Urban Activators
BUTTERFLY VS. ELEPHANT
Infrastructure as Public Space.
Butterflies are lightweight, prompt in responding to the stimuli coming from the environment and have a short lifecycle. On the contrary, elephants last for decades, slow to adapt and are not lightweight.
UrbanBuddy, in collaboration with ExternalReference architects, proposes a workshop to build butterfly buildings; light and movable pavilions which may activate temporary public space within the city.
Urban Activators Workshop
PROPOSAL
Our proposal for the Urban Activators workshop is to work on portable devices, light and movable pavilions which may activate temporary public space within the city of Barcelona, Spain. Following the success of the ExternalReference event ModaFAD 2009, our aim with the Urban Activators workshop is to pursue, more in depth, research on temporary devices and public spaces.
INFORMATION
• October 2011
• Barcelona, Spain
• Open to all design related professions.
• Sessions: TBA
• Final Installation: TBA
MOBILITY AND TRANSFORMATION
In full accordance with the position of the radical avant-garde 1960-1972, we think that architecture, instead of defining immovable structures, should respond to situations. Accordingly, architecture has to use and explore temporarily deployable or portable technology so that it may become more flexible focusing its interest on soft and mobile solutions for the critique of the permanence. A movable space has to respond to the needs of human activity and there are many examples in history that express this aptitude – hospitals, circuses, restaurants, residences.
Therefore, portable architecture is architecture in its own right and does not represent just a fix for complicated situations or impervious places. Nevertheless, mobile architecture has to introduce some peculiarities and follow some principles of formal efficiency and flexibility.
Workshop Goal:
The idea of ‘instant architecture’, which can activate an urban scenario, definitely belongs to our days, if we think, for instance, of the tendency of cities to change themselves generating public space. New configurations, even transitory ones, can enhance the activities of the city through the use of urban voids and green zones, but also through the transformation of spaces with great public potentialities, such as urban nodes, plazas, parks, roads or infrastructures in general.
So, the present workshop has a clear goal: to explore the potentialities of urban areas as possible public spaces, re- defining the infrastructural space, thus overcoming its ‘non-place’ condition.
The concept of transformation, together with the introduction of an activator, changes temporarily the use of an urban area. Examples of urban catalysts that operate as activators in open spaces can be found in the MACBA square in Barcelona (MVRDV, Habalos Herreros), where crowds and cultural expressions animate the city spaces.
WORKSHOP SITE: TBA
INFRASTRUCTURE AS PUBLIC SPACE
Any spot in the city can be public space, if fuelled by some sort of activating experience. Rather than working on the urban voids inherited from the past cities and former planning strategies, it’s necessary to focus the attention on the modifications which can trigger unexpected changes of role in the built up urban space. The idea stems from this thought-provoking consideration: any existing space in the city can become a public space through the generation of stimulating activity. At this point two questions arise: how is it possible to produce stimulating activity? Which kind of activities are considered stimulating? It is imperative to conceive of both urban operations based on elastic devices and new manifestos representing common spaces. Inside ordinary and daily life, public areas allow nomadic and temporary uses such as: basket, cinema, exhibitions, cafe terraces. Therefore, the generation of stimulating activities is tied to the event as an excuse to steal the road from the vehicular traffic and bring it back to the citizen.
PROCESS
THINK ABOUT BUTTERFLY
Characteristics of the activator devices
A movable space has to respond to the needs of human activity and there are many ex- amples in history that express this aptitude – hospitals, circuses, restaurants, residences. Therefore portable architecture is part of all architecture and not only a remedy for complicated situations or impervious places. Nevertheless, the mobile architecture has to introduce some peculiarities and follow some principles of formal efficiency, flexibility and transport which will include some characteristics.
REDUCE PERIMETER
In terms of manufacturing and functional criteria, by keeping the maximum of area, use the minimum of perimeter and thus minimise useless parts. In this case the dimension of the devices are the optimum for the track transportation.
REDUCE WEIGHT
The device should be flexible and light in order to be easily transportable.
REDUCE FIXTURES
Digital fabrication techniques will be applied to the full-scale installation. The pavilions will be formed by assembled parts and composed by simple and ready-to-work elements.
Workshop Director:
Carmelo Zappulla, externalreference architects externalreference.com
Workshop Director:
James Brazil, uA Collective ua-collective.com
Program Facilitator:
Paul Brogna, Global Director, UrbanBuddy paulbrogna@urbanbuddy.com
Urban Activators Schedule (TBA):