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Towards Partnerships that Continue Beyond the Research Field: Reflections on an Intervention to Address Socio-spatial Vulnerability in Amman, Jordan

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As resilient cities rely on leveraging people’s voices, promoting active participation to encounter socio-spatial vulnerability is pivotal. This paper provides methodological reflections on a participatory research intervention in Amman and reports on the lessons learnt from this very process. The city’s resilience strategy emphasised the sudden increase of population and thus suggested inclusive approaches to resilience. Hence, the conducted intervention aimed to create and sustain partnerships between various stakeholders, and engage them in spatial modes of thought towards supporting vulnerable communities’ involvement in public life and improving their access to public spaces. The research (which combined interdisciplinary workshops and outdoor excursions) involved partners in a collaborative process of investigation, action, and education. Each of the workshops was tailored to the attending participants, and included creating collages, creative writing, basic cartography, storytelling games, and collecting objects from nature. The paper raises questions, first, about how the collaborative nature of this intervention expanded civically, linking theory with practice and decision-making with sociocultural needs. Second, it addresses the dynamics of sustaining existing collaborations while creating new ones between the researcher, local, and refugee communities, authority figures, local community centres, and international non- governmental organisations. Third, it examines the researcher’s role as a mediator with multiple positionalities. Finally, this paper reports on the extent to which the complex synergies connecting different agencies can support the process of addressing socio-spatial vulnerability, amplifying the voice of the ordinary citizen, and creating exceptional venues for knowledge exchange in a context that currently lacks such practices.
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Repurposing Places
for Social and Environmental
Resilience
Edited by Anastasia Karandinou
1
Proceedings of the International Conference
Repurposing Places for Social and Environmental Resilience
Editor: Anastasia Karandinou
Published 2023
by Counterarchitecture, in collaboration with UEL and Arup
Copyright: editorial, Anastasia Karandinou; individual chapters, the contributors
ISBN (ebook): 9781739268107
Cover image: includes a photo created by the former UEL MA Interior Design student Rushil Gaba, 2021
2
Proceedings of the International Conference
Repurposing Places for Social and Environmental Resilience
Whilst the 20th century was mostly about starchitects, 21st century is about synergies and the relevant complex
dynamics that these allow to grow. This shift happens in parallel to others; reusing, retrofitting, and giving a new
life to the existing places, buildings and neighbourhoods, in an environmentally and socially resilient manner,
developing ways for the existing communities to grow in a symbiotic relationship with new ones, designing
processes of circular economy and upcycling, which allow people to collaborate and find viable solutions.
Participation in architecture is a notion that continuously evolves, even more so in recent years. Knowledge and
innovation that contributes to social justice and responsible design practices, emerges from complex networks
and agile cross-disciplinary collaborations.
In this context, this conference examined the relationship between social and environmental resilience, by
looking into designed projects, cross-disciplinary research and investigations, participatory and collaborative
design methods. It welcomed architects, designers, artists, planners, urbanists, engineers, academics, educators,
as well as researchers and practitioners of other relevant disciplines, who have addressed some of the above
themes through their work. Projects on adaptation and retrofitting of places in an environmentally and socially
responsible way, as well as participatory projects, were particularly welcomed. The conference also included
presentations of ongoing projects and collaborations, which will drive the relevant conversations forward. This
volume includes the short articles of the peer-reviewed and accepted presentations delivered at the conference,
in London, in March 2023.
It is often argued that environmental resilience leads to social resilience. Indeed, there is an inextricable link
between environmental (spatial) resilience and social resilience and the former leads to, or effects, the latter.
However, in the context of this conference, we did not consider this as a simple one-way equation, and we aimed
at investigating further the complex relationship between the two.
Conference organisation & Acknowledgements: The conference was co-organised by the University of East
London, Counterarchitecture, and Arup. Many thanks to all co-organisers, members of the conference
committees and participants.
Keynote speakers: Simon Allford, Juliet Mian, Anna Minton, Prof Doina Petrescu, Alex Scott-Whitby
Conference organisers:
Dr Anastasia Karandinou, Prof Florence Lam
Advisory Committee:
Prof Hassan Abdalla, Carl Callaghan, Alan Chandler, Prof Richard Coyne, Prof Gail Findlay, Prof David Tann, Dr
Julie Wall
Organising Committee:
Dr Deborah Benros, Dr Christian Groothuizen, Dr Debra Shaw, Catalina Pollak, Clare Penny
Scientific Committee:
Prof Ela Aral, Dr Aghlab Al-Attili, Pauline Desouza, Dr Angelique Edmonds, Prof Heba Elsharkawy, Prof Ozlem
Erkarslan, Armor Gutierrez, Prof Luisa Maria Gutierrez, Dr Arman Hashemi, Carsten Jungfer, Assoc Prof Roland
Karthaus, Prof Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira, Prof Anastasios Maragiannis, Dr Kat Martindale, Prof Anna
Mavrogianni, Dr Antigoni Memou, Prof Rosa Mendoza-Robles, Fernanda Palmieri, Sowmya Parthasarathy,
Melina Philippou, Prof Argyris Rokas, Prof Christine Schwaiger, Dr Sally Shahzad, Dr Renee Tobe, Amanda
Wanner, Adam Wiseman
Proceedings Editor: Dr Anastasia Karandinou
3
Contents
Section 1: Projects, Case studies & Critical reflections ......................................................................... 8
Conflict, Urban Space, and Resilience: Reflections on Post-conflict Spatial Requalification
Practices in the Syrian City of Raqqa ................................................................................................. 8
Mounir Sabeh Affaki1, Amer Obied2, Mariam Eissa3, Layla Zibar4,5, Sozdar Abdo6, Eyad Alzerkly4 8
The architecture of synergy: rewriting the meaning of a profession ............................................. 12
Aliki-Myrto Perysinaki ................................................................................................................... 12
Discerning the Historic City - A study on appropriated Houses of Downtown Madurai ............... 15
Al Mariam Ul Aasia Kamal Basha .................................................................................................. 15
Urban tactics for the co-production of social resilience. The case of the temporary intervention
ChatterBox in Portsmouth. .............................................................................................................. 19
Guido Robazza1, Alessandro Melis2 .............................................................................................. 19
Everyday Placemaking. Six Days in the Life of People and Places in Phnom Penh and Hanoi ...... 24
Anika Slawski ................................................................................................................................. 24
Spaces of resilience: a typology of places and practices in two Dutch cities ................................. 28
Louwrens Botha, Oana Druta ........................................................................................................ 28
Rebuilding traditional houses along Flores Island in Indonesia, repurposing on tourism behalf
and cultural consciousness .............................................................................................................. 32
Bondan Diponegoro ...................................................................................................................... 32
The Ongoing History of an Unloved Structure; 'Prora' and its Rigid Resilience ............................. 35
Florian Rietmann ........................................................................................................................... 35
In the light of Lumen. How to get a 30 years loan of use for a common space in Florence .......... 39
Francesco Caneschi1,2, Cristina Setti3, Jacopo Ammendola4 ......................................................... 39
Repurposing as Learning: Understanding the Role of Architects in Enabling Owner-Occupiers to
Retrofit .............................................................................................................................................. 43
Habib Ghasemi, Tara Hipwood, Peter Holgate ............................................................................. 43
Co-creation and collaboration to create social value: A case of the restoration and retrofitting of
Woodstock School Mussoorie, India ............................................................................................... 48
Aishwarya Tipnis ........................................................................................................................... 48
The Role of Lighting in Supporting Town Centre Regeneration and Economic Recovery ............. 51
Richard Morris1, Bettisabel Lamelo2 ............................................................................................. 51
Lancaster West Future Neighbourhood Vision: co-designing a resident-led vision for London’s
largest eco-neighbourhood .............................................................................................................. 54
Bettisabel Lamelo1, James Caspell2 ............................................................................................... 54
Re-thinking homes as productive spaces for improved resilient communities ............................. 57
Silvia Micheli1, Antony Moulis1, Peyman Akhgar1,2, Remi Ayoko1, Tim Kastelle1 .......................... 57
Dialogue with Light: Social Impact of Inclusive Lighting Planning .................................................. 60
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Sebnem Gemalmaz ....................................................................................................................... 60
Using multidisciplinary, evidence-led design approaches to embed sustainability and social
value in the British Library Extension .............................................................................................. 63
Laetitia Lucy, Angela Crowther, Freya Johnson, Dimple Rana, Anne Parkes, Ann Dalzell, Alison
Gallagher ....................................................................................................................................... 63
Royal Street; community and stakeholder engagement drives 'beyond best practice' health and
wellbeing strategy in built environment. ........................................................................................ 66
Minas Ioannou, Elisa Bruno, Angela Crowther ............................................................................. 66
Section 2: Neighbourhood & Urban Issues.......................................................................................... 68
Curating Neighbourhoods.The role of curatorial practises in shaping and transforming
neighbourhoods ............................................................................................................................... 68
Rotem Shevchenko ....................................................................................................................... 68
Sustainable Cartography: Mapping the ecological imagination of cities ....................................... 72
Ernesto Valero-Thomas ................................................................................................................. 72
Health in growing districts neighbourhood as a prospect for well-being ................................... 76
Helena Schulte, Agnes Förster ...................................................................................................... 76
Liminality & Little Guyana: Explorations in Caribbean Culture, History, and Spatial Practices .... 79
Jonathan Plass ............................................................................................................................... 79
Thinging architecture; An investigation of transition spaces as arenas for an expanded
understanding of community supportive architecture ................................................................... 82
Anne Corlin .................................................................................................................................... 82
Modern, Postmodern, Meta-Urbanisms: Romancing the City ....................................................... 86
Lineu Castello ................................................................................................................................ 86
Virtual traces of hopeful places: mapping global networks and local initiatives of digital city-
making .............................................................................................................................................. 89
Martin Bangratz, Agnes Förster .................................................................................................... 89
Decolonizing the notion of 'Urban Commons' to mitigate the fragility of contemporary cities ... 94
Asma Mehan ................................................................................................................................. 94
Can we repurpose stranded assets as vertical farms to fill a gap in food supply? ........................ 97
David McLennan1, Eike Sindlinger2, Kyriakos Anatolitis2 .............................................................. 97
Reimagining vacancy. How temporary projects bring resilience. ............................................ 100
Gabrielle Kawa1, Waldo Galle1,2, Niels De Temmerman1 ............................................................ 100
Local Community and Norwegian Peri-Urban Asylum Reception Centres - Learning from
relational notions of place ......................................................................................................... 102
Marianne Skjulhaug .................................................................................................................... 102
Investigating the Outer Zone; Spatial practices and values in the abandoned territories of the
industrial city .................................................................................................................................. 106
Michael Bianchi ........................................................................................................................... 106
Natural Hypertransformation: Agriculture in Belgium and the Netherlands 2100 ..................... 111
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Poorya Eghtesadi, Niklas Michels ............................................................................................... 111
Towards a Framework for Considerate Urbanism: Centering Emotion and Empathy in the
Production of Urban Space and Urban Experience ....................................................................... 115
Liane Hartley ............................................................................................................................... 115
The ultra-local place advocacy of HOOPLA ................................................................................... 117
Kathy Waghorn, Nina Patel ......................................................................................................... 117
Enhancing the resilience of the Urban Web. Simulations of the selection of design projects
applied in Greek cities in the last decade. ................................................................................. 120
Mattheos Papavasiliou ................................................................................................................ 120
Appropriation of Space as an Integrated Planning Approach towards Social Resilience ........ 123
Anastasia Schubina ..................................................................................................................... 123
Section 3: Participation & Processes ................................................................................................. 126
Towards Partnerships that Continue Beyond the Research Field: Reflections on an Intervention
to Address Socio-Spatial Vulnerability in Amman, Jordan. .......................................................... 126
Hala Ghanem ............................................................................................................................... 126
Participatory mapping for social and environmental resilience: the position of the architect-
researcher in an art organisation. ................................................................................................. 129
Catalina Ionita ............................................................................................................................. 129
Operative Mapping and Collaborative Actions as Design Tools for Critical Socio-spatial Urban
Interventions .................................................................................................................................. 133
Manuela Valtchanova, Roger Paez ............................................................................................. 133
From Intentions to Impacts: articulations and enactments of community in a senior co-housing
community ...................................................................................................................................... 137
Mia Kruse Rasmussen ................................................................................................................. 137
Augmented Co-Creation: Remodeling Public Space Through Augmented Reality ...................... 140
Tengku Sharil Bin Tengku Abdul Kadir, Dongwei (Shirley) Chen ................................................. 140
Utilizing Extended Reality (XR) as a tool for Citizen-Led Participatory Planning of a Car-Free
street; Case study of the ‘Living Streets’ project in Oslo, Norway. .............................................. 144
Kai Reaver ................................................................................................................................... 144
The Gesture of Play in Creative Civic Practice ............................................................................... 149
Jason Crow1, Charity Edwards1, Daša Moschonas2 ..................................................................... 149
Fight or Flight: The Many Ways of Tactical Participation Agency in Amman, Jordan ................. 153
Jakleen Al-Dalal'a ........................................................................................................................ 153
Section 4: Climate & Environment ..................................................................................................... 157
How can good design facilitate resilient systems? ....................................................................... 157
Reem Daou1,2, Angelique Edmonds1 ........................................................................................... 157
French urban practices towards a Circular Urban Metabolism .................................................... 161
Chiara Bocchino, Domenico De Rosa .......................................................................................... 161
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Goldfish Architecture: Therapeutic Urban Aquaponics in the Form of Sustainable Household
Appliance ........................................................................................................................................ 165
Zhou Li, Yusuke Obuchi, Alex Orsholits, Kritika Dhupar, Chengzhe Zhu, Yusuke Komata, Shuta
Takagi .......................................................................................................................................... 165
Neighborhood resilience: integrating intersectional challenges into climate focused urban plans
........................................................................................................................................................ 169
Dalia Munenzon .......................................................................................................................... 169
Repurposing Cities towards Environmental Resilience Using Modular and Generative Planning
Approach ........................................................................................................................................ 173
Rati Sandeep Choudhari .............................................................................................................. 173
Public Architecture as Therapy - A Literature Review .................................................................. 177
Yawen Sephira Luo ...................................................................................................................... 177
Design Proposals for Waterfront Revitalisation and Adaptive Reuse: Case Study of Thewes
Market and Pier, Bangkok .............................................................................................................. 181
Bhargav Kaushik, Shoon Le Yee Oo, Chamnarn Tirapas.............................................................. 181
Circular Cities for Urban and Social Resilience .............................................................................. 185
María Cecilia Chiappini1,2, Nurhan Abujidi3 ................................................................................. 185
Developing a holistic process to inform decisions on the re-use or demolition of existing
buildings at the earliest stages of site development .................................................................... 190
Alex Lloyd1, Angela Crowther2, Pete Thompson1, Greg Hardie1 ................................................. 190
A Community-based Classification of Impact Criteria for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in
the Context of Estate Regeneration .............................................................................................. 192
Sahar Nava1, Zaid Chalabi1, Sarah Bell2, Esfandiar Burman1 ....................................................... 192
Section 5: Educational projects .......................................................................................................... 196
Re-pairing: Care and the performance of repair ........................................................................... 196
Nigel Simpkins ............................................................................................................................. 196
Post-Nuclear Infrastructure as Architecture: The Speculative Decommissioning of Oconee
Nuclear Station ............................................................................................................................... 201
Amy Trick..................................................................................................................................... 201
Rethinking Resilience through Learning Environments in a Digitized Era ................................... 205
Selin Tosun .................................................................................................................................. 205
ACademy for Collaborative Urban Development: Students and Shop Owners as Agents for Inner-
City Transformation ....................................................................................................................... 207
Christina Jimenez Mattsson, Agnes Förster ................................................................................ 207
Repurposing Cody Dock for climate, health and social resilience: a ten-year trajectory ............ 211
Krystallia Kamvasinou, Giulio Verdini, Corinna Dean, Ripin Kalra, Sabina Cioboata .................. 211
New Towns New Tenures .............................................................................................................. 215
Lola Lozano Lara1,2, Elena Palacios Carral1 .................................................................................. 215
Resuscitating the City - Exploring former hospital sites through Pedagogy and Practice ........... 218
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Isabel Deakin1, Nick Walker1,2 ..................................................................................................... 218
Hackney Wick: Towards a Sustainable De-industrialization. Empowering live-work strategies for
creative industries at risk of displacement. ................................................................................... 221
Armor Gutierrez Rivas, Rosa Rogina ........................................................................................... 221
Compassionate Living: Societal Transformation in Action ........................................................... 224
Eeva-Maarja Laur ........................................................................................................................ 224
Social & Environmental Reconnection through Regeneration_Australian design Studio examples
........................................................................................................................................................ 227
Angelique Edmonds .................................................................................................................... 227
Modern Greek cities: Ιnvestigating the relationship between obsolescence and sustainability 230
Venetia Tsakalidou, Nikolaos Kalogirou ...................................................................................... 230
Placemaking and the Urban Living Lab for students’ social learning and innovation in education:
The case of Heerlen. ....................................................................................................................... 233
Stefano Blezer, Nurhan Abujidi, Herwin Sap .............................................................................. 233
Retrofitting The Welfare State’s Suburban Building Culture - discussing values. ....................... 238
Charlie C. Steenberg .................................................................................................................... 238
Urban Landscape Remediation and Social Resilience: The case of Larissis Station in Athens .... 243
Konstantina Karvountzi, Maria Markou ...................................................................................... 243
Living Home - neighbouring difference: the use of design partners in a novel participatory
educational model for undergraduate design studio projects ..................................................... 247
Carolina Vasilikou ........................................................................................................................ 247
8
Section 1: Projects, Case studies & Critical reflections
Conflict, Urban Space, and Resilience: Reflections on Post-conflict Spatial
Requalification Practices in the Syrian City of Raqqa
Mounir Sabeh Affaki1, Amer Obied2, Mariam Eissa3, Layla Zibar4,5, Sozdar Abdo6, Eyad Alzerkly4
1Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic. 2University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
3University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal. 4Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-
senftenberg, Cottbus, Germany. 5KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. 6Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syrian Arab
Republic
Introduction
The 'Arab Spring' brought a new dimension to public space in affected countries; spaces that were
predominantly designed to accommodate vehicular traffic were occupied by protesting masses. Al-
Tahrir Square in Cairo and al-Shuhada Square in Beirut, are prime examples. In his essay 'The Arab
Revolution Takes Back the Public Space', Rabbat (2012) describes this phenomenon as recapturing the
'publicness' of Modern Arab public spaces which were contested for many reasons; their clash with
the traditional cities, the overwhelming use as political tools to commemorate revolutions against
colonial powers, and lastly for being continuously under surveillance and censorship - a characteristic
of Arab dictatorial regimes. During the recent armed conflict, Syria’s public spaces were no different.
