humanscalecities:

DOING IT DIFFERENTLY

It’s all about creativity and innovative entrepreneurship, pop ups, collaboration and the sometimes seemingly crazy. Doing it Differently looks at a range of creative and innovative solutions to the challenges of urban living. Creativity in all its forms is essential to the healthy evolution of urban environments, particularly when undergoing such rapid change. 

Kylie Legge is a founding Director of Place Partners, a multidisciplinary place making consultancy based in Sydney Australia.   

The Creative Time’s online database contains over 350 projects related to public realm and civic engagement from the last 20 years, categorized by a series of criteria.

Strategy and Tactics in Public Space by a + t is a new interesting catalogue, that collects projects conceived for vacant lots, urban voids and forgotten piazza. Whether the projects are bottom-up approaches or initiatives led by enlightened decision makers, the book shows how urban design and architecture can actually be the tools to build community hubs, tailored to serve flexible uses and functions.

The book includes projects by Basurama, Cascoland and Topotek, featured in Public Design Festival previous editions.

From 2006 to 2009 Platform 21 worked as an incubator for a new concept of design museum in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Applying the principle of learning by doing, Platform 21 presented alternative exhibition formats and promoted a more democratic approach in showcasing design. Curatorial Cooking tells the story of this experience in an open D.I.Y. way, with famous projects like the Repair manifesto, Platform21 = Hacking IKEA, encouraging people to steal these ideas.

The Spontaneous City is an inspiring book by Urhahn Urban Design, claiming the spontaneous and slow development, as an alternative way of thinking the urban strategy in opposition to the traditional large-scale city planning. It argues for a new approach of urban designers and planners, based on the importance of small initiatives with the involvement of local actors and on the principles of fleaxibility to adapt to changes and openness. The book presents a collection of references, from Amsterdam to Rio de Janeiro.

The Right to The City was an exhibition at Tin Sheds Gallery in Sidney (Australia), held in April 2011, whose goal was to present artistic, theoretical and philosophical ideas of reinventing a more socially connected life in our cities.

The book tells this research, collecting the works of artists, activists, planners and architects that are redefining city living by engaging with issues around urban spaces, such as property ownership, sustainability and gentrification.

The Architecture Foundation has just published a book!

Union Street Urban Orchard is a disused site transformed into an urban orchard and community garden during the London Festival of Architecture. The book documents the process by which it was conceived, constructed and used, presenting it as a case study to inspire others to think creatively about how empty spaces in the city can be used.

Public spaces belong to all of us, teenagers included. That’s why they should learn to create and protect them. Watch This Space: Designing, Defending and Sharing Public Spaces by Hadley Dyer encourages young readers to be part of their communities and become involved in both the design and use of public spaces.  

This is Service Design Thinking edited by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider is a toolbox of methods belonging to this discipline, offering also interesting case studies and short articles by various contributors. It can be used by anyone looking for a creative approach to problems: the book is a motivation to start doing things.

My Green City is an interesting catalogue of inspiring ideas for a sustainable and more responsible way of conceiving the urban environment and bringing nature back to our cities: from urban farming initiatives, guerilla gardening, and architectural visions, to furniture, products, and other everyday objects that use plants in a functional or aesthetic way.

And turning over the pages, there are two Public Design Festival’s designers of the previous editions: Arabeschi di Latte and Marieke van der Bruggen with her Public Pie.

a+t has just opened up a new line of editorial research. Strategy Public, the last double issue of the magazine, inaugurates the strategy series. More than 20 works of urban landscaping and public design, all built, are analysed regarding the strategies identified in each one.

With a rich visual selection of projects and methods, Urban Interventions documents the new artistic approach to urban art that is currently making a mark on our contemporary visual language and represents the next generation of artwork to hit public spaces.

Using any and all of the components that make up urban and rural landscapes, these spatial interventions bring art to the street and turn the city into outdoor  laboratory and gallery. Modified traffic signs or swings at bus stops challenge us to rediscover our environment and interact with it in new ways.The book shows the growing connections and interplay of this scene with art, architecture, performance, and installation, from London to New York, from China to Colombia.

Street Furniture by Chris van Uffelen

Street furniture is the secret star of urban outdoor design. Though rarely noticed at first glance, it significantly contributes towards the urban experience. Benches, fountains, street lamps, rubbish bins, post boxes, tourist information signs, bus stops as well as public toilets are items that reoccur in various urban spaces. Just like outstanding monuments and landmarks, they determine the identity of a square, street or town.

Objets urbains - Vivre la ville autrement

Urban Furnitur for a New City Life

With more than 400 objects or international projects, Sophie Barbaux offers a panorama of contemporary design for public space.

Landscape Architecture Europe is the triennial yearbook of European landscape architecture. The book is an observation of the current mindsets and corresponding design approaches in Europe,  and it will be published at the beginning of 2012.

The call for entry is now open.Submitted projects must be designed or realized between 2008 and 2010. All kinds of projects are welcome: gardens, parks, public spaces, rural landscapes, town-planning projects and regional plans.