Author:

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Alive Architecture

Abstract:

The search for the clean and the perfect in our cities is reflected in the spatial exclusion of certain people, especially those on the margin of society. New immigrants, prostitutes and voyageurs are part of those communities often placed in invaluable districts. The concept of the city with a rich diversity of cultures and social backgrounds becomes increasingly a fairy tale, far from reality.As curator of the 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (2010) Kees Christiaanse revealed the notion of the ‘open city’ where interaction among the polarized society happens through infrastructure. He calls for innovation through design for coexistence as weapons against the tendency of the closeness of the city. Alive Architecture is a project-based research that proposes and implements strategies for encounter of citizens from different backgrounds. Careful analyses of urban districts inhabited by marginalized parts of society are represented in‘mappings’. These readings represent the often missing relation to the ‘other’ and serve as a base to design processes of interaction amid those two different realities. Therefore leftover spaces of public tenancy are reused to provide for new social places in the area. Those ‘city-hacks’ become nodes of a network of use that overlays the existing flux in the streets. Projects are developed through co-design with local experts and inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Fashion-Hacktivist Dr. Otto von Busch uses similar strategies. He addresses the issue of co-design through small, interactive workshops where people engage into the process of making their own skin. The reuse of leftover fabric leads to a new piece of cloth of great value. Thus Otto von Busch is hacking the operating system of fashion and the industrial modes of production. Both types of hacktivism criticize through playful projects the prevailing culture of democratic indifference and consumerism. The role of the designer / architect is redefined as a catalyst for social change.