Many squares and roundabouts became grounds for protests and counter-protests. Some became
targets for aggression and territorial markers of division-turned segregation.
Soon after armed conflict ended, requalification became a national priority for the Syrian government,
which used the most symbolic places to broadcast its authority and narrative with ‘love’ monuments
and billboards installed in many cities. However, Raqqa’s case is quite different. Its governance system
of local and International NGOs led by the Civil Council focused on recuperating normalcy and
reactivating the city through interventions in public space. The city is now gradually recovering its
public spaces. However, The pace of these interventions left us the authors in shock, wondering about
their reasoning and impacts.
Methods
To assess the efficacy and outcome of these interventions, two assessment methods were employed:
assessment through inquiry, for which 10 semi-structured interviews with locals were conducted, and
assessment through analysis, for which two case studies were selected based on the interviews to
analyse the requalification work from an architectural perspective. Satellite images were consulted to
detect the changes that took place as well as to spot and highlight design shortcomings conducive to
the raised issues.
Results
The majority of the interviewees agreed on the locations of past and ongoing interventions. Their
perception demonstrated a pattern that started with shock and doubt at the moment of
announcement, with scepticism on the allocation of funds for such projects, then, after
implementation, rejection turned into acceptance and further demand for more. However, the lack of
security measures and insufficient light elements raised serious concerns with reported harassment,
drug abuse, and vandalism. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and corrupt youth constitute a
9
disturbing element for locals, commonly blamed for said phenomena. Also, the lack of management
and regular maintenance was reported.
The most mentioned places were al-Naeem roundabout and al-Rashid Park. Both are central and the
most significant of their kind. Accordingly, they were selected for further assessment through
analysis.
Al-Naeem roundabout
A key population hub, gathering space, and central attraction point abundant with fast-food shops
and cafes. What was once ‘Paradise Square’ became associated with traumatic memories during the
rule of IS. In a collective act of condemnation, locals substituted the name with the ‘Inferno Square’ in
their daily exchanges. Its requalification by the Essential Services Program was the first in the city,
funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aspiring to erase the
traces of IS and neutralise traumatic memories. Consequently, the roundabout was completely
redesigned.
To this aim, the intervention was considerably successful as the original name was publicly restored.
The square regained its significance as a key venue for leisure. However, some people still refuse to
visit due to unresolved trauma. Moreover, it is not seen as a friendly or safe destination, especially for
women and families. Satellite images show that the original site planning was preserved as well as its
shortcomings; access to the roundabout remains dangerous as pedestrian paths are not well-
established and traffic and parking remain highly under-regulated.
Al-Rasheed Park
Located in a central location, nearing Al-Rashid High School and the 'Suq' (market), Al-Rashid is the
most known and frequented park. Sadly, it was abandoned and reduced to a mere crossing point
during the war. The park was given the highest priority for intervention. However, it was limited to
maintenance work of tree plantation, wall and pavement restoration, and light provision.
Reportedly, the park is now attended by various social groups. However, polarisation between locals
and the incoming IDPs was evident with the latter being accused of undesired practices. Satellite
images show that the design was preserved. Entrances remain poorly located at busy traffic points.
This also applies to the playground located at the southern corner near the entrance, which threatens
children's safety. The park's fencing and strict geometric design can limit movement and facilitate
harassment and assault. Inadequate illumination and areas with high tree density may be used for
drug use and undesired activities.
Discussion
Interviews demonstrated that interventions were limited to recovering landscape elements, which
with the spread of corruption and lack of execution quality and regular maintenance were not spared
from locals’ criticism. Issues, both pre-existent and emerging, that could have been addressed became
missed development opportunities, rendering these efforts as shy attempts to restore normalcy
instead of instigating sustainable change.
Focusing on the social resilience aspect, several interviewees reported public demands being ignored.
When asked about society involvement, most interviewees had not heard of any relevant efforts.
Others mentioned limited surveys for the selection of intervention locations. This exclusion from
decision-making and active participation evidently led to the initial public rejection of requalification
work. Rightfully noted by one interviewee is that this exclusion impacts the sense of ownership and
belonging to public space, which also translated into cases of vandalism and misuse. Furthermore, on
10
the impact of requalification works on social cohesion, some denied noticing any contribution, while
others saw positive signs and mentioned their role in introducing families and encouraging
involvement in social activities. Nevertheless, the issue of cohesion between locals and IDPs was
central to the discussion, with some expressing a lack of trust and others indicating polarisation,
territorialisation, and spatial segregation.
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In conclusion, these findings expose the limitations in the adopted intervention approach and failure
to address emerging societal issues, which points up the importance of comprehensive approaches
that integrate the social aspect for sustainable outcomes. As the safety factor is compromised,
elements of comfort and pleasurability become an afterthought for potential users (Mehta, 2014).
Requalification aims should not be limited to spatial quality standards (Carmona, 2019), but aim for
attaining the potentials of public space to the fullest, whether as a tool for psychological recovery (San
Juan et al. 2017), social cohesion (Gaffikin & Morrissey, 2011), or as a platform to exercise and express
the values of democracy, freedom, and agonism (Bollens, 2013).
Conclusion
While the global understanding of public space has shifted from spaces designed to accommodate for
traffic into active spaces occupied by the masses that serve as hubs for various activities, the local
understanding is predominantly faulted and limited to it being more of a crossing point than a
destination, a confined place that requires high security, gates, and walls. However, we can argue that
the Arab Spring has instigated a shift by recapturing the 'publicness' of public spaces and turning them
into contemporary sites of meaningful memory. Public space is now perceived as a potent political
tool for the expression of values of democracy, freedom, and agonism. In this light, we argue that the
responsibility of post-war processes is to build upon this shift not only for the restoration of normalcy,
but towards further development.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Middle East Cooperation Unit at BTU Cottbus Senftenberg University for their project
with the American University Beirut and the German Jordanian University ‘Rehabilitation and
Reconstruction of Historic Districts and Preservation of Architectural Heritage after Armed Conflicts’
that provided the utmost assistance and work environment for conducting this study. We also thank
the Czech Technical University in Prague for generously sponsoring our conference participation.
References
Bollens, S. (2013). Urban Planning and Policy. In R. Mac Ginty (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of
Peacebuilding. (pp. 375-386). London: Routledge.
Carmona, M. (2019). Place value: place quality and its impact on health, social, economic and
environmental outcomes. Journal of Urban Design, 24(1), 148.
Gaffikin, F., & Morrissey, M. (2011). Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested
Space. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Mehta, V. (2014). Evaluating Public Space. Journal of Urban Design, 19(1), 5388.
Rabbat, N. (2012). The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space. Critical Inquiry, 39(1), 198208.
San Juan, C., Subiza-Pérez, M. and Vozmediano, L., (2017). Restoration and the City: The Role of Public
Urban Squares. Frontiers in Psychology. 8:2093.
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The architecture of synergy: rewriting the meaning of a profession
Aliki-Myrto Perysinaki
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom. Laboratory Architecture, Milieu,
Paysage, ENSA Paris-La Villette, Paris, France
Focusing on the works of the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture’s laureates, this article intends
to critically present the (design) process behind built projects and the impact of such works on their
surrounding environments. Facing a (western) context that cements the understanding of architecture
as technological system reliant upon engineering problem-solving to achieve environmental
standards, the aim here is to present ways of thinking and doing architecture that bypass the meaning
of the brief, the scope of the profession, and the outcome of the project. From Patrick Bouchain’s HQH
(haute qualité humaine = high human quality, paraphrasing the French certification HQE - haute
qualité environnementale = high environmental quality) and Philippe Madec’s consideration of time
as design framework to Diébédo Francis Kéré’s, Carin Smuts’s and Estudio Teddy Cruz/Fonna Forman’s
architectures of social engagement, the intention is to establish a mapping of processes and, often,
political protocols that open up emancipatory perspectives for a synergetic appropriation of the
territory.
In Diébédo Francis Kéré’s work, local (African) construction and land-use planning traditions based on
climatic principles and more sophisticated occidental technical processes are interlinked: Kéré
transposes the 'ecological rationalism' of Germany where he studied to the climatic and social
conditions of Burkina Faso. He therefore creates an endogenous economic sector. The egalitarian
treatment of indigenous and imported architectural cultures through the critical synthesis of the
acquired knowledge in the projects, makes it possible to seek the right balance between the climatic
logics of Western countries and the economic solidarity of vernacular societies. Most importantly,
Kéré situates the development of each man and for all men in the centre of his work process (Beygo,
2016). That’s why he considers architecture as means for satisfying a social need, in accordance with
his principle of 'help to self-help'. As praised by the Aga Khan Foundation, his projects - envisaging a
regeneration of the existing, here and now - often have a ripple effect: from a social angle (e.g. access
to education), to the economic benefit (development of construction skills and learning of new
building techniques) and cultural implications (valorisation of local materials and endogenous
architectural traditions).
Carin Smuts in South Africa talks about social performance per square meter (rather than energy
performance). The inhabitants are involved in the building process to adapt the program, introduce
missing functions and ultimately transform disadvantaged neighbourhoods into places of exchange,
imagined as meeting points and public spaces. By doing so, Smuts follows an interactive process where
empathy and collective intelligence become (the) keys to understanding places through the human
life they contain (Frey, 2016): for Smuts, participation is a means of social reintegration allowing to
overcome ethnic tensions (particularly in mixed-race areas). Thinking beyond environmental
attributes, Smuts decides on techniques and materials to use with the intention to create employment
for the local workforce, suffering from endemic unemployment. Similar to Kéré, local subcontractors
and young people are therefore included through training workshops or reintegration projects. In
essence, the architectural project becomes an infrastructure that contributes to a new economy, a
dynamic to convey the development of the neighbourhood.
Patrick Bouchain, working with Loïc Julienne, bypass the traditional role of the architect, by becoming
developers, managers, advisers, even performers; overall turning into some sort of mediator who
translates the needs of communities and groups into buildings. These buildings often target specific
matters, depending on the nature of the programme and the site. How? By taking advantage of the
French policy where public buildings have to dedicate 1% of their construction budget to a work of
13
art, they apply policies linking this 1% into social aspects ('solidarity 1%'), research aspects ('scientific
1%'), training aspects ('education 1%') or even generational aspects based on transmitting knowledge
('elderly 1%'). Bouchain and Julienne advocate 'HQH' architecture, 'high human quality', paraphrasing
the French certification 'HQE' (high environmental quality). To achieve this, they insist on the
involvement of future users. Often, the first step is to set up a network of interested parties, including
not only the usual professions involved in the building process, but with an emphasis on residents or
neighbourhood groups. These parties establish a sort of participatory democracy, a dialogue between
architects, builders, whilst having in mind the different and successive users of the project. The second
step is to enable interaction. This takes place in the form of construction workshops, on-site training
in building trades and self-management of collective spaces -that can be from an office to a restaurant.
What is primarily built here is no physical project, but a network of ideas and relationships, where
data are constantly questioned, discussed and reinterpreted. The outcome is to define what is
appropriate and useful for the site, inventing the ‘brief’ after inhabiting the site (Bouchain et al., 2012).
In this context, the construction site becomes a meeting place where ideas about the project could be
shared, discussed or adjusted. Perceived as an open process, it becomes a tool aimed at transforming
the construction process into a cultural and social act.
