The topic of this year’s Belgrade International Architecture Week is Public Spaces, where through a series of different programs visitors and lecturers will investigate the content, meaning, the interactive nature and formal values which define urban spaces. Centre for Architecture Belgrade participates in this year’s BINA with three events.

On Friday May 16, in Artget gallery of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade took place the lecture Why public space?, a presentation of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. This prize is a biennial competition that aims to encourage and recognize  the creation, recovery and improvement of public space in the understanding that the state of public space is a clear indicator of the civic and collective health of our cities. The program is organized by the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona (CCCB).

At BINA the European Prize for Urban Public Space was presented by David Bravo Bordas from CCCB and Darko Polić from CAB. The event was moderated by Ivan Kucina.

Among the BINA workshops program,  Milena Zindović from CAB and Katarina Aleksić, informatics teacher, will hold the workshop Women as Belgrade Builders for children of age 10 to 12.  The workshop is scheduled for Thursday May 29 from 10:00to 11:30 am, and of Friday  May 30 from 10:30am to 12:00 pm, in the space of the Center for Promotion of Science in Knez Mihaila Street 5.

The workshop participants will work in groups to explore elements of urban public space using simple Web tools, as well as present their findings in the form of interactive images, interactive timelines and mind maps. Through their work and dialogue with moderators, the children will get acquainted with the history of Belgrade and its public spaces, significance of architecture and urban design in development of the city, as well as with works of our women architects. The workshop will be based on the principles of peer education since the children participating will be helped by their peers from “Branislav Nušić” Primary School, who have already successfully completed similar tasks during the educational project Women as Belgrade Builders.

All children’s work will be published on the project’s blog.

In collaboration and by invitation from Do.Co.Mo.Mo Serbia, Milena Zindović together with Marijom Martinović will guide the BINA walk Banks of Sava River and What Connects Them. On Sunday June 1, starting at 2 pm from Beton Hala, the group will board a boat to travel on the Sava river and talk about its banks, important urban ambiances such as Savamala, the Sava amphitheater and Old Fairground, and buildings such as the “May 25″ sports center, the Belgrade Fair, BIGZ etc.

Milena Zindović of Centre for Architecture Belgrade was invited by lecturers from Tunghai University in Taiwan to participate as a guest critic at the final presentation of the Tunghai architecture summer studio in Rome, which took place end of July in the Cornell AAP studio space in Rome.

The workshop entitled ‘Building the Common Space’ was led by Luca Garofalo of the Roman architecture studio IaN+, and assisted by Tien Ling, lecturer at the architecture department of Tunghai University. 18 students of the Tunghai University from Taiwan attended the workshop, and in groups of two worked on conceptual proposals for a religious space located in either the Roman Forum or the courtyard that houses the visitor’s center, opposite the Forum entrance.

The aim of this short but fruitful workshop was to explore the relationship of architecture and urban heritage through design and function of a religious building, which can as well be seen as public/common space. In the complex and historical Rome, it is a challenge to create a common space which would allow the public, the citizens and the common interests to reclaim the public historical spaces which are today mostly populated by tourist.

The workshop’s final presentation showcased 9 projects, which answered the topis in interesting ways and enriched the discussion on religion, architecture, culture and public space with an Eastern perspective and understanding. Other guest critics were Carmelo Baglivo, co-founder of IaN+, and Juan Carlos Artolozaga, graduate student at Cornell University.

Each year Tunghai University from Taiwan organizes a summer studio in Rome for its students. The students are introduced to roman and Italian history, culture and architecture and, in co-operation with lecturers from Cornell University, participate in an architectural workshop that allows them to creatively express the ideas and inspiration taken from their time in Italy in the form of actual proposals for the city’s urban space.

Student work:

Praying in the wall by Ting-Wei Lee and Ta-Wei Chen

Living pillars by Yu-Ching Huang and Wei-Ting Liu

Praying room beneath the water by Yun-Chu Liang and Po-Chen Wu

Il Segreto Giardino by Tyson Chen and William Chen

Photos: Tien Ling

The project Urban pockets of Belgrade deals with abandoned urban spaces with the aim of including the local community in their improvement and activation based on the principles of sustainable design. With an appropriate intervention these spaces can become part of daily life of local residents and present an important contribution to the overall quality of life in the neighborhood.

Urban pocket  Room with a view in Baba Višnjina street in Belgrade, had its opening in 2011 and covers approximately 1000 m2.   The project’s Investor was the municipality of Vračar, and the project won the Grand Prix of the Third Salon of  Landscape Architecture in 2009. This year it has been nominated for the the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2013.

The design includes a zone of active recreation with fitness equipment, a zone of calm relaxation with seating and a central zone of gathering where the seating sculpture is located. Symbolically, the authors of the Room with a View urban pocket, Vesna Gvozdenov i Jovana Kovačević, both lanscape architects, wanted their intervention to provide a different experience of urban space – to create a room with a different view.

The projects main idea was to encourage residents to acknowledge green areas as extensions to their own living rooms and to transmit the model of behavior from the inside of their home to a public open space, which is just as much part of their everyday life.

The main focal point is the sculpture Room with a View. The structure is inspired by the urban tissue of the Vračar municipality.  The birds are part of the structure, but are emphasized through color and form and simbolize the freedom of movement in a public space. The sculpture provides visual identity and becomes a new meeting place and a landmark. Additionally,  the space is visualy dominated by a graffiti, work of  street artist  Branko Tešević.

The authors of this urban intervention successfully created a space tailored to the users needs, increased the awareness of the public about public space and contemporary art, and above all to promote landscape architecture  as a multidisciplinary field that deals with open public spaces.

