Y tras bucear un poco en el archivo del blog, os dejamos también unas fotos del Ecobulevar nevado que hizo Emilio P. Doiztúa ese mismo año.

Following our last week’s post on Place au Changement, and still in the frame of our placemaking series, we were curious to meet with collectif etc. From the other side of the Pyrenees, we managed to contact them on their Détour de France, so they could share some impressions about their experience in Saint-Etienne, and ideas about placemaking.

placemaking | Collectif etc from ecosistemaurbano on Vimeo.

The Détour de France

Since October 2011, collectif etc has started a Détour de France, a trip around France to meet different makers of the city – inhabitants, associations, professionals, institutions – who seek for alternative ways and models of generating the urban fabric.

“The making of the city formerly follows complex and vertical processes, according to a hierarchy often excluding the population concerned. Public urban projects tend to remain in the professional field of architects, consultants and clients (often local or national administrations) and to generate isolated solutions from the community’s real needs.
In response to this gap, new participatory processes are emerging in various cities in France, aiming to involve the population in building their own living environment. We are off to meet the actors behind these initiatives, and work with them in the social making of the city.”

The itinerary was initially based on the collective’s established contacts, yet it remains flexible to any potential opportunity along the way. Until august 2012, Collectif etc will be pedaling, meeting, sharing, creating, building, tinkering and designing, adding the preferred co- prefix according to the different people they encounter on the way.

Two objectives in mind:
1. make a census and build a network of the different actors involved in a social making of the city
2. collaborate with them along the trip on interventions in public space

For french speaking readers, you can follow their progression on their blog, and we recommend you read the full description of the project here.

Active since September 2009, Collectif etc is a combination of sparking energy, innovative dynamics, social engagement, creative experimentation and human interactions. Their practice materialises in various forms - built structures, ephemeral interventions, urban furniture, workshops and debates –  where the common key is about generating a process, and building a community. Their projects take root in the existing climates of exchange and creation, grow from collective action and intelligence, and catalyse the existing dynamics of the community into the design of their living environment.

In short, a breath of fresh air in the scope of city related professionals. You can be sure to here from them again.

Following our last week post on the Campo de Cebada, and still in the frame of our placemaking series, we decided to interview Zuloark, so they could tell us about their own field experience. In the end, we managed to find two Zulos in El Ranchito, absorbed in the construction of their new Open Offffice, and catch a few minutes of their time among drills, nails and hammers. Ironically, they shared their story on the few remains of City Island, first initiative at the root of the Campo.

placemaking | Zuloark from ecosistemaurbano on Vimeo.

“For us it has always been a kind of test, a laboratory where we would put ideas
that weren’t necessarily very clear. [...] The idea is to generate opportunities.”

What is Zuloark? An office, a collective, a platform, a frame, a kind of commitment?
- “You could be Zuloark.”

Indeed. Zuloark is an open and unstable network, a group of individuals who identify themselves as such, as members of a collective identity. The collective’s organisation is based on a completely liquid hierarchy, a mutable structure changing at all times and for each project, challenging the inherited hierarchical models.

By defining itself equally in each of its members, Zuloark doesn’t focus its professional activity on a specific theme, but constantly aims to multiply and extend its fields of intervention by generating various research lines, often linked to architecture and urbanism. You can tell their story from the actual spaces they worked in, some virtual like Zoohaus and Inteligencias colectivas, others physical, like the Campo de Cebada, all focused on building open networks and generating opportunities of co-working.

In terms of working platform, Zuloark considers itself as a zone of proximal development (ZPD), meaning the difference between what one can do with and without help. In other words it promotes a new knowledge environment based on a peer-to-peer model of horizontal collaboration and learning with more capable peers.

Which is precisely what aroused our interest. Despite its unstable and undefinable nature, Zuloark precisely finds meaning and consistency in the latter: a networked, open and unlimited structure aiming to promote collective intelligence and collaborative creation. Beyond an office or collective, beyond fulfilling projects and involving neighbours, citizens to participate in generating their own public space, Zuloark calls for a step further: a completely open and horizontal structure, a new participatory model where professionals and participants are no longer distinguishable.

placemaking | Ooze from ecosistemaurbano on Vimeo.

“Cities aren’t buildings, they’re people”.
- Luis Fernández Galiano

Ooze define architecture and design as natural organisms, ecosystems of interdependent elements belonging to a greater whole: a city, a neighbourhood, a home; an individual. “Architecture and design are vital forms of expression, capable of provoking a broad range of thoughts, experiences, sensations, emotions and memories.”