Questioning the role of the architect, Philippe Madec highlights the responsibility to control the brief
by altering the programme, emphasising on the opportunity to exceed the original demand (by adding
functions). On that end, he takes advantage of the policy in place, particularly the Local Housing Plan
(Plan Local de l’Habitat (PLH)), allowing to include 20 to 25% of social housing in every new urban
development. By doing so, not only does he facilitate an equitable accession to low-income
households, hence accommodating social diversity, but also, by combining different housing densities,
he controls urban sprawl. To structure living relations, Madec introduces the bio-îlot as a spatial,
environmental and social structure enabling the interweaving of spatial scales through time frames:
the intention is not to simply position buildings on a site, but to implement them and articulate the
programs between themselves. In other words, the bio-îlot establishes porosities and forges
connections in between the different nodes of the system. Reminding the most recent debates around
the concept of the '15 minute city', this temporal dimension that the architect promotes for each
project becomes key in understanding and designing space since it allows to consider programmatic
strategies based on procedures rather than designs (Madec, 2021). This consideration of time turns
public consultation into a pre-requisite to ensure the project’s appropriateness and experience once
completed: it is via imagining the (future) experience that the building(s) obtain(s) an identity (what
Madec calls idiosyncrasy).
This sense of interconnections and articulations between different scales that transcends Madec’s
work is expressed differently in the work of Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman. After thorough observation
of existing socio-spatial dynamics and whilst imagining emerging possibilities, they end up designing
systems, what they call policy frameworks, in the sense of a network of relationships. Cruz and Forman
are driven by the belief that the future of the city depends less on building and more on the
reorganisation of social and economic protocols (Cruz and Forman, 2023). That’s why they provide a
network of programmatic nodes, where marginal activities are anchored alongside dominant ones.
For instance, housing types are thought in parallel of local economies, and all are embedded within
an infrastructure of socio-economic and cultural programming. Ultimately, architecture plays the
mediating role between top-down resources to support bottom-up creativity: the original request
(that the architect has to respond to) is dealt with through some short of magnifying glass. Essentially,
the project becomes (a peripheral) part of an agenda that actually targets the overall context at its
root, giving to the project itself a social and financial dimension, exceeding what a conventional brief
would be. As a result, beyond providing physical spaces, the studio develops a determined position
(political activism) summarised in their recent book by ‘socialising architecture’. By designing ‘micro-
policy’ systems, able to facilitate construction permits or even loans and subsidies, Cruz and Forman’s
intention is to empower each neighbourhood to respond to its own needs.
14
Such thinking and doing mechanisms briefly described here reveal not only how a building serves a
(its) purpose, but also how it shapes behaviours. The imaginative nature or interpretation of urban
policy activates bottom-up sensibilities, turning architecture into infrastructure, in most cases plugged
with social and cultural activity. What is common denominator is the social relevance of such
architecture(s) where the design process exceeds a spatial exercise of environmental performance
and obtains a political dimension.
References
Beygo, A. (2016) Francis Kéré: Radically Simple. Hatje Cantz Verlag.
Bouchain, P., Julienne, L. and Tajchman, A. (2012) Histoire de construire. Actes Sud Editions.
Cruz, T. and Forman, F. (2023) Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up. MIT Press.
Frey, P. (2016) CS Studio Architects: Carin Smuts, Urs Schmid : Anatomy of a Dream. Actes Sud Editions.
Madec, P. (2021) Mieux avec moins. Architecture et frugalité pour la paix. Terre Urbaine.
15
Discerning the Historic City - A study on appropriated Houses of Downtown
Madurai
Al Mariam Ul Aasia Kamal Basha
Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, India
Evolving spaces call for its architecture to evolve alongside it. One of the implications of evolution,
happening with regard to architecture, is that of the growing city. Many of these present-day cities
have their historical lineage. The architecture of older times, seen in these cities, acts as a
manifestation of that historical significance. The discovery and preservation of such heritage is a
process that is underway. The rapid growth of the economy around the globe insists on the rapid
growth of these historical cities as well. This milieu, which asks for competing development, leads to
the adaptive reuse of many of the heritage spaces that aren’t sophisticated enough to be brought
under preservation.
Adaptive reuse architecture has had conflicting arguments regarding its role, existence, and efficiency.
One such conflict is between the designer’s vision and the user’s needs. The use of any design for
anything other than its intended use has been contested for the integrity of architecture itself. Despite
there being a conspicuous need for discourse in this assertion, there resides a constant opposition in
the evolution of any architecture. The same goes for a growing city especially a historic one, with its
architecture shrouded behind the curtains of growth, development, and the espousing of the modern
life.
Despite the raising constructive scrutiny towards this embrace of modern life, there still lingers a
fallacy of the promises of modern life. The argument that regards this fallacy to be one of the sunk
costs however is facing scrutiny. This is especially true for commercial uses, defined by their revenue
generation. This eventually results in a binary that lacks constructiveness toward the advancement of
the field of adaptive reuse architecture. This can be picked up easily from several arguments, be it the
CIAM’s regard of cities destroyed by war as opportunities for an unshackling from a cramped past or
be it the readily available examples that witnessed the retrofitting of designed space to accommodate
changing needs. Although we are far past the scenarios of war-torn cities, there still exists the centers
of historic cities, that are subjected to the changes resulting from our changing lifestyles.
Urban centers of historical cities, apart from being the commercial pot of the greater city to which it
belongs, are also the regions that exhibit a diversity of architectural styles with a composition made
of contrasting old and new. The city of Madurai, much like any other city, was built by retaining the
earlier architecture and new architecture superimposing the old. Once a primarily residential zone,
the downtown of Madurai has transformed into a commercial region. However, in most cases, these
regions retain their original architecture, exacting for the adaptive reuse of these spaces.
Studies of such historical cities have yielded an acknowledgment of the conflict between the two. A
deconstruction of this binary will enable the emergence of numerous possibilities. This will enable the
advancement of adaptive reuse architecture in a way that is in accordance with the growth of the
historic city.
One major criticism from the mid-20th century towards the inchoate paradigm of adaptive reuse
architecture was about the nostalgia that was carried along with the drive for the reuse of these
historic architectural styles. This can be discerned from the criticisms towards the reinhabiting of
Ponte Vecchio and the ensuing rebuilding of the region that surrounded the bridge. However, such
criticisms subdued the discourse that arose during the late 20th century with polemics that discussed
the need for an understanding of the diverse nuances of urban life rather than a blind adherence to
16
the glorification of the metropolis. The criticism towards CIAM's concept of towers-in-the-park is that
it glamorized the crowded metropolis. The criticism of the Garden City concept of satellite towns is
that it isolated various functions of urban life from each other and disregards the inadvertently and
exponentially happening embrace of modern life. Even though the adaptive reuse of old buildings was
birthed purely out of necessity, there is also a normative way of viewing the field. The rising argument
that old buildings of any city help in the perception of the city itself are of significant importance. The
heritage of a place helps shape the stories that took part in the evolution of these spaces.
These arguments can be regarded as the ones that laid the steps for an urban design framework that
would later evolve into something inclusive of the idea of adaptive reuse. A discourse is significantly
needed since an inclination towards any one of the contesting sides can only be superficial and
unyielding.
With that acknowledged, the further approach is towards contemplation of the inadvertently
occurring adaptive reuse, that carries on without any oversight of either the original designer or any
other designer. For an establishment of a constructive discourse of these conflicting interests, there
needs to be an understanding of the role played by adaptive reuse architecture in the weaving of the
tapestry of the urban form which largely encompasses the micro-scale and mesoscale fragments of
the urban environment. Three major elements that contribute to the form of a prototypical urban
region include the urban plot, urban block, and street. How the adapted architecture influences these
elements provides for an exhibition of the significance that adaptive reuse can have in the
regeneration of the historic center into the polis that is expected to support modern life.
Urban plot
The adaptive reuse of the building in urban centers results in the changing of the form of the urban
plot. However, in other cases, the form of the urban plot is retained while the building is adapted for
new use.
Urban block
When it concerns the urban block, adaptive reuse has the opportunity to diversify the uses of the
block. Adaptive reuse is mostly driven by access routes to the plots. And when the townhouses of
downtown Madurai are adapted for commercial activities, changes are created in terms of land use.
The importance of diversity can reflect on as many as three major aspects that contribute to the
livability. When the multi-use includes residential and commercial that correspond to the users of the
residential spaces, maintenance efforts will be relative. The other influence of the diversification of
uses in an urban region is local economics. When multiple business types exist in a proximal region,
the sellers of one business also act as the buyers of other businesses. This establishes sustenance of
the regional economics. Land use diversity also contributes to the safety of the urban space.
Street
The adapted buildings have just as much influence on the street as the street has on bringing about
the need for adaptive reuse. The induction of new activities in an existing space creates new patterns
that influence the nature and characteristics of the street. It also has an impact on the activities of the
street, which ultimately contributes to the fabric of the street.
17
An intramural study of such inadvertently adapted architecture has yielded a distinctive relationship
between form and function. The conflict between the two is an ongoing one concerning what holds a
greater position during the design process. Adapted architecture witnesses a reciprocal influence
between the architecture and the function of the building. This is especially true for the examples that
are adapted for new uses without the oversight of a designer and are carried out by the immediate
use of the space. Compromises are made along both sides to bring forth the most viable functioning
of the space. This will prove to be useful with an accomplished understanding that would push our
current pedagogy to move past the integrity of either the architecture or the function alone and
towards the integrity of the place in question. Despite there being a considerably exponential
diversification in the definition of architecture to include perceptual imagery among many more, there
is also this need for the rejection of the association of architecture with monumentality and the
manipulation of perception directed solely towards the creation of such monuments.
The other fight adaptive reuse has to put up with is one between reused architecture and rebuilt
architecture. This is the scenario for the urban centers where the milieu is dominated by spaces of
commercial land use. The option to reuse is overlooked with the spaces that are valued for their
revenue generation capabilities.
Although the wave of rapid growth can be held responsible for this, a lack of dialogue on the idea
should also be paid heed to. Prevailing economic conditions might be the ones forcing the overlook of
the need for the evolution of the paradigm. But growth can only be achieved when the idea of adaptive
reuse is regarded to be a part of the reciprocal contributions between place and man.
References
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., & Shlomo, A. 1977, A pattern
language: Towns, buildings, construction, Oxford University Press, New York.
18
Caniggia, G., & Maffei, G.L. 2001, Architectural Composition and Building Typology: Interpreting Basic
Building, Alinea Editrice, Florence.
Fisher-Gewirtzman, D. 2016, Adaptive Reuse Architecture Documentation and Analysis, Journal of
Architectural Engineering Technology, Vol.5 No.3, pp. 172.
Gaonkar, D.P. 1999, On alternative modernities, Public Culture, Vol.11, No.1, pp. 1-18.
Hosagrahar, J. 2005, Indigenous Modernities, Routledge, Abingdon.
Jacobs, J. 1992, The death and life of Great American Cities, Random House, Inc., New York.
Kropf, K. 1996, Urban tissue and the character of towns, Urban Design International, Vol.1 No.3, pp.
247-263.
Kropf, K. 2009, Aspects of urban form, Urban Morphology, Vol.13 No.2, pp. 105-120.
Kropf, K. 2014, Ambiguity in the definition of built form, Urban Morphology, Vol.18 No.1, pp. 41-57.
Parsaee, M., Parva, M., & Karimi, B. 2015, Space and place concepts analysis based on semiology
approach in residential architecture: The case study of traditional city of Bushehr, Iran, HBRC Journal,
Vol.11 No.3, pp. 368-383.
Sattayakorn, S. 2012, Space as a Place for Social Interaction: The Cases Of Housing in Bangkok EAAE /
ARCC International Conference on Architectural Research, Politecnico di Milano, 7-10 June 2012, pp.
420-423.
Serrano, M.M., Pérez, P.F., Llonch, R.J., & Barberà, A.P. 2012, Reinhabiting, the house, the street, and
the city, EAAE / ARCC International Conference on Architectural Research, Politecnico di Milano, 7-10
June 2012, pp. 424-427.
Sharifi, A. 2019, Urban form resilience: A mesoscale analysis, Cities, Vol.93, pp. 238252.
Yin, R. K. 2014, Case study research: Design and methods, Sage Publication, London.
19
Urban tactics for the co-production of social resilience. The case of the
temporary intervention ChatterBox in Portsmouth.
Guido Robazza1, Alessandro Melis2
1University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom. 2New York Institute of Technology, New
York, USA
Introduction
In urban environments confronted with unprecedented challenges, where disadvantaged inhabitants
increasingly face structural conditions of exclusion, impoverishment and deprivation, fostering social
resilience has become a primary objective for policy makers and urban communities. A vast literature
(Lara Hernandez & Melis, 2020) shows that temporary appropriation activities in the public space are
effective tools to achieve resilience, intended here as the community’s capacity of adapting to changes
in times of global crises. Among these activities, Temporary Urban Practices (TUP) can provide a
secure, flexible, and experimental space to include citizens in the city-making process while training
social capacities that contribute to social resilience. This article offers insights on the outcomes of the
Multicultural City ChatterBox, as a paradigmatic example of TUP encouraging social minorities to
repurpose an unused urban space, fostering urban resilience through agency, collaboration and co-
creative endeavours.
Placemaking, social capacities and community resilience
As anticipated in the previous paragraph, temporary appropriation of public space develops the
adaptive capacity of a community. Participatory planning and the involvement of citizens in the city-
making are pivotal tool through which this is achieved. Placemaking through co-creation goes a step
further, putting users at the core of the design process. Placemaking’s value lies primarily in the
process of collective creation, producing social capital through the engagement of those involved
(Matarasso, 1997), such as skills learned and connections earned (Iwińska, 2017). As Guinard (2018)
remarks, public art is a method for generating knowledge based on life in the local community.
Madsen (2019) suggests that ‘collaboration, connectivity, space creation and altruism can be potential
mechanisms leading to a stronger sense of belonging, social cohesion and inclusion’ which improve
the adaptive capacity of a society in times of global crises. Interestingly, Berkes and Ross (2013)
integrate a series of social capacities -some of which related to placemaking- into a spiral leading
towards social resilience. Similarly, Faulkner et al. (2018) characterizes the capacity for social resilience
as dependent on attachment to place, community networks, community cohesion, knowledge and
learning, claiming that attachment to place provides the foundation upon which the other capacities
depend. Within this context the ChatterBox case demonstrates how the greater diversity of the co-
creation agency constitutes a reservoir of possibilities and, therefore, a further strengthening of the
adaptive capacity of a community through the re-appropriation of the public space.
The ChatterBox Project: Addressing the challenges of Somerstown
The local community group Chat over Chai (CoC), from a Black, Asian Minorities Ethnic and Refugee
background, participated to transform a neglected area in central Somerstown, a high-density
neighbourhood of Portsmouth, which remains within the 10% most deprived areas in England (Smith
et al., 2015). Somerstown faces challenges such as a lack of public spaces, socio-economic disparities,
and social exclusion of minority groups. The ChatterBox project aimed to address these challenges by
empowering the local community to repurpose an unused urban space and foster social resilience.
20
CoC members were empowered to make decisions and define the project brief for the intervention.
After selecting a design idea from student submissions, they participated in co-design and co-creation
workshops alongside the researchers. A small 1:10 scale model simulated the main timber structure
and aided design thinking. A series of painting sessions at the university lab developed several tiles
designs to be fitted on the structure. The final artwork included a composition of tiles representing
their group logo. A 5-day construction residency workshop facilitated hands-on building, and the
completed project was celebrated with an unveiling event attended by around 120 people, including
CoC members, university representatives, and city council members.
