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Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World | Book and Interview

Category: ⚐ EN+publications+sustainability+urbanism

Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World book

Last year we were contacted by Vanessa Miriam Carlow from the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism to make an interview for the book Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World. This book is dedicated to the significance of rural spaces ‘as a starting point for transformation’. Different international experts were asked to reflect on rural spaces from an architectural, cultural, gender-oriented, ecological, and political perspective and ask how a (new) vision of the rural can be formulated. As the introduction states:

In an urbanizing world, the city is considered the ultimate model and the measure of all things. The attention of architects and planners has been almost entirely focused on the city for many years, while rural spaces are all too often associated with visions of economic decline, stagnation and resignation. However, rural spaces are transforming almost as radically as cities. Furthermore, rural spaces play a decisive role in the sustainable development of our living environment—inextricably interlinked with the city as a resource or reservoir. The formerly segregated countryside is now traversed by global and regional flows of people, goods, waste, energy, and information, linking it to urban systems and enabling them to function in the first place.

Today we are publishing the interview, answered by Belinda Tato. If you find it interesting, there is much more in the book! We recommend you to get a printed copy here. Here is the full transcript of the interview:

Q: Your office name, ecosistema urbano, brings with it a certain tension that somehow combines unexpected contrasts. How did you come to this name and what do you want to express with it?

A: It took us a while to choose a name or concept that communicated our interests and the complex reality of urban issues we face. We found the idea of ‘ecosystem’ an appealing one, its definition implies a group of interconnected elements formed by the interaction of a community with their environment. This relationship between the natural and the artificial aims for a balance between these two worlds, and reflects the issues we care about when designing architecture and practicing territorial and urban planning.

Q: In your presentation, you said that during your studies the planning approach mainly focused on infrastructure and the physical environment. How would you describe the situation today?

A: I believe there is a clear shift between the object-focused educational approach from the nineties towards a more polyhedral approach and understanding of cities and design that is happening today. There is a growing interest in considering processes and interactions and taking the social, cultural, or economic aspects into account leading to more comprehensive and ambitious proposals to transform reality.

Q: Which approach does your office have today? How would you describe the current role of the architect and planner?

A: That is not an easy question to answer briefly! We recently made an effort to try to summarize our approach and the result is a kind of manifesto in ten points.

Urban. Social. Design. Three words that describe our dedication: the urban context, the social approach, and the design understood as an action, an interaction, and a tool for transformation. Understanding types of behaviour and processes at different levels is crucial.

Creativity is a network. In a globalized world, creativity is the capacity to connect things innovatively and thus we understand that the protagonist of the creative process is not just a team but an open and multi-layered design network.

Community first. Cities are created and maintained by people for people, and urban development only makes sense when the community cares about it. We work to empower the communities to drive the projects that affect them, so social relevance is guaranteed.

Going glocal. Just as cities have residents and visitors, and planning is made at different scales, every urban project is born in a constant movement between the direct experience and specificity of the local context, and the global, shared flow of information and knowledge.

Accepting –and managing– conflict. Participation, like conversation, means letting all the points of view be raised and listened to. Public debate only makes sense if all the stakeholders are involved. Every project affecting the city has to deal with both opposition and support, consensus and contradiction.

Assuming complexity. Encompassing the complexity of the urban environment requires simplifying it. Instead, we prefer to admit its vast character and understand our work as a thin layer –with limited and, at times, unpredictable effects– carefully inserted into that complexity.

Learning by doing. Our experience grows through practice. We know what we can do, and we challenge ourselves to do what we think we should be doing. We solve the unexpected issues as we move, and then we take our lesson from the process and the results.

Planning… and being flexible. Urban development is what happens in the city while others try to plan it. We think ahead, make our dispositions, but we are always ready for reality to change our plans… mostly for the better. Rigidity kills opportunity, participation and urban life.

Embracing transdisciplinarity: We assume that our role as professionals is evolving, disciplinary bonds are loosening, urban projects are complex, and circumstances are continuously changing. This requires open-minded professionals, flexible enough to adapt their roles and skills and to use unusual tools.

Technology as a social tool: Today’s technology enables us to better relate and interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. As the digital-physical divide narrows and the possibilities multiply, it becomes an increasingly significant element in urban social life.

Keeping it open: Open means transparent, accessible, inclusive, collaborative, modifiable, reproducible. Open means more people can be part of it and benefit from it. These are the attributes that define a project made for the common good.

Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World book

Q: From your presentation, it emerged that the integration of the local conditions—as a climatic and social issue—represent an important focus of your work. How do you rate the relationship between global-local influence in relation to the architectural or urban design?

