The idea of a community or public playground is about creating an accessible recreational space for all. However, in many cases, initiating a playground project might fail due to insufficient funds or regulations/restrictions. The first challenge is largely to set the project in motion and, most importantly, get the community’s positive reception and, if possible, its involvement, thus ensuring the project's success and sustainability.
Urban Interventions: The Latest Architecture and News
Concéntrico 10 Reveals The Complete List of Upcoming Urban Installations and Program
From April 25 to May 1, 2024, Logroño hosts the tenth edition of Concéntrico, a celebration of urban innovation and transformation. This year, the festival explores the future of cities, incorporating new formats, engaging diverse audiences, and tackling urban challenges through the lens of time as a catalyst for change in design. Featuring 20 interventions and activities involving over 100 professionals from 17 countries, the program encompasses processes such as renaturalizing public spaces, reimagining urban structures, and integrating recycled materials from previous editions.
Additionally, collaborations with educational centers ensure a lasting impact beyond the festival, fostering new collective practices in public spaces. Special projects with Matali Crasset and Maider López further enrich the festival's engagement with communities across Spain.
Architecture and Design Festival Concéntrico 10 Announces Winning Projects
Now in its 10th edition, Concéntrico, the international festival of architecture and design in Logroño, has announced the winners of the open calls for urban interventions. Responding to the call to ‘Celebrate the City,’ the winning proposals will be temporarily built in Plaza Escuelas Trevijano, in Viña Lanciano of Bodegas LAN, and in Paseo del Espolón in the Spanish town of Logroño. The Festival welcomes visitors between April 25 and May 1, 2024, to explore the city through installations, exhibitions meetings, and performances.
Integrating Heritage and Innovation: 7 Architectural Installations at Dubai Design Week 2023
Happening between November 7 and 12, Dubai Design Week 2023 brought together over 500 designers, architects, and creative practitioners to explore the relationship between traditional practices and emerging technologies in an effort to create more environmental sustainability and design-led social impact solutions. As one of the most important cultural events in the Middle East, the festival brings forward a wide offering of installations, artworks, and immersive experiences, all exploring important topics of eco-friendly design.
This year’s interventions and installations drew inspiration from the region’s natural ecosystems as well as local traditions and craftsmanship while merging these practices with innovative technologies, biomaterial explorations, and reimagined ways of practicing. Across the interventions, a recurring motif emerges, that of celebrating Middle Eastern heritage and engaging productively with vernacular practices.
The Philippines Pavilion Employs Urban Acupuncture to Address the Flawed Ecology of Manila at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale
At the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Philippines Pavilion presents an exhibition that investigates the ecology and social implication of the Tripa de Gallina estuary in Manila. The body of water, once a mechanism for flood mitigation, has now become congested and polluted, affecting the lives of the nearby communities. The Pavilion aims to present the initiative that set out to gather and investigate the guts of the estuary and to work with the residents to find adequate and sustainable architectural solutions. Titled “Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary,” the exhibition in Venice is co-curated by Architect Choie Funk and Sam Domingo and presents the work of the Architecture Collective, represented by Bien Alvarez, Matthew Gan, Ar. Lyle La Madrid, Noel Narciso and Arnold Rañada.
OKRA Receives the European Urban Public Space Award 2022
The Dutch firm OKRA landschapsarchitecten has been awarded the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2022 for its project to restore the Catharijnesingel canal in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Being an initiative of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), this eleventh edition received 326 projects from 35 different countries showing those problems that European cities must face and proposing some solutions in the framework of a post-pandemic context focused on climate change and how to make cities more livable.
Carlo Ratti Associati Joins Manifesta 14 to Design Urban Interventions in Prishtina, Kosovo
Design and innovation office CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati unveils the result of its Urban Vision and Urban Program for Manifesta 14, the European Nomadic Biennial in Prishtina, Kosovo, between July 22 and October 30, 2022. CRA’s project proposes a new methodology for reclaiming public space in the city. It starts with a series of open-ended design interventions to encourage citizen participation and foster feedback loops to create long-term effects on the built environment. During the 20th century, regime changes and political clashes brought considerable turbulence to Kosovo and its cities. As a result, Prishtina currently suffers from a substantial shortage of public space, but a large group of disenfranchised residents is eager to reverse this situation.
Placemaking through Play: Designing for Urban Enjoyment
Humane cities center around the relationships between people and places. Communities thrive on shared resources, public spaces, and a collective vision for their locality. To nurture happy and healthy cities, designers and the public apply methods of placemaking to the urban setting. Placemaking—the creation of meaningful places—strongly relies on community-based participation to effectively produce magnetic public spaces.
Vibrant Intervention by The Urban Conga and Hive Public Spaces Sends Love Notes to Long Island City
The Urban Conga has collaborated with HIVE Public Space and Long Island City Partnership on a new urban intervention titled "Ribbon", a vibrant and interactive installation for people to connect, share, and learn about each other's experiences in Long Island City, New York. Each unit includes kinetic pieces that rotate, reflecting the surrounding context and revealing different love notes written by locals to the city.
Young Practices and Artists Reflect on the Urban Environment at Concéntrico 07
The International Architecture and Design Festival Concéntrico, now at its 7th edition, prompts an exploration of the urban environment through temporary installations inhabiting the public spaces of the city of Logroño, Spain. From September 2nd to 5th, the festival brings together an array of emerging architects and artists from all over the world to share their perspectives on urban spaces and communities.
Serena Confalonieri Transforms Abandoned Parking Lot in Milan into a Graphic Urban Playground
Designer and art director Serena Confalonieri, along with a team of students and volunteers have created “Quadra”, a graphic installation that is part of the initiative “Piazze Aperte” promoted by the Municipality of Milan. The urban intervention is a graphic art project in a former parking lot in the Quarto Oggiaro district that aims to enhance and characterize tactical urban interventions in all cities.
Carlo Ratti Associati Designs Urban Interventions in Prishtina as part of Manifesta 14
Manifesta 14 recently announced that the 2022 edition of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art will take place in Prishtina, Kosovo. In preparation for the event, Carlo Ratti Associati has been commissioned to create an urban vision for the host city, focusing on sustainable solutions attuned to its current realities. The urban interventions showcase CRA's newly defined participatory urbanism methodology and explore how Prishtina could be transformed by the citizens' act of reclaiming public space.
A 3D-Printed Majlis and Suspended Cliff Platforms: 10 Unbuilt Projects Submitted to ArchDaily
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights cultural structures submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From pavilions to installations, this article explores the topic of cultural urban interventions and presents approaches submitted to us from all over the world.
Featuring a pavilion nestled in the sand dunes of the Persian desert, an afrofuturistic, interactive art installation proposed for the upcoming Burning Man event, and a new take on summer cinemas in Russia, this roundup explores how architects reimagined traditional gathering places and created urban interventions in all scales. The round up also includes a collection of structures in the United Arab Emirates, United Sates of America, France, and the United Kingdom, each responding to different contexts and topographies.
Torino Stratosferica Transforms Abandoned Tramway into Vibrant Urban Park
Ever since the tramline’s closure, the 800-meter-long strip in the center of Corso Gabetti and Ponte Regina Margherita in Turin, has been abandoned. To make use of the dead area and give residents an extra space outdoors following Italy's severe pandemic repercussions, non-profit cultural association Torino Stratosferica has transformed the tree-lined strip into Precollinear Park, a temporary public space fit for socially-distanced leisure.