The process was structured around these key steps:
Definition of a design brief by the community group (deciding what & where)
Preparation of concept ideas through design competition open to architecture students
Selection of design proposal to-be-built by a jury formed by community group
Collaborative Design Development, including:
o Co-design meetings (Assuming the mantle of the expert, Construction-game scale
models)
o Co-creative workshops (Artwork creation)
Residency Week (1:1 Fabrication)
Unveiling Event
Methodology: Co-Creation and observation
The co-creational methodology followed the Double Diamond innovation framework (Design Council,
2021; Hawryszkiewycz & Alqahtani, 2020; Tschimmel, 2012) and drew inspiration from three main
design toolkits: human-centred design (IDEO.org, 2015); the DIY (development, impact and you) kit
(NESTA, n.d.) and Recipes for Systemic Change (Boyer et al., 2011). As Manzini (2015) notes, design
tools are fundamental in coordinating the relationship between expert designers and non-expert
designers, aiding a clearer conversation between them and a more effective empowerment. The main
tools we used were:
Assuming the mantle of the expert - Participants roleplaying as experts to gain confidence in
construction and problem solving (Robazza & Smith, 2022).
Using construction-game scale models Deepening participants’ understanding and make their
contribution to the design more meaningful.
Holding creative workshops (Polaine et al., 2013) including painting, writing, and sewing.
The research investigation included continuous field observation and informal conversations,
gathering semi-structured conversations, structured and filmed interviews and written feedback. We
also valued casual conversations (Eggins & Slade, 2004), realizing during research that these reflected
what people felt and thought of the process. Through thematic analysis and coding (Braun & Clarke,
2014), we wrapped our reflections around: agency, attachment to place, knowledge and learning, and
networks.
Findings
On agency. The design process was a collective one, the participants appreciating the ability of the
researchers to listen and act on their views and ultimately seeing their ideas fully materialising in the
finished pavilion. Participants referred to the outcome as ‘our own design’. Agency and empowerment
were present throughout the process though it is unclear what impact this had beyond the duration
of the project.
21
On attachment to place. The CoC group demonstrated a consolidated attachment to the city of
Portsmouth. The design process winnowed several ideas down to a structure that should inform of
the city of Portsmouth and celebrate its diversity and beauty. Their pride, sense of purpose and caring
for others was manifest in a creation designed for all residents, projecting the explicit inclusive
message that ‘everyone is welcome’. The care of the space contributed to reinforce the group love for
the city.
22
On knowledge and learning. The participants were exposed to an entire design process of a temporary
structure in the public realm, learning on navigating a complex urban management process. During
the co-design phase considerations were focused on the qualities of the design, such as accessibility,
safety, vandalism, maintenance, and how the design could promote sociability and inspire
interactions. The 1:10 scale model was instrumental to discuss and take informed decisions about the
openness and porosity of the space and evaluate its potentials for gathering people. CoC participants
valued learning the ‘how it is done’ and said that observing how the design process worked had alerted
them to new perspectives. Learning DIY skills was also valued, particularly learning new hands-on
craftsmanship skills. A recurring consideration was that the project’s challenged instilled anxieties
which ultimately vanished, enlarging the boundaries of participants usual life and mitigating their
initial fears. Participants equally noted the visible socio-geographical barrier between the local
community and the university in Portsmouth, while praising the project dynamics for diminishing this
barrier. Exploring new territories, such as university spaces, and workshops was considered valuable.
However, some also had to face personal self-esteem and sociability issues or anxieties in engaging
with the project or being accepted by researchers.
On networks. The ChatterBox intervention connected CoC members with other communities,
participants expressing feeling to be positively affected by the intergenerational collaboration process
with the students, and their conversations with them. Collaborating with a common goal and sharing
a purpose was recognised as supporting people to connect faster and more intensively, lending sense
and meaning to their collaboration, in a task that could be completed only with teamwork. The project
also created opportunities to connect with other local action groups and public representatives, local
MPs, national politicians and City Council officers.
Conclusions
Collaborative placemaking interventions like Multicultural City ChatterBox can stimulate a range of
social capacities and support participating in city-making activities, developing networks, setting new
boundaries, acquiring knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of belonging to a place; these are
social capacities that social scientists identify as contributors to social resilience. Further research is
needed to assess the actual production of resilience beyond the TUP itself, but during the intervention
these social capacities have been stimulated and developed, demonstrating TUP could be considered
safe, experimental and transitory training environments to reinforce social capacities intimately
interconnected to resilience.
References
Berkes, F., & Ross, H. (2013). Community resilience: Toward an integrated approach. Society & Natural
Resources, 26(1), 520.
Boyer, B., Cook, J. W., & Steinberg, M. (2011). In studio: Recipes for systemic change. Sitra.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2014). Thematic analysis. In Teo Thomas (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Critical
Psychology (pp. 19471952). Springer.
Design Council. (2021). What is the framework for innovation? Design Council’s evolved Double
Diamond. Design Council.
Eggins, S., & Slade, D. (2004). Analysing casual conversation. Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Faulkner, L., Brown, K., & Quinn, T. (2018). Analyzing community resilience as an emergent property
of dynamic social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 23(1).
23
Guinard, P. (2018). Redefining publics, artists, and urban spaces: The case of Made in Musina, South
Africa. City and Society, 30(1).
Hawryszkiewycz, I., & Alqahtani, A. (2020). Integrating open innovation process with the Double
Diamond design thinking model. European Conference on Knowledge Management.
IDEO.org. (2015). The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design.
Iwińska, K. L. (2017). Towards better participatory planning: guide to place-making. Utrecht University.
Lara-Hernandez, J. A., & Melis, A. (2020). Understanding temporary appropriation and social
sustainability. Temporary Appropriation in Cities: Human Spatialisation in Public Spaces and
Community Resilience, 11-26.
Madsen, W. (2019). Re-creating community spaces and practices: Perspectives from artists and
funders of creative placemaking. Journal of Applied Arts & Health, 10(1), 2540.
Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation.
In MIT Press.
Matarasso, F. (1997). Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts
NESTA. (n.d.). DIY Toolkit | Nesta. Retrieved November 11, 2021
Polaine, A., Løvlie, L., & Reason, B. (2013). Service design: From insight to inspiration. Rosenfeld Media.
Robazza, G., & Smith, M. (2022). Co-design as play: Junk sounds and architecture in urban space. In A.
Cardaci, N. Mohareb, N. Cavalagli, & S. Maruthaveeran (Eds.), Cities Identity through Architecture and
Arts. Advances in Science, Technology and Innovation. Springer, Cham.
Smith, M., Noble, M., Noble, S., Wright, G., McLennan, D., & Plunkett, E. (2015). The English indices of
deprivation 2015. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 1114.
Tschimmel, K. (2012). Design thinking as an effective toolkit for innovation. Proceedings of the XXIII
ISPIM Conference: Action for Innovation: Innovating from Experience.
24
Everyday Placemaking. Six Days in the Life of People and Places in Phnom Penh
and Hanoi
Anika Slawski
University of Applied Sciences, Lübeck, Germany
Initial motivation to utilise the tool placemaking
Globally, the urban population will have increased to 6.7 billion people by 2050, with almost 90% of
the growth expected to happen in Africa and Asia (UN DESA, 2018). In light of this rapid growth, two
things become obvious. For one, infrastructure that secures livelihoods must be built and maintained.
At the same time, the importance of qualitative aspects such as the increased quality of life in cities
needs to be focused on. In order to strengthen urban liveability, the development needs to be people-
centred, should enable participation and promote responsibility for urban spaces (Mehaffy, Elmlund
& Farrell, 2018, pp. 4-5; Haas & Mehaffy, 2018, pp. 1-2; United Nations, 2016, pp. 6, 8-10, 19, 24, 28).
Therefore, especially in fast-growing cities, tools are needed that foster social sustainability and
people-centred planning to create places that are tailored to the peoples’ needs.
This article takes the people-centred development of urban spaces as its starting point and, narrated
through exemplary case studies, asks the question:
What can be learned from everyday patterns (everyday placemaking) in order to achieve a socially
sustainable and resilient design of places (strategic placemaking)?
A short definition: everyday and strategic placemaking
Generally speaking, placemaking can be classified into an everyday and a strategic approach. Everyday
placemaking is understood as the sociocultural appropriation of space (Healey, 2002, as cited in
Henkel et al., 2010, p. 361). It is assumed that social structures can be experienced in spaces and that
every society produces its own places. Thus, places are not only physical but also social constructs that
result from human interactions and are structured and shaped by a community. Therefore, the urban
space is inseparable from the everyday place, while the latter is created through habits and routines
(Healey, 2010, pp. 33-35; Healey, 1998, p. 5; Lefebvre, 2019, pp. 81, 88, 94, 97, 189, 197, 201-202;
Lefebvre, 1991, p. 31, as cited in Löw, 2018, p. 26).
Strategic placemaking refers to a spatial design strategy that is guided by a planner and implemented
by a collective. The aim here is to improve the quality of life and the quality of place, by bringing
creative, cultural and social processes together. Through strategic placemaking, (physical) spaces can
be transformed into (socially meaningful) places (Healey, 2006, pp. 97-98). As an integrative planning
approach, placemaking has been increasingly discussed as a possible effective tool to enhance socially
sustainable urban development (Ghavampour & Vale, 2019, pp. 196-197; Healey, 2002, as cited in
Henkel et al., 2010, p. 361; Healey, 2010, pp. 44-45, 77-78, 226-227; PPS, 2018, pp. 14-18; Relph, 1976,
p. 71; Stern & Zengchis, 2018, p. 270; UN Habitat, 2016, pp. v, vii).
Patterns of the everyday placemaking
To approach possible answers to the initial question, a case study was conducted in September 2022
with a team of local researchers in two currently fast-growing cities Phnom Penh in Cambodia and
Hanoi in Vietnam (United Nations, 2018, pp. 20-21). For six days, the researchers participated in the
life of six different places and analysed the places’ rhythm by applying methods such as mapping,
25
observing and photographing. In the following, one of the places the Tan Mai Ward in the south of
Hanoi (Vietnam) will be described.
The Ward is an informal communal and typical residential area. The place’s continuous surface is
bounded by mostly three-story houses. Each building faces the place and is complemented by a
ground floor zone, which is set off from the surface by a small step. The ground floors are lively and
mostly commercially used, so that the houses can be classified as shop houses.
The middle of the place is marked by a parklet which structures the place and divides it into an eastern
and western part. The ground floor zone has a rather private character, while the parklet is a
communal space.
The Ward is a green area with many plants concentrated within the parklet and in front of the houses.
Both in the parklet and on the ground floors there are elements such as plastic chairs and tables that
invite people to sit and linger. Typical elements in the place are hanging laundry, colourful canopies,
power poles and wires that lend a tangled appearance to the urban landscape. Part of the scenery are
handwritten texts on walls, houses or self-made signs. The texts include i.e., advertisements for
renting houses, prohibitions of harmful activities or simply the names of the house owners. These
handwritings illustrate the dynamics of this neighbourhood and show the pattern of behaviour to
improve one's own living space.
In the Ward, a lot of everyday activities and social interactions such as communication take place
constantly. People seem to know each other well, as they simply sit together, or gather to eat and
drink. Immense appropriation can be observed when people care about their environment, i.e., when
they clean the scenery and water the plants. While one group socialises over a game of chess, others
sit in the parklet or in front of their houses and observe the neighbourhood’s life. In addition to
stationary activities (i.e., observations), a lot of movement takes place. Certain spatial patterns, such
as areas with fast traffic dominated by scooters and other areas with slow movement such as walking
and cycling, become evident. Movement generally occurs in the middle, while social and lingering
activities are concentrated at the edges. People sit directly in front of the buildings so that social life
takes place on the ground floors. It is these very zones that function as outdoor living rooms and
kitchens. The social activities, as well as a variety of objects, that wander from the inside into the place,
cause smooth transitions. This spillover creates communicative hotspots that can be described as
social magnets; areas, where intensive exchange takes place. These ‘magnets’ show the neighbourly
cohesion and the close community of the Ward.
However, the place is not static and changes its rhythm in the course of a day: In the early morning
there is a rush and many people are on the move. In the morning, the pace of movement is quite slow
and people just calmly get on with their day or gather in groups. Around lunchtime, people do not
linger as much, as it (usually) rains at this time and people stay inside. In the afternoon, there is a
revival of the place and people from young to old come out of their houses for several (social)
activities. This activeness lasts into the evening and the alleys stay buzzing, while increasingly leisure
activities take place. In the late evening, the place is rather quiet, private and introverted.
Learning from everyday placemaking for socially-sustainable and resilient places
As experienced in the case study, mobility is a significant issue that affects the observed places. The
major means of transportation is the scooter which influences all places, especially around rush hour.
However, despite its dominance and loudness, community life the social practices take place in
front of the house. These activities are thoroughly resilient. In many ways, the places are the urban
living rooms and kitchens; many doors are open, which is a symptom of the neighbourly community
and a signal of mutual trust.
26
In general, there is an observable interplay between the people and the place, because people add
purpose and meaning to a place. In return, places offer people a special relationship, the framework
for social interactions (Schneekloth & Shilbley, 1995, p. 17). Thus, it can be said that, in addition to
people who care about each other and their place, the opportunity a place is needed that allows
appropriation and offers an invitation for lingering and meeting others. This case study shows that in
this regard the best places are the informal ones the spots in front of houses and the ones that offer
people room to express themselves.
In conclusion, an essential task of planning in the sense of placemaking is to strengthen the connection
between people and places through a collaborative process (PPS, 2018, p. 0) and to take the rhythm
of the place as the baseline for future improvements.
References
Case study descriptions based on field notes from: Hương Tho, Nguyn Th Thùy Linh, Hu
Phương, Cao Thiên Thanh, Lưu Đình Sơn & Anika Slawski, 22. September 2022.
Ghavampour, E., & Vale, B. (2019). Revisiting the “Model of Place”: A Comparative Study of
Placemaking and Sustainability. Urban Planning, 4 (2), 196-206.
Haas, T., & Mehaffy, M.W. (2018). Introduction: the future of public space. Urban Design International,
24, 1-3.
Healey, P. (1998). Collaborative Planning in a Stakeholder Society. The Town Planning Review, 69(1),
1–21.
Healey, P. (2010). Making Better Places. The Planning Project in the Twenty-First Century. Houndsmill,
Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Henkel, D. et al. (Ed.). (2010). Planen Bauen Umwelt. Ein Handbuch. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.
Lefebvre, H. (2019). Das Recht auf Stadt (3rd. ed). Hamburg: Nautilus Flugschrift.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
Löw, M. (2018). Vom Raum aus Stadt denken. Bielefeld: Transkript.
27
Mehaffy, M.W., Elmlund, P. & Farrell, K. (2018). Implementing the new urban agenda: the central role
of public space. Urban Design International, 24, 4-6.
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) (Ed.) (2018). Placemaking. What if we built our cities around places?.
Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://uploads-
ssl.webflow.com/5810e16fbe876cec6bcbd86e/5a6a1c930a6e6500019faf5d_Oct-2016-placemaking-
booklet.pdf.
Relph, E. C. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion.
Schneekloth, L. H. & Shibley, R. G. (1995). Placemaking. The art and practice of building communities.