A: This is a very interesting question, and one we have asked ourselves several times. We have worked mostly abroad during the last years, and over and over we find the same situation where we have to balance the local and the global dimensions of design and planning. Local conditions are always the main terms of reference for our work. They give accuracy and pertinence to our proposals. They not only determine the boundaries we have to respect, the resources we have available, or the particularities we have to take into account, but also the potential for improvement that each particular place has. Local context is a source of invaluable site-specific knowledge, even if that knowledge is not always conscious or apparent, especially to locals. Opening a project to participation is a great way to make local values stand out and locals become self-aware… if you are able to ask the right questions and then read between the lines, of course. But relying solely on local conditions rarely provides the best solutions. You usually find situations that have become stagnant precisely by the lack of confrontation and external feedback. Then you need to confront the local ‘ways,’ often loaded with prejudices or relative narrowness, or with something else. And that is where global influence comes into play: the contrast, the opposition that clears concepts, breaks groupthink and gives a relative measure to local values. Global is the mirror that local can use to become self-conscious. We could speak of bringing knowledge from the global to the local, or even generating local knowledge by confronting it with the global. But it is also creativity that is being created or transferred. The ability to connect, articulate, and interpret different contexts is crucial whenever a new approach is needed and local conditions have proven insufficient to deliver it.

Q: You showed us some practical examples of your current work, which pursues sustainable approaches in terms of water recycling systems for the kindergarten in Madrid or climatic adaptations for the Expo pavilion in Shanghai. What opportunities do you see for the implementation of sustainable planning tools or strategies in larger, urban scale projects?

A: Urban planning and urban design have a great impact on people’s lives, shaping the way we live, move, relate, consume, etc… In addition to this, its impact will be of a long term as it is less ephemeral than architecture. For these reasons, it is important to design integrating with nature, its cycles and processes, taking advantage of the environment and optimizing interventions.

Q: Let us take a closer look at the countryside: in the current city-centered discourse, rural spaces are often dismissed as declining or stagnating. However, rural spaces also play a critical role in sustainable development, as an inextricably linked counterpart, but also as a complement to the growing city, as extraction sites, natural reservoirs for food, fresh water and air, or as leisure spaces. Do we need to formulate a (new) vision of ‘ruralism’? What would be your definition of the future rural? What new concepts for the rural exist in Spain?

A: When talking about ecosystems, it is crucial to understand the interwoven connections between the urban and the rural, and how they relate and affect each other in a critical balance. Although the urban expansion has some environmental consequences, there are also some interesting phenomena happening. As today’s IT keeps us connected and allows us to work remotely, this neoruralism enables us to have a renewed vision of the territory and its possibilities, offering development opportunities in towns that have been abandoned for decades, for instance in Spain. This new trend is transforming these abandoned towns into new activity hubs, creating a new migration flux from cities. It will be possible to measure the socioeconomic impact of this activity in a few years.

Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World book

Q: The once remote and quiet countryside is now traversed by global and regional flows of people, goods, waste, energy, and information, interrelating it with the larger urban system. Is a new set of criteria for understanding and appreciating the rural required? How would you measure what is rural and what is urban?

A: In a globalized world with an unprecedented ongoing process of urbanization, and under the impact of climate change and global warming, it is becoming more and more difficult to precisely define the limits between the rural and the urban as the urban footprint is somehow atomizing and gobbling the rural. Cities are the combination and result of the simultaneous interaction between nature and artificial technology, and their ecological footprint expansion forces the extraction of natural resources from even further sources, with obvious environmental consequences. At the local scale, it is necessary to point out the close relationship between the way a city relates to its environment, the way it manages its natural resources, and the quality of life it can provide to its inhabitants. This could be summarized as: the more sustainable a city/territory is, the better its inhabitants will live.

Q: What role do villages and smaller towns have in a world in which the majority live in cities? Could you comment on and describe a bit about the situation in Spain or the other countries you have been working in?

A: In cities, innovation and creativity concentrate and emerge naturally. The rural environment also requires people willing to create, to innovate, to connect, etc…. This creative ruralism could lead to the creation of eco-techno-rural environments, which would provide some of the features of the rural combined with specific services of the urban…the perfect setting for innovation to take place!

Q: Which role could the rural play at the frontlines of regional transformation and sustainability? What are the existing and potential connections between urban and rural spaces?

