#zurbs

A walk in your words - Listening to year 2052. audio walk 

At the conference "Planning 2052" zURBS invited architects, planners, artists and citizens to go on a performative audio walk through East London. Here they listed to the future, who guided them through its current beginnings, as well as the hopes, fears and visions that people have for what is to come.

The tour was based on a series of open and invited workshops and interviews held on site and carried out by Nina Lund Westerdahl and Cecilie Sachs Olsen.

“What will urban planning be like in 2052? This one-day conference [brought ] together policy makers, researchers and practitioners to envisage the role of urban planning in the future.

Planning for the profound political and social shifts that the future requires can feel intractable and overwhelming. Everyday realities makes it difficult to look beyond the rhythm of political cycles and yet it is critical that we do.

By taking a step away from our immediate constraints, this conference envisages government’s role in city design in 2052. What will a culture, in which regenerative ecosystems, circular economies, and human flourishing are core pillars of a new economy, mean for policy making and urbanism?

By brokering relationships between artists, creative practitioners and policy makers and extrapolating from bold urban planning initiatives, we will collectively engender a hopeful and practical conversation about the future role of policy in tomorrow’s economy.

Planning 2052 is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale and programmed in partnership with the Architecture Foundation, Royal Holloway University, The British Academy and Rich Mix.” https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/events/planning-2052

Concept, sound edit and workshops made by Nina Lund Westerdahl and Cecilie Sachs Olsen.

A group of city researchers from the future travel back in time to see how it really was in Arendal in the year 2018.

Participants was invited to join the future city researchers on a playful and poetic exploration through Arendal's streets. With headphones on, the city's present times are explored through retrospects from the future. The walk in the city streets took you to various parts of the city, to shopping centers and parking garages, and to old and new harbor areas. Along the way, the tour offered meetings with the city's population, and with politicians, town planners and property developers. How do future city researchers experience a Norwegian small town in 2018? And how do we experience the future of the city in our time?

zURBS (NLW and Ceciie Sachs Olsen)in collaboration with Oslo Architecture Trienale

Here’s some funny impressions from participants (in Norwegian):

https://www.facebook.com/Oslotriennale/videos/1728632987247978/

https://www.facebook.com/Oslotriennale/videos/1728633380581272/

Participatory approaches to urban development has come a long way in providing frameworks that enable people to voice their opinions and to speak up in relation to urban issues. Nevertheless, residents often complain that their voices are not being heard.

While practically all the attention is paid to speaking, the aspect of listening has gained far less attention. Failing to listen, we fail to learn, and we damage our relationship with others. The feeling of not being heard increases the perceived distance between those who plan and administer the city and those who live in and use it, resulting in a lack of public trust.

To emphasise the importance of listening for creating shared understandings and ways of working in and with public space, zURBS develops a co-created audio-walk, providing transformative and multi-vocal listening experience in which different users of public space can listen with each other and public space in new and expansive ways.

How is public space in Kreis 1 imagined, perceived, used, discussed, controlled and planned? How can we provide a space for different ideas and perspectives on public space to be shared and understood across various differences and disagreements? How can we bring together institutional powers of the city (e.g. planners and policy makers) and citizens in civil society (e.g. local communities) to collectively imagine a more expansive use of public space in Kreis 1?

In April-May 2018, zURBS invites users of public space in Zurich to address these questions through a series of events, each providing a platform for different urban stakeholders to engage in a distinct practice of speaking and listening.The audio-walk will be developed from audio material recorded and gathered through these events.

Audio walk, Thursday 21/9- 2017, 11:15 – 13:00

zURBS invited on an audio tour with a unique possibility to  experience how radical urban visions and plans have materialized and developed in some of the many possible futures. We explored the movement, the dreams, the absurdities and certainties of what some people call reality.

Contrary to urban planning strategies that attempts to control the future through plans that are tied to the present in terms of fact production, risk management and control policies, these materialized futures are based on the unexpected, the unplanned and -certainly- the uncertain aspects of Sydhavnen today.

The tour were not just about exploring different futures, but was about bringing these possible futures “back” to work on the present, to inspire action and new forms of urban planning and development today. zURBS’ project invites and encourages you to imagine urban planning and development not as they are, but as they possibly might be.

Guided tours by zURBS with a series of small instant exercises. 

Jetzt ist das Gestern von Morgen - Zeitkapsel 2015

6am.04.SEP – 6am.05.SEP 2015   Performance in der Europaallee , Zürich 7.NOV - 16.DEC 2015 / Exhibition, SB Gallerie, Europaallee , Zürich.

Trailer for Invisible Zürichs,