New York: Wiley.
Stern, N. & Zengchis, D. (2018). Looking-In Cities. In: R. Burdett, P. Rode (Ed.), Shaping Cities in an
Urban Age (1.st ed.) (270-277). London: Phaidon.
UN DESA (Ed.). (2018). World Urbanization Prospects 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from
https://population.un.org/wup/.
UN Habitat (Ed.). (2016). Global Public Space Toolkit. From Global Principles to Local Policies and
Practice. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from
https://www.saferspaces.org.za/uploads/files/Global_Public_Space_Toolkit.pdf.
United Nations (Ed.). (2016). Neue Urbane Agenda. Habitat IIII. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from
http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/NUA-German.pdf.
United Nations (Ed.). (2018). The World’s Cities in 2018. Data Booklet. Retrieved March 22, 2023, from
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/the_worlds_c
ities_in_2018_data_booklet.pdf.
28
Spaces of resilience: a typology of places and practices in two Dutch cities
Louwrens Botha, Oana Druta
Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Introduction
The term 'resilience' is ubiquitous, but is often poorly defined, presented as politically neutral, or used
to justify neoliberal projects of austerity and state withdrawal (Mackinnon & Derickson, 2012; Shaw,
2012). Existing research on resilience largely operates either at the scale of systems or of individuals,
with community resilience less developed. Resilience literature also tends to focus on responses to
crises or disasters rather than a) the conditions that create those crises and b) the idea of progressive,
desirable change rather than reactive adaptation (Kaika, 2017; Davoudi, 2018). Furthermore, there is
a lack of understanding of existing practices of resilience; that is, what are people doing on the ground
to develop resilience, how do we define and recognize these practices, and how do their practices
cultivate capacities of resilience? How do they access, use and transform space, and how does this
impacts the city? This paper therefore aims to identify, map and categorize existing everyday practices
of resilience in two Dutch cities, Rotterdam and Eindhoven, along these dimensions: practice: what
the group does on a practical, everyday level; domain: their concerns and aims; capacities which they
develop; and resources, with special attention for space as a resource.
Theoretical framing
A review of the literature shows definitions of resilience as forming a spectrum ranging from resilience
as resisting stresses and bouncing back, to resilience as systemic adaptation to change and crisis, to
transformative resilience as a position acknowledging people's ability to imagine and enact
alternatives - thereby avoiding crisis rather than reacting to it, and seeing change as potentially
desirable (Brown, 2013; Walker et al, 2004; Porter & Davoudi, 2012). Our approach to community
resilience sees it as co-produced through shared action (Petcou & Petrescu, 2015), and highlights the
importance of agency in shifting resilience from a position of "coping" to one of "meaningful,
intentional action" (Brown & Kulig, 1997).
The production of neighbourhood resilience is studied at the scale of everyday practice, drawing on
the arguments of Shove et al (2012) around social practices as key to how societies change or persist,
suggesting that intervention in everyday life practices is necessary for wide-reaching societal change
and transition. Studying practices of resilience further offers the opportunity to learn from already-
existing solutions by which people are experimentally anticipating alternative future lives, and
“fostering small-scale shifts in the conception of what is possible” (Cretney & Bond, 2014).
Method
Mapping began with known projects in Rotterdam and Eindhoven, after which a systematic online
search was performed with keywords focused on location, organizational forms, and themes or
domains. This in turn led to a series of secondary links and existing networks and databases. All cases
were then filtered for relevance, degree activity, and bottom-up nature. From the resulting set of 57
cases, a typology of practices was inductively developed. This grounding in empirical cases both
responds to a lack of established theoretical models and aids instrumentality in mapping and
identifying further cases. The organizing dimension is the practice, in line with the research aims of
understanding resilience as practiced.
29
Towards a typology
From the above process we have categorized these practices into five provisional types:
1. ‘organizing & advocating’ to improve their neighbourhood and build political capital and
representation;
30
2. ‘meeting & making’, either as open-ended meeting space for various activities, or intentional
activities such as crafting or repair;
3. ‘greening & gardening’ in outdoor green spaces, gardens, food systems;
4. ‘sustainable living’ including sharing knowledge about insulation, energy reduction and lifestyle
changes, and in some cases local energy cooperatives;
5. 'experimenting’ with alternative economies, housing, infrastructures, and narratives.
The spaces used by these practices are predominantly repurposed commercial or institutional spaces,
including existing community centres or spaces which no longer have institutional management or
programming. Their tenure is most often through temporary anti-vacancy lease or institutional
agreement. In outdoor spaces, there is a combination of appropriation of existing public space, and
creation of new green spaces on (temporarily) vacant land.
Three examples can illustrate the approaches of these practices in repurposing urban space:
Leefbaarheidsteam Achtse Barrier is a neighbourhood advocacy group in northern Eindhoven who
meet to discuss and address problems, challenges and desires within their neighbourhood, and who
have taken on part of an existing community center as their meeting space. In the absence of state-
led community spaces and programme, they have thus taken on part of the function of a community
centre on their own initiative.
Huis van de Toekomst (House of the Future) in Bospolder-Tussendijken, Rotterdam, is an initiative
using collective activities such as baking, repairing clothes, and sharing meals, as forum for discussing
energy transitions and how residents will live in the (near) future. Their space is a former corner store
in a social housing block, which was no longer fit for commercial use but nor can the housing
corporation afford to renovate it. Their activities in the space challenge 'official' narratives of the
future, the nature of the energy transition being pushed by the municipality and the socio-spatial
changes presented as inevitable.
Finally, Oes Moes in Drents Dorp, Eindhoven, is a community garden collectively tended by residents
and the harvest shared among them. Beyond the gardening activities the space has evolved to host
social activities such as shared pizza nights. The garden is an appropriation of a collective space within
a block of row houses for a purpose desired by residents; in the contemporaneous neighbouring block,
this central space is used parking.
Discussion
The presence and prevalence of these everyday practices serve as evidence of unmet social and
community needs; citizens do not gather explicitly to 'develop resilience' but because they miss, and
desire, a space in their neighbourhood to meet, collaborate, and take action over their living
environment. This reflects the loss of social infrastructure and 'third spaces' in the city dominated by
market logic. At the same time, the appropriation and repurposing in these examples paradoxically
demonstrates that space is available; however, access to that space is severely restricted by the
market, even when empty.
Despite their value in furthering social cohesion and community resilience, cultivating transformative
visions of the future, and directly meeting the needs of residents, these practices are not valued within
the dominant neoliberal logic of urban development. For the market, they serve only to temporarily
resolve the vacancy inherent in capitalist development cycles or after crises such as the financial crash
or Covid-19 - hence the "permanence of temporary urbanism" (Ferreri, 2021). While citizens' practices
31
may cultivate community resilience, their precarity risks undermining this in the longer term if they
are not supported at structural and systemic levels. The essential ability of local practices to prefigure
alternatives to 'business as usual' is undermined by the need to adapt to existing structures, to 'play
the game' - or disappear (Druijff & Kaika, 2021).
For resilience practices to be truly transformative it therefore becomes necessary for them to change
the rules of the game, to alter the systems shaping our cities. This is a daunting challenge: the current
status quo has itself proven highly resilient. It is to be hoped that the new imaginaries being co-
produced in these vacant shops and disused fields can be the starting point for a collective belief in
and desire for genuine change, a shift in the conception of what is possible, rooted in the everyday
but always looking towards a transformed tomorrow.
References
Brown, D. D. & Kulig, J. C. (1997) The Concept of Resiliency: Theoretical Lessons from Community
Research. Health and Canadian Society, vol 4 no 1: 29-52
Cretney, R. & Bond, S. (2014) ‘Bouncing back’ to capitalism? Grass-roots autonomous activism in
shaping discourses of resilience and transformation following disaster. In Resilience: International
Policies, Practices and Discourses, 2:1, 18-31.
Davoudi, S. (2012) Resilience: A bridging concept or a dead end? Planning Theory & Practice, 13(2):
299333.
Davoudi, S. (2018) Just Resilience. City & Community 17, no. 1, March 2018: 37.
Druijff, A. & Kaika, M. (2021) Upscaling without innovation: taking the edge off grassroot initiatives
with scaling-up in Amsterdam’s Anthropocene forest. European Planning Studies, 29:12: 2184-2208.
Ferreri, M. (2021) The Permanence of Temporary Urbanism: Normalising Precarity in Austerity
London. University of Amsterdam Press.
Kaika, M. (2017) ‘‘Don’t call me resilient again!’ The New Urban Agenda as immunology … or … what
happens when communities refuse to be vaccinated with ‘smart cities’ and indicators’. Environment
and Urbanization, 29(1): 89102.
Petcou, C, and Petrescu, D. (2015) R-URBAN, or How to Co-Produce a Resilient City. In Ephemera:
Theory & Politics in Organization vol 15(1): 249-262.
Pink, S. and Lewis, T. (2014) Making resilience: everyday affect and global affiliation in Australian Slow
Cities. Cultural Geographies, 21(4): 695710.
Shaw, K. (2012). “Reframing” Resilience: Challenges for Planning Theory and Practice. In Planning
Theory & Practice, 13:2: 308-311.
Shove, E., Pantzar, M. & Watson, M. (2012) The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It
Changes. Sage.
Walker, B., Holling, C.S., Carpenter, S.R., and Kinzig, A.P. (2004) Resilience, Adaptability and
Transformability in Social-Ecological Systems. In Ecology and Society 9, no. 2: art5.
32
Rebuilding traditional houses along Flores Island in Indonesia, repurposing on
tourism behalf and cultural consciousness
Bondan Diponegoro
Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Introduction
The culture of building houses then and now is different. One of them was influenced by the influx of
modernization and industrial building technology which replaced traditional house-building patterns
in Indonesia. On Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia, various traditional buildings
can still be found although they are decreasing and starting to be replaced. Since the 2010s efforts to
restore buildings that reflect this tradition have been encouraged by various parties, with the same
goal, to avoid the extinction of the culture itself. Various methods are carried out, with the
intervention of the central government, social assistance from private companies, regional power
holders, diaspora communities, and the residents themselves.
The initial process of the building also varied, some came from concerns during visits to these villages,
or more coercive conditions caused by disasters such as fires that destroyed the majority of villages.
This writing is divided based on case studies and the process of rebuilding that can be seen based on
the journey the writer has taken from 2015-2022.
Waerebo, Manggarai
Waerebo village in 2008 left 4 traditional houses in the shape of a conical which was believed to be
the only authentic village left in Manggarai at that time. The construction of traditional houses and
supporting buildings was carried out for a decade together with the village community and various
parties. Drastic changes have been felt since 2014 when visitors arriving have increased and
multiplied. The village which is known as authentic has turned into a tourist village that is visited by
thousands of visitors every year, both local and international.
The occupational background of the Waerebo people is farming and gardening, with the economic
limitations of the people it is difficult to maintain these magnificent and prominent traditional houses.
Layers of aid have arrived since the restoration of the 2 houses that were hundreds of years old by the
local government in 1998. In 2009, through 2 private foundations, one of the houses was demolished
and rebuilt. Its success has invited many parties to participate in building Waerebo. A decade later,
Waerebo village has 7 conical houses as its original composition and added several other buildings as
support such as an arrivals post, library, lodging building, clinic building, and bathrooms.
Bena, Ngada
The involvement of the local government in increasing regional income from tourism visits has
occurred in Ngada Regency, for a long time Bena village has been known as a megalithic village which
is still inhabited and controlled jointly by the government and its people in maintaining building
traditions including the visual form of the village. Resembling a crescent moon, terraced and lined
rows of traditional houses on each side with a large yard at the front.
A few years before 2013, an asphalt road crossed the central courtyard of the village and divided the
village into 2. On the 2015 visit, the road was diverted around the village boundary, and the land that
had previously been a road had built a new traditional house, and it was celebrated in 2018.
33
Visiting Bena village today is no longer like entering a traditional settlement, but more like a gallery
displaying rows of women selling woven fabrics with local motifs that tourists are looking for. Even
when visiting, you are required to pay a ticket of IDR 20,000 (GBP 1.1) just like entering an attraction
at an amusement park.
Gurusina, Ngada and Nggela, Ende
Not far from Bena, Gurusina village can be reached in 15 minutes. 2018 was a dark year for this village
and Nggela village in the Ende region. Large-scale fires destroyed the majority of the buildings in the
village and left only a few.
The commitment from the central government to help rebuild villages that were burned down was
realized within 2 years. Together with the local community, they work together to build involvement
at each stage. All raw materials in building traditional houses are provided by the government and the
entire construction process and rituals are carried out by the traditional community. This development
process has been carried out since Waerebo in 2009, where the division of tasks was divided into two:
the donor provided the building materials (purchasing) and the local community had to be fully
involved in the development. This development process was replicated in several other villages and
was considered a success. Within 2 years, 26 houses that were burned down in Gurusina have been
rebuilt and traditional processions can take place again.
In Nggela, the construction committee had to work more on collecting materials according to the same
scheme. Of the 22 houses that were burned down, 6 were rebuilt with assistance from the central
government. For the rest, various methods were used to get funds to buy the main materials. In 2022
there will be 2 more houses that are still not built.
Settlements in Manggarai and Ende
Although previously proven by the success of other villages in building or reviving settlements with
the involvement of the residents and outsiders, several other villages did not do this. During the 2013-
2019 process, central government assistance was also replicated to local regional governments by
spending funds to build or add to the infrastructure of traditional villages in their area. But the
opposite of what was expected appeared, in fact, the building that had just been built no longer
wanted its residents to live.
The sense of ownership and direct involvement from the community itself must be greater than the
portion of outsiders who help, balanced with governance that is fully surrendered by the people who
inhabit it. Several cases in the two regions occurred because the construction was fully carried out by
the government with work assigned to non-community contractors.
Royal Palaces, Sikka
I recently had the opportunity to write about the process of reconstructing a (pre-colonial) king's
palace that was no bigger than the traditional houses discussed earlier. In the Sikka region, there were
three main kingdoms that were combined during colonialism. The shape of the palace is more or less
like a residential building in general but full of invisible symbols. Development initiated by the family
or descendants is the bright spot.
The building that stands is no longer used as a residence. But it is intended for local tourism, as well
as proof of the existence of this family in the history of the region. There are 2 palaces that are in the
stage of revitalization, the Sikka Palace on the south coast, and the KangaE Palace which is in the
highlands. Both have almost the same shape, only the spatial composition is different.
34
The intention of the development initiated by the family as a memento shows architecture as a
monument of existence rather than the built environment. The contrast between the traditional
palace buildings and their surroundings suggests an unspoken caste system.
Conclusion
On the journey along the island of Flores, traditional buildings or settlements are no longer merely a
residential environment for the people. The need for affirmation from outsiders supports the
sustainability of these traditional buildings, as well as the people. Even though it does not reach the
ideal of civilization, the efforts made by various parties are a stepping stone to maintaining the
continuity of the traditions and culture of the people of Flores.
35
The Ongoing History of an Unloved Structure; 'Prora' and its Rigid Resilience
Florian Rietmann
Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany
Introduction
This article deals with resilience as a feature of built structures, precisely large scale structures and
the continuous influence they can exert on their surroundings. The resilience of buildings is not always
positive. On the contrary, it can have a deeply ambiguous, even harmful influence on communities.