A: The rural could provide a complementary lifestyle for people fleeing from the city to re-connect or re-localize. At the same time, we would need to explore and expand technology’s possibilities, pushing its actual limits, and foreseeing potential new services that could enhance life in the rural by making it more diverse, fulfilling, and even… more global.

Q: And what role can urban design play in preparing rural life and space for the future? Is the rural an arena for ‘urban’ design at all?

A: I think the challenge would be to create the conditions for social life and interaction. We do have the conditions for that activity to happen digitally, but how can we foster social activity in low-density environments? Would it be necessary to create small urban nodes in the rural? These issues are interesting challenges we have to face conceptually and design-wise.

Are you interested in this topic? You can get the book here…

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Presenting the 'Networked Urbanism' Book | Available Online for Free!

Category: ⚐ EN+networked design+networkedurbanism+urban social design

Book Cover Book Cover

After several months of work here in Madrid, collaborating with our associate editors at the GSD in Boston, we are happy to announce that the Networked Urbanism book has finally been published online and is making its way through the printing process!

We have been presenting the work of the “Networked Urbanism” students in a series of posts on the blog and they have been publishing many of their ideas and the results of their efforts on networkedurbanism.com, but having the book finally printed on paper is an important milestone considering that the book also contains 4 unpublished essays and an exclusive interview. For those of you that haven’t been following our updates during these years at the GSD, here comes the short story of the book and its contents.

The book is the product of three different studios taught by Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in Boston, during Fall Term of 2010, 2012, and 2013. The three courses shared the same approach while focusing on slightly different topics; this approach, what we call network-design thinking, is an alternative to the traditional way of designing cities from a bird’s eye view, and a single designer’s perspective.

What is Networked Urbanism?

In today’s connected world, urban design can no longer be addressed from a singular perspective, but should result from an open and collaborative network of creative professionals, technical experts, citizens, and other stakeholder, we need to explore the new role of the designer as an activator, mediator and curator of social processes in a networked reality, but above all, we must develop and test tools that allow citizens to be active participants at all stages: before, during, and after the design process.

Networked Urbanism promotes the exploration of new tools that can become the catalyst to spark creativity and multiply the possibilities of interaction and connection among individuals in the search for more healthy and sustainable communities. The studio challenges future designers to develop initiatives that reconcile existing physical conditions with the emerging needs of citizens through network-design thinking, and promotes active participation in the redefinition of the contemporary city.

The pedagogical approach: the toolbox

The Networked Urbanism studio adopts a framework of experiential education that promotes learning through direct action on the ground and reflection in a continuous feedback loop. With this approach, students actively engaged in posing questions, assuming responsibilities, being curious and creative, investigating, experimenting, and constructing meaning. They became intellectually, emotionally, and socially engaged. This involvement produced a perception that the learning process is authentic, necessary, and real, as a starting point, the Networked Urbanism toolbox provided a set of guidelines that could be applied sequentially throughout the design process:

1. EXPLORE: Choose a topic at the intersection between your personal interests and societal needs.
2. RESEARCH: Become an expert on the topic.
3. NETWORK: Create a network—from citizens to experts—and explore connections at both the official and grassroots level.
4. SHARE: Confront and experience ideas outside your own desk: feedback is a treasure.
5. BE OPEN: Start with a detailed plan but be prepared to disrupt it, responding to its natural development.
6. THINK BIG: Focus on a small-scale design that has the potential of the larger scale, and design a strategic overall vision.
7. START SMALL: Any aspect can be the starting point; the concept will grow as your project develops.
8. ACT NOW!: Prototype and implement in real life at least a small but significant part of the design.
9. COMMUNICATE: Take your initiative to a broader audience.
10. MOVE BEYOND: How can you develop your project beyond the limits of the studio?

The book contents

GIF animation of the contents of the book

The book dives deep into the exploration of these principles, first through four essays: “Digitas Meets Humanitas” written by Blair Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune; “A Different Design Education” by Lulu Li, a former student and creator of bikenapped.com; “Out of the Studio onto the Streets” by Scott Liang, Thomas McCourt, and Benjamin Scheerbarth, also former students and now entrepreneurs with their project Place Pixel; and “Reflection in Action” by Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo containing the famous 10 points of the Networked Urbanism Toolbox; and then with an interview on the importance of design thinking with Paul Bottino, the co-founder and executive director of TECH at Harvard.

The second part of the book contains 19 selected projects organized by their main area of intervention. Even if, obviously, they all can not be easily categorized under a single topic, the first projects are more focused on Environmental issues followed by the ones centered on Social interventions and finally by projects considering more the Digital realm, which are reconnected to the Environmental ones closing the conceptual circle of topics.

