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Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the seventh episode, Christopher Cabaldon, the longest-serving mayor in West Sacramento’s history, an LGBTQ+advocate, talks about the urban regeneration of his city, from a former industrial town to an urbanized, livable community.
For nations worldwide, the course of action to fight the spread and effects of coronavirus COVID-19 has been to implement quarantines; restricting the movement of the general population while isolating people infected by the disease, albeit indefinitely. The result: both public and private spaces have closed in a bid to curb the number of new cases. At the same time, the rising number of deaths has added to both social and economic uncertainty, with people across the globe asking "how are we going to work?" or, better yet, "how are we supposed to eat?"
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped urban life, and so too has it left many streets and buildings empty as people practice social distancing. From Times Square to the Place de la Concorde in Paris, photographers are capturing these "empty cities" in a defining moment across the globe. In turn, The New York Times recently published a piece dubbed "The Great Empty", showcasing a new side to urban life in these structures and streets. Now five photographers have been commissioned to photograph Rotterdam during the pandemic.
Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the sixth episode, Marianthi Tatari, Associate Director and Senior Architect at UNStudio, talks about creating inclusive spaces to connect people and generating 24/7 activity within their projects.
'Cities for Play' is a project whose main objective is to inspire architects and urban planners to create stimulating, respectful, and accessible cities for children.
Natalia Krysiak, its creator, is an Australian architect who believes that children's needs should be placed at the center of urban design to ensure resilient and sustainable communities. In 2017, she produced 'Cities for Play,' studying examples of cities that are concerned with providing environments that are capable of promoting the health and well-being – physical and emotional – of children through a focus on play and "active mobility” in public spaces.
MVRDV in collaboration with Airbus, Bauhaus Luftfahrt, ETH Zurich, and Systra, is developing a plan for the future of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The investigation tackles the integration of “flying vehicles” into our urban environments and envisions a comprehensive mobility concept.
Entitled Becoming Xerophile, Cooking Sections and AKT II have developed a zero-water desert garden, part of the first Sharjah Architecture Triennial in UAE, curated by Adrian Lahoud. The installation explores the introduction of desert landscapes in the urban fabric of the city and everyday life.
Opening in February 2020, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is showcasing an exhibition by Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Entitled Countryside, The Future the exhibition seeks to investigate urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic transformations in the nonurban areas.
Architecture enjoys a close connection with moving picture, perhaps because of the limitless imagination it allows. Our mind can be taken far away to utopian worlds where we live different realities with our eyes and skin; movies can carry us to new and distant places, where we face new unusual realities.
However, besides carrying us to distant places, movies can also be a vehicle of social criticism. This is not news, as it has been done for almost as long as cinema has existed. The evolution of this role is relative to the topic of critique that has developed over time, as have our habits and ways of living. In this sense, one of the most emerging problematic of nowadays is climate change.from architecture to arts and, clearly, the movies.
Studying the data that indicates a climate crisis that has been affecting the whole planet for the last decades, the reactionary attitudes may sound disappointing. However, at the same time that the news indicates a global average temperature rise, the political focus on the climate crisis is also intensified, according to the UN Environment report released in 2019, which is a reflection not only of the occurrence of manifestations and protests around the world but also of the so-called activist art expression.
Does the Coronavirus concern us? Yes, it does. Beyond the rush for health cures, cities are seen to react by using both architecture and urban strategic planning as tools for the virus’ containment, shattering our notions of city and resilience planning.
Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE about how we can use design to make cities more livable and lovable. Every week, a new episode will be released featuring speakers that explore the future of our cities, like Thomas Heatherwick from Heatherwick Studios, Chris Precht from Studio Precht, Leona Lynen from Haus der Statistik and Yosuke Hayano from MAD Architects among others.
The Un-habitat or the United Nations agency for human settlements and sustainable urban development, whose primary focus is to deal with the challenges of rapid urbanization, has been developing innovative approaches in the urban design field, in order to encourage the active participation especially of children, women and underprivileged individuals.
City Dreamers is a documentary by filmmaker Joseph Hillel that underlines the ever-changing city of tomorrow and the life and work of 4 women architects who reconsidered the urban environment. Phyllis Lambert, Denise Scott Brown, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel are inspiring pioneers that observed and shaped the city of today and tomorrow.
Goldman Sachs has released a report on the effects of climate change on cities across the world. The study explored the major changes that will transform the planet and highlighted several metropolises that will be at risk of flooding.
Although cities are supposed to be built for everyone, they are in most of the time, thought, planned and designed by men: “Cities are supposed to be built for all of us, but they aren't built by all of us.”
With basic different needs, men and women expect different outcomes from their urban surroundings. A city should be able to fulfill everyone’s essentials. Lately, the topic that has everyone's attention revolves around cities designed by women. With a female mayor onboard and a feminist agenda, for the past four years, Barcelona has been undergoing major transformations on this subject.
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JakubCervenkai_1_(131_of_589).jpg?1584354067 "© Jakub Cervenkai")
TomasPrinc-265.jpg?1584353916 "© Tomas Princ")
