Today I want to share an article that was previously published in Studio Magazine. On this occasion, I would like to thank their coordination team for inviting me to join their first release.

Summary /Overview

 
Traditional media don’t broadcast what the citizens are debating or organizing on a daily basis. Nevertheless, thanks to Social Networks, people can receive information and interact in real time with others, taking part in debates and social movements; and the 15th of May in Spain is an example of this.

This new information ecosystem reduces the influence of the mass media and slowly forces local authorities to relate to citizens in a more direct and horizontal way.

This is a great opportunity to generate a new “social control” model, pushing local authorities to take public opinion into account.

The digital media offers a broad environment for communication so that the organisation of any given action is greatly improved; everything becomes decentralized while simultaneously connected and synchronized.

On the urban scale, we speak of the “Sentient City”, a model based on a technological/social ecosystem, where knowledge, collective actions, and interactions between individuals and groups are encouraged, taking advantage of the new possibilities offered by hybridizing physical and digital layers.

In reversing the supremacy of centralisation over individual actions, citizens can become aware of their power and organize themselves on the web.
We have the necessary technology, knowledge and dynamics to put in place more open processes of urban administration and management. Citizens have already started to move; and although public administration could take advantage of such independent and autonomous processes to deal with complex situations, it appears that a clear political will is still lacking.

The fragmented city

 
Today, the dimensions of time and space, which were historically strongly linked in a space-time continuum, are increasingly growing apart and becoming independent, in a fragmented spatial perception. Nowadays a large number of people are moving from one point to another of the city to reach their workplace, and go back home. The distance between these two points (spatial dimension) and what happens between them does not affect or interest these people in any way. Indeed, the only thing people are concerned with is the duration of the trip (time dimension).
The city is no longer a continuous place, but a structure of nodes connected in a network (network city). These nodes become increasingly more defined, organised and efficient and, the journeys between them shorter and faster thanks to technical progress. The spaces of a city that have no particular characteristics and a unique function, that is to say everything that is not a node, loose significance, including public spaces.

In such city – the “fragmented city” – we use low cost technologies (internet, telephone and transport) to move, to manage our social relationships, and to communicate with people with whom we don’t necesarilly share a common physical space like a neighbourhood.

Very often the complexity of one point exclusively consists in giving access to other points, hence the importance that movement has acquired today. Instead of living in a continuous space, we continuously move between discontinuous spaces (points or nodes).

This networked structure, unlike a continuous structure, reduces diversity and complexity. The less diversity and complexity, the greater the need to move. Every point has its function and identity. Everything seems more organised and easier to find. However, to find what we are looking for, we are compelled to move constantly to other nodes.

The majority of these journeys are done by means of transport, at a speed that does not allow any relationship with the surroundings. There is a starting point and a finishing point, with little opportunity for a surprise or a change. All this implies an impoverishment of the intermediate spaces, spaces that link different points: places are consequently public spaces.

In order to transform these kinds of cities, it is essential to intervene in everyday aspects of life which might appear to have no relationship with the design of public spaces in urban areas.

Our lifestyles are two dimensional: in situ and virtual. Now we are able to intervene in the new dimension, what we commonly call “virtual” or “digital”, . As the sociologist Manuel Castells says “Everything we do, from when the day begins until it is over, we do it with internet […] the connexion between in-situ (not real because reality is virtual and in situ at the same time) and virtual is established by us. There are not two different societies, there are two kinds of social activities and relations within ourselves. We are the ones that have to search the best way to arrange and adapt them.

Image by Francesco Cingolani | francescocingolani.info

Public Space, Sentient Space

 
According to Daniel Innerarty, in the city the homogeneous and non changing area is nothing more than an extreme case within a global area of connected local multiplicities. Instead of neighbourhoods, local networks are developed, and public debate takes place in a virtual area. In this scenario, streets and squares have ceased to be the main meeting areas.

