Arctic hypothesis

The exhibition aimed to promote dialogue on climate and economic transition in the Arctic from an architectural and urban planning perspective, as well as to use architecture creatively to explore future alternatives for society in the Swedish Arctic.

The exhibition was based on three hypotheses:

Form follows environment. This hypothesis suggested that the design of future Arctic settlements would be directly influenced by Arctic environmental conditions, adapting the form to wind, snow, ice, rain, and changing landscapes.

The network works. This concept viewed the city as an interconnected system where local issues and broader territorial challenges mutually influence each other, integrating local communities into larger regional or global discussions.

Green, blue, and white. Towards sustainability, this approach treated nature as essential infrastructure for the northern regions, with design strategies that effectively utilized vegetation, water, and ice as interconnected systems.

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Prosumer's perspective in cultural heritage districts

 

The purpose of this project is to develop, test and evaluate a method by which prosumers who live and / or work in environments with cultural-historical values are motivated and given the opportunity to integrate solar cells (funded by STEM)

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Transdisciplinary urbanism: Three experiences from Europe and Canada

The decreasing pace of urban development in economically-troubled Europe allows time for urban practitioners and actors to re-think planning action and its outcomes. In Canada where urban development seems unstoppable, contemplative breaks are as important. From the rubbles of recent environmental and economic crises around the world, in this article we discuss the emergence of a new theoretical approach in urban design and planning that is at the intersection of Socio-Spatial Research, Complexity Theories of Cities, and Urban Activism: Transdisciplinary Urbanism. We deploy three relevant, research projects we have been engaged with to analyze issues, challenges and limitations of Transdisciplinary Urbanism. The time frame of these interventions spans almost a decade.
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“My Public Living Room” on the 26th of June 2014, the last day of the public display.

Source: Galanakis, picture taken in 2014.

Playontology for Seniors (PlaS)

Proposal by Michail Galanakis (FI), in collaboration with: Ron Smyth (CA), Mariana Salgado (FI), Despina Sfakiotaki (FI), Agatino Rizzo (SE), Veronica Bluguermann (DK), Johan Carlsson (DK).Contact: michail.galanakis(at)gmail.com

In 2015 THE NORDIC INDEPENDENT LIVING CHALLENGE invited proposals to address the issue of senior citizens’ quality of life (http://www.realchallenge.info/). Playontology for Seniors (PlaS) was one of the 415 proposals. On the 10th of April 75 proposals were shortlisted to enter the next stage of the competition. PlaS did not make it; however, since we appreciate the theme of the competition, and value our proposal, we would like to disseminate it.

TRANSURBANISM. TOWARDS A NEW TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH IN URBAN PLANNING

The current insecurity around real estate along with the global financial crisis and state budget cuts presents an opportunity for urbanists (scholars as well as practitioners) to contemplate on and develop new practices to advance urban research and empower local communities. TransUrbanism is our transdisciplinary approach to urbanism as a practice for conducting urban research and planning. Urban Art Interventions are components of TransUrbanism. They are action projects in which urban activists, planners, architects, artists, and social workers collaborate to generate 1:1 scale urban settings to stimulate public imagination regarding alternative urban scenarios. In this article by discussing two different research projects carried out in the Helsinki-Tallinn Euro-region, we present our understanding of TransUrbanism and its relevance to both shrinking and growing cities.

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ISOCARP YPP Workshop in Ulyanovsk, Russia

The workshop aimed to provide young Russian planners responsible for, or participating in, the shaping and development of settlements, with the principles and practices of effective contemporary urbanism and practical knowledge that will be of immediate use to each participant.

The objective of the workshop was to provide the workshop participants with hands-on practical experiences.

It was also intended to develop an example of the comprehensive (strategic) urban planning exercise for the Russian cities hosting the 2018 FIFA football games / other activities.

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link to the report...

Elders and Participatory Action in Helsinki

Poster about Karhupuisto's Project presented by Cityleft's friends and collaborators Michail Galanakis and Inka Kaakinen for the:

EUROPEAN NOVEMBER CONFERENCE VIENNA 2010
Public space and the challenges of urban transformation in Europe: Politics and culture.

