laboratory of immediate architectural intervention
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Professor Oren Lieberman
Dean of Faculty – Art and Design
+44 1202 363700
olieberman@aub.ac.uk
Arts University Bournemouth
Wallisdown, Poole
Dorset, BH12 5HH
United Kingdom
aub.ac.uk
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This lecture is telling a story of something that has been going on for the past 20 years in my hometown of Gothenburg, considered a successful example by the politicians of Umeå.
It’s just something about the interventions. It’s so much not the way I usually do things. To just go out and “do stuff”. I know I should but I just keep making excuses for my self not to. It’s like I don’t want to do things unless I know what I’m doing. Like I need to have a bigger plan, or that my interventions in a way should be a part of my investigation in a very obvious way.
And I’m having a hard time to find my project. There is just so much information that hits you once you start observing the city. Umeå is indeed a spectacular place in many aspects. Or perhaps not. Maybe bandwaggons, slogans and assumptions now made facts are what are driving most Swedish cities the size of Umeå. My hometown of Gothenburg is known for it’s almost fundamentalist approach and blind faith in events, tourism and “being on the map” as the driving forces for developing the city. At least whitihn the political elite.
This summer I was in a debate with Catharina Thörn (a professor at the institution of Cultural studies) and she said that it is really problematic once the local politicians start to think of their city as a product that is competing with other products on a market and has to be branded. They adopt the lingo of the market and in the process forgetting that they are actually elected by the people of the city, not the tourist businesses.
Umeå is now heading down the exact same way as Gothenburg did some 10 years ago. Politicians gladly saying yes to any spectacle as long as the words integration, culture and growth are mentioned.
This news feature video says it all.
Well, now back to the project. I really have to start producing.
I have some ideas for what I might want to do for my project this semester.
Interactive platform for city-citizen communication
This is an idea I’ve been having for about half a year. It’s mainly about creating a digital tool/platform/service that could help cities in their dialogue with their citizens. I am picturing it as some kind of three-dimensional blog or forum which allows the users to move through a digital model of the city and access information about the ongoing development, to comment and basically getting involved in the development. It is about making meeting the citizens when they have the time to discuss their city, not only during office hours.
This could very well also be an application for smartphones that combines movement in the actual physical space with additional info and a framework for a more accessible communication between city, citizen, developer, organization etc. to occur. I have been asking around amongst politicians and officials and they all said that it is an interesting project and that it is needed. This could be something to build a career on.
2014
The vide posted above inspired me to do a documentary film on what is going on in Umeå at the moment in the name of Umeå as European capital of culture. A minor detail is that I don’t know how to make film and that I don’t own a camera, but that’s just details. I would probably learn allot about interviewing and collecting and presenting information and different views.
A change of scale
Larger companies driven by quarterly reports are doing their best at rationalizing their organizations, products and even the essence of their very being in to absurdity in the constant pursuit of growth. Shareholders got to have their share, and Umeå is no exception to the rule. The city centre is through the organization Centrumgruppen (an organization that gathers store owners, restaurant owners, real estate owners, well basically anyone who owns something in the city centre) undergoing a transformation in to what more and more resembles one huge shopping mall. The historical buildings are nowadays merely facades housing restaurants and hotels and the city library has even been described as an unwanted and hostile element seen in a commercial perspective, by one of the spokesmen of Centrumgruppen.
A vivid, warm and cosy town is a town to remember. It’s in the city we meet to go shopping, spend a couple of hours together, see a play or a film or eat at a restaurant. Therefore we have a common responsibility to improve and develop the city to make rise of the trade, culture, tourism and economy possible.
-www.umeac.se
The big issue here is that the politicians probably share this vision. If a library isn’t culture, then what is?
I believe that some of this way of perceiving the city can be tracked back to scale and structure. I would like to look at what a different city structure could mean for Umeå. It is not so much about designing buildings as it is about designing conditions for something of a smaller scale to emerge. A more “human scale” as the romantic would put it, but I am (romantic or not) a firm believer that new jobs don’t necessarily have to come in the form of the likes of IKEA setting up shop outside of town. That is just the easy, quick-result way to do it, but in the long run it could perhaps be done in a manner resembling something like this.
So now what to do today and until monday? I should probably focus on finding ways to connect my interventions with what I’m interested in. When I read the above it is a bit scattered, but in some ways I think that it all, in one way or another, is about engaging in dialogue with the city, the citizens, the commercial forces and probably lots of other groups as well.
So to summon up I think today should be about doing interventions that are exploring and trying different ways to engage in a dialogue with the citizens of Umeå. I’ve been doing some stuff on scenarios as well but I’ll just let them rest for now. At least until after the review on Monday.
Today’s questions: How do I address and engage different people/groups in talking about their city. Do people want to be engaged in development issues/affairs/processes. And how do I gather all the information and handle the input?
Oh yeah, I’m also setting up a local chapter for the organization jagvillhabostad.nu. The organization is a network that gives a voice to the 216.000 young people in Sweden who are having a hard time finding somewhere to call home (that is not a third hand black market contract with no security whatsoever). Anyone is welcome to join!
//Martin Livian
Today we met with Olle Forsgren. We met at city hall and talked about architecture, urban development, globalization, Umeå, LiAi and everything in between for almost four hours. I think we all really enjoyed it.
Olle presented two new masterplans for Umeå and Umeå City. They had a lot of good ideas in them but, as Olle said, there is always the matter of convincing the politicians. It was also clear that Umeå just as so many other cities have a problem communicating these visionary strategies and getting feedback. Most people comment way too late down the process and get upset when they find out that their appeals can’t stop a project, only delay it (usually resulting in a lower quality of the realized project). We then gathered back at school to discuss our interventions and how we can help one another. We started making a list of interventions that we want to do and in the coming days we’ll try to make as many as we can. Some will be made together, others individually. We also started making a list of issues and characteristics in Umeå. More on these lists in a group post tomorrow.