Internet seems to offer an alternative “space” for social relationships as compared to “traditional” spaces. This can be seen as a problem leading to empty public spaces; or on the contrary, it can be considered an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen social relationships by creating the necessary budgets to improve the vitality of public spaces. Today the Internet is the “place” where community models of management are being experimented.

I believe it is important to reconsider the city as something built by everyone, and to see public areas as the ground where this process can take place. Today we have tools available that are able to act as a catalyst for participatory dynamics that were previously impossible to coordinate. There are increasing examples of processes of creation by citizens, linked to the use of new technologies. It is undeniable that Internet is a key factor contributing to changing the society. That being said I believe it is obvious that we cannot think of public space without taking into consideration the potentialities of these technologies, how they are used and how they can be an added value.

We should begin to talk about a new type of public space, a hybrid space, where technology could become a catalyst for hybridising dynamics between activities that are not traditionally connected or that are located in other (private) spaces.

Juan Freire explains this clearly: “The differentiation between spaces and physical and virtual communities is outdated. We are witnessing a hybridising process which modifies our individual identities, communitarian and territorial. Internet has contributed to the development of global networks, but paradoxically it has had a less noticeable influence in local spheres. However, digital technologies modify radically the way in which we are organised and we relate to our environment so we are already living in territories where the digital realm is as important as the physical. The hyper-local networks and hybrid public spaces are the new realities which we confront with the advent of Internet and digital culture in our local environment”.

According to Juan Freire the crisis of public (physical) spaces in urban areas is also due to the lack of (open) design, giving the citizens, once more, the opportunity to take a real interest in its use. It has also brought into debate concepts such as “hybrid spaces”, to refer to the opportunities that the hybridising of the physical with the digital sphere offers in public spaces.
We can grant the assumption of the existence of a digital skin that characterizes public spaces and devote ourselves to defining its qualities and characteristics. Instead of “hybrid” I like to use the concept of “sensitive”. “Sensitive space” refers to the “living” character of these spaces; to their capacity to promote a two-way relationship with its users, to catalyse hyper-local social networks and to visualise information related to the environment in a transparent manner.

Image by Francesco Cingolani | francescocingolani.info

Social networks and Self-organization

 
If we analyze the increase in the use of social networks on the Internet we realize that we are witnessing a process of change that will lead to the disappearance of the current dissociation between digital and in-situ identity.
Most people can continue living in complete normality without having to take care of their digital (identity) presence in social networks. Nevertheless, it is highly probable that in a few years time the concept of identity will inevitably integrate both the digital and the physical dimension. Consequently, each person will be forced to take as much care of their digital identity as of their physical identity, something that many people have been doing for some time already.

We must take several specific factors of this new kind of identity into consideration such as its peculiar time dimension. The building process of the digital identity over time leaves a footprint on the web, a visible footprint that is accessible to any user. The end result is an identity that is perceived as a sum of the past (footprint) and present identity.

Generally we control our public image by showing at each time only what we wish. However, when our identity leaves a footprint on the internet, we no longer have exclusive control over it but it is shared amongst friends and acquaintances (namely the peer group).

Each person that knows me can publish information (photographs, texts, etc…) that are directly or indirectly related to my identity without the need of my approval. This is what happens in most of the social networks.

Certainly, my digital identity will be entirely integrated in the learning process and will be increasingly associated to a physical space; that is, the idea we had about a parallel digital identity that is detached from reality does not, I think, interest anyone: in fact we do not even have time to create parallel identities.

Our identity is not only formed by way of the information that my friends and I have published, but also through the information that my devices publish. An example could be the use of services like Foursquare that allows me to upload posts in my social networks about my location at any time, taking advantage of the internet connection of our mobile phones.

To explain this phenomenon Tim Berners-Lee mentions Giant Global Graph, this means, the future Semantic Web with which we shall go from gathering the relationship between people to focus on the relationship between people and their interests (documents). Thus, if the “Internet” has allowed us to connect computers and the “Web” has allowed us to connect documents, then the “Graph” will allow us to link the documents (places, objects, etc.) and the people. So we could define the Graph as the third level of abstraction, taking into account that in each layer (Internet, Web, or Graph) we have handed over some control only in order to reach bigger benefits. A direct consequence of these dynamics is the definite statement of a (unique) identity on the web that can be recognized by any agent, person or application.

