We mourn the death of Dietmar Steiner, director of the Architekturzentrum Wien from 1993 until 2016 and an old friend of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. This sensitive architect, aware of the complexity of the urban fact was the most veteran member of the international jury of the Prize.
What happens when the pandemic obliges our confinement at a highly politicised time and demonstrations in public spaces must suddenly cease? AOC Media analyses how protests in France have moved from the streets into the social networks, as well as onto balconies where people bang pots and pans or applaud, and to facades exhibiting old and new demands. What will happen when the restrictions are lifted?
Venice without tourists, an empty Times Square, skies without planes … How is the pandemic affecting tourism? Is this the end of mass tourism and global cities? National Geographic Viajes has consulted specialists in several areas. While travel agents are planning different strategies for reinventing themselves, Andreas Jaque points to two opposite models that are presently crystallising: the resort model and a new paradigm which, now being developed, is based on socio-ecological coexistence and mutual caring in human communities and the environment.
At this moment of pandemic, wearing medical face masks in public spaces is recommended or even mandatory. Urbanist Mark Kammerbauer reflects in Topos Magazine on higher propensity towards wearing masks in public in Asia. A matter of curtesy or culture? Is it linked to public health emergencies in the past, is it a matter of cultural tradition and influences such as Anime and Manga, or the way urban space articulates itself in socio-cultural terms?
The strategies for putting in place plans to lift the lockdowns before a vaccine is developed could involve tracing coronavirus patients and their contacts in order to determine whether government actions are working. The measures are triggering fears of growing surveillance, including questions about whether location data are truly anonymous and how they might be used once the crisis is over. The Financial Times analysis how to find a proper balance between privacy and public interest.
The pandemic undermines our most basic ideas about community and, in particular, urban life, claims the New York Times ’s architectural critic Michael Kimmelman. Epicenters of capital and creativity, cities are facing social distancing that not only runs up against our fundamental desires to interact, but also against the way we have built our cities and plazas, subways and skyscrapers, all designed to be occupied and animated collectively.
Once used as an open-air car park, the area at the foot of the walls of a medieval castle has been transformed to include a square, a playground, steps, and terraced seating
The creation of a park following the course of the Lea River from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to the Thames at Blackwell has overcome physical and social fragmentation caused by large-scale infrastructure while also recognising the industrial landscape which has been essential for London’s economic development.
Neglected for more than fifty years, a natural riverside space in the old city centre has been opened to the public after temporary landscaping was carried out.
The empty, poorly maintained spaces of the “Les Courtillières” resThe empty, poorly maintained spaces of the “Les Courtillières” residential estate which, like so many other projects of modern urbanism, had lapsed into social exclusion and spatial-social segregation have been refurbished in a project embracing the whole estate. idential estate which, like so many other projects of modern urbanism, had lapsed into social exclusion and spatial-social segregation have been refurbished in a project embracing the whole estate.
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.
Montalegre, 5 - 08001 Barcelona
Tel. 93 306 41 00 - Fax 93 306 41 01
publicspace@cccb.org
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