Tomorrow it will be raining so I’ll prepare the Urban Olympics intervention and hopefully I’ll be able to arrange the Scenarios exhibited intervention. Good night!
I’m kind of having a hard time just doing stuff a.k.a interventions the way Oren wants us to. I don’t really have an angle on my project and to just go out and make interventions feels a bit mannered. Especially since I have a fever and anyways can’t do nothing but sleep…
But ‘nuff with the whining already. What I’ve come to think of is that Umeå probably functions in quite a different way from most other cities that I’ve spent time in on recent years. On one hand I get the impression that allot of people in Umeå want their city to become more urban. More like Gothenburg, Stockholm or, the present ideal, NYC where all young creative people go with their shiny Macbooks drawn to embark on their personal cruzades to self fullfillment (which I by the way don’t know really what it consists of but I somehow still feel attracted to it anyway). On the other hand I’m beginning to realize that Umeå isn’t about the urban. But what that is I’m not exactly sure. In order to find out I think I must let go of my “urban ideals” and just embrace some kind of Umeå state of mind.
My hypothesis, however, is that people don’t see the city as a place where to meet. I’m being full on prejudice here, but I think most people meet in other places. The city is just another place where to go and do errands/shop etc. just as the external shopping malls. People rather meet in the tracks, at Iksu or other outdoorsy places (full on prejudice). So what I’ve got to do is to find out how and where people actually meet.
My “case” right now is built on the presumption that people don’t really have anywhere to meet spontaniously (especially not in the winter time). Organisations (sports, music, crafts and whatever people do) are important for social interaction, but they are not spontaneous, rather the opposite. This then makes the private home a significant factor when it comes to social activities. A problem however arises when there is a lack of good accommodations that suit the different actual needs of different people. What you get is a sellers market where people are left with no choice but to buy whatever s**t the market lays out in front of them and still forcing you to beg on your bare knees at the bank to get a loan.
What is problematic, or what rather puzzles me, iare the many curious events that seem to happen without anyone really saying that there is something not quite kosher about the way it all goes down. For example the way the Baltic group made the deal with the University to build the Arts campus, and how there is no good land up for sale for private persons to build houses on in combination with how Bostaden are building really shitty and expensive appartements at Öbacka which is probably one of the best sites in town.
This calls for some further investigation…
I should also document and map the conversations I’ve had and will have in the future with different people. Who told me what and so on.
I should also find out who is building what. NCC, PEAB, Skanska?
I also find the Östra station-project somewhat curious. In my point of view it’s an example of an infrastructure project where the new station actually makes it easier for people to crosse the barrier that is made up by the railway and the road. The fact that it closes at 23.00 is just outrageous and it says allot about Umeå. This is also something to investigate further.
//Martin Livian
Umea has a lot of unuseful and in some way dead sites. It makes people consider city as empty and comfortless place, unattractive to be in.
Also for me city is disengage and during this intervention I also wanted to tie some parts in at least artistic sense.
We chose part of Skolgatan street between Vastra Kyrkogatan and Ostra Kyrkogatan – on the one side of is barred parking that makes this place which situated next to the central area really deserted.
Understanding our act as partly (or even fully) illegal we wore protective gloves.
Using materials that we’d found on the site in a trash cabine we started to bind trees and fences. In a half of an hour white and red leads crossed street in many directions and on different heights.
People started to interact with us almost from the very begining. In spite of questions about what we were doing in general we got also demands if we had any documents to do it, was it legal. Some of them wanted to help by reason of regarding our action as something beautiful and interesting.
Fascinating moment for me was when women with go-cart went through our net. Sometimes she needed to incline because leads were quite low. But she was smiling and saying some words to her child about game. I understood that moment of playfulness is very attractive for the inhabitants so other strangers who went through also were gamesome with this situation that appeared in the empty space. Place became alive just in a several minutes. One bicyclist shouted: “It’s beautiful but dangerous!” So I decided to went to the institute and on the way home put some signs for bicyclists. When I came 4 hours later it was totally destroyed.
So now I have some conclusions and questions:
City need to fill gaps with objects or activities.
Citizens are open for new acts and events and respond to the call.
Why do people afraid of doing/creating things that can attract some attention in the city space?
Actually, I don’t think that it was some people who concern to government of the city who broke net so I guess there is no much of fear of management structure or this fear is undue.
/Anna Misharina
At 6 a.m. I’ve tried to forbid the entrance to the Kyrkbron (Church Bridge) for the bicyclists and pedestrians from the left part of the city to the right. I’ve
chosen that direction because in the morning hours traffic was more active. As I understand more work places situated in the central area of the city and
left riverbank is mostly for accomodation. I tied caution tape to left and right fences separating bycicle and pedestrian pathes from the road.
I realised that,
unfortunately, I’m not a really good photo-spy so all the pictures made from the hidden places are not very clear but anyway.
First bicyclist came to the line and looked around if someone’s watching him. When he understood that no one was around he crawled under the tape. After some bicyclist and pedestrians repeated his action. Aproximately in a 15 minutes after period without anyone
going to the bridge one bicyclist was riding the bike on the high speed and just tore the ribbon.
Second try had almost the same scenario excepting moment with person who didn’t break it but just unleashed.
On my opinion, people do not lend themselves to be provoked if they don’t see the full picture – caution tape, workers/machines – and the ribbon is not the real reason to, for example, not to do things they used to do during whole life. Yet the bond of characters and values is strong and “tape = zone of risk” works providing cautious behavior. Also probably such an ignorance attitude was due to the distances between bridges – the only connections over a period when river is not covered with ice.
/Anna Misharina
LiAi 