This unmistakable digital identity facilitates the development of innovative social hardware projects based on participation of a non-collective nature, where the dynamics of collaboration are the result of individual action and interaction. We are progressively discovering the self-organisation of informed societies that are capable of revolutionizing their own structures taking advantage of the virtual mirror phenomenon that enables the association of information on a given situation with individual decisions.

Image by Francesco Cingolani | francescocingolani.info based on flickr images by garpa.net & See-ming Lee

Control and decentralization

 
Social networks reinforce a new type of control: a decentralized control operated by a diversity of independent individuals that collaborate, using shared and mobile capacities of calculation and communication. Information and Communication Technologies do not present a solution, but an opportunity to improve our ability to manage territories. ICT’s can be used for many different purposes. On the one hand their enormous capacity for processing data can be used to centralize all the information and try to “solve” urban complexity; but they can also be used to open and decentralize decision-making.

The aim is to research on how ICT’s allow us to define an urban administration structure where discontinued points of control exist in an environment of self-determination (appropriation) and liberty. This is an idea that is close to the definition of tensegrity that Buckminster Fuller mentions: “islands in compression inside a tense ocean“.

The introduction of digital technologies within the physical space enables the development of new communication dynamics and relations between neighbours that improves the cohesion of local communities and their quality of life, offering a feeling of greater security.

Thanks to new technologies and to some cultural “mutations”, systems and worlds that were previously closed and not very transparent, are now open to the participation of agents (and people) who are external to their organisational structures. Citizens become more available to participate and collaborate because they are better informed and they are finally considered as useful partners for the urban administration. Architects and urban planners can reasonably begin to work keeping in touch constantly with citizens, “sharing” their decision-making “powers”.

To explain this phenomenon we can refer to the concept of “long tail” coined by Cris Anderson. The Internet and the digital environment have changed the (power) distribution laws and the market rules. The present political and economic system is based on a pyramid structure where the power (or the economic or creative potential) of many is considered inferior to the power of those that stand on the highest part of the pyramid. There is a new system based on the addition or accumulation of all the small potentials (or powers) of the mass of citizens that, thanks to the systems of communication on the internet, can equal or exceed the power (or potential) of those who are in a privileged position today. These are the old markets of masses and the new niche of markets that are pictured at the top and the bottom of the well known graph of statistical distribution.

The presence of a centralized identity is not needed when the control and feedback devices allow the actors to visualize or to become aware of the consequence of their actions. The unconscious self-organisation phenomenon becomes conscious and intended control when the individuals are allowed to understand the effects of their actions. The concept of tensegrity comes in here when it refers to an administration model where decentralized and centralized decisions are joined, avoiding the appearance of any closed and omnipresent control dynamics.

Reversing the supremacy of centralization over individual decisions, citizens can become aware of their actions and intentionally coordinate them. This process may help to restore the necessary legitimacy and credibility to the interventions that take place in degraded urban areas.

Image by Francesco Cingolani | francescocingolani.info

Towards participation: Accountability and open data

 
“Participation demands an information system, an observatory and indicators that will regularly reflect the situation of what we consider as key variables to establish our evolution, that should be accessible and comprehensible for citizens” (Agustín Hernández Aja, 2002)

In 2002, Hernández Aja, Urban planning professor at the Universidad Politécnica in Madrid, describes the essential assumptions for citizen participation. A decade later, communication models and administration dynamics that bring us close to these assumptions start to become popular.

I would like to highlight (point out) accountability and the Open Data movement.

Approaching the term accountability we can create an ecosystem of communication and transparency that can enable citizens to demand responsibilities from governing bodies. This would help us to reach the objective of decentralizing control, which is necessary for a true democracy.

Open Parlamento (openparlamento.it) is a great example of how to work to achieve accountability. It is a web-based tool that enables distributed monitoring of the work of the members of parliament in the Italian parliament.