Prora - a contested building complex on the Baltic Island of Rügen - serves as a case study to highlight
more ambivalent features of resilience.
A Difficult History
Prora was erected between 1937 and 1939 by the Nazi organisation 'Kraft durch Freude' (Strength
through Joy). It was a central construction and propaganda project of the regime and was meant to
hold 20,000 beds, to provide low-cost seaside holidays for workers. As a gigantic vacation-machine
without equal in the modern world, it was intended to illustrate the sociopolitical power of the regime.
During the Third Reich, however, no tourist ever saw the sea in Prora. Still in the shell stage, the project
was stopped. What remained was an almost five kilometre long structure on the beach. (a structure
stretching for almost five kilometres along the beach).
In the aftermath of World War II, demolition attempts failed halfway. As the Cold War intensified, the
ruins were rebuilt and transformed into barracks of the communist GDR’s National People’s Army.
During this process, Prora disappeared behind barbed wire and trees as well as from public maps. In
its new function, however, it exerted continuous influence on the atmosphere and social structure of
the island: Roughly one third of all jobs on Rügen depended on the military. On the other hand, the
relationship of many inhabitants of the island to Prora becomes exemplary clear in a quotation of the
later district administrator Hannes Knapp:
'Prora has had something ominous, closed and mysterious for me since my childhood. I associate the
term Prora with impressions like barricade signs, barbed wire, machine-gun crackling, the roar of tank
engines and helicopters. Prora was the site of war games here on the island, but only to be observed
or experienced from a distance, because the site of the action, Prora, was closed [...] Prora is for me a
symbol of disaster and violence.' (Knapp, 1994, p. 57)
The quote shows how the baleful effects of large-scale structures from the past can continue to affect
the mentality of people and are perceived as a burden for the present.
The Burden of Prora
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rügen was confronted with enormous changes: The National People’s
Army of the GDR was disbanded. Prora was abandoned again and listed for demolition. However,
these plans failed when the complex was listed as a Nazi heritage site.
At the same time, a feeling of powerlessness and alienation was spreading on Rügen. Many islanders
lost their jobs due to the withdrawal of the military. There was also a fear of overpowering competition
from the West.
36
These fears found concrete expression when it became clear that the federal government wanted to
sell Prora in its entirety to an investor from outside. Plans were being prepared for a huge shopping,
leisure and entertainment centre with overnight accommodations for up to 6,000 people and 15,000
parking spaces for day tourists.
People on Rügen feared that a repurposed Prora would dominate the entire island, produce extensive
car traffic and strangulate small scale developments. Citizens' initiatives spoke of a 'monster of mass
tourism' that had to be opposed (INSULA RUGIA e.V., 1994).
Over the next few years, Prora evolved into a battleground of different actors like heritage activists,
government agencies, citizen groups and investors. In the wake of this conflict not only the past was
fought over, but a wide variety of future scenarios were projected onto the complex.
One of the most striking initiatives was taken by the Rügen District Council. It responded directly to
the federal government's plans. The district council passed a counter-resolution:
Prora must be kept free from any 'non-museum use'. A 'buffer zone' had to be declared around the
monument, where construction is prohibited. Only with enough distance, an 'appropriate
development (residential district, small industries …)' should be possible again (Bürgerinitiative FÜR
RÜGEN, 1994).
These measures were intended to turn Prora into a 'memorial to the consequences of large-scale
projects' as district administrator Hannes Knapp justified the plan (Knapp, 1994, p. 60). Prora should
be raised on a pedestal and at the same time tabooed, to banish any possibility that Prora could be
repurposed in the future and manifest its sinister influence again on the island.
To resolve the deadlock, the federal government decided to bring all stakeholders to the table and
conduct a discursive process.
Reassessing Prora’s Potentials
The contract to carry out the discursive process was awarded to the renowned Berlin development
company S.T.E.R.N. S.T.E.R.N. was specialized in the 'gentle renewal' of inner-city districts by
preserving the existing structures and involving the residents. S.T.E.R.N.'s mission was to reach a viable
consensus for Prora's future development, together with the different stakeholders on the island.
The approach was characterized by a strong believe in the value of communicative interaction based
on rational grounds. The process involved discussions, extensive workshops, joint decisions of the
different stakeholders and continuous exchanges with the wider public.
A non-binding agreement under the title 'Prora for Rügen' was reached as result of the process. It
shows how Prora’s potentials and history can be reassessed and used to steer the islands development
into a socially and environmentally more sustainable future. Formulated in the words of S.T.E.R.N.:
Prora 'offers chances, not additional burdens, chances for Rügen' (Pfotenhauer, 1996, p. 2). By using
these chances, it can serve as a 'relief for the entire island' (Hämer, 1996, p. 3).
Potentials of Prora lie in the already existing large buildings and sealed areas, its density as well as
existing sustainable transport links to rail and water.
Using them however requires the individual municipalities of Rügen to overcome their parochial
politics. The municipalities would have to refrain from planned new buildings for hotels and holiday
settlements and direct the tourism development pressure into the existing spaces in Prora. Developing
37
the complex under these preconditions would allow protecting the unique nature of the island as a
touristic asset in the long-term.
This would enable a touristic development on Rügen, which corresponds to the development goals of
the Agenda 21 (The non-binding United Nations Action plan for the 21st century with its focus on
sustainability, decided in Rio de Janeiro 1992).
38
Tourism as an economic driving force would allow supporting economically weaker uses in Prora, like
affordable housing, cultural institutions, youth tourism. Functions which are necessary for Rügen and
its more vulnerable groups in the long term.
In the non-binding 'Prora-Contract' the different actors committed themselves to the joint
implementation of the consensus (Grundsätze zur Entwicklung von Prora, 1996). The guideline
'Altruism before Egoism' was agreed as the basis of the Prora-Contract (Schlusche, n.d., p. 6).
Conclusion
The example of Prora shows how failed large-scale projects - even if the reasons for their construction
have long since become obsolete - can still have a decisive influence on the fate of a region.
Resilience is not per se a positive feature. The potentials of the past, which buildings carry within them,
can exert a deeply ambivalent influence on the present. To advance change towards a more socially
and ecologically sustainable future, there must be an active engagement with these ambiguous
potentials.
References
Knapp, H. (1994), Die Bedeutung des KdF-Bades für die Insel Rügen. In Werkgruppe Prora, 1. Prora-
Symposium. 6. und 7. Mai 1994 im Kinosaal Prora/Rügen. Texte Presse Briefe (pp. 57-62).
INSULA RUGIA e.V. (1994, June 4), Open letter to the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania, Dr. Bernd Seite.
Bürgerinitiative FÜR RÜGEN (1994, October 16). Prora - Nationales Denkmal zur Deutschen Geschichte
ist einzig verantwortbares Entwicklungsziel [Introduced as a draft resolution in the Rügen District
Council].
Grundsätze zur Entwicklung von Prora (1996, December 18). In Arras, H. E., Pfotenhauer, E., Schlusche,
G. (Eds.) (1997), Entwicklungskonzept Prora für Rügen. Bedarfs- und Wirtschaftlichkeitsuntersuchung
(pp. 98-102), S.T.E.R.N. Gesellschaft der behutsamen Stadterneuerung.
Pfotenhauer, E. (1996, November 2), Tourismusprojekte auf Rügen. In Schlusche, G., Rieckmann, K.
(n.d.), Protokoll des 3. Prora-Forums am 4. und 5.11.1996 zum diskursiven Verfahren der S.T.E.R.N.
GmbH für die Liegenschaft Prora [Attachment 4].
Hämer, H.-W. (1996, November 4-5), Die Bilanz zum Dritten Forum: "Prora für Rügen". In Schlusche,
G., Rieckmann, K. (n.d.), Protokoll des 3. Prora-Forums am 4. und 5.11.1996 zum diskursiven Verfahren
der S.T.E.R.N. GmbH für die Liegenschaft Prora [Attachment 5].
Schlusche, G., Rieckmann, K. (n.d.), Protokoll des 3. Prora-Forums am 4. und 5.11.1996 zum
diskursiven Verfahren der S.T.E.R.N. GmbH für die Liegenschaft Prora.
Figures
Top: Prora, view from the seaside, ca. 2012, photo: Antoine Beaudoin
Bottom: Prora, view from the landside, ca. 2012, photo: Antoine Beaudoin
39
In the light of Lumen. How to get a 30 years loan of use for a common space in
Florence
Francesco Caneschi1,2, Cristina Setti3, Jacopo Ammendola4
1FAUP-Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal. 2DIDA - Dipartimento di
Architettura dell'Università di Firenze, Firenze, Italy. 3Lumen, Florence, Italy. 4DIDA - Dipartimento di
Architettura dell'Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy
Introduction
There are architects that design walls and roofs to let people in, and there are architects that design
processes to let people meet. To regenerate an urban fragment, the second ones are as important as
the first ones.
Lumen is a physical place under constant evolution: the result of a ten-year experimentation of
temporary events. Nowadays, many professionals work across disciplines to regenerate urban spaces,
and they define themselves as urban practitioners.
Practice, in this definition, can be interpreted as the Aristotelian Praxis, as opposed to Poiein. They
both mean “to act”, but while the definition of Poiein means to produce something, as in building a
house, Praxis means to do something that is good in itself without any permanent physically built
result, as in building social relations between people that dwell in the same place.
Temporary actions for the collective regeneration of spaces
Lumen started as a happening, in a forgotten shed of a park in the city center of Florence. A group of
young people organized a sort of semi-spontaneous event where for one afternoon there was music,
live painting and some collective maintenance of the place. In a moment where the few free places of
social interaction started to decline, such as the “case del popolo” and squats, this heterogeneous
group of people wanted to offer an alternative to the consumerist leisure options that the city was
offering. Years after years, the group expanded: the happening became a two days festival free of
charge, named “Copula Mundi”. Illustrations exhibitions, live jam sessions and juggling were added to
the program. The main associations that managed the event and the informal actors had to become
a proper and defined legal entity: the association Icchè Ci Vah Ci Vole (ICVCV). This entity was needed
because of an increase in complexity and in responsibility management. After four editions the users
of the park changed, as more families started using the garden, overrunning the previous population
mainly composed of kids skipping school. This dynamic forced the public administration to increase
the affordability of the garden, through various interventions on the space.
Temporary events are an experimental tool for the modification of a space. As an experiment, it is
replicable in different contexts, but without a standardized approach.
Experimenting the institutionalization of co-production
Aware of the potential of this approach, the public administration suggested another park to host the
festival, bigger than the previous one and abandoned as well. The cultural offer, the actors involved,
and the hierarchy grew with the new dimensions of the festival. Being mostly based on voluntary
work, public funding and food & beverage, the organizational machine was too big to be a free of
charge festival. Moreover, a temporary festival has considerable waste production, that is acceptable
if the aim is profit, but it’s not if the aim is urban regeneration.
40
The idea of establishing the festival and the association in a specific place surfaced between the
organizers. How to create a path with the public administration?
A law came in hand along the process of finding a place. A law that allows groups of citizens to ask for
a non-residential building that is not listed as historically relevant, and that has a covered surface
beneath the five hundreds square meters.
This legal tool was created in 2017 and, until 2020, nobody used it. ICVCV found an abandoned park
at the periphery of the city center, nevertheless just five kilometers from the cathedral. The 4000
square meter park has several greenhouses and an old abandoned Casa Colonica, that previously
hosted a health facility for addicts. Lumen, the new name of the place, is right now in a strategic place,
at the border between the countryside and the city, exactly where a new tram terminal will be built
in 2024.
As in every innovative process, the beginning is always experimental. 2023 is the third and the last
year of a temporary loan for use, preceding the signing of a thirty-year contract. The bargain is to have
the place for free, in exchange for ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the building and the
park. After a brief estimate, the total probable investment will be around 600k Euros. Figure that will
become a public profit since the abandoned farm house is a public property.
In these first three years, the interiors are being used as storage, while all the resources are being
focused on the exterior of the park. That is because it’s easier and cheaper to make a place work in
the summer. In addition to that, it would be unwise to focus on the building instead of focusing on
building a community, before signing the contract.
Accountability & Sustainability
ICVCV is an association for social promotion (APS), a legal subject that has a clear hierarchy, where the
president is accountable, economically and legally, for all the association activities. The problem of
accountability is a multifaceted one: it compels a hierarchy that verticalizes social relations and spatial
production, it oversimplifies decision-making and makes it easier for the supervisory bodies to identify
a scapegoat. This structure isn’t a reflection of a common project, and recently this contrast was a
further aggravation to a fine that the association received for a question regarding the 2019 edition
of the festival.
Any legal or penal setback that occurs to the legal representatives, drives them to isolation.
Any additional burden they bear as individuals is mirrored by a reduction of engagement toward the
members, and the decrease of interaction, in a common project, usually drifts members apart. This is
the core complexity of a commoning project in Italy, that is linked to the issue of sustainability.
Three freedoms
A common project that is non-profit, that is designed to give to others, works if the people actively
involved receive something back, that usually are: to feel useful, a sense of belonging, new skills or
new possibilities. These last possibilities can be defined as the three freedoms used by Michael Sorkin
to define a good urbanity: freedom of assembly, freedom of access and the freedom of use and
expression.
The festival “Copula Mundi” worked on all three freedoms: it opened and improved the places where
it has been done, free entrance meant that people were able to assemble there and, lastly, it offered
the possibility of exhibition, performance and self-expression. Right now, if an association wants to
use the space for a show without a ticket, the space is given free of charge.
41
The festival "Copula Mundi" is now taking place every summer at Lumen, still free of charge. But the
space itself during working days has to safeguard access requiring a membership card, even if a cheap
one. That is because of accountability. To safeguard the freedom of access, and to minimize
accountability, the association rejected the proposal of the administration to manage 9000 square
meters and asked instead to manage the half of it, turning the remaining 4k sq into a public garden.
In this way the public space is subjected to the social control of the association activities, it's not its
responsibility, and it’s actually open also to the ones that do not want to become members.
To keep alive and to develop these freedoms, the architecture of the place is changing every year, to
improve them and to create new ones.
Form follows contents
The 'usual' process of constructing cultural and social spaces follows a predefined sequence: the
architectural container (or landscape) is designed and then built on the basis of an a-priori model that
lives in the mind of the designer, and the social and cultural content must adapt to this given form.
Lumen is an experiment in subverting this predefined sequence, postponing the definition of the
spatial configuration to the construction of the cultural and social content. The actual spatial design
is, in fact, indefinitely delayed, resorting to provisional layouts and pop-up devices, recursively
rearranging the architectural and outdoor spaces, in a permanently ongoing experimentation.
In this way, instead of forcing the social and cultural contents to adapt to a predetermined form, the
physical form of the place is incrementally built around the characteristics of the people and
relationships it will have to accommodate.
Indeterminacy is one of the main characteristics of a good public space, it has to accommodate the
unexpected, just like a good party or a festival. Festival is, in fact, the translation, not completely
satisfactory, of the “la te” concept by Lefebvre. The philosopher stated that one of the most
42
important aspects of urbanity is the moment where the use value overcomes the commodity value,
the moment of creation of the “oeuvre”, that he called “la fête”.
