The eight winning solutions of the Living Labs Global Award 2011 were announced yesterday in Stockholm. The competition called for technological solutions that would address the local societal problems pinpointed by eight global cities in search of the latest service innovations to make their cities smarter, greener and more inclusive. The participant cities were: Barcelona, Taipei, Sant Cugat, Lagos, San Francisco, Eindhoven, Stockholm, & Cape Town.

Technologies such as mobile broadband, smart hand devices, cloud computing and open-source public databases are becoming central to envisioning favorable future scenarios of cities. Living Labs Global, a non-profit association based in Copenhagen (Denmark) joined forces with the partnered cities with the aim of bringing companies and decision-makers from all corners of the globe together to promote innovation in services and mobility in cities, and to better capacitate the potential of new technologies to change our day-to-day lives for the better.

Proposals tackled issues of transportation, mobility, healthcare, safety, energy consumption, waste, food, piracy and entrepreneurship. The competition drew submissions from hundreds of countries, which were narrowed down to forty shortlisted finalists. Yesterday the eight winning entries were announced in Stockholm at the Stockholm Summit of Service innovation for cities, and the winners are:

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Posted by Gricelys Rosario

To read this post in Italian click here: Intervista a Reena Tiwari: Il simbolismo dell’architettura dovrebbe essere sociale

In this interview architect Gricelys Rosario talks to urban designer Dr Reena Tiwari, Associate Professor in the Departments of Urban & Regional Planning and Architecture at Curtin University of Technology Perth (Western Australia) about the impact that the flux of cross-border and national migrants has on contemporary architecture and the role of architecture in building democratic societies.

© Jana Sebestova, photo courtesy of Fondazione OAT

Dr Reena Tiwari spoke in a panel discussion with Riccardo Balbo, Mario Cucinella and Riccardo Vannucci during the 2nd edition of the Democracy Biennial held in Turin on April 16 2011, the conference was organized by the Fondazione OAT. Tiwari has carried out extensive research on Indian slums, and has realized urban design projects in her native country India, and with her university students in Perth in collaboration with architect VB Doshi, who is also Indian.

The work of Reena Tiwari is strongly focused on social involvement, building strong relationships with communities and analyzing the needs and functions of architecture with its users. Social participation is also a key element in all of her projects and Tiwari has gained international fame for implementing with success an approach PEP: Profile, Educate, Participate, which is replacing the so-called DAD: Decide, Announce, Defend.

Gricelys Rosario: The outlook for young people in Italy in terms of job opportunities is currently not bright, with architecture being a particularly difficult field. The country’s dire economic and political situation is constantly discussed and lamented, engendering a general lack of hope about the future.
Reena Tiwari: In terms of giving hope to young architects, I think the very fact that they are architects should give them hope. We are talking about a profession that deals with creating space, homes, places, and buildings, this alone should give you so much, not just in terms of satisfaction for object building, but in terms of realizing what a single person can do for others if done in the right way, and how architecture influences the social production of space and promotes the social relations within it.

Obviously, if you do a bad job – too bad! But, if you do a good job, then that is when architecture can make a considerable contribution to society building. Some of the problems related to the marginalized and urban poor in our cities could be resolved with minimum positive actions of architects, if only we – as architects – were more aware of our responsibility then we could help the needy much more through positive and honest decisions.

GR: Talking about social responsibility, you have conducted extensive research on slums in India. To some extent slums in India and Latin America share a common condition, which is that slum dwellers tend to migrate towards first world countries (in the case of Latin America to the USA). Once arrived at their destination immigrants follow similar patterns: they work in the informal economy, out of state control, and are therefore unable to reinvest their earnings in their host countries. So, they send their money back home to improve their families economic situation and to build the ‘home of their dreams’. In this context architecture is, once again, used to ‘raise’ people’s social statuses, despite in many cases its aesthetic incoherence and lack of market value. Yet, this type of practice is socially and politically incentivized as migrant remittances constitute the second largest financial inflow to many developing countries, exceeding international aid, and accounting for up to 20% of their GDP.
Do you think architecture could be used as an efficient social mediator between migrants and slums dwellers? In your view could architecture serve to create an identity within the slums, in order to change its relationship with the mainstream somehow?
RT: You have raised a couple of interesting issues. Number one: migration, be it within the country – from the rural to the urban areas – or be it transnational. We should first look at the root cause of it, which is migrants’ role in sustaining the rural economy within the nation or the local economy of cities, let’s say this is the first problem that should be addressed.

