Last week, January 12-16, our President Luisa Bravo co-directed an intensive workshop at Escola Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain. Working with sixty students from University of Parma (Italy), from the International Master Program in Architecture, Architectural Design Studio course, taught by Prof. Marco Maretto and Prof. Luisa Bravo, and ten students from ETSAB, we were investigating the city centre of Barcelona and the suburban area of the Eixample, along the waterfront to the Forum of Cultures till the river Besos in Sant Adria.

After a guided city tour on foot, a meeting with city managers from the Municipality of Barcelona and a fun long-distance urban experience by bicycle, students were organized in five groups of about fifteen poeple and they had to propose an urban design project for five different locations: a redesign of Placa Catalunya, on two different levels in order to accomodate all flows and connections related to pedestrian use on the ground floor and on the underground metro line level; a redesign of two blocks from the Eixample adjacent to Sagrada Familia in order to create a new pedestrian path as a public space from the Diagonal; a new entrance for the Poblenou Central Park designed by Jean Nouvel at 22@ neighborhood; the creation of new public spaces in a superblock on the Eixample, close to the Gran Via; a new residential mixed-use block in Sant Adria, as a replacement of a large shopping mall and a parking lot.

[To download the program of the workshop, click on the image on top left]

City Space Architecture is proud to announce "MaPS. Mastering Public Space" a new, three-years term, international research project intended to investigate relevant cities and geographical contexts, all around the world. 

Maps are what everyone uses to find a place, to understand or to explain the morphology and geography of the urban experience. Maps are a tool and a resource. They are made of cities and people, buildings and public spaces. The aim of the MaPS project is to deliver open-minded maps, filling the voids with intangible meanings and unpredictable urban experiences, telling the story of the contemporary public life in cities, all around the world. 

MaPS is made of a large network of scholars, devoted to urban and architectural studies, and also architects, professionals, artists, private and public institutions, non-profit organizations and citizens. Those scholars will investigate a specific city, developing research activities, involving students, professionals and public/private institutions, thus establishing a small Lab able to promote a local debate on specific issues, to be reported to the network.

All affiliated members of the MaPS project will meet in person at least once every year, in the occasion of public conferences or events, in Italy and abroad.

City Space Architecture will serve as the leading coordinating Lab in the city of Bologna and will developed several research projects related to contemporary architecture and public space. Click on the image on top left to discover the cities that already are part of the MaPS project.

A CALL FOR INTEREST IS NOW OPEN!

Deadline December 31, 2014.

Pop-up City @ Tin Shui Wai

8-15 Nov 2014

Tin Sau Bazaar, Hong Kong

Opening Reception: 18:00-21:00, 8 Nov 2014, Saturday

Exhibition: 8:00-20:00, 9-15 Nov 2014

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Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (TWGHs) Tin Sau Bazaar will be turned into a Pop-up City – an open gallery of public space – for a week in November, where local residents and the general public can gather, interact and envision public life in an existing place in the new town.

Pop-up City is an ongoing photographic research project investigating public space.  It is initiated by Luisa Bravo, our President, together with Italian photographer Fabio Mantovani. Pop-up City documents suburban places in Bologna, usually with no identity and continuity with the historic environment.  The photos intend to highlight existing places with a potential for public life, searching for an “ordinary magic” along everyday street spaces.

The Magic Carpet project team at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Tin Sau Bazaar see that Pop-up City resonates the situation of Tin Shui Wai: It locates at the margin of Hong Kong; its space has no identity; it lacks street spaces for communal encounters and micro-economic activities.  All these result in the stigmatisation of Tin Shui Wai with problems such as social isolation and a high unemployment rate.

This Friday, 31 October, is the very first World Cities Day promoted by UN-Habitat! This years theme is "Leading Urban Transformations".
Leading urban transformation is about redefining the urban paradigm for future generations. It is about empowering people to contribute to creative solutions that can improve our shared urban future. It is about innovation and new ideas to bring about the city we need and the future we want. 
City Space Architecture will be part of the event with the seminar "Life in Cities | Conversazioni sullo spazio pubblico", on urban transformation, urbanity and public space. The seminar is organized in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Region and will be held in Bologna at the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, Fiera District. It will bring together public administrators, academic professors, professionals, artists and citizens, exchanging ideas and reflecting upon projects, experiences, research and practices, comparing different points of view and multidisciplinary approaches.
The seminar will be also dedicated to the presentation of the international research project "MaPS. Mastering Public Space". MaPS is a three-years term project intended to investigate relevant cities and geographical contexts, all around the world, through a large network of scholars devoted to urban and architectural studies. In addition, the seminar will include the presentation and exhibition of the photographic research "Pop-up City" developed by Fabio Mantovani and curated by Luisa Bravo, that was exhibited for the first time at the Museum of the History of Bologna, June 27-July 20, 2014. "Pop-up City" was presented on September 1-3, 2014, at the "Future of Places" conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, promoted by UN-Habitat, Project for Public Spaces and Ax:son Johnson Foundation.

The seminar "Life in Cities" is officially registered on the UN-Habitat World Cities Day website.
Follow the hashtag #citiesday #urbanoctober 
Follow the event on Facebook.

To read the program of the event, click on the image on top left.

For any info about the seminar in Bologna, please write to: info@cityspacearchitecture.org

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At the beginning of the new Millennium global transformations of urban territories have opened the way, quite inevitably, to more and more complex and profound considerations about the places that surround us, the places that we have built, the opportunities we have missed, and those ones we must, instead, learn to grasp. Common ground, common places, common people, common sense, common tradition were the declarations of the 13.International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2012.

It is by now a widely shared fact that cities are a common good, so actions devoted to its transformation, requalification and valorisation should involve everyone. Ideas coming from citizens, associations, residents and ordinary people are easily available and shareable through the virtual world, thus causing drastic changes in the way of thinking and acting in the urban realm. We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment in planning. Although signs of hardship are all around, we see the emergence of a powerful, networked, creative movement of people who demonstrate that place-based and people-oriented actions are possible, despite economic or political obstacles.