Life Takeaway. Five actual scenarios for urban public spaces

/ Urbanism /

One of the most important lessons of the pandemic for everyone involved in urban planning is the demand for a new quality of open public spaces. The voids between infrastructure and architecture are a kind of connective tissue not only of the city, but also of human relations: it is a place for meetings and exchange of ideas. If traditionally planners focused their attention on architecture and infrastructure, today the focus of world practices is the scenography of public spaces and methods of their new interpretations.

The townspeople realized that the takeaway principle can be applied not only to lunch, but also to most everyday activities. Let's try to figure out which scenarios of using parks, streets and squares are the best. And how architects and designers can respond to new requests.

 

UX design as the key to mutual understanding

Even Le Corbusier, who dreamed of building a machine city, realized: "The human heart seeks emotions beyond utilitarianism." Everyone who is at least partially concerned with self-presentation consciously and unconsciously perceives the streets and squares as a stage. And that's great, otherwise street fashion and design wouldn't exist in the world, and our interaction with the city would be reduced to the shortest possible journeys between points of origin and destination.

Targ Wenglowa square in Gdańsk, temporarily transformed with the help of a "square constructor" - sets of modular furniture that the townspeople used as they saw fit. Design: Gdyby Group. Photo: © Bogna Kociumbas

Interacting with the city, people also adopt behavioral attitudes dictated by the environment. Settings can be different — marginalized areas often provoke risky behavior, while prosperous streets and friendly design set the mood for creativity. Art objects form a person's creative mood, the presence of sports simulators and treadmills will make you think about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and hammocks suspended in the shade between trees will set you up for relaxation.

The design is designed to tell a person exactly where he is: on the sports field or in the lounge area. At least this relationship between the environment and man was noted by the founders of environmental psychology, Roger Barker and James Gibson. And Donald Norman in his bestsellers "The Design of Common Things" and "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) the Things Around Us" developed the topic, offering ways to optimize the connections between elements of the environment and people.

He explained "on the fingers" how the use of affordances (markers suggesting scenarios of use of a thing or space) models behavior. What we often call intuitive design actually means that the developers have done a good job of letting the item or object tell us how to use it.

Public square in Bogotá, Colombia. Obraestudio's original landscape design, inspired by the wetlands of the Bogotá Savannah, attracts residents and tourists alike. Photo: Jairo Llano

You can lie on the grass, stand on your head, watch how it grows, you can roll cheese from the grassy hills in front of you or roll the skull yourself. Concrete parapets can become anything: a seat, a bed, a work table. Benches are sources of built-in light, and street lamps are supports for climbing plants. Something should hint to us - "it is possible!". At the same time, it is important to leave room for spontaneous actions. People like to improvise and act as screenwriters themselves. Everyone likes to play.

The Karen Blixens Plads square in Copenhagen, reconstructed in 2019 according to the project of the COBE studio. Photo: Rasmus Hjortsnø

It is worth thinking about the existence of internal and cultural blocks. For example, a person from a deep post-Soviet province, having moved to the capital once, may not know that now lawns are increasingly used for recreation by citizens. In this case, the use scenario will be prompted by furniture installed on the grass. Or a sign with a literal explanation that this is a lawn for relaxation.

For buzzers, it's natural for the city to communicate with them through QR codes, but for seniors, traditional navigation and intuitive design are important. And since the excess of verbal navigation - posters, signs, instructions - is also annoying, creates a feeling of lack of freedom and visually overloads the environment, then intuitive design is a priority!

Gaps between infrastructure and architecture are a kind of connective tissue not only of the city, but also of human relations

That is why large design companies today involve UX designers (from user experience — user experience) in the development of concepts, who study what architecture should look like or what the design of public space should be like — embankment, square, street, park. All in order for the people who came here for the first time to get a qualitatively new experience that would bring them pleasure and encourage them to stay or return.

 

New tools: performance design and scenography work

In the early months of the pandemic, when cities practiced bans on people visiting parks and other open public spaces, placemakers even recommended that developers temporarily make public spaces less inviting to prevent overcrowding. But when it became clear that the negative effects of isolation and separation outweighed the risks of transmitting the virus while in the fresh air, these countermeasures softened to requests to avoid close seating by creating distances between outdoor furniture.

Artist Yuri Suzuki demonstrates how you can interact with his Sonic Bloom installation in Mayfair, London. Photo source: thetimes.co.uk

The topic of creating high-quality and successful public spaces, for which William White, the author of the book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces", once coined the term "placemaking", turned out to be completely inexhaustible. And any local or global (like a pandemic) upheaval gives it a new sound.