As architects, Eva and Sylvain have worked on different scales and projects – from exhibition designs and scenographies, temporary interventions and installations like Théâtre Evolutif in Bordeaux (France), Between the Waters in Essen (Germany) or the community garden and kitchen in Amsterdan (Netherlands), to individual housing, and urban scale planning like the Bottrop city development strategy in the Rhur region – including different fields and actors.

Between the waters – Community Garden, and autonomous water treatment system in Essen

Community garden and kitchen, and urban empowerment strategy in Amsterdan

“The process is not so much about designing as it is about emergence.”

As part of our placemaking series, we were particularly interested in these architects’ social commitment, supplanting common designs for a standard mass, to spontaneous and subjective interactions, and individual stories. Ooze describe their first approach of a place as “an archeological research” : what was here before, who is concerned with this space, and who is likely to become so? “The occupants and users of any given space bring their own stories to bear upon it. They draw upon these narratives – their backgrounds and perspectives – to continually recreate the environment in which they find themselves.” Then, architecture is about joining individual details in a larger entity, about building a collective memory around on-going process.

“The process is not so much about designing as it is about emergence.”

With regard to to such perspectives, Ooze was brought to recently participate in urban art festivals, like the Emscherkunst in 2010, and Evento in 2011. Indeed, working on ephemeral interventions allows a more experimental approach, disconnected from the usual official procedures that come with an architectonical project “With the art project you can allow yourself to advance without knowing the outcome”. It allows to experiment, aiming to understand the local and collective identity of a place and different individuals, by observing immediate and spontaneous reactions; then consequently react to real-time issues of the place. Then, the architects’ role goes beyond a punctual intervention, to settle a flexible process and encourage an “informal evolution”, in which people are involved.

O Campanario na cidade invisible from O Campanario on Vimeo.

Un proyecto desarrollado por Felipe Riola Parada, Jesús Carrazoni Fuertes, José Manuel Sanchez Vizcaíno, Marcario Iglesias Carbonell y Xiao Varela Gómez, para desescribir, estudio de arquitectura y diseño.

Para más información, pulsa aquí.

Leopold también propone una solución a ambas pero yo sólo avanzaré la primera: plantar un huerto -para conocer la segunda os remito al texto original*. Yo creo, al igual que Leopold, que ahí reside el meollo del asunto ya que si todos tuviéramos un huerto, o al menos plantáramos una lechuga en nuestra vida cambiaría completamente nuestra visión del mundo, porque plantando un huerto: 1)uno se da cuenta de lo difícil que resulta conseguir que crezca una lechuga 2)uno se ve obligado a mirar al cielo, saber qué temperatura hará o si va a llover… o sea, se ve obligado a “reconectar” con la naturaleza, simplemente para que no se le muera la lechuga 3)a uno le sube enormemente la autoestima al comerse una lechuga cultivada por él mismo (si tiene éxito, claro!) 4)uno fomenta su independencia energética 5)uno cuida su salud si no usa pesticidas ni fertilizantes industriales, ni productos transgénicos 6)uno ahorra energía (con los transportes, almacenaje, envoltorios…) Para los que tienen un huerto esto parecerá una obviedad pero para los urbanitas industrializados como yo estas resultan ser revelaciones casi místicas.

Cuando me formulan la famosa pregunta: “Y que pueden hacer las personas de a pie para ser más ecológicas/respetuosas con el medio ambiente/sostenibles/para luchar contra el cambio climático/o como quiera que formulen la pregunta…” Yo acostumbro a responder como Leopold: que planten un huerto -en una maceta, en una ventana, en la terraza o en el balcón, en el terreno de sus tíos o en el solar abandonado de al lado de su casa… que planten un huerto! Hoy plantar un huerto es un acto mucho más revolucionario que alzar una bandera sea del color que sea. Adaptando la famosa frase revolucionaria del 68: “Levantad los adoquines, debajo está la huerta!” (o en una versión un poco más comedida que da nombre a una cooperativa agroalimentaria: BAH Bajo el asfalto está la huerta!) .

Como la propia Steel dice al final de su charla “Sabemos que somos lo que comemos, pero tenemos que darnos cuenta también que el mundo es lo que comemos. Podemos utilizar la comida como una poderosa herramienta para construir un mundo mejor.”

por Lluís Sabadell Artiga (a+h+p)

*Aquí prefiero no usar la palabra “consumimos” ya que al final parece que todo tiene que acabar en una relación económica (en el mal sentido de la palabra); al igual que prefiero llamarnos personas a consumidores o prefiero seres humanos a individuos… es sólo una cuestión de palabras, lo sé, pero al final las palabras son las que construyen el mundo en el que vivimos cada día.