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Post di Gricelys Rosario

Per leggere l’intervista in inglese clicca qui: There is no one-way to define democracy: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas

Questa è la prima di una serie di interviste raccolte nell’ambito degli incontri organizzati dalla seconda edizione di Biennale Democrazia, svoltasi a Torino dal 13 al 17 aprile 2011 ed organizzata dalla Città di Torino. In questo contesto la Fondazione Ordine Architetti Torino (Fondazione OAT) ha organizzato una conferenza dell’architetto olandese Rem Koolhaas sul tema “Architettura e democrazia”: come si riflette un sistema politico nell’organizzazione della forma urbana? Qual è il ruolo dell’architettura nei confronti dello spazio pubblico?

© Jana Sebestova, photo courtesy of Fondazione OAT

Nel corso della conferenza, tenutasi presso il Teatro Carignano, l’architetto olandese è stato presentato da Manfredo di Robilant: dal profilo delineato da quest’ultimo emerge la multidisciplinarietà attribuita all’architettura da Koolhaas, il quale conferisce alla figura dell’architetto il ruolo di “mediatore tra diverse parti”, dovendo interagire con esperti di discipline differenti ma complementari nel campo della progettazione. Nell’attività pratica di Rem Koolhaas il concetto è stato tradotto nella realizzazione di AMO, controparte di OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), all’interno del quale confluisce un’eterogeneità di saperi, ampliando gli orizzonti dell’architettura.
Rem Koolhaas ha illustrato il complesso rapporto tra democrazia ed architettura mediante una carrellata di immagini, di progetti e non, che hanno rappresentato l’evoluzione del concetto di “potere popolare” degli ultimi novant’anni. “Non tutti i sistemi sono ugualmente democratici”, come afferma lo stesso Koolhaas: non esiste quindi un significato di democrazia univoco, ma l’accezione del concetto deve essere declinata sulla base del contesto in cui questa forma di governo si è affermata.
Nella trattazione dell’architetto ampio spazio è stato dedicato all’economia di mercato, al ruolo sempre più incisivo che riveste anche in campo architettonico.

© Jana Sebestova, photo courtesy of Fondazione OAT

Gricelys Rosario: Questa settimana è stato pubblicato un articolo su Gustavo Zagrebelsky, presidente di Biennale Democrazia, in cui anticipa la sua conferenza di ieri. Egli afferma che la società è basata su tre elementi principali: politica, economia e simbolismo. Ovviamente l’architettura realizza simboli, o, meglio, utilizza i simboli per creare un’identità. Secondo lei gli architetti sono liberi di realizzare un’architettura basata realmente su simboli democratici?

Rem Koolhaas: Non ho ben capito cosa si intenda per “democratico” in questo contesto, cosa vuole dire? Può farmi un esempio?

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Posted by Gricelys Rosario

To read this post in Italian click here: Non c’è un unico modo per definire la democrazia: intervista a Rem Koolhaas

This entry is the first of a series of interviews conducted by Cluster in occasion of the second edition of the Democracy Biennial held in Turin from April 12 -17 2011, organized under the auspices of the City of Turin. In this context the Turin’s Architects Association Foundation (Fondazione OAT) organized a keynote speech by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas with ‘Architecture and Democracy’ as the proposed theme: How is the political system reflected in the build environment? What is the role of architecture in the design of public space?

© Jana Sebestova, photo courtesy of Fondazione OAT

The conference – held in the prestigious Carignano Theatre – was introduced by Manfredo di Robilant, who emphasized the importance of Koolhaas’ intellectual work, starting from his first two publications Delirious New York (1978) and SMLXL (1995) to a series of urban and architectural studies then developed through AMO, a research studio founded in 2000 that operates as counterpart to his design office OMA, which serves to enrich architecture with knowledge garnered from multidisciplinary confrontation and to shape the architect’s vision by informing his approach to new realities.

To illustrate the complex relationship between democracy and architecture Koolhaas used a series of images and projects that have emerged mostly over the last ninety years, and which represent the evolution of the “people’s power” concept. “Not all systems are equally democratic”, argues Koolhaas: there is no one-way to define democracy, but the meaning of the concept must be articulated within the context from which this form of government was established. The architect also dedicated a part of his conference to discuss the market economy, and the increasingly large space it occupies in the field of architecture.