Goethe affirmed : “I call architecture ‘petrified music”. But in the light of Lumen, architecture is more
like live music.
43
Repurposing as Learning: Understanding the Role of Architects in Enabling
Owner-Occupiers to Retrofit
Habib Ghasemi, Tara Hipwood, Peter Holgate
Northumbria University, Newcastle, United Kingdom
Introduction
In the UK, the residential sector shares 58% of the building's emissions, more than 85% related to
heating space and water (UKGBC, 2021). Hence, There is a pressing need to improve the thermal
performance of its existing housing stock to fit them for the future, which mainly concerns owner-
occupied homes as they constitute more than 63% of existing housing stock (EAC, 2021). Whilst direct
legislation is considered too intrusive and expensive to enforce (Lucas et al., 2008), the emphasis shifts
to owner-occupiers' voluntary engagement. This is often followed through unsuccessful educational
programs based on information deficit models and behavioural change (Abrahamse & Matthies,
2018). Recent research has argued for learning in situations where the inter-relation of energy
consumption with bundles of practices that make up the everyday life of households becomes
accessible (Christensen et al., 2019). Similarly, practice-based research that explored the practical
enactment of house retrofit located energy efficiency within various accounts of everyday realities
and emphasised the strategic position of architects in resolving conflicts and incorporating retrofitting
in broader house adaptations (Hipwood, 2021).
Therefore, this paper understands 'low carbon retrofit' as upgrading existing house components to
improve energy use (Shahi et al., 2020) . However, the study places retrofitting within broader goals
and house development projects to investigate architects' highlighted yet under-explored position in
making retrofitting sensible for owner-occupiers (for retrofit as process, see Galvin & Sunikka-Blank,
2017). In this context, 'repurposing' does not refer to changing the function or occupation of houses
through intervention but to repurposing the intervention process itself - towards greater energy
efficiency.
Approach and Methods
The research draws on the theory of practice architecture, which explores learning as initiation or
being steered into practice (Kemmis, 2019). In the theory of practice architecture, sayings, doings, and
relatings form practices and hang together as projects that are made possible by cultural-discursive
(C-D), material-economic (M-E), and social-political (S-P) arrangements. These arrangements are not
entirely at the disposal of individuals. Instead, they form as people encounter one another in semantic,
physical, and social spaces (Figure 1). Thus, educators can be conceived as co-participants in shared
sites that influence local-based arrangements and enable or constrain practices.
Accordingly, through micro-ethnographic observation of communicative spaces that architects come
to share with owner-occupiers (Erickson, 1995), the research investigates the educative influence of
architects in reproducing practice architectures around retrofitting. To ensure energy efficiency has a
chance to emerge within these shared spaces, professional networks are purposefully searched to
locate architects with pronounced ambition in employing their expertise to address energy efficiency
in domestic projects. The research examines four architect-owner meetings around three projects at
different stages of preparation and design (RIBA stages A to C).
44
Discussion
Exchanges between Owner and Architects 1 and Architect 2 about house chimneys as part of an
improvement project are selected to discuss the findings. The following concise narrative is assembled
from episodes of talks across two meetings and follow-up interviews. The first part presents the
arrangements within which Owner finds removing chimneys sensible, and the second part shows the
45
reformation of the practice architecture by the architects to keep the chimney and improve the energy
performance of the house.
In contrast to the architects, Owner does not have a clear idea of retrofitting. He has a list of projects
oriented toward gaining more space and/or attending to maintenance. Chimneys are in a
deteriorating condition requiring attention. Also, Owner sees them as obsolete components that limit
the flexibility of the interior space. Later, he associates enhancing interior flexibility with improving
the living quality of his son, both in terms of creating a better space for him to socialize and leaving
what he defines as a ‘lasting legacy’. However, he expresses willingness to sell the house and move
somewhere else to access better schools. Understanding Owner’s sayings, doings, and highlighted
relations from the lens of the practice architecture shows how these seemingly unrelated factors
connect to each other across arrangements and make removing chimneys sensible (Figure 2):
Overlaps of Material- Economic and Cultural- Discursive Arrangements: the chimneys’
conditions and their perceived negative impacts on space (M-E) direct action to better use of
space and improve the interior (C-D).
Overlaps of Cultural- Discursive and Social- Political Arrangements: seeking space and
flexibility are derived by providing good living conditions (C-D), directed by being a father and
the ambition of leaving a legacy (S-P).
Overlaps of Social-Political and Material Economic Arrangements: concerns over access to
suitable education cause a sense of instability (S-P) that limits actions to urgent small-scale
works, including addressing the deteriorating chimneys (M-E).
Architect 1 suggests keeping the chimneys and using them as ventilation shafts to bring in fresh, warm
air and dry out the house. This would also help resolve the dampness problem Owner mentioned
earlier. She gives Owner examples of integrating the chimneys into the house's interior layout and
making them useful. Architect 1 also raises concerns about the impacts of removing chimneys and the
costs of the work. She then warns that selling their house may not yield enough money to purchase a
similarly sized property in the current market. Later, Architect 1 invites the owner to think long-term
and emphasizes that current houses are not ready to meet the energy requirements of the future. She
concludes that improving energy efficiency would be inevitable at some point. Finally, Architect 2
shares her experience of going to the same schools and ‘turning out fine.' Looking at overlaps between
the arrangements better illustrates the architects' influence in making retrofit and keeping chimneys
sensible (Diagram-2):
Overlaps of Social-Political and Material Economic Arrangements: Reframing the owner
position, both as a householder and father (S-P) encourage actions to aim for long-term goals
such as energy efficiency (M-E).
Overlaps of Social-Political and Cultural- Discursive Arrangements: Being in a more stable
position opens the possibility of thinking long-term (S-P), which extends the discourse of
improving living condition to include thermal comfort and energy use (C-D).
Overlaps of Material- Economic and Cultural- Discursive Arrangements: Keeping Chimneys as
ventilation routes is demonstrated as a straightforward way (M-E) to achieve better energy
performance. Additionally, proposing scenarios in which chimneys serve new and wider
purposes (M-E) resolve conflict around flexibility and better use of space (C-D).
Findings
Eventually, Owner removed the chimneys but adopted the retrofit measure, demonstrating learning
and the architect's roles beyond persuasion to enable the owner. In this example, the architects'
influence can be explored around practicality and costs that constrained Owner to retrofit.
46
In the overlap of (S-P) and (C-D) the architects initiate the owner into re-thinking their future
position and what constitutes good life. They enable owners to think of practicality from
broader and different perspective. Therefore, they play a transformative role.
In the overlap of (C-D) and (M-E) the architects initiate the owner into aiming for more
forethoughtful and/or broader goals. They enable the owner to achieve practicality by acting
smarter and making most of the situation. Therefore, architects play an augmentative role.
In the overlap of (M-E) and (C-D), the architects initiate the owner into re-evaluating their
future position and coordinate their actions, respectively. They enable owners to explore
practicality in vision-driven decision-making and problem-solving over time. Therefore,
architects play a scaffolding role.
In general, the architects help the owner to better envision what lies ahead, reduce uncertainty
around current actions, and repurpose the interventions to ensure their long-term happiness through
optimising energy use. Architects are well-positioned to contribute to this as they have access to the
ecology of dwelling practices and the deeply emotional drivers behind them. Recognition of this role
is critical for upgrading housing stock and maintaining an ethical practice, which is essential in
addressing contemporary challenges (see Samuel, 2018).
References
Abrahamse, W., & Matthies, E. (2018). Informational strategies to promote pro-environmental
behaviour: Changing knowledge, awareness, and attitudes. In Environmental Psychology: An
Introduction (pp. 263-272). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119241072.ch26
Christensen, T. H., Larsen, S. P., & Knudsen, H. N. (2019). How to engage households in energy demand
response solutions? EEEE 2019 Summer Study on energy efficiency: Is efficient sufficient?, France.
Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). (2021). Energy Efficiency of Existing Homes: Fourth Report of
Session 201921. The House of Commons.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/5171/documents/52521/default/
Erickson, F. (1995). Ethnographic microanalysis. In (pp. 283-306): Cambridge University Press.
Galvin, R., & Sunikka-Blank, M. (2017). Ten questions concerning sustainable domestic thermal retrofit
policy research. Building and environment, 118, 377-388.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2017.03.007
Hipwood, T. (2021). Understanding low-carbon housing retrofit within a wider nexus of practices.
Journal of architecture (London, England), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2021.1925328
Kemmis, S. (2019). A Practice Sensibility: An Invitation to Theory of Practice Architecture. Singapore:
Springer, 10, 978-981.
Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2013). Changing
practices, changing education. Springer Science & Business Media.
Lucas, K., Brooks, M., Darnton, A., & Jones, J. E. (2008). Promoting pro-environmental behaviour:
existing evidence and policy implications. Environmental science & policy, 11(5), 456-466.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2008.03.001
Samuel, F. (2018). Why architects matter : evidencing and communicating the value of architects. New
York : Routledge.
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Shahi, S., Esnaashary Esfahani, M., Bachmann, C., & Haas, C. (2020). A definition framework for
building adaptation projects. Sustainable cities and society, 63, 102345-102345.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102345
UK Green Building Council (UKGBC). (2021). Net zero whole life carbon roadmap: A pathway to net
zero for the UK built environment.
48
Co-creation and collaboration to create social value: A case of the restoration
and retrofitting of Woodstock School Mussoorie, India
Aishwarya Tipnis
Aishwarya Tipnis Architects, New Delhi, India
Reimaging Woodstock School’s campus, infrastructure and learning spaces to celebrate its 168-year
legacy and heritage while providing a modern, flexible teaching and learning environment for the 21st
Century to support their pedagogy, as well as vision, for the future. The project has adopted a
community-led, people-centric design approach reflecting the school’s values of inclusivity,
collaboration and treading lightly on Earth. The careful implementation of the project has been
achieved through the integration of low-technology, recycling and upcycling of materials within the
site, as well as the application of traditional materials and craftsmanship during the COVID 19
pandemic. The entire restoration has been a fully private sector initiative, funded by 250 individual
donors from North America (Canada and the U.S.), Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, India,
Northern Ireland, Denmark, and the UK through the Friends of Woodstock School (FWS), Canadian
Friends of Woodstock School, and Lyre Tree Society.
Woodstock School, established in 1854, is a premier non-profit, co-educational boarding school set in
258 acres of wooded landscape in Landour, Mussoorie, India. Although it is not legally protected as a
heritage building, it is considered to be a local-level landmark. Recognized as an institution rich in
history and tradition by current and former students, staff, administrators and visitors, its heritage
environment provides a tangible link to its distinctive identity.
Having grown incrementally over the years to adapt to the changing academic requirements, the
individual internal and external changes have had a detrimental impact on the overall architectural
heritage value of the school’s academic buildings. It recognizes that in moving towards becoming an
international educational leader in Asia it needs to initiate change to foster a sense of community as
well as impact student learning.
An example of participatory heritage conservation, this project has been entirely driven by the
community for the love of their heritage. The articulation of the community’s values was achieved
through bottom-up engagements with the students, teaching staff, administration and alumni
through hybrid modes. In keeping with Woodstock School’s ethos of treading on the planet lightly, the
project has been guided by the vision of celebrating the rich heritage of the building while providing a
modern flexible environment that supports its vision to be a global institution. The core values of the
school of encouraging holistic learning, caring for the planet and sustainability have been the guiding
force for the project. The heritage values are vested not only in the material fabric, but also in the
largely intangible; the legacy of the past as well as the vision for the future.
Sustaining identity is not just about returning a place to its glorious past, it is about endurance and
empowering a community to adapt to changing circumstances. The fund-raising campaign for the
project has been built around the idea of honouring Woodstock’s past by giving towards its future, co-
creating and sustaining a collective identity for the institution. Adopting a participatory design
approach, the brief of the project was outlined through collaboration and co-creation with all
stakeholders.
The objective was to make the 168-year-old buildings future ready, adapting to teaching and learning
in the 21st Century while respecting their heritage and improve resilience of the buildings to disasters
such as fire and earthquakes. The primary challenges were the structural retrofitting of the building
to increase resistance to seismic threats, upgrading the mechanical engineering services and
49
integrating new heating and ventilation systems for the classrooms and science labs. The architectural
interventions included recovering the original spatial configuration of the 1929 building by
reorganizing the spatial uses. This included careful removal of incongruous walls and partitions,
designing spaces that were collaborative, flexible, student centered and efficient. Original
architectural features and fenestration patterns were recovered, original timber windows were
repaired and refurbished, and those which were heavily damaged were replaced to match the original
design in like-for-like material. The key design elements were recovering the original spatial design of
the building, creating spaces with ample natural light and ventilation that facilitated collaboration,
enhanced the mood and supported learning and remained a solution that was specific to this site.
Interaction spaces outside the classrooms were created with the refurbishment of the hallways as well
as creating a centrally located lounge for teachers and students. The disused open space to the front
of the High School was re-imaged as a student interaction space. The landscape design was chosen to
be practical, the existing material available on site was reused, the overall drainage of the site was
managed and new benches made from leftover materials were designed around the existing trees,
enhancing the biophilic qualities of the space. The main entry was re-imagined to create a more
visually permeable entrance while maintaining the security, highlighting the original entrance gate
which was faithfully restored based on archival references. The security and reception area were
designed to merge into the surroundings and built with material already available on site, in keeping
with the recycle, reuse and repurposing principle. All new interventions were chosen to be
contemporary in the choice of material, colour and expression. The project has created flexible
working spaces with the creation of open-plan and collaborative working spaces, centrally shared
social and informal meeting areas for teachers and students. The spaces are enhanced by the choice
of flexible furniture.
Adopting a community-led design approach, through an iterative process, the project was undertaken
on a tight budget using low technology and relying more on human action. As the project was
50
implemented during the COVID 19 pandemic, several new ways of working in collaboration with the
local teams emerged for co-creating solutions that helped in successfully overcoming the various
challenges that were encountered. Learning from this experience we have co-created an online open-
source platform called the Restoration Toolbox that brings together all stakeholders in the design
process and empowers local communities to restore their own buildings in a participatory way.
51
The Role of Lighting in Supporting Town Centre Regeneration and Economic
Recovery
Richard Morris1, Bettisabel Lamelo2
1Arup, Manchester, United Kingdom. 2Arup, London, United Kingdom
Introduction
Town centres are struggling due to changing retail trends and the impact of Covid. We live half of our
lives in darkness yet lighting after dusk is so often considered only in functional terms and does not
fully address human centric needs; the cultural, economic, social and political aspects of our global
society. However, considered lighting, beyond just compliance, can engage communities and support
wellbeing, but there is little socio-economic data available to define the value of lighting.
This paper explores the role of lighting in town centre regeneration. It explores the potential for
lighting interventions to create night-time spaces for people and provides evidence to guide town
investments towards encouraging economic activity, and bringing people back into the towns in a safe
and inclusive manner using lighting as a key resource.
Context
Lighting plays an important role in enabling healthy, inclusive and sustainable urban lifestyles. It
focuses on the human factor and ways to enhance the experience and use of public space during the
hours of darkness. Many towns and businesses already understand the economic implications of a
flourishing night-time economy. After all lighting design shapes the attractiveness and quality of the
night-time experience.