**El texto de Leopold en su versión en castellano tiene por título Una ética de la Tierra , y el fragmento está en el capítulo titulado Buen roble.

El proyecto fue galardonado con el primer premio en un concurso internacional hace un año y tiene previsto abrir sus puertas para finales de 2010. Se desarrolla junto a la gran empresa de arquitectura Belga ELD partnership de Amberes.

Se trata de la reconversión de una antigua fábrica de Coca-Cola en el futuro ayuntamiento y centro cívico de la ciudad Belga de Oostkamp. El sistema constructivo interior propone crear espacios con burbujas hinchables de plástico para proyectar hormigón a posteriori. Aparecen de esta manera grandes cúpulas blancas con los mínimos apoyos verticales posibles. También es interesante la búsqueda de elementos de sostenibilidad, desde la reutilización del propio edificio, hasta las múltiples soluciones adoptadas dentro de sus sistemas energéticos (sistemas de captación solar, aerogeneradores, sistemas pasivos de calefacción, aprovechamiento de agua de lluvia….).

“Con respecto al video de Carlos Arroyo y su tratamiento visual, nuestra intención ha sido dar una imagen moderna, dinámica, ágil. Un montaje actual, que nos dé como resultado un vídeo de alto interés para el sector de la arquitectura, pero que también pueda ser disfrutado y entendido por cualquier espectador común. A nivel estético se trata de potenciar las atmósferas creadas por el edificio y las sensaciones que esta produce al familiarizarse con el entorno” – Ildefonso Rodríguez Moreno

The White House Office of Urban Affairs and the Domestic Policy Council hosted a day-long discussion about the future of America’s urban and metropolitan areas. Participants included policy experts from across the country, several cabinet members, and elected officials. Discussions covered the evolution of metropolitan areas, best practices in urban communities, and how the federal government can be a more effective partner in these communities.
After the roundtable discussions, the President spoke on some of the challenges facing urban communities today. The President is personally familiar with these challenges after spending much of his life in urban areas, saying he received his greatest education working in Chicago’s South Side. These challenges are only exacerbated by the recession, which is why the administration has been committed to making sure our cities not only rebound, but also prosper in the future:
But what’s also clear is we’re going to need to do more than just help our cities weather the current economic storm.  We’ve got to figure out ways to rebuild them on a newer, firmer, stronger foundation for our future.  And that requires new strategies for our cities and metropolitan areas that focus on advancing opportunity through competitive, sustainable, and inclusive growth.  And that’s why all of you are here today.  And I know that there were a lot of ideas that were shared throughout the morning and afternoon.
Now, the first thing we need to recognize is that this is not just a time of challenge for America’s cities; it’s also a time of great change.  Even as we’ve seen many of our central cities continuing to grow in recent years, we’ve seen their suburbs and exurbs grow roughly twice as fast — that spreads homes and jobs and businesses to a broader geographic area.  And this transformation is creating new pressures and problems, of course, but it’s also opening up new opportunities, because it’s not just our cities that are hotbeds of innovation anymore, it’s our growing metropolitan areas.
The President outlined some of his administration’s proposals:
And we’re also going to take a hard look at how Washington helps or hinders our cities and metro areas — from infrastructure to transportation; from housing to energy; from sustainable development to education.  And we’re going to make sure federal policies aren’t hostile to good ideas or best practices on the local levels.  We’re going to put an end to throwing money at what doesn’t work — and we’re going to start investing in what does work and make sure that we’re encouraging that.
Now, we began to do just that with my budget proposal, which included two investments in innovative and proven strategies.  I just want to mention these briefly.  The first, Promise Neighborhoods, is modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s successful Harlem Children’s Zone.  It’s an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck effort that’s turning around the lives of New York City’s children, block by block.  And what we want to do is to make grants available for communities in other cities to jumpstart their own neighborhood-level interventions that change the odds for our kids.
The second proposal we call Choice Neighborhoods — focuses on new ideas for housing in our cities by recognizing that different communities need different solutions.  So instead of isolated and monolithic public housing projects that too often trap residents in a cycle of poverty and isolate them further, we want to invest in proven strategies that actually transform communities and enhance opportunity for residents and businesses alike.
The President highlighted the policies of Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City for their innovative solutions to urban challenges. With these fresh ideas and successful solutions, and the help of the federal government, we can reinvent our urban and metropolitan areas for the 21st century.

More info