Lectures

Rock, Paper, Scissors: Cultures of Resilience
Monday 12 February, 10:30-11:30
KdG, Campus Zuid, Brusselstraat 45, 2018 Antwerp / Aula Parein

Drawing on experience of diverse material and socio-political practices, this lecture will present a list of themes to explore and test the term 'resilience' and discuss what skills, thoughts, and positions we as designers, professionals and citizens might contribute in order to develop cultures of resilience in our locale.

Making NYC Risk Landscape
Tuesday 13 February, 12:30-13:00
UAntwerp, campus Mutsaard, aula K1.6 (Dieperik)

In 2015, we worked with NYC Planning and the Office of Emergency Management to develop a publication called NYC Risk Landscape, which was the first hazard mitigation guide to be published by a city planning agency. Our lecture will discuss the process of developing the guide and working with city agencies to tackle the challenges of climate change.

Urban Prototyping: when tactical urbanism meets the third teacher concept to improve learning processes
Wednesday 14 February, 19:00
UAntwerp, Campus Mutsaard, aula K1.6 (Dieperik)

‘If you really want to shift a culture, it’s two things: its habits and its habitats – the habits of mind, and the physical environment in which people operate.’ Ken Robinson¹

Thinking about new ways of teaching urbanism is essential to meet the demands of today's cities. We know that, in order to truly transform public spaces into places of exchange and coexistence, we need collective efforts. Simultaneously, in formal and informal learning organizations, we identify a deep desire to transform the traditional teaching and learning habits, with studio based learning and collective processes.

But how can we get there? We truly believe that our commitment in our own urban environment can teach us the way to reach this goal. As Loris Malaguzzi said:

‘There are three teachers for children: adults, other children, and their physical environment. The environment is the third teacher.’²

In the 1970s, the psychologist Loris Malaguzzi explored, in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, this idea that the environment is a central element of the teaching process. His pedagogical approach, known as 'third teacher', was developed for all the public day-care centers of this city of 160.000 inhabitants. The success of this approach was meanly spread in the Anglo-Saxon world where many schools are now following these principles.

Because we believe that the true learning process arises from direct contact with the problem, its actors and its specificities, we took the concept of the ‘third teacher’ even further and explore the urban environment as a teacher who can teach us how to build cities.

In this case, learning would be encouraged by the physical experimentation of the space, using the Urban Prototyping methodology, both for concrete interventions, and for learning processes with students.

This was what happened in Recife (Brazil) in 2016, for a section of an urban requalification project at the riverbanks of the Capibaribe. This work was conducted by a research team of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the INCITI - Research and Innovation for the Cities, in partnership with the city hall. The two coordinators of this research team are co-founders of the En Commun association.

The experiment began with a three-days in-situ residence that had, as first objective, to reveal the main problems of this specific space and to associate its different actors. Afterwards, during four months, twenty-two collaborative workshops of two types were released: training workshops and public space occupation.

With the training workshops, the idea was mainly to address the informal traders - object of numerous conflicts -, to integrate them in a process of organization and formalization. With the public space occupation workshops, the main objective was to encourage the involvement of the residents. This cycle of participative process was finalized with a two weeks urban prototyping workshop. The ephemeral urban construction on 1:1 scale allowed the INCITI team to test the project: verify the feasibility of the proposal and see if it responded to the problems, and did not generate new conflicts³. All steps were coordinated by INCITI's "practitioner-researchers", realized by dozens of students and DIY experts, and supported by technicians of the city Hall and local inhabitants.

From this case study we want to discuss, in this keynote, the tactical urbanism approach through the eyes of the 'third teacher' and describe and understand how the urban prototyping method can contribute to improve the learning process of urban planners and architects.

The content of this contribution has been presented for the first time in 2017 at the Architecture Connects International peer reviewed conference of the association of architectural educators⁴.

¹ Cannon Design, VS Furniture and Bruce Mau Design, The Third Teacher: A collaborative project, (New York: Abrams, 2010), p. 58.
² C. Edwards, L. Gandini, and G. Forman, I cento linguaggi dei bambini. L’approccio di Reggio Emilia all’educazione dell’infanzia (Junior, 2010).
³ Romain Gallart, Julien Ineichen, L’activation: une stratégie de coconstruction du projet urbain? (Paris: GIS Democratie et Participation, 2017).
⁴ Romain Gallart, Ursula Troncoso, Julien Ineichen, Urban Prototyping: when tactical urbanism meets the third teacher concept to improve learning processes. (Oxford: Architecture Connects, aae conference, 2017)

KOSMOS/CHAOS
Thursday 15 February, 12:30-13:00
UAntwerp, Campus Mutsaard, aula K1.6 (Dieperik)

Lecture, describing the work of KOSMOS, our research projects and inspiration. The focus will be done on temporary architecture, infrastructures and public shared spaces.