endowed with new senses by appealing to the collective imaginary with a series of monuments to everyday items.
Montalegre, 5 - 08001 Barcelona
Tel. 93 306 41 00 - Fax 93 306 41 01
publicspace@cccb.org
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