On the initiative of PPS, Placemaking Week is held annually in various cities of the world — international events that gather specialists in the creation of public spaces. In addition to the lectures, where special attention was paid to practical learning and innovative social activities, the festivals leave behind a legacy of new objects and publics in the cities. In Europe, Placemaking Week Europe has been held since 2017 — in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Valencia. In 2020, the conference was held in an online format, and in October 2021, it was held in Barcelona and was dedicated to the post-Covid reality.

In parallel, hundreds of state or city-scale events are held in different parts of the world, which are supposed to solve both global theoretical tasks and problems of a specific place.

The Markthal is a residential and office building in Rotterdam with a "built-in" market square that is also used for exhibitions and concerts. The project is one of the key examples of the global implemented Market Cities strategy. Architecture and Design: MVRDV. Photo: Daria Scagliola & Stijn Brakkee / MVRDV

The set of tools is also expanding. We have already mentioned UX design, but the Dutch research organization Platform-Scenography proposes to separate scenography into a separate direction of urban design and interdisciplinary practice. At one time, avant-garde artists and futurists made a revolution on the theater stage, creating multivariate scenery with the help of light, symbols, and universal forms. Platform-Scenography suggests using something similar to make urban public spaces more diverse.

People who care about self-presentation unconsciously perceive streets and squares as a stage

Sometimes the architecture of modern architecture - all those multi-layered squares with hills and hidden cavities for bike parking, recreation or children's games, which studios like Cobe, SelgasCano, JKMM Architects and many others like to practice, can seem difficult to an inexperienced or timid viewer. Pop-up installations, theatrical actions, performances, street art are all types of design that can visually suggest different options for spatial practices and non-obvious possibilities of using familiar objects and environments.

A hybrid approach and five elements of success

Enumerating all the possible scenarios programmed by designers for modern hybrid public spaces, they can be reduced to the five most relevant options.

  1. Health and recreation. We wrote about biophilic design and its impact on our health in the article "Total biophilia. The end of the competition between the city and nature?", as well as in many materials devoted to landscape design and landscaping.
  2. Manifestation of public initiatives and corporate social responsibility. Actually, the very process of creating and improving a new public place can become such a manifestation if the citizens are involved in it. And then the space itself offers conditions for gatherings and concerts.
  3. The game is not only for children, but also for adults. And it is not only about the literal integration of playgrounds. Public Play Space is a project that, under the auspices of the Creative Europe program of the European Union, promotes innovative and creative methods of co-designing inclusive, cohesive and sustainable public spaces using games and digital technologies. Open performances, interactive installations can also be considered a game component.
  4. Market. The global strategy of Market Cities - a way to revive the economy, increase urban activity and the attractiveness of places has been gaining popularity in recent years. In part, this resonates with the topic of urban farming, which we have repeatedly covered on the pages of the magazine, but it also deserves a large analytical material in the future.
  5. Representations of art objects. We partially disclosed this topic in the article "Public space as a display» in the 34th volume of PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA.

The pavilion installed in the square of the Spanish city of Logroño as part of the urban festival Concéntrico. Design: sauermartins + Mauricio Méndez. Photo source: arquitecturaviva.com

The end of the era of monofunctionality also affected public design. Today, architects create complex, hybrid public spaces that, like chameleons, adapt to the current task or season. If there is not enough space for architects to create a full-fledged and original public on the ground - this is especially true for dense urban centers - then the remains of old infrastructure are used: bridges, aqueducts, docks, railway lines. Squares become multi-storeyed - they grow up in layers, rise to the roof or go underground. Seasonal and even all-season pontoons descend on the water.

The architecture of small forms can be used as a connecting link for disparate functions and objects

Architecture of small forms - pavilions, installations - can be used not only as self-sufficient elements, but also as a connecting link for different functions and objects. For example, as part of the September urban festival Concéntrico, an original pavilion by sauermartins + Mauricio Méndez studios appeared in the center of the Spanish city of Logroño. It is located on a city square, "populated" with various elements - several types of city furniture, statues, an old tree. The new pavilion organizes this visual chaos. Just two lines — a diagonal and a circle — tie all the separate elements together and create a coherent landmark, significantly changing the perception of the place. People are more likely to remember (include in their cognitive maps) this square thanks to the pavilion.

Under the artificial hills of the public square Karen Blixens Plads in Copenhagen, there is a hidden bicycle parking for 2 places. Project of the COBE studio. Photo: Rasmus Hjortsnø

It would be excessive to try to fill one, even the most spacious park, with every possible feature or infrastructure. Any stadium is a public place, not every public should be a stadium. With age, sports preferences can change, for example, skateboarding remains the prerogative of young people, but cycling is popular among all age groups. Despite the apparent archaic nature of street chess - for us they are an attribute of old Soviet parks - European architects are actively incorporating them into modern landscapes.

