UdN goes Seattle

Die Urban Designer und Stadtplaner Deborah Zervas, Martin Kring und Giacomo Losio berichten auf der Homepage der American Society of Landscape Architects von ihrer Teilnahme an der UdN Summer School 2009:

“In the summer of 2009, I attended a two-week-long urban design workshop in Wilhelmsburg, Germany, a river island neighborhood of Hamburg. Sponsored by Hafencity University, the goal of the workshop was to design a plan for Wilhelmsburg that would improve livability and develop the public realm. Students of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and planning from Russia, Italy, Germany, and the U.S. worked and stayed in Wilhemsburg during the workshop.

The specific aims of the workshop were to work with/engage the community, try promising findings on site, assess contemporary practices in the fields of planning and urban design, and examine planning and urban design curricula in this light. To achieve these objectives and the larger community design goals, it was essential to realize a high level of international and intercultural cooperation. (…)

To address the diversity conundrum, we devised many small hypothetical actions that could add function to one-use spaces in the community. Our goal with these actions was to increase the mix of users and promote interaction and dialogue that would spark further, larger actions and interactions within and beyond Wilhelmsburg. We called our proposed actions “funken” (sparks), and named the consequent transformational chains of actions and interactions “funkenflut” (flood of sparks). From this hypothetical action master plan, we designated several small “funken” for the initial experiment in Wilhelmsburg that were appropriate in scale, time, and means for the workshop. (…)

With one important distinction, our method was akin to art intervention—the use of art outside the art world to change an existing condition. Initially, we kept our purpose hidden, but quickly realized that sharing the purpose with the community was itself an important (planning) interaction that better created capacity for change. So, our final, and most successful, experiment at the laundry was open and transparent.

To create a new public space at the laundry, we brought with us everything necessary for a sidewalk cafe, and set the items up inside the facility and then outside its entrance on Georg-Wilhelm-Strasse. The research team sat at a table, drank coffee, and was available to interact with employees, patrons, and passers-by. At the café, many people spoke with us and expressed their interest and support for street-side casual gathering places, including individuals walking by, the barber next door, and the formerly hostile laundry manager who changed his tune when he saw the positive community response. This indicated to us that informal public gathering spaces were in short supply and welcome, and that adding function to existing places was an effective, appropriate design response. (…)

While the results of experimentally activating these specific spaces and sparking dialogue may have been few and small scale, they are not inconsequential. Importantly, they point to the efficacy of real time interventions as a legitimate on-site data gathering instrument for planning decisions. The questions that should be answered with this technique are: What does the community want and need?  How will the community members respond?  Is there community consensus?  Can it be developed?  Can spaces be transformed?”

Der gesamte Artikel ist hier abrufbar!