10th and 11th November 2010
Palais Kabelwerk Programme: http://skuor.tuwien.ac.at Interdisciplinary

Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space Department of Spatial Development, Infrastructure and Environmental Planning Faculty of Architecture and Planning Vienna University of Technology

P2P-Urbanism: What's new? (excerpt)

The recent informational revolution has brought new concepts such as peer-to-peer, open source, free software, copyleft and so forth. In the last decade these concepts are redesigning social relations, advocating for the direct involvement of people in decision making, production, and management of any hard and soft product at any scale. Thanks to the efforts of the P2P foundation ( see http://p2pfoundation.net/) and its main driver, Michel Bauwens a Belgian philosopher based in Thailand , peer-to-peer (P2P) philosophy has been discussed on the web at any significant scale - from P2P architecture to P2P Warfare (see http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/).

Brief History of P2P-Urbanism

P2P (peer-to-peer) Urbanism joins ideas from the open-source software movement together with new thinking by urbanists, into a discipline oriented towards satisfying human needs. P2P-Urbanism is concerned with cooperative and creative efforts to define space for people’s use. This essay explains P2P-Urbanism as the outcome of several historical processes, describes the cooperative participation schemes that P2P-Urbanism creates, and indicates the possible outcomes of applying P2P-Urbanism in different human environments. more...

PLUG & PLAN

In the last 15 years Helsinki and Tallinn have been developing a bottom-up partnership led to strength local economy in Estonia and global benefits for Finnish companies. This partnership is bringing many advantages to both cities, but also disadvantages especially in Tallinn. Disadvantages are, for instance, social segregation, environmental pollution, and traffic congestion. A more balanced structure will help the HTR to compete with other cities in the Baltic Sea Region, allowing a better way of live for its inhabitants. see: http://www.cityleft.altervista.org/

Border Cities_presentation+exhibition

ARCHIPELAGO CITY

In 2007/2008, the Border Cities Kolleg, facilitated by the Germany-based Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, brought together an international group of young planners, architects, artists and urbanists to explore the complex dynamics of trans-national urbanism in the Baltic Sea Region.

Within this framework our group came together to consider the cities of Helsinki and Tallinn as a case of EU spatial policy implementation. Region makers such as EUREGIO view the two cities as part of an emerging European Region, one that opens an opportunity to enhance economic and administrative capacities, as well as to expand transportation and distribution networks. These in turn form or enhance a number of interweaving bonds.

The focus of our group research was to see how far this notion of region building has progressed, compared with past and present common identity building processes. The cross border effects as well as historical pre-conditions manifest in the urban fabric of Tallinn appeared to us as an archipelago of ‘islands’, each with different economic, social, and cultural milieus; segregations overlooked or underconsidered by city planners and administrators. The model of the archipelago also created an inverse space between these hegemonic ‘islands’ where new inputs can enrich HTR’s diversity.

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Abruzzo

P2PFOUNDCITIES: Project Proposal for the Reconstruction and the Preservation of Abruzzo


We present a scheme for efficient transitional housing for the communities of Abruzzo accounting for the need to maintain the social cohesion of original communities under reconstruction. With this proposal we hope to offer a comprehensive strategy that will serve as a model for similar contexts worldwide.
What we propose is a form of transitional architecture specifically intended to quickly re-establish the functional 'social infrastructure' of damaged towns in ways similar to the original architecture being restored and in the immediate proximity of the original towns so that people are 'at home' and able to function as a community to support the restoration effort. Our key tool for this is a concept called Peer-To-Peer Architecture; building methods that allow the inhabitants of a community to design and spontaneously redesign their habitat as they see fit. Our main priority is, in fact, to develop a design process which is open to the local community. We think that after establishing a nucleus of our cargotecture we could then involve local stakeholders in the development of temporary settlements. This participation process is actually coherent to our P2P ideal. We think that for the self-sustainability of any design process a direct involvement of locals must be achieved.

Plug & Plan urban centers are a system of temporary, removable, and adaptable urban workshops creating the necessary space to allow experts (say architects, planners, region makers, researchers) and non-experts (say NGOs, inhabitants) interaction.
We have called this approach Urbanism 3.0, a new way to deal with urban issues, where trans-disciplinary research and P2P urbanism merge together for the study/planning/developing of urban environments. This conferencing approach is not only intended to be a mode of collaborative design but also a means to restoring a sense of empowerment to the members of the community.

The use of adapted ISO shipping containers -often called 'cargotecture'- for relief shelter is nothing new and has many advantages in the role of emergency relief and transitional shelter. However, we propose to use this technology in a very different way. We propose to use containers as modular elements for the construction of complex multi-storey structures formed of single, pair, triplet and quad side-by-side room sets with a number of additional accessory elements such as stairways, walkways, pergolas, and outdoor decking. These would be combined into larger conjoined complexes serving as neighborhood clusters -microvillages-, freely designed and adapted collaboratively by their own inhabitants in order to approximate some of the character of their original homes and reestablish, in parallel, the same social, commercial, industrial functions of damaged structures under restoration.