For example, the social project Urban Chess in the Netherlands, which started in 2018, led to the appearance of more than two dozen new chess platforms in the squares and parks of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and others. In short, there are many options for integrating the sports function, and the number of square meters is always limited. A survey conducted among local residents will help designers make a choice, and as a result, perhaps instead of unified strength training machines or a football field, the only curling place in the city will appear in the block.

It is important that the space leaves room for spontaneous actions. People like to improvise

In many European countries, public school grounds are, in the literal sense, a public place, which is used during vacations, weekends and evenings as a city-wide infrastructure for sports games, events and parties. Such an approach allows the community, on the one hand, to save significantly on the creation of a separate cultural center, and on the other hand, to invest resources and its initiatives in arranging school spaces. In fairness, it should be noted that this is practiced in small, quiet towns where neighbors know each other. In metropolitan centers with a high flow of transit pedestrians, schools and sometimes universities often limit or meter access to the area for safety reasons.

 

There is no limit to perfection

"For a year and a half of the pandemic, I've been in Manhattan so rarely, and when I do, it's like a sip of strong coffee or energy for me! — says Ukrainian journalist Lidia Pliske, who lives with her family in New York. - I feel him. My eyes light up, a bunch of ideas are born in my head, which I want to immediately run and implement. I can't convey the crazy energy of pre from every intersection of any street with any avenue, from every skyscraper and brownstone, from every yellow cab and coffee shop. How different he is, how controversial, how direct and mysterious, how terribly imperfect!"

Hybrid, multi-functional public space Superklein in Copenhagen, designed by BIG and Superflex. Photo: Ivan Baan

Energy, ideas, impressions and contacts - this is what we all expect from open urban spaces. Ukrainians can envy the public spaces of New York, its creative and stylish POP'S (private-public spaces) and its public parks. But the residents of the American metropolis believe that everything can be much better.

Hybrid public spaces, like chameleons, adapt to the actual task

Urbanists in New York City, where a new mayor will be elected in November, recently held an international brainstorming session on the topic of urban reset. The Institute "Center for the Urban Future" has supplemented the reports of the think tank Re: New York City with 250 ideas for renewing urban policy from progressive architects, designers and visionaries.

Among them is advice from Bjarke Ingels of BIG: "Turn every tenth street in New York into a 'people street'." The Danish architect is convinced that the creation of many lively and pleasant open spaces stimulates the urban economy, taking much less time and resources than large-scale interventions. Bjarke also proposes to close the road over the East River to private vehicles, turning it into a multifunctional embankment for pedestrians and cyclists.

An architectural installation on one of the streets in Logroño, Spain, installed as part of the urban festival Concéntrico. Photo source: arquitecturaviva.com

In general, the consultants agree that initiatives to create public places that are effective in the sense of economic development and the formation of a positive image should be given to private businesses and public initiatives. The municipality can abandon global and expensive projects and play the role of administrator and operator, which creates conditions for developers and activists. Urban planners would do better to concentrate on infrastructural issues and drawing up clear policies. And although Ukraine, with its unique situation in all respects, is least likely to indulge in the cargo cult, such recommendations are worth adding to the local checklist.

 

Overlooking the river

For now, Kyiv is only at the beginning of a long journey of reformatting public spaces. But more and more often, it is public areas that are the backbone of new development projects. And since life near water has a special value, public spaces located on the banks of a river or lake have more chances to be at the top of the success rating. That is why Kyiv developers have been actively developing projects for the development of post-industrial areas along the Dnipro in recent years.

And for the project of the multi-functional quarter "Noviy Podil" on the territory of the former river port in Kyiv, the embankment is one of the main forms and meaning-making spaces. The master plan and concept was developed by Grisha Zotov's Architectural Prescription office, based in Amsterdam, a city where all life is centered on the banks of the canals.

Promenade along the shore of Paprokan Lake in Poland. Design: RS+ Robert Skitek. Photo credit: RS+ Robert Skitek

The architect said that the vision put into the idea of ​​designing the "Novy Podol" embankment became, no matter how strange it sounds, a "post-apocalyptic industrial landscape" - a trendy aesthetic that is in great demand in European cities that seek to distance themselves from the distilled, artificial modernist environment .

"Industrial architecture, concrete, brick, rusty iron - everything is real, alive, with a patina. A city gradually captured by completely wild greenery: field grasses, cereals, vines - this is an associative series that we would like to reproduce. Therefore, calculating the ratio of paving stones and greenery, we allocate a much larger area for landscaping. And we even plan to allocate several plots closer to the ship repair plant for urban farming. Two old rusty cranes, reminiscent of history, remain as anchors that shape the identity of the place. They can be perceived as sculptures. I do not rule out that some other function will appear in the future," said Grisha Zotov.

