#269 SIGNIFICANT DETAILS >>>>>>> OPEN CITY

# OPEN CITY As with all tangible things, the products we use every day - as well as the environment we inhabit - are often offered to us in a narrow window that prevents us from seing them as part of a bigger picture. Yet, however beautiful and suggestive the poetic image of the invisible hand of the free market system may be, in practice one of its tangible effects is out alienation from our holistic environment.

Sustainable development may now be a motto, but in modern society the creation of most consumer products has migrated not only from our localities to places away from our cities, but often even farther, to other continents. As a result, the complexity of production -- the complexity of our lives -- seems to have separated us from a simple organic relationship to the physicality of the products we use -- and in general from the visible matter -- as an essential part of the environment we live in.

In cities, even historic covered markets buildings are teared down. An emblematic example being, in the epicenter of Paris, the former Halles and their iconic Baltard's iron structures, famed pulsating heart of the city documented by Atget photographs and Zola's novel, and so on. One among other, culturally significant places dismantled or displaced far away from the cities centers... Many similar markets accross the world's metropolises (London, New York, cities of Eastern Europe...) are indeed threatened by development schemes. Often in order to be replaced by commercial centers, such as, precisely, the «forum des Halles» shoved underground in the very place of the market, but which does not live up to the expectations conveyed by the word «forum», in terms of sociability.

As a further step, one of the answers to our new habits is even to replace traditional shops by vending machines, with all the added values in terms of 24h 7 days/7 accessibility, but quite obviously at the cost of a complete loss of any social interaction...

Some retail projects though, far from the usual and not sustainable supermarket model, have made use of existing abandoned plants, respecting those testimonies to the industrial history of the city. However, how interesting they may be, those enterprises are still based on the economical and societal model of consumer's society...

Some of the pressing questions we are currently faced with then include: "How can we expect people to understand these complexities and be actively involved in them, feel ownership and take responsibility? And does the synthesis of our complexity and alienation find a direct mirror in how we feel about our cities?” [1]

We could not multiply examples, and certainly did not choose the most appealing photographs to illustrate them, but some expressing current issues. Namely, snapshots, or significant details, bearing witness to the ability of sometimes simple ideas to change the face of the city and our daily urban experiences...

Quite obviously, one of the answers resides in architecture. This black (in contrast to the red-brick and white painted adjacent townhouses) single-family but intergenerational house, with some activity/office space at the basement level, is made of simple forms and built for a per square meter price significantly lower than average, in spite of a conception that integrates sustainability (choice of the materials and construction process, and maintenance and energetic issues for years to come.. ).The issues surrounding such an isolated architectural object are of course far from those of a collective housing operation.

A good example of response to community concerns is this larger scale real estate development project, initially implying the erection of up to 6 stories buildings detached from the streetline, in an environment of family houses of 2 stories at most. Those plans prompted argued criticisms by the inhabitants in the vicinity, the project was later amended to create as many units, with the same maximum height, but in a much more contextual fashion. And the promoters eventually admitted that in the redesigning process, some new terraces could be created toward the roofs of the existing houses in compensation for the higher density, and that following the pattern of the streets gave complexity and cachet to the otherwise unspectacular buildings.

This is an isolated intervention, that certainly respectfully rejuvenates the neighbourghood, but then what about the connection beetween areas, and the enhancement of a pleasant and smooth pedestrian mobility in the «legible city» ? Some of the possible approaches to address these questions include a variety of interesting initiatives where design irrigates the city. We do not think here of such concepts "capitals of design" or of venturous and bold design gestures, but of micro scale interventions, when for example the form of the passageway is reinvented in order to gently insert new streams into an existing row of houses. The newly created one, modest in proportion to the neighbouring buildings, is relevant by its usability, the pertinence of its signaletics mixed with an artistic intervention, and moreover, reveals itself at night. Here the implications of the "24 hours city" are adressed by clever lighting design. (double illustration on the following page)

Transforming former plants (or docks warehouses, etc...) into lofts/apartments is nothing new, and widely branded successful developments have changed entire areas of cities, making them some of the most attractive and much coveted, thus not quite affordable anymore.... There is another way for inhabitants to litteraly reclaim parts of the city: sometimes, such as in this beleaguered areas, abandoned plants are first «assaulted» by groups of illicit occupiers, and through a negociation process, it eventually happens that they are able to settle legally in a portion of the building, start its renovation, whereas vast parts of the building remain available for potential activity development.

Such examples are harbingers of new trends towards more empowerment of the inhabitants.

Eventually, the "open design" movement promotes a shift from the traditional passive consumer to an active owner, who is involved in the process of creation, production and adaptation. A design process which is open, where the end product is the result of an iterative process, similar to the software releases in the development of open source software. When we decide to transfer this open design approach to the urban context, can we really become the creators of the open source city ?

Active artistic participation is certainly not limited to the «creative class» depicted by Richard Florida in his 2002 book. Some citizens are engaged in an approach whose aim is to connect people to social issues through artistic expression. Those enterprises include interventions such as painting and drawing on walls, i.e. the creation of so called public murals and the transformation of dustbins.

An interesting example of this idea of creating visible matter in the city as art, in fact of tinkering and creating and making our cities our own is that of the «social creatives». This concept finds expression in projects originated by Faris Basharahil, the founder and Director of, precisely, Social Creatives, a non-profit social enterprise which promotes community art [2]. He calls this kind of work “legal vandalism for a good cause.”

And at this end of our urban wandering, we will borrow our last words to the aforementioned representative of this movement: "We do legal vandalism. A picture speaks a thousand words. A motion is a thousand pictures. An emotion to a thousand motion. What we do is not just to paint but to spread emotions to one another. We hope to make society more colourful both visually and emotionally”. We make us this statement, as one of the many entries to adressing the challenges of the open city...

NOTES # EXTERNAL LINKS:

[1] http://watershed.co.uk/opencity/think-pieces/think-piece-2

[2] http://www.thecity2.org/stories/community-created-street-art

(the quoted example of community created art does not refer to the photographs we took and only serves as a reference, regarding the global project i.e the active artistic & community approach)