Artistic interventions for urban innovation: Comparing new forms of engagement in public space by two local initiatives

This article looks at artistic interventions as impulses for urban innovation. It investigates their ability to create the conditions for new forms of engagement, influence, rethink or enable new kinds of cooperation or experimental ideas to approach the urban context. Two examples are examined, focusing on their production and the emergence of new roles at the intersections of disciplines or in processes of co-creation. The architects and designers involved in this process become “intermediate actors”. Their doing shifts from creating spaces to creating experiences and new public interfaces where city-making and social engagement is re-imagined, discussed and tested. The artistic interventions selected show new formats established in or at the intersection with public space. As catalysts for transformation processes they contribute to an urban and cultural knowledge creation and address a shift of focus in approaches towards an urban context

Baltic Lab: Creative platform on cities and territories in the Baltic States

Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, the capitals of the three Baltic States, have become vibrant places for culture, economy, and also for politics. Digital innovation, cultural creativity, open and independent thinking are enhancing communities, projects, and networks in the region and in Europe. With BALTIC LAB, we aim to ask for the role of architecture and urbanism for sustainable development in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Curiosity is directed to the three metropolises, their perspectives and their interaction—and to the interaction with the territory of metropolitan margins, seaside, and inland towns and villages in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Design-led Resilience Pathways for Places beyond Metropolis

Climate change will turn how we understand, feel, and design cities. Cities are the stage and a key actor to imagine and realise a resilient present how we live and work together. The aim to transform Europe into the first climate-neutral continent will need inventive design for living spaces—that combines technology with arts, and that enhances new economic and social opportunities. The initiative New European Bauhaus calls urbanism and architecture to link, combine, and accelerate with other disciplines, other creatives, and with active citizens to set up a cultural project for Europe as part of the Green Deal. The creative research exercise of NEW BAUHAUS CITY responds to this call through setting cities at the core—as places where a multitude of phenomena occur at the same time, where people, space, flows, and ideas interact, where new quality of life can be imagined and achieved

City Makers: A New Paradigm for Urbanism

Looking at the emblematic photography by Mau- ro Masera of 1960 that sets the freshly produced Sanluca chair on stage in the arcades of San Luca in Bologna, we experience a flash-back to the inventiveness and energy of the Italian design in the 1960ies. The approach of City Makers responds to a so- cial, economic and cultural move towards re-es- tablishing materiality in the age of digitalisation. With the project City Makers we develop two—as 9 will be shown—strongly interlinked lines of re- search: firsthand, the question of place and space as stage and source of the new creative and pro- ductive urban paradigm of making. And secondly, the question of the influence of a maker paradigm to the concepts and ways to work on the positive transformation of city and territory

The Matter of Future Heritage

In 2018, for the first time, the University of Bologna’s Board of PhD in Architecture and Design Culture assigned second-year PhD students the task of developing and managing an international conference and publishing its works. The organisers of the first edition of this initiative – Giacomo Corda, Pamela Lama, Viviana Lorenzo, Sara Maldina, Lia Marchi, Martina Massari and Giulia Custodi – have chosen to leverage the solid relationship between the Department of Architecture and the Municipality of Bologna to publish a call having to do with the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, in which the Municipality was involved. The theme chosen for the call, The Matter of Future Heritage, set itself the ambitious goal of questioning the future of a field of research – Cultural Heritage (CH) – that is constantly being  redefined. A work that was made particularly complex in Europe by the development of the H2020 programme, where the topic entered, surprisingly, not as a protagonist but rather as an articulation of other subjects that in the vision of the programme seemed evidently more urgent and, one might say, dominant. The resulting tensions have been considerable and with both negative and positive implications, all the more evident if we refer to the issues that are closest to us namely the city and the landscape

Cooperative architecture: creative and social design modes as urban practice

Directing towards future modes for architectural design in existing urban contexts, the concept of cooperative architecture is defined, looking not only at future urban spaces lived, used and designed in cooperation, but also the representation, understanding and communication of space as well as ways of working at the intersection with other disciplines. To start the discussion three reference projects were examined, showing the complexity of their social and spatial relations as a curated exhibition thought as format for exchange and discussion. Highlighting the spatial qualities, atmosphere and cultural capacity of the cooperative architectures understood as lived spaces, qualitative research methods and an inventive exploration helped to bring together the collected material and try a first categorization. Curation in this sense is used as a research tool to experiment and reflect, positioning the act of researching in a changing and interdisciplinary context that opts towards a future process of architecture and urban design as creative and social attitude.Peer Reviewe

Cooperative Architecture. Lo spazio urbano come mezzo e strumento per condividere narrazioni

Understanding the already existing space as socio-cultural dimension, cultural capacity and atmosphere that can be approached in many different ways, is connected to the idea of using space as a medium that opens up discussions, fosters social connections and is able to reveal socio-political contexts, cooperative processes of planning, production and change, questions of everydaylife, the  design and use of space throughout the past and visions towards the future of our cities. Changing the perspective on space and using it as a medium and tool for knowledge creation is addressed through the concept of cooperative architecture.This concept rethinks and reactivates the architectural and urban design discipline as social, creative and common practice as well as it defines new roles within the discipline and at the intersection with other disciplines.Comprendere lo spazio già esistente come dimensione socio-culturale, capacità culturale e atmosfera che possono essere avvicinate in molti modi diversi, è connesso all'idea di utilizzare lo spazio come mezzo che apre discussioni, favorisce connessioni sociali ed è in grado di rivelare contesti politici, processi cooperativi di pianificazione, produzione e cambiamento, questioni di vita quotidiana, progettazione e fruizione dello spazio nel passato e visioni verso il futuro delle nostre città. Cambiare la prospettiva sullo spazio e utilizzarlo come mezzo e strumento per la creazione di conoscenza è affrontato attraverso il concetto di architettura cooperativa, che ripensa e riattiva la disciplina del progetto architettonico e urbano come pratica sociale, creativa e comune, oltre a definire nuovi ruoli all'interno della disciplina e all'incrocio con altre discipline

The Matter of Future Heritage

In 2018, for the first time, the University of Bologna\u2019s Board of PhD in Architecture and Design Culture assigned second-year PhD students the task of developing and managing an international conference and publishing its works. The organisers of the first edition of this initiative \u2013 Giacomo Corda, Pamela Lama, Viviana Lorenzo, Sara Maldina, Lia Marchi, Martina Massari and Giulia Custodi \u2013 have chosen to leverage the solid relationship between the Department of Architecture and the Municipality of Bologna to publish a call having to do with the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, in which the Municipality was involved. The theme chosen for the call, The Matter of Future Heritage, set itself the ambitious goal of questioning the future of a field of research \u2013 Cultural Heritage (CH) \u2013 that is constantly being redefined. A work that was made particularly complex in Europe by the development of the H2020 programme, where the topic entered, surprisingly, not as a protagonist but rather as an articulation of other subjects that in the vision of the programme seemed evidently more urgent and, one might say, dominant. The resulting tensions have been considerable and with both negative and positive implications, all the more evident if we refer to the issues that are closest to us namely the city and the landscap