Open spaces are the hubs of social and urban life, and should therefore be maintained and improved, housing various activities and different events and processes, rather then be perceived as leftover spaces between the surrounding architecture.

Text and photos: Vesna Gvozdenov

Superkilen urban park by Danish architecture studio BIG, Berlin-based landscape architecture studio TOPOTEK1 and artists group SUPERFLEX from Copenhagen, conceived as a giant exhibition of urban best practice by incorporating everyday objects from more than 60 different cultures, constitutes a rare fusion of architecture, landscape and art.

The kilometer long urban park wedges through the Norrebro area just north of the Copenhagen city center, creating a different yet unifying space in one of the most ethnically diverse and socially challenged neighborhoods in Denmark. The aim of the invited competition initiated by the City of Copenhagen and Realdania Foundation back in 2005 was to create a truly unique urban space with a strong identity on a local and global scale. The 13.4 million euro development started construction in 2009 and opened to the public in June 2012.

Superkilen is divided into three color-coded areas, each with a distinct atmospheric and functional condition: the large and expansive red square which serves as an extension of the adjacent sports hall offering a range of recreational and cultural activities; the black square as the heart of the Superkilen where locals can meet by the Moroccan fountain or a game of chess; and a linear green stretch as a natural meeting place for large-scale sports activities providing vantage points over the surroundings. The three areas form the backdrop to the surrealist collection of global urban diversity of more than 100 objects from 60 cultures which reflect the true nature of the local neighborhood. The objects were selected through an intensive curatorial process in close collaboration with the local population.

“Rather than a public outreach process towards the lowest common denominator or a politically correct post rationalization of preconceived ideas navigated around any potential public resistance – we proposed public participation as the driving force of the design leading towards the maximum freedom of expression. By transforming public procedure into proactive proposition we curated a park for the people by the people – peer to peer design – literally implemented”, says Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of  BIG.

The objects ranging from exercise gear, including muscle beach LA to sewage drains from Israel, palm trees from China and neon signs from Qatar and Russia are all accompanied by a small stainless plate inlaid in the ground describing each of the objects and their origin.

Nanna Gyldholm Moller, project leader from BIG, says: “When our team was invited to propose a project in this neighborhood we realized that we had to do more than just urban design. Rather than plastering the urban area with Danish designs we decided to gather the local intelligence and global experience to create a display of global urban best practice comprising the best that each of the 60 different cultures and countries have to offer when it comes to urban furniture.”

The Copenhagen-based art group Superflex took the public participation further into the extreme by handpicking five groups of people and travelling to the country of their origin to document the process of selection. “Our mission was to find the big picture in the extreme detail of a personal memory or story, which on the surface might appear insignificant, but once hunted down and enlarged became super big. A glass of palestinian soil in a living room in Norrebro serving as a memory of a lost land, enlarged to a small mountain of palestinian soil in the park. A distant Mediterranean flirt in the seventies symbolised by a great iron bull, hunted down and raised on a hill in the park.“, explains the group SUPERFLEX

Throughout the Superkilen red maple, Japanese cherry trees, larix, palm trees from China and Lebanese cedar trees are planted to offer more shade and vegetative interest, augmenting the existing trees. The diversity in tree and plant species complements the diversity of the site furniture. “While the Romantic Gardens of the 19^th Century attempted to give the visitors an exotic experience of the world that was still big and hard to travel around – allowing people to witness a Chinese pagoda or a Greek temple – the Super Park in Copenhagen does the opposite. Rather than perpetuating a perception of Denmark as a mono-ethnic people, the Super Park portrays a true sample of the cultural diversity of contemporary Copenhagen”, explains Martin-Rein Cano from Topotek1.

A bike path runs through the entire park improving the infrastructure locally in the area while integrating it into the broader, citywide context.

Photos and drawings: © Bjarke Ingels Group

Pripreme za Evropsku nagradu za javni gradski prostor za 2012. godinu su započele!

Ovo je odlična prilika da kvalitetno uređen javni gradski prostor vaše sredine konkuriše za ovu prestižnu nagradu Centra za savremenu kulturu Barselone (CCCB).

Kalandar za dodelu nagrade je:

17.10.2011.- 19.01.2012.
Registracija
05.03.2012- 11.04.2012.
Rad žirija
19/20. 04 2012.
Finale rada žirija
29.06.2012.
Dodela nagrada.

Više detalja na: www.publicspace.org.

Upoznavanje sa urbanim tradicijama Tunisa je posebno zanimljivo ako put vodi kroz sela i gradove u unutrašnjosti. Gradovi u priobalnom delu se često ne razlikuju od ostalih mediteranskih gradova, uz jasne osobenosti islamske civilizacije. Znatan je uticaj francuske kolonijalne arhitekture, često su prisutni i ostaci građevina iz rimskog perioda.

Naselja u oazama na rubu, i unutar Sahare su posebna, jer su njihov razvoj uslovili drugačiji kulturni i civilizacijski obrasci. Ipak, impresivan razvoj Tunisa nakon Drugog svetskog rata i urbani modeli savremenog života učinili su da se danas gradovi Tunisa ne razlikuju mnogo od ostalih urbanih naselja globalizovanog sveta.

Festival oblikovanja javnog prostora (Public Design Festival) održava se po treći put u Milanu, u aprilu naredne godine. Cilj održavanja festivala je da istakne izuzetni značaj javnog prostora u razvoju gradova. Gradova u kojima ljudi mogu da žive, a ne samo preživljavaju. Gradova koje čine ljudi i njihovi odnosi.

Upravo je otvoren poziv za prijavu radova za festival. Rok za predaju je kraj januara 2011. godine, a više o samom festivalu i mogućnostima za učestvovanje na zvaničnom sajtu.