The web page offers lots of information on draft legislation, and in general, about all the activities in the Parliament. Most interesting of all is the distributed monitoring system that allows for control of every Member of Parliament’s political activities. Every citizen can “adopt” a member and publish all their declarations and confront them with their parliamentary activity.

We can imagine this same system applied on a local scale, where citizens have greater organization capacities and power to exert pressure. The control to which all the local administrators would be subject to, would be so intense that they would nearly be obliged to start up a transformation of the administrative structures towards a more open and participatory model.

The Open Data movement is an important drive towards achieving transparency over public administration. Open Data consists of making Public Administration data available for the public, such as data related to projects that are financed with public money or managed by public institutions.

The aim is to take advantage of the data that the public administrations do not want or do not have the capacity to analyze. Releasing this data enables any person or organization to build new consultation and visualization formulas, to simplify, diversify and even to enrich the initial information.

In Spain, within this new tendency, the Open Data Euskadi project should be highlighted. It is part of the Open Government initiative of the Bask Government: a website dedicated to the exhibition of public data in a re-usable format, under open licenses. On an urban scale, two projects stand out that have been activated by two Spanish cities; Zaragoza and Córdoba. They are beginning to take their first steps in the world of Open Data.

I am convinced that citizen pressure will force all the big cities to join this process of openness and transparency.

Image by Francesco Cingolani | francescocingolani.info REAL-TIME CITY | a proposal for Smart Turin by HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés.

Open source and Network Awareness

 
As we mentioned previously, reversing the supremacy of centralization over individual actions, citizens can become aware of their “power” and begin to organize in networks.
We have the technology the knowledge and the dynamics available to introduce more open urban administration processes. Citizens have begun to move; the administrations could take advantage of these autonomous and independent processes, to manage very complex situations. However, a clear political will is still lacking.

Probably the administrators have managed to delay the transition towards a new participatory administration model, thanks to the indirect or even direct support of what is known as the “fourth power”: the media. The current information system still offers the administrators and the “powerful” a wide opportunity to manipulate and control certain processes.
The emergence of a more distributed information model is beginning to offer to any citizen the possibility to produce relevant local information. A communication ecosystem based on social media is born.
This new information ecosystem can reduce the influence of the mass media and therefore force the local administrators to enforce accountability regarding the decisions that are taken. The administrators will be compelled to relate to this new, more horizontal and distributed form of communication: an opportunity to generate “social control” that can improve transparency and force the local administrators to take the public opinion into account.

A clear example of what is being presented here, are the latest citizen mobilizations that are happening in Spain. After the 15M demonstration, an organized and authorized event, many occupations took place in numerous squares in the whole of Spain. These camps were organized in a matter of hours using Twitter and Facebook. It is impossible to exert control over these information flows and action catalysts like the occupations. Steps have been taken towards a model in which governors and administrators are going to have to understand that they cannot continue to ignore the citizens while they defend the interests of others.

We are witnessing an innovative construction process of a new communal and public sphere; the development of a new model of public space that we have called “sensitive space”. Traditional media don’t communicate what we the people are debating on a daily basis, nonetheless, thanks to Social Networks, people can receive information and interact in real time with others taking part in debates and social movements, the example of the occupation of public squares is an example of this.

It is interesting to note that the in-situ (on-site) realm is absolutely essential and how the digital media is simply offering a wider environment for communication so that the organisation of any given action is greatly improved; everything becomes decentralized while at the same time connected and synchronized.

These processes seem to be nearly inevitable. Once they are established as natural local administration processes then we will be speaking about a more favorable environment, for an Open Source City, that is, a city open to everyone’s participation.

Flickr image by Julio Albarrán

This article was originally published in urbanohumano.org and Studio Magazine.

This competition is a collaboration between Realdania Fredensborg Municipality, Realdania, Local and Construction Fund and the public housing companies in Kokkedal.  The challenge is to explore new possibilities for local management of stormwater and flooding and how to combine it with recreational areas ​​and new active sites, new places for citizens to meet.

