Buenos Aires, Argentina. Image from sharptoyou. Image via Shutterstock
Understanding the diversity and plurality of people who inhabit and pass through cities on a daily basis, gender-responsive urban planning aims to incorporate all those identities, perspectives and activities that have been invisible for years. Understanding the complexities that surround cities and getting involved in the urban experiences of their inhabitants, public spaces turn out to be the scenario for the development of urban life and, as such, should bring together a series of guidelines and considerations in accordance with this new paradigm that act as planning tools, composing this network of spaces and contemplating all the users of the city.
The fallen Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol after a group led by American Indian Movement members tore it down in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020. Author: Tony Webster, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic via Wikimedia Commons.
What is the story that your city's public space tells? Who are the people honored in monuments scattered throughout it? Issues like these have led to a series of insurgencies in recent years in several cities. The notions of memory and representation have expanded the reflection on which narrative we build in our spaces, a fact that has triggered an urban question for the future: after all, what do we want to remember (or forget) through the symbols that we rise (or destroy) in cities?
UN-Habitat has just released its annual World Cities Report during the eleventh session of the World Urban Forum, which took place in Katowice, Poland from June 27 until June 30, 2022. Titled “Envisaging the Future of Cities”, the 2022 release highlights insights on the future of the urban realm, based on “existing trends, challenges, and opportunities, as well as disruptive conditions, including the valuable lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic”. In fact, it seeks to present cities with ways to be prepared for future challenges and address current issues.
Reforma en Sants, Un oasis en el corazón del Poblenou, Departamento THE DUKE, Reforma de vivienda en la calle Calabria. Montaje con fotografías de reformas en Barcelona. Image via ArchDaily
Nowadays, the integral reform of flats in Barcelona is one of the most common activities for both freelance architects and local architectural studios. This is not surprising in a city with more than 4,000 years of history in which there is a lot of buildings and little room for new construction.
In the 1960s, Jane Jacobs criticized modernist urban planning from the perspective of the integrated city. She believes that the purpose of urban renovation is to establish a better-integrated relationship between urban space and urban function by repairing the gap between them. Rather than "beautify" the urban environment.
Every city is a complex environment, bringing together people, cultures, architecture, commerce, and even nature. While experiencing a city, a lot of attention is given to its appearance, but appearance is not everything. The theory of sensory design aims to go beyond vision and explore the richness of the built environment through textures, smells, and sounds. For city officials and planners, a lot of attention generally goes towards how a city looks and sounds, but in terms of smell, the focus is mainly on managing waste or cleaning unsanitary areas. Yet the sense of smell, so often overlooked, is strongly linked to the creation of emotional memories. It contributes to our understanding of the world; it reveals otherwise hidden cultural practices, and it rounds up the experience of an environment.
111 West 57th Street by SHop Architects. Image Courtesy of SHoP Architects
The world is facing an Urban Century. The world’s population is collapsing into city centers as manufacturing and agriculture need fewer humans because technology replaces the human hand with machines. The world's urban population has grown from 751 million in 1950 to 4.46 billion in 2021 and will grow to 6.68 billion by 2050.
The expression "a perfect storm" refers to an event (typically an unfortunate one) which is exacerbated due to a confluence of negative or unpredictable factors. It is widely used when describing meteorological phenomena, but can also be applied to other contexts, such as the economy. The analogy can also be used to describe the relationship between the climate crisis and the world's dependence on concrete. As demonstrated in the Chatham House report, while cement (an essential element for concrete manufacturing) is extremely detrimental to the greenhouse effect and climate crisis –representing about 8% of global CO2 emissions–, its global production is nevertheless expected to increase over the next 30 years. It is said that this increase will stem from the demand for rapid urbanization in regions such as Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the last IPCC report warned that we only have 11 years to reduce emissions and prevent irreversible damage due to climate change. In other words, the cement industry is facing a significant expansion at a time when emissions need to fall rapidly – a perfect storm.