Until the printed version is released, you can read the book online and download it in digital format:

Enjoy!

If you want to explore the projects briefly, you can have a look at the list of posts with the projects organized by different thematic categories:

1- Bicycle Culture

2- Turning waste into resources

3- Active awareness

4- Better communities better places

5- Your digital opinion is importat to us

6- Physital social networks

7- Time, space, and memories

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Empoderamiento y TICs | Entrevista a ecosistema urbano en empodera.org

Category: ⚐ EN+⚐ ES+colaboraciones+cultura abierta+ecosistema urbano+internet+open culture+publicaciones+publications+social software+social toolbox+software social

dreamhamar.app por Ecosistema Urbano

dreamhamar.app por Ecosistema Urbano

Hoy publicamos una entrevista que nos realizaron desde empodera.org, una plataforma de impulso para personas e iniciativas que utilizan las tecnologías desde un punto de vista social e innovador para hacer una sociedad más inclusiva y empoderada.

“Ecosistema Urbano: diseñando lugares para mejorar la auto organización de los ciudadanos, la interacción comunitaria y su relación con el medio ambiente”

Acceder a la entrevista en empodera.org

La entrevista se incluyó en la publicación Ciberoptimismo: Conectados a una actitud (pág. 287), una selección de entrevistas y experiencias sobre cómo las tecnologías han cambiado definitivamente nuestra interacción con diferentes temas (procomún, nuevas formas de economía, plataformas abiertas para todos, educación, software libre, transparencia, open government, participación ciudadana, sostenibilidad, etc.).

Aquí podéis descargar el libro español-inglés bajo licencia Creative Commons:
Ciberoptimismo: Conectados a una actitud – Ciberoptimism: connected to an attitude
empodera.org es una iniciativa de la Fundación Cibervoluntarios.

¡Que lo disfrutéis!

The launch of dreamhamar.app. - photo: Christoffer Horsfjord Nilsen

The launch of dreamhamar.app by Ecosistema Urbano – Photo: Christoffer Horsfjord Nilsen

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dreamhamar contado como nunca antes: presentación del libro y exposición

Category: ⚐ ES+dreamhamar+ecosistema urbano+publicaciones+urban social design

dreamhamar

dreamhamar es el proceso de network design que llevamos a cabo alrededor del rediseño de la plaza principal —Stortorget— de Hamar, Noruega. Este proceso creativo se inició como un concurso internacional de ideas en 2010 y en julio de 2012 entregamos el proyecto de ejecución de la plaza.

Poco hemos compartido durante este largo tiempo sobre el proyecto, el proceso participativo y las vicisitudes de abrir una pop up office y trabajar codo con codo con la comunidad local. Ha sido un proceso apasionante, intenso y lleno de todo tipo de anécdotas; una experiencia única que nos permitió trabajar sobre un espacio que literalmente habitamos durante 4 meses, ya que nuestra oficina estuvo localizada precisamente allí, frente a Stortorget.

Recopilar, ordenar, cribar y presentar la información producida ha sido una enorme tarea. La voluntad de mostrar y contar esta información en un libro nos ha obligado a realizar una labor de síntesis que por otro lado ha resultado muy esclarecedora. Con este post queremos contaros el proceso que hemos seguido, mostraros unas primeras imágenes del resultado e invitaros a su presentación en público.

dreamhamar book - interior

dreamhamar book – interior

Volver a contar la historia

Acabado el proceso participativo, que tuvo lugar entre los meses de agosto y diciembre de 2011, redactamos un informe para el ayuntamiento contando lo que se había hecho desde distintos puntos de vista. Nuestra idea inicial era pulir ese documento, convertirlo en un libro y hacerlo público. Pero pronto nos dimos cuenta de que para hacer todo el proceso inteligible y, sobre todo, facilitar el aprovechamiento práctico del conocimiento generado necesitábamos contarlo de otra manera. Tras meses de redacción y revisión en inglés y noruego, el resultado es una forma de contarlo, de muchas otras que podría haber, que creemos que es más estructurada y fácil de “navegar”, leer y consultar.

Revisar el proceso de forma (auto)crítica

Uno de los valores más claros de plantear una metodología definida aun sin precedentes directos es el de la experimentación. Pero ese valor no trascendería más allá de la experiencia concreta si no fuéramos capaces de extraer conclusiones con vistas a mejorar el proceso y repetirlo en otra ocasión. De modo que, junto a varios colaboradores del ámbito de la sociología urbana y la antropología, realizamos una revisión del proyecto, repasando las herramientas y metodologías utilizadas, explicitando nuestras propias impresiones tras la experiencia directa, destacando cosas que funcionaron bien y aspectos que habría que mejorar en el futuro, y tratando de condensar todo ello en una serie de conclusiones que pudiéramos compartir.