Image credits: Spectrum Arkitekter

URBACT publicó el artículo tras la inclusión por parte de la Comisión Europea de un nuevo artículo en sus propuestas de políticas de cohesión para el período 2014-2020, en el que incitaba a cuatro importantes fondos a trabajar juntos para dar soporte al DLLC. La intención tras esta iniciativa es “facilitar la implementación de estrategias integradas de desarrollo local y la formación de grupos de acción local basados en la experiencia del enfoque LEADER”.

Los autores del artículo (Paul Soto, Melody Houk y Peter Ramsden) apuntan que, aunque se trata de una propuesta prometedora, es importante cuestionarse cómo un método o modelo como éste, basado principalmente en la experiencia rural, puede ser aplicado al contexto urbano. A partir de la experiencia de URBACT, el artículo argumenta que aunque la mayoría de los principios fundamentales del enfoque LEADER (basado en áreas, integrado, asociado e innovador) son transferibles, es necesario adaptar el modelo a las complejas y específicas características de las áreas urbanas.

“Esperamos que esto sirva de comienzo para un debate”, dicen los autores. “Muchas propuestas de futuro están siendo desarrolladas mientras escribimos. Es esencial incluir la experiencia de diferentes ciudades de distintas partes de Europa para asegurar que las propuestas son trasladadas de una forma operativa que pueda estar a la altura de los desafíos que enfrentan las ciudades”.

A continuación os dejamos un pequeño sumario y el artículo original, en inglés:

1. En el comienzo… estaba LEADER
2. ¿Qué áreas locales?
3. Definiendo áreas “coherentes”
4. De la integración horizontal a la multidimensional
5. ¿Liderado por qué comunidad?
6. La innovación requiere más que compartir buenas ideas

Sigue leyendo:

Noticia original y artículos citados, en inglés:
Implementing “community-led” local development in cities. Lessons from URBACT – PDF
Community-Led Local Development – hoja informativa de la Comisión Europea – PDF
Este artículo forma parte de un acuerdo de publicación con URBACT

We are very glad to be there among such a great selection of agencies and collectives (some of them featured in our recent series about placemaking) that share the same interests and explore similar approaches while working in quite different contexts.

Our contribution to the exhibition will be focused on dreamhamar, our most recent participatory project in Hamar (Norway), in which we have applied our ideas about network design.

A quote from the exhibition follows:

In Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris or Rotterdam,… these extraordinary teams have taken up a critical stance. They admit to exploring the role of architecture in societal changes. They are pro-action and produce and often even build their projects themselves. The practices are promises which revive long-forgotten utopian ideals.
They all invent wonderful standards and approach the complexities of modern life with the ability to transform into reality the potential that lies at the crossroads between experience and the built-up world. They are pragmatic, good at conveying their message and tend to work with the existing residents and for the inhabitants of the future.
The thirty exhibited proposals, shown at the various stages of development, describe the conditions in which the orders were placed, the study behind the projects, participative action as well as the conditions in which studies were carried out and the projects completed. Each proposal is thus presented through videos, drawings, interviews, plans and photographs to provide the public with an idea of the innovative and experimental nature of their research. Whether temporary or permanent, these projects are perfectly in line with the times and do not create extra constraints which could limit future choices.

We highly recommend you to visit the exhibition if you can, and to have a closer look at the work of the rest of the participants:

AAA – Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (Paris), Andrés Jaque Architects (Madrid), Assemble (London), Bruit du frigo (Bordeaux), Collectif Etc (France), Coloco (Paris), DUS Architects (Amsterdam), Exyzt (Paris), MUF architecture/art (London), Practice Architecture (London), Raumlabor (Berlin), Rotor (Brussels), ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] (Rotterdam), 1024 architecture (Paris)

More info: official website
Place: Pavillon de l’Arsenal
Open: Tue-Sat 10.30 a.m. – 6.30 p.m | Sun 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Entrance: Free, 12th april – 2th september 2012

El objetivo de estas reuniones fue extraer lecciones de la implementación del programa URBACT hasta la actualidad, desde la participación nacional, y presentar los términos de referencia de la tercera convocatoria de propuestas URBACT.

