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.
CRA and Manifesta 14 put forward an experimental methodology to create inclusive urban innovation in response to this situation. This practical “open-source urbanism” methodology is based on a series of temporary to permanent interventions developed with a participatory approach based on citizen feedback. In the first phase, CRA mapped the city to identify socially and culturally significant sites. In this phase, the studio teamed up with MIT Senseable City Lab to use artificial intelligence analysis to form a digital streetscape of the city. The related data can be accessed upon request by researchers in the spirit of open-source urbanism.
In the second phase, temporary renovations or interventions are set up to demonstrate how the locations, many of them previously being in compromised conditions, can be reclaimed by and for Prishtins’s citizens. These are low-cost interventions programmed for a short period but with a speculative intention. Residents are invited to “vote with their feet,” deciding whether these interventions should be made permanent, modified, or discarded. Finally, evaluation sessions will be held to facilitate the accelerated evolution of the city.
Cities around the world are currently going through an extraordinary time marked by crises but also potential for a renaissance. Faced with an unprecedented situation during the first outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, local government officials were forced to do bold urban experiments to respond more efficiently to people’s needs. - Carlo Ratti, founding partner of CRA and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab
This methodology was applied to build the Green Corridor, a 1.3-kilometer former railway track, which used to be filled with abandoned cars and trash. The newly transformed pedestrian path, which features seating areas and vegetation, links two prominent locations of Manifesta 14: the Palace of Youth and Sports and the Brick Factory. The walkway was redeveloped in just twenty days of work, addressing the debate about how to remedy the city’s problem of low pedestrian accessibility. A circular approach ensures that all the corridor elements are easily removable and reusable in other locations.
Other Urban Interventions were realized by CRA back in 2021 and have been integrated into Prishtina’s social fabric differently. For instance, the former Hivzi Sulejmani Library, whose external gates were reclaimed from an illegal parking lot in June last year, was turned into a permanent cultural institution, the Centre for Narrative Practice. The former Brick Factory, first converted into an ‘urban living room,’ was transformed into a temporary Eco Urban Learning Center opened along with the Biennial. These projects show how “open-source urbanism” can enact change within different time frames.