Liam Young is a speculative architect, product designer, and director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction, and futures. Young specializes in designing environments for the film and television industry, harboring the belief that creating imaginary worlds grants us the ability to connect emotionally to the ideas and challenges of our future.
No city is like New York. As an amalgam of different cultures, it is one of the most diverse in the world. New York is also facing social and environmental challenges that range from the need for new housing and transportation demands, to rising sea levels and storm surges. As the global pandemic further underlined the importance of design in shaping public life, city officials and planners are looking at a range of approaches and models for urban development and renewed growth.
The past couple of decades introduced the world to new ways of living as a result of different social, economic, and ecological changes. Naturally, these changes found their way into the architecture and urban practice, provoking new concepts within traditional typologies. Designing a space, regardless of its function, has always prioritized users' needs and ensured practicality and functionality, but recently, keywords like flexibility, privacy, inclusivity, and eco-consciousness have become driving forces behind design processes. In this interior focus, we will look at how current cities and living trends across the world have reshaped interior design and introduced modifications to typical typologies.
Throughout the years, urban settings have been shifting and taking on new forms. Workspaces became more flexible, home-based offices are common and the increasing costs of housing have led to changes in the way dwellings are designed and built; while turning us towards public and communal outdoor areas for leisurely activities and social gatherings. Our shifting lifestyles are therefore shaping a new urban landscape that’s influencing the way we conceive and use these spaces. Despite everything, some smaller and often unrecognized typologies have persisted and remain as necessary as they’d always been.
https://www.archdaily.com/984818/interstitial-spaces-and-public-life-the-overlooked-interventions-that-weave-our-built-environmentHana Abdel & Paula Pintos
Since the creation of BOGDAN & VAN BROECK in 2007, we have been focusing on the realisation of caring architecture, the activism for a high-quality urban culture and the redefinition of the traditional role of the architect. However, it was my experience in politics in Romania that helped me most with my involvement in public policy in…the Brussels-Capital Region. My position as Secretary of State in Romania, coordinating the field of cultural heritage from the perspective of heritage as a strategic resource in 2016-2017, and as co-founder of a Romanian political party in 2017-2019 made me embrace a holistic approach to regenerative development.
Nature has continually played muse to architects. Colors and forms from the natural world find themselves embedded in artificial edifices. Buildings are also shaped by patterns of the wind and sun, topography, and vegetation. While architecture is informed by the effects of nature, buildings have been proposed as inert objects that remain static in a biologically evolving world. Anthropocentric concrete “jungles” are devoid of life, separating humans from natural environments and causing imbalances that have manifested as pandemics. What would cities look like if there were no boundaries between humans and ecosystems?
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, affluent Parisians flocked to second homes on France’s Atlantic coast as a nationwide lockdown came down on the country. In June 2020, as the lockdown was eased in England, residents headed to seaside towns like Bournemouth to soak in sunny weather. The former scenario reflects the widening gap between France’s wealthy and the poor, whilst the latter is a reflection of the democratizing power of public-access beaches.
If you’re reading this right now, or have read an article on ArchDaily, it’s because you were in a place that enabled you to connect to the internet. Think about a time when you found yourself in a dead zone, where the internet was lagging and you were unable to connect your computer to WiFi to finish an assignment or even without the ability to connect your phone to quickly Google something. You likely dashed to the nearest coffee shop, or place where WiFi was more reliable, just to have the feeling of being online again. The internet, in an ideal world, is equally open to all providing access to knowledge and the ability to easily connect with others. But what happens when you don’t have internet? How is your life impacted if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide and live in an area without broadband access?
Architecture, as a profession, is highly cyclical in nature. It ebbs and flows with the tides of economic conditions, and is especially hard hit during times of downturn. We’ve all heard stories or experienced it ourselves, or layoffs during the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, or even more recently the significant cutbacks architecture firms went through during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects went on hold and new business opportunities declined almost overnight. Now, two years later, firms are keeping a close watch on global supply chain issues and rising inflation rates, especially with increased pressure to meet the needs of a growing urban population. Will architecture be recession-proof as we enter a bear market?