También se presentó en INFODAYS un vídeo sobre el método URBACT que se puede ver en el canal de URBACT, traducido a 17 idiomas, y que insertamos más abajo.

A continuación adjuntamos las principales presentaciones mostradas durante los eventos:

Introducción al Programa URBACT II – PDF ⚐EN
Tercera Convocatoria de Propuestas URBACT II – PDF ⚐EN

Así como las presentaciones del URBACT INFODAY que tuvo lugar en la sede de la Comisión Europea en Bruselas el pasado 18 de enero:

La dimensión urbana de las políticas de cohesión 2014 – 2020 Presentación por la Comisión Europea ⚐EN
El caso de Sabadell – Proyecto ESIMEC Mesa redonda – Ciudades miembro de URBACT compartiendo su experiencia ⚐EN
El caso de Nyíregyháza – Proyecto RegGov Mesa redonda – Ciudades miembro de URBACT compartiendo su experiencia ⚐EN
El caso de Aarhus – Proyecto REDIS Mesa redonda – Ciudades miembro de URBACT compartiendo su experiencia ⚐EN

El vídeo acerca del método URBACT:

Más información:

URBACT Call for proposals – web de URBACT
URBACT INFODAYS in your country! – web de URBACT
URBACT videochannel – canal de vídeo URBACT en Dailymotion
Artículo original en inglés.
Este artículo forma parte de un acuerdo de publicación con URBACT

It covers how open data creates value and can have a positive impact in many different areas. In addition to exploring the background, the handbook also provides concrete information on how to produce open data.

As the introduction explains:

Do you know exactly how much of your tax money is spent on street lights or on cancer research? What is the shortest, safest and most scenic bicycle route from your home to your work? And what is in the air that you breathe along the way? Where in your region will you find the best job opportunities and the highest number of fruit trees per capita? When can you influence decisions about topics you deeply care about, and whom should you talk to?

New technologies now make it possible to build the services to answer these questions automatically. Much of the data you would need to answer these questions is generated by public bodies. However, often the data required is not yet available in a form which is easy to use. This book is about how to unlock the potential of official and other information to enable new services, to improve the lives of citizens and to make government and society work better.

The original version of the book, called “Open Data Manual”, was written during a book sprint in Berlin in October 2010. Since then, a wide group of editors and contributors have added to and refined the original material, to create the Handbook you see today. Just click the image below and read it online:

The vision is to create a growing series of open-source Handbooks and Guides that would offer advice on different aspects of open data. This project has already been started, being available so far:

• The Data Journalism Handbook,
• DataPatterns, which focuses on the technical aspects of data wrangling
• The shorter Guide to Finding Public Domain Works Online.

Do you find it useful and want to see it further improved? Then you could consider becoming a part of the project and contributing to its development. The project now lives as a self-contained project within the foundation, its community being mainly centred around the open-data-handbook mailing list. It is primarily supported by the open government data and the EU open data working groups, and of course you can join in and add your bit.

There are many ways you can contribute:

• Would you like to have it in your language? Help translating it! They are using Transifex to manage translations; see the instructions on their wiki for information about how to get started.
• You can point out corrections and suggestions for improvement on the issue tracker or by emailing opendatahandbook[@]ofkn.org.
• You can contribute to the next version of the Open Data Handbook:  join the mailing list and share your ideas!
• A country specific adaptation could be also a great addition you could work on.
• Donate! The OKF is committed to keeping the Open Data Handbook entirely free, and all contributions to make this possible are gratefully received.

Source: OpenSource.com
Front page image: digiphile + cactusbeetroot

There will be two lectures on Friday 23 about dreamhamar:

11:50 – DreamHamar!
By city manager Kari Nilssen and city architect Geir Cock, from the Municipality of Hamar
Main square in Hamar: What happens when a foreign group works with ideas of local citizens? Why is everyone inside the process positive and those who are outside of it, critical?