The basic module set for our system is composed of the following structural elements;

- Shelter Units: basic 20'x8' finished building units for housing and other uses composed of single-room and multi-room sets with one or both ends fitted with windows or sliding door units.

- Shelter Accessories: special purpose single container modules for pre-finished bathrooms, kitchens, utility systems, staircases, balcony/decks, repositionable friction-stay partitions, rooftop gardens and decks, and the like.

- Open Space Modules: containers modified with no walls used to create outdoor spaces and outdoor structures like gazebos and seating areas interconnected to the shelter modules. Would also be used as open interstitial elements to support raised/cantilevered portions of the shelter structures.

- Special Purpose Modules: concerned mostly with infrastructure systems including solar/wind power, telecommunications, water supply, waste processing (though most dwellings may employ marine incinerating toilets), trash handling, etc. Would also include kiosks for small shops and outdoor cafes and certain health and recreational facilities.

- Industrial Units: simple work-shed variation of the Shelter Units intended for light industrial applications and used for local container modding facilities as well as work facilities for the ongoing restoration work. The free demountability of the structures also means that the initial community design is not set in stone. At any time things that prove less workable or effective than originally anticipated or which must be updated to suit changes in the neighborhood situation, can be changed with minimum disruption to the community. Ultimately, these transitional structures would disappear completely from their sites leaving no trace.

*** This project was submitted to an international open context held in June in Italy and titled “Un’idea per la ricostruzione”. Together with other proposals, it was selected Among 204 participants for a honorable mention.***

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EU URBANISM 2: B O R D E R C I T I E S - Bauhaus Kolleg IX (2007/2008)

16th-18th May 2008

The Bauhaus Kolleg IX focused on border cities in the Baltic Sea region as places where a new Europe is being formed. The Baltic Sea region is one of the "laboratories" where the negotiations for a new Europe have been at their most dynamic since the end of the Cold War. It is one of the most multifaceted and contradictory regions, characterised by inequalities, discontinuities and conflicts, but also by intensive exchange, cross-border cooperation and migration. Here, openness, isolation, dynamic growth, industrial decline, radical free trade experiments, state-directed isolationism, new wealth, new poverty, transnational identities, and a new nationalism come together.

The contradictory mechanisms of European integration are particularly evident on the northern border. As such, the border cities of the Baltic Sea region are testing grounds for the project of Europeisation. How do the incessant exchange processes and migratory movements affect the cities in question? To what extent are new models of European urban life being formed? The Kolleg will base its examination of these issues on three border cities in the Baltic Sea region, which are confronted by the actuality of borders in different ways.

link...

Below the settings of the Urban Art Interventions staged in Tallinn in 2008

# 1		# 2
exploration of the spatial concept of an archipelago of islandswith the two projects Tallinn Retold at the harbour and Porta de Viru at Tammsaare Park discussions with tourists and locals took place about the potential of the spatial structure of Tallinn; people were encouraged to visit different parts of the city and exchange stories about meaningful places;		exploration of areas in transition two very different areas, Rotterman district and Balti Jaam Market, were chosen for integrative projects; while Rotterman is a well designed new urban site with expensive high brands but few social interaction, Balti Jaam Market is a very cheap informal area that is very important for economically less fortunate locals. Our project consisted of building up small market stands where we distributed goods from the contrasting area in exchange for people’s desires. The intent was to get local opinion about what has value in the further development of the city; In a subsequent project in the evening, a projection regarding real estate speculation in Uus Maailm community started a discussion about the topic of future city development and whose city it is to develop;

# 3	#4
activation of abandoned space related to real estate speculation many areas at the harbour are waiting for transformation but seem abandoned at the moment. Through temporary structures installed in the space we wanted to show that a different use of urban space is possible; related projects used these spaces for breakfast and dinner gatherings as well as an area next to Linnahall for a temporary beach;	cross border relations a projection of people going into a pedestrian tunnel was shown at a site in Viimsi where the future tunnel to Helsinki will emerge out of the ground according to current planning; the projection visualized the idea of social connections, beyond purely economic and regionmaking desires for connecting the two border cities.

# 5		# 6
public breakfast The aim was to explore potentials in Tallinn's in-between space.		information kiosks With this  intervention we tried to stimulate visions concerning the local urban space. Printed material was edited to allow people exploring popular as well as forgotten urban areas. We distributed question-postcards to send us back by post.