Grisha Zotov, architect, founder of the architectural bureau Architectural Prescription

The width of the pedestrian (this is essential!) embankment will be 30 m. Architectural Prescription conducted research in European cities, comparing the density and height of buildings with the width of the promenade, which varies from 20 to 60 m. 30 meters is a balanced compromise that will allow the implementation of almost all key scenarios. The main condition is that there are no barriers, the embankment is planned as an open space.

Energy, ideas, impressions and contacts - this is what we all expect from open urban spaces

"You cannot build any MAFs, neither temporary nor permanent. Yes, it will be possible to organize some kind of farmers' market in a pop-up format - from morning to lunch. But nothing is stationary - no restaurant will be able to bring its terrace to the embankment. Commerce, retail, cafes — all this is "sewn" into the active first floors of buildings. In Kyiv, there are enough littered public spaces that are difficult to walk through, such as the Maidan. We are categorically against this. A cultural center will appear in the central part of the promenade, where we want to make an approach to the water. It will be the center of social life there. Perhaps there will be floating pontoons that will be used for events or to install a swimming pool," explains the architect.

Embankment of the new multifunctional quarter "Novy Podil" on the site of the former river port in Kyiv. Architectural Prescription project. Image source: "Novy Podil"

At the westernmost point of the embankment, where the 6-meter retaining wall ends, there is an opportunity to organize a small beach. The wall itself significantly limited the plans of the designers, says Zotov: "Currently, the practical function of this hydrotechnical structure is no longer available. This wall has no meaning, except for the historical one. We would really like to make a terraced embankment with slopes right down to the water. But the height difference turned out to be too great. So we rely on other solutions to bring people closer to the water, including pontoons and some temporary installations.”

The embankment is one of the main form and meaning-making spaces of the new quarter in Kyiv's Podil

The embankment of the new quarter will be fully open to all citizens. While working on the project, Architectural Prescription was based on research and development plans of various parts of Podol, in particular, concepts regarding Kontraktova Square, Valiv, etc. "When we project, we change the focal length several times, look at all of Kyiv, get closer and look at all of Podil, then at our plan. The embankment is intended for the citizens in general, and not only for the residents of the quarter. This is the only place in the whole of Podil, where a full-fledged embankment can be opened - without the noise and stench of cars. Our buildings, like a protective barrier, fence off the block from the Naberezhno-Lugovaya highway, and this is an opportunity to create an absolutely unique atmosphere and its own microclimate," says the architect.

The embankment of the "Novy Podil" quarter will be fully open and accessible to all citizens. Architectural Prescription project. Image source: "Novy Podil"

Social proximity in the age of physical distance

"There is a minimum of activity in poorly equipped urban spaces: people are in a hurry to go home. In a good environment, a different, wider range of human activities is possible," Ian Gale formulated the main criterion of quality spaces in the book "Life among buildings" back in 1971.

Public events in the RYBALSKY residential complex form an active and friendly community. Image source: RYBALSKY

With "poorly arranged" spaces, everything is clear. In the urban play, the antagonist of the successful public is a phantom space. Western urbanists often use this term to denote underused or neglected public spaces in the urban area. And they agree that the main cause of degradation is bad design that lacks attractiveness, safety, and accessibility.

"A wider range of human activities is possible in a good environment," Ian Gale

Life in a big city can in many ways be considered useful in the sense of achieving well-being — here it is easier to realize yourself, build a career, make acquaintances, and earn money. But how many people can call life in Kyiv pleasant in general, outside of its new quarters built according to the principles of modern placemaking? In the same way that a thing endowed solely with functionality does not always give pleasant emotions, an urban environment devoid of the attention of UX designers is not able to form a "sense of place", to become a home or at least a destination.

The courtyards of the RYBALSKY residential complex are a private and public area available to residents of the complex. Image source: RYBALSKY

Underground chambers on Prague's Vltava embankment, once used to store ice, have been converted into art galleries, workshops and cafes in an effort to revitalize the area's social life. Design: Brainwork. Photo: Tomáš Vodnanský

Hanging Pavilion Park on the banks of the Maozhou River in Shenzhen, China. Industrial aesthetics gives the building expressiveness. Architecture and design: TJAD Original Design Studio

The meaning we attach to the concept of "good environment" is subject to annual and daily revision. The range of activities that we would like to do outdoors is also expanding. New ones appear, which Ian Gale did not suspect before. And in addition to numerous scenarios and criteria, there is another integral quality condition, which is perhaps the main one: a friendly atmosphere, that is, an atmosphere of acceptance. It would be naive to claim that its creation depends entirely on design.

How often aesthetically perfect design spaces cause us proper admiration, but do not cause us to want to linger in them. The key influencers of the immersive atmosphere are still the people and the community, which is open to participation.