Gricelys Rosario: Earlier this week Gustavo Zagrebelsky, president of the Democracy Biennial, published an article as a prelude to his lecture yesterday, in which he basically states that society is structured around three main functions: politics, economics and symbolism. Obviously, architecture – as a practice – deals with the creation or interpretation of symbols, or rather, uses symbols to create identity. In your view are architects today free to build an architecture based on truly democratic symbols?

Rem Koolhaas: I don’t really understand what is meant by the word democratic in this context, what do you mean? Can you give me an example?

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Posted by Gricelys Rosario

(This article is also available in Italian, please click on italian in the menu bar)

Lecture Review: Rem Koolhaas “Architecture and democracy”
2011 Democracy Biennial l Teatro Carignano l April 15th, 2011
Sponsored by Turin’s Architect Association Foundation (Fondazione OAT)

© Jana Sebestova, photo courtesy of Fondazione OAT

One might have expected an acknowledgement of the ‘unquestionable’ benefits of democracy in the creation of quality spaces in our cities. Instead, Koolhaas account of the relationship between architecture and democracy takes a new direction in identifying the essential role politics and market economy have played in the definition of this liaison. To trace this idea, he presented a rich succession of words, images and projects, in a guided reflection of the fragility of democratic systems, a condition that easily made room to economic speculation and the establishment of false utopias. [See below some of the projects shown on this lecture]

1934 Frank Lloyd Wright – Broadacre city © Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Source: http://www.fabiofeminofantascience.org/RETROFUTURE/RETROFUTURE11.html

Given the indisputable degree of consensus on democracy’s virtues, architects have constructed a vocabulary and articulated a shape to talk about it, using a deliberately biased language, as they have become the commentators of their own buildings. Architecture dressed as “green spaces, middle height and a tree on top” as the Vancouver model reveals –an example made to avoid mentioning once again the word sustainability- have produced a skyline of unmerciful icons that do nothing but to enhance uniqueness as a value, sacrificing not only the quality of architecture but leaving little space for spontaneity, the very essence of democratic places.

Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Marne-la-Vallée, by Ricardo Bofill, 1978-83.
Source: http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/bofill-abraxas.htm

Guggenheim Bilbao, Frank Gehry ©elperroverde.com
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/namistai/52625689/

The lecture clearly brings to the table an interesting series of issues, which have informed the shift of collective values in contemporary society, and therefore conditioned the perception and creation of the built environment: the predominance of the “¥€$ regime” and its responsibility in the definition of living standards and changing ideals of validation of the architectural language and public space interventions; the coexistence of opposing political systems, marked by unsuccessful initiatives to acknowledge the need of an informed critical approach regarding authoritarian regimes and the dynamics within it; the current extreme political mediocrity that has transformed everything besides democracy into ‘evil’, encouraging indifference and acceptance of a hostile attitude, so that their criticism could be legitimized as aimed at other populations, as people living in this contexts are treated as ‘others’; the devastating effects of market economy on accumulated knowledge, social disparity, architecture and urban life; the invasion of shopping on every environment and its consolidation as the only form of public space; the stagnation of architectural discourse and the need for a code of responsible behaviour; the public disapproval of the commitment with non democratic regimes and the Arab world made by some architects (including himself), based on the lack of knowledge in their “effort to understand its significance and potential values to reinvent immutable assumptions, to use architecture to find a way to destruction of their existing landscape, and to step out of the European moralism that will lead only to its own isolation”.

Parthenon: Foto by Danov
Source: http://my.opera.com/danov/albums

Time Magazine Front Cover: in order – Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, Le Corbusier, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama
Source: http://www.time.com/time/archive/

Koolhaas’ keynote, presented through an intentionally controversial template, leads us to explore some of the contemporary meanings of being architects -shifting from the original definition of mere usufructuaries of their jus aedificandi towards a role of social, political and economical mediators- but most importantly, he emphasized our duty as advocators of democracy, to question the established truths and widely accepted systems, inadvertently referring to the values set by one of the main Italian figures that informed the consolidation of democracy when stating “Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every faculty to its fulfillment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty” (Giuseppe Mazzini).

This review will be followed by an interview with Rem Koolhaas

Article translated by Alessandra Pellicanò