Town centres are often defined by the following characteristics: retail, leisure and cultural hubs, access
to public/private sector services, employment, commerce, transport hubs and they are perceived by
the community as their town centre.
The Covid pandemic brought unprecedented challenges and towns reacted with streets closed to
encourage social activity outdoors. Reaction was positive and now towns are making meanwhile
interventions permanent, transforming the urban environment into places for people. Also,
capitalising on an increased desire to walk and cycle requires improved perception of safety after dark
on these routes to encourage their use.
Lighting can contribute in many ways to easing the pre and post-covid challenges that town centres
are facing:
Supporting a transition from functional covid interventions into a recovery plan.
Revitalising and enhancing attractiveness and perceived safety
Catalysing regeneration and sustained economic growth.
Providing cost-effective, ‘quick wins’ for stakeholders looking to make improvements.
The economic value of lighting can be expressed in terms of the multiplier effect; an initial injection
into the economy leads to a much greater final increase in GDP. For example, the direct impact of a
lighting festival can be measured by additional spend in food outlets, indirect impact will be enjoyed
by the supply chain feeding the event, and an induced impact is the supplier employees spending in
the local economy.
52
Well considered lighting design will help achieve sustainability goals which support well-being, social
activity for all, growth and employment and the responsible use of modern technology. The
development of a successful night-time strategy will be dependent on private and public sector
partnerships. However, the value of lighting intervention must also be balanced with the respect for
biodiversity in our urban environments.
Challenges
The paper identifies nine town centre regeneration challenges which lighting can help address:
1. Attracting people in a safe manner
2. Providing attractive outdoor spaces for dwell
3. Reconnecting people with the natural assets
4. Removing physical and psychological barriers
5. Expanding beyond retail, food and beverage, into leisure, residential and co-working
6. Celebrating heritage assets
7. Bringing new life into underused spaces
8. Encouraging community participation and ownership
9. Accommodating retail changes, diversifying to complementary uses
A town’s diversity is complicated by an increasing diversity of citizens and more social and economic
life now takes place in towns after dark, so 24h thinking needs to apply to towns which now have a
wide demographic requiring lighting to respond to their needs.
Case Studies
The sixteen case studies contribute in various ways to the three main dimensions of urban life:
liveability, sustainability and economic development and range in size. They focus on the human
factors; ways to enhance the experience and use of our town centres after dusk. Three are
summarised below.
1) B-Lit NYC
Engaging a community with simple lighting interventions can be used to build resilience, create safer
places and reduce antisocial behaviour while building a sense of community. Low-cost lighting
interventions were used to promote ownership and pride.
2) Leicester Square
Lighting interventions were informed by pedestrian traffic analysis and they reinforced alternative
walking routes though the central park space to unlock bottlenecks. Now occupancy is more evenly
spread and the visitor experience less frustrating which promotes dwell and spend.
3) HK Metroplaza
Metroplaza was renovated to create an ‘airport lounge’ type environment with an enlarged outdoor
green space to enable people to take a break, relax and make the shopping trip more of an event. This
encouraged a longer stay and resulted in a double-digit growth in retail/leisure spend.
53
Next Steps
The final part considers the next steps; to scope, plan and formulate a business plan for lighting
interventions, namely:
1) Scoping: Prioritise/Identify which of the nine challenges are most applicable to your town, and
understand why. Consider which nine town centre challenges are your policy goals.
2) Context Appraisal: identify parameters which will inform the interventions; engage with third
parties via collaborative thinking sessions, review the site, scale and scope of the intervention, think
about human perspectives of arrival, impression and orientation, appraise the site character and
heritage, appraise people’s perceptions of safety and evaluate the appetite for change.
3) Conceptualisation: identify the possible interventions, appraise options and prioritise them
functionally, physically and financially. Integrate them into the masterplan with defined and
measurable short, medium and long term goals.
4) Business Case: now the project is scoped and understood, back it up with fiscal evidence. The
business strategy for interventions must ensure benefits are achieved, from meanwhile interventions
to a long-term masterplan
Hyperlink: www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/promotional-materials/section/the-role-of-
lighting-in-supporting-town-centre-regeneration-and-economic-recovery
54
Lancaster West Future Neighbourhood Vision: co-designing a resident-led
vision for London’s largest eco-neighbourhood
Bettisabel Lamelo1, James Caspell2
1Arup, London, United Kingdom. 2RBKC, London, United Kingdom
In 2017, 72 residents lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire.
Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea created the
Lancaster West Neighbourhood Team (LWNT) to work on the refurbishment of 800 homes on
Lancaster West Estate (LWE) and work in partnership with residents to achieve a green recovery,
codesigning the future of the neighbourhood very closely with the community.
As part of recovery, LWNT worked with 1,800 residents to co-design a Future Neighbourhood Vision
(FNV) to deliver community projects and services. Arup was appointed in 2021 by Lancaster West
Residents Association (LWRA) and LWNT to work with residents and stakeholders to co-design the
next steps of the FNV.
The vision has three main objectives:
Define priorities for future investment and for delivering services.
Help LWNT to better utilise their assets to meet local needs and deliver positive outcomes.
Support their ambition to become a socially and environmentally resilient eco-
neighbourhood.
There were some key challenges to overcome during the FNV process:
LWE (and Notting Dale ward as a whole) is a diverse community with nearly half of residents
born outside the UK.
Over-consultation and engagement fatigue in the local community: due to the context
surrounding the LWE, residents of this community are incredibly consulted by various bodies
and organisations.
Covid 19: The pandemic provided some logistical challenges, with the Omicron variant
delaying the final project stages.
On an estate where a vision was never in place and that has been historically neglected, LWNT has
been working closely with residents to repair their relationship with local authorities and to make this
relationship one that is lasting and meaningful, built upon trust and where all parts of the community
are heard.
The FNV contributed to nurturing this relationship and helped overcome existing challenges by using
innovative strategies to community involvement which place residents at the centre of the process:
1. Resident-Led: from initial scoping to delivery, community representatives have been a key
part of the governing steering group, procurement processes, and strategic decision-making.
2. Accessible: using a multi-channel and multi-lingual approach, engagement was embedded in
everyday activities and designed to require minimal effort to participate. From the onset, 3
residents were hired as engagement assistants to help overcome linguistic and cultural
barriers.
3. Flexible: taking an agile approach to the programme enabled learning and feedback loops,
allowing resident to meaningfully shape outcomes at each phase.
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4. Collaborative: over 20 organisations active in and around LWE from across public, private and
voluntary sectors formed a FNV Partnership Board to work collaboratively on the FNV.
The project comprised five stages of working with residents and stakeholders:
Empower empowering 3 residents through employment to shape key strategic decisions
and work with the project team.
Understand building a picture of the current context using demographic data and resident
feedback to form a robust evidence-base for future projects over the next decade.
Inspire creating a playbook of best practice solutions from around the world to address
identified needs.
Explore building a list of potential projects specific to LWE, assessing and prioritising each of
these against need, deliverability, funding and benefit to the community.
Demonstrate co-designing one exemplar project based on resident demand, which is a
training and employment hub.
Key planning principles such as no loss of existing social housing and ensuring any new housing
benefited local residents and would all be flat-level access were accepted as resident-led non-
negotiables from the outset of the FNV, ensuring a truly bottom-up approach was apparent
throughout. This was especially important considering one in 5 residents live with a disability and life
expectancy in this ward is 10 years less than the borough average.
Some of the positive impacts of the vision include:
Social value: the three residents hired received training tailored to their context and needs.
This gave them skills valuable for their professional future.
High levels of participation: the team engaged with over 70 residents and collected over 300
individual comments. The vision enabled meaningful co-design with residents and successfully
delivered outputs that serve as tools for managing and delivering future resident-led
initiatives on the Estate.
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Projects being delivered with sustainable outcomes:
1. In a ward where only an estimated 31.7% of residents are in full-time employment,
the exemplar project, the employment and training hub, has been piloted as a local
Green Skills Academy to future-proof skills as LWNT works towards a carbon-neutral
economy. The Academy is training contractors, local SMEs, and residents and has
trained over 40 council staff members to date.
2. As a result of the FNV, residents are now congregating at monthly community
breakfasts and for activities in community spaces.
3. FNV has built on LWNT’s approach for sustainable development improving the
physical and environmental quality of the estate. Notable achievements include
465.81m2 of grey to green space transformation, and 2,000+ new plants by 85
community garden volunteers.
Partnership and collaboration: Where services were often once disconnected and
uncoordinated, the FNV has left the legacy of bringing together 20+ organisations in the FNV
Partnership Board to enable collaboration to deliver wider equality outcomes. New
collaborations such as vaccination clinics delivered at FNV events saw the NHS vaccinating 127
residents amongst community groups with high levels of vaccine hesitancy. These
partnerships are driving the sustainable and quality delivery of projects and enhance
outcomes for community health and wellbeing.
The FNV successfully identified community priorities for the neighbourhood to better utilise facilities
and spaces to support the Estate in becoming London’s first eco-neighbourhood. The success of the
FNV is materializing as projects are delivered by LWNT and community partners continue working
together as part of various other initiatives, including the GLA’s Future Neighbourhoods 2030
programme. The ambition of this community-led vision is to create improved opportunities for
residents to meaningfully participate, make informed choices and drive positive change.
This will ensure that social cohesion and empowerment is built to maximise the resilience of the
Lancaster West Estate, and its residents.
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Re-thinking homes as productive spaces for improved resilient communities
Silvia Micheli1, Antony Moulis1, Peyman Akhgar1,2, Remi Ayoko1, Tim Kastelle1
1University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. 2Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
In 2022, the University of Queensland School of Architecture and School of Business launched an
interdisciplinary study to develop design strategies for rethinking the future of Brisbane’s work in
suburban residential areas. The aim of the study is to challenge the modes of existing workplace
arrangements by recognising the residential property as a location for diffused work, microscale
business and manufacturing activities. The study has its starting point the structural change around
work practices characteristic of post-Covid cities. Adapting to work from home has shifted the city’s
sites of productivity, as well as working behaviours. What is happening because of this shift, and what
does this mean for the productivity and economic redesign looking into the future of work in
Australia? We observe how the house in low-density inner-city suburbs is undergoing a radical process
of transformation of both its typology and use. Flexible working patterns and increased
entrepreneurship are blurring the boundaries between public and private realms (working and
living), revealing the significant potential of the house as it accommodates productive activities. In
dealing with these issues we have adopted, as our case-study, the city of Brisbane, Australia. Many of
Brisbane’s current population of 2,000,000 inhabitants live in detached houses of a marked suburban
residential character, houses that begin to reveal a diversified range of microbusinesses run by their
occupants a phenomenon still emerging.
This study applies a multidisciplinary lens, interpolating architectural, business and planning
perspectives with insights gleaned by on-site investigation conducted in Brisbane sample suburban
areas. Drawing on the observational approach known as everyday urbanism (Chase, Kaliski and
Crawford, 1999) a close examination of the everyday working patterns of residents embedded in
residential neighbourhoods shows an increased tendency in the use of liminal spaces of private
properties for on-site production, display and exchange of goods. The types of activities observed
include plant nurseries; bike repair services; home gyms; dog grooming services; hairdressers and
beauty salons; pottery and art studios and so on (“Business Queensland: Starting a home business”,
2022, online resource). The mapping of these small-scale interventions, occurring in Brisbane since
the pandemic, and even before it, has cast light on the widespread nature of emerging niche
businesses across the city. Taking place in residential zones, fully regulated as such, the productive
activation of residential properties has shown how production exists at different scales and levels of
occupation, on and within properties, and along fences connecting public and private spaces.
However, design solutions to host these activities remain extemporaneous.
Innovation in the research methodology comes from the combination of architectural and business
approaches in support of projected futures for urban design and city planning regulation situated
through evidence-based scenarios. The research stresses the urgency for councils to liaise with the
community and small business owners to understand how (architectural and business) design can
enhance the capacity of residential architecture to support novel workspaces arrangements and
models. In a nation where 40 percent of workers are employed by small businesses, attention should
be paid to the needs of micro-scale and family-run businesses and allow opportunities for them to
grow in the suburbs and serve localised markets. To prioritise the design of homes that can promote
entrepreneurship, address should be given to the management of mobility and the implication of
parking, noise and other environmental impacts as parameters to be meet through design. These
include, but are not limited to, couriers pick up, car parking and customer accessibility, pollution
barriers (against dust, vibrations, waste waters or products and lighting), signage and business
visibility, safety measures, separation and closure elements, availability of storage and workshop
spaces. In terms of financial issues related to the integration of production in residential properties,
insurance plays an important part, as running a business from home can carry risks often not covered
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by traditional home insurance. Public liability and a property’s ‘change of use’ are key factors that
constitute the new dimensions of the productive house. While a conventional home office taking no
more than 20% of the floor space of the house, with no clients visiting the premises, is usually covered
by most insurance policies, other productive activities on the residential property may need separate
legal cover, seeding issues for how residential zones are classified, regulated and governed.
Creating opportunities for people in Brisbane to manage their houses flexibly and efficiently as homes
for living, and also for the productive activities they undertake, allows people to experiment and
develop their own agency based on bottom-up economic initiatives. The house as productive space
thus looks toward a new social and political landscape, in which individuals become drivers in creating
new economic relationships at a local level. Manuel Castells observes that ‘we are currently
contemplating the emergence of new social landscapes, in which individualised persons strive to cope
with the responsibility of constructing their built environment and networks of communication on the
basis of who they are and what they want.’ (Hass, 2008, p.10). The research adopts the view that the
city, beyond its built forms, is also ‘a social product, created out of the demands of everyday use and
the social struggles of urban inhabitants’ (Hass, 2008, p.10).
We see the productive house as the future of work in suburban residential areas in cities such as
Brisbane and look to the capacity of the regulatory environment to acknowledge and support a
growing tendency for the creation of grassroots business activities. We propose that design can
contribute to absorb these new needs, leading to a rethink of the typology of home. We finally
question the role of zoning in contemporary urban planning when related to the future of work in
Australia, and develop design strategies for new working patterns, mixité and mobility. The benefits
of rethinking the house as productive space are around increasing community resilience by supporting
economic practices where goods and services are made, consumed and sourced locally, reducing the
need for commuting and facilitating social interaction and cohesion in the community.
References
“Business Queensland: Starting a home business”. (2022). online resource.
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/starting-business/starting-buying/setting-up/home-business
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Chase, J. Kaliski, J. and Crawford, M. (1999). Everyday Urbanism. Monticelli Press.
Haas, T. (2008). New Urbanism and Beyond: Contemporary and Future Trends in Urban Design. Rizzoli
International Publications.
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Dialogue with Light: Social Impact of Inclusive Lighting Planning
Sebnem Gemalmaz
Arup, Istanbul, Turkey
Introduction
Dialogue with light is a purposefully chosen title to cover two phases: lighting planning and social
impact assessment methodology development process. The roots of the word dialogue, As David
Bohm explains, come from the Greek words dia and logos. Dia means 'through'; logos translates to
'word' or 'meaning'. In essence, a dialogue is a flow of meaning, communication. “Dialogue with Light”
positions light as a medium to allow communication among children and the caregivers, the
municipality and the designers to open a new way of thinking and planning in the field of night-time
design.
Starting with a lighting masterplan, the “