12:20 – DreamHamar and Ecosistema Urbano
By architect Belinda Tato
How does the bold Spanish company Ecosistema Urbano work?

NLA fagdag 2012 – Program

We hope to meet you there!

As there isn’t much information about this building around the net (in fact I just realized it isn’t even published here), they asked us to send them the plans. The surprise came when, some weeks later, Bernabe contacted us back and sent us some photos of a nice scale model he had made using that technical information. Here you can see them:

Nice, isn’t it? It’s even more detailed than Ecosistema’s own models! And Bernabe also wrote us some words:

Dear Ecosistema Urbano,
My name is Bernabe Josue Longoria and I am a student at the University of Texas at Arlington [also, he tells us he was born February 8, 1990, raised in the small town of Cleburne, Texas]. This is currently the beginning of my junior year in the architecture program and the first assignment given to us was to study a small, residential, prefabricated house of our choosing. After spending a few days going through books in our library and houses online, I finally stumbled upon the House of Steel and Wood.
The organic simplicity of this design was what impacted me most, along with the spaces themselves. Nothing interrupts them, which allows anyone to not only enjoy the company of their own family and friends, but the beautiful surroundings in the area.
Being from Texas, everything must be expensive, everything must be better than “that design”, above all, everything must be bigger. As a student the fame, fortune, and idea of my name becoming a generic stamp on a building has never been something important to me. What I aim for in this career is clearly what this house displayed; to impact the world itself without leaving a mark. I find it very interesting that you are able to design with not only a limited amount of space but materials as well. I have never been taught to design at this scale or style, so this was a whole new experience for me seeing as how The House of Steel and Wood was my first precedence of this type of architecture. I hope to pull from this experience the concept of making a feasible, discrete, and sustainable designs for the earth and by the earth; therefore offering a design to the world without taking away from its natural beauty.

Many thanks to Bernabe for sharing his work with us! And there’s even more: Fabiola, Brigid and Shih-hsun are right now working on a BIM model of the same house; here at the office we are all eager to see the result.

This kind of interactions make us even more aware of the importance of sharing information about each one’s projects and creations. Right now, everyone can already download the Air Tree project or, just for fun, get the CAD files for EU Comics, but there is still a long long way to go: could we publish every project the same way?

In her own words:

I am currently a master student of architecture at the Aarhus School of Architecture, from where I also completed my BA of Arts in Architecture. During the past years I have found a lot of inspiration from travelling and through my camera I try to take notion of every-thing that wonders my Nordic eye.

One late evening at the Aarhus School of Architecture I found myself caught in a post about the parallelism between pizzamaking and a concept called network design. When I was to discover that the Madrid based studio Ecosistema Urbano was the pizzachef, I realized that to learn more about this intriguing idea of network design and how to profoundly activate the citizen as a integrated ingredient in architecture, I had to head south. I had for a while been interested in the relation between citizens and architecture and I found Ecosistema Urbano’s mindset very inspiring.

With strong predilection for a sensible architecture I usually try to work with the mechanisms of the urban landscape to create durable concepts that can make us even more aware of the beauty of our constantly evolving environment. During my studies I developed a strong interest for an architecture of process –and I encountered the idea that the process is in fact the project. By working with Ecosistema Urbano I am hoping to explore another layer in the field of architecture in process, that I have not yet been able to fully explore during my studies.

So here I am. Lets bake!

And here is Julie’s short profile and related links:

Occupation: master student, Aarhus School of Architecture
Interests: People/city/landscape, travel, photography, food, friends, family, hygge
City, country: Aarhus, Denmark
Web: juliekaalbybjerre.dk
Social profiles: facebook.com/julie.bjerre

The workshop, which is open to both architecture students and general public, will take place around Bab al Bahrain (Gateway of Bahrain) on Friday 24 and Saturday 25. During these two days we will try to approach and visualize the identity of the city from the point of view of the citizens, with the aid of the whatif web and mobile application. We are looking forward to meet you there!