Project Brief

Summary

In this studio course students will design a comprehensive vision for the future system of indoors and outdoors playgrounds for newly invented games in the space of abandoned Brewery Schade (1833-1990) in the center of Dessau, and probe their ideas by prototyping a variety of outcomes, from game innovations to public art, from ephemeral installations to reconstruction of historical heritage, and from landscape design to new buildings.

Reasoning

The studies of play have resulted in a range of definitions. In this course a more design-centric definition of the concept will be used, one that connects play to the complex, systemic, and democratic features of urban space. For the design purposes, play is defined as free movement within a more rigid structure of the city. Creating situations of interaction that transform urban space through play is a critical position assumed in this project. When play does occur, it can overflow the existent context in which it is taking place, generating emergent, unpredictable results: sometimes, in fact, the force of play is so powerful that it can change social hierarchy itself.

Subsequently there is no single definition of urban space that can account for all its complexity. In this course urban space is defined as a dynamic system composed of material artifacts (anything from cell phones to cars to buildings), immaterial stimuli (sound, smell, taste, light, and color), human beings (constituents of all kinds, both producers and consumers) and social relationships (formed by public policy, cultural patterns, and ideologies). Urban space is also asserted as a communication environment defined by ensembles of interactions between people, between people and material/immaterial artifacts, and between material/ immaterial forms. Finally, in opposition to the conventional understanding of urban space as an open (almost left-over) and empty space (in cities commonly between buildings), it is considered  as indeed a loaded, dynamic environment that works as a site of permanent interactions between the manifestations of citizens’ privacy and publicity. When thinking about citizens it is important to remember that people do not only react to an environment, but they also act through an environment; thus urban space understood in this way may be seen as a critical instrument of citizens as they strive to have an impact on the ways in which their public and private lives unfold.

Dessau has many abandoned spaces that could be bring back to life by citizens´ engagements. However, these engagements face diverse barriers that make difficult to develop and manage a project in urban space even when the space is unused. The main problems are legal ones, security issues, social obedience and lack of resources, which are usually due to the obsolete communication channels between citizens and the city’s authorities. This project seeks to reintegrate citizens and their city by installing a system of newly invented games that will inspire citizens to engage in reusing their urban space. By mediating between citizens’ curiosity and urge to play and the rigid environment that is not offering much of a challenge, Urban Playground develops opportunities for a new cycle of economic, social and cultural exchange. From these exchanges city could establish what is known as autonomous cultural identity, a collective value based on individual responsibility.

Goals

Promote synergies between citizens and urban space that enforce citizens’ engagement in urban redevelopment through play.

Activities

In order to provide coherence and continuity to the class, three specific methodological phases will be followed through semester:

Observation and Notification - the research will start with identification of urban space in order to establish provisional taxonomy of its attributes. Each student will choose his/her own point of view focusing on serial of accidental situations that are unfolding in-between different elements of the space. Sketches and notes will be taken to signify accidents collected at different times during day-time and night-time.

Mapping and Archiving - notified situations will be mapped and organized as keynotes following space-time model which implies four dimensional systems of relations among citizens, their behaviours and built environment.

Programming and Designing- original technique will be used to conceptualize playground space for invented games. This technique is applying three complementary steps: in the first step keynotes are translated into 3D programmatic diagram, in the second step programmatic diagram is translated into 3D spatial diagram and in the third step spatial diagram is translated into the architecture scheme.