Clasificar, seleccionar y reelaborar materiales

dreamhamar nos dejó con una cantidad ingente de materiales de todo tipo. Notas escritas en cuartillas y postales, comentarios y posts publicados en la página, paneles con propuestas de proyecto hechas por estudiantes, cartones con esquemas dibujados durante los talleres, dibujos hechos por los niños en las escuelas, documentos impresos y digitales, maquetas, vídeos y sobre todo muchísimas fotografías de todo el proceso. Desde el principio tuvimos claro que para poder mostrar y compartir posteriormente el proceso teníamos que poner especial cuidado en documentarlo muy bien, y así lo hicimos. El resultado es que, a la hora de recapitular y contar el proyecto, hemos echado en falta muy pocas cosas, pero nos hemos tenido que enfrentar a la difícil tarea de ordenar, cribar, seleccionar y formatear todo ese contenido que sí tenemos.

Maquetar, revisar, maquetar, revisar…

Y por último, montar el libro. Para ello contamos con Lugadero, una joven editorial de Sevilla que desde el principio vio muy claro el proyecto y apostó sin dudarlo por su publicación. Con ello comenzó un largo proceso de pruebas y maquetas para encontrar una estructura adecuada, y después un aún más largo proceso de revisión y ajuste. En la carpeta del proyecto tenemos cerca de 40 borradores llenos de anotaciones, correspondientes a otras tantas vueltas de revisión. Algunas parciales, otras específicas para revisión de textos o gráficos, y otras, la mayoría, mucho más completas y exhaustivas.

Y por fin… el libro

Gracias a la paciencia y dedicación de todos los que han participado en esto, podemos por fin presentar una edición muy cuidada que, esperamos, permitirá al lector entender el proyecto en su totalidad y revisar al detalle nuestras reflexiones y conclusiones sobre lo que fue una gran experiencia piloto de network design y de lo que nos gusta llamar diseño social urbano.

dreamhamar book

dreamhamar book

Este es el libro que estaremos presentando en Lugadero mañana martes, aprovechando para inaugurar una exposición con materiales complementarios, algunos traídos casi directamente de nuestra última instalación en la Bienal de Venecia. ¡Os esperamos allí! Para los que no estéis por Sevilla, no os preocupéis, en breve os contaremos más sobre el libro y la manera de conseguirlo.

Fecha: martes 29 de abril de 2014
Hora:  20:30h
Lugar: Lugadero (C/Correduría, 5A, Sevilla)

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Planning for protest | Things we could learn from #15M in Madrid

Category: ⚐ EN+ecosistema urbano+publications

Planning for protest publication - by Project Projects

Planning for protest publication by Project Projects

As we told you in a previous post, last year we were invited to join an exhibition and publication called Planning for protest. Among 11 other architectural offices in different cities across the globe, the people from Project Projects invited us to examine the role of architecture in shaping, defining, or limiting the flow of protest within our respective cities. continue reading

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Miroslav Sasek – This is New York

Category: ⚐ ES+city+educación

Os recomiendo este libro de M. Sasek. “This is New York” es un libro de 1960 que presenta la ciudad de Nueva York a los niños. Pertenece a una serie de libros sobre ciudades: “This is…” continue reading

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WATERCUBE: The Book

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture

is a complete monographic publication about the National Swimming Center for the Beijing Olympics 2008. With an exhaustive description about the Watercube we present a detailed study of the project. The book makes an holistic approach to the project that starts with a brief description of urban and social changes that China has been experienced in the last decade. These facts have encouraged the construction boom that made possible these kind of projects occur in cities like Beijing. continue reading

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ECO SKYSCRAPER – YEANG, KEN

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture+sustainability


For many, ecoskyscrapers are synonymous with Ken Yeang. In more than three decades of practice, Ken Yeang has almost single-handedly pioneered and developed this building genre.

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Piel: experimental web book

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture+colaboraciones+eu:abierto

Piel.Skin is an experimental web book aimed at architecture students. The book literally surfs on several projects, jumping from exceptional exteriors in Asia to intelligently optimized facades in Europe. The book allows playing a virtual tour dedicated to google-earth travellers: By means of clicking on the coordinates of each project begins a journey where you can jump directly to each site and visualize the project within its environment.
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