masterclass 1: design game in wierden
almere haven is the oldest sub-center of the new town of almere. initially planned for 30.000 inhabitants, today 22.500 people inhabits this town. nowadays, there are plans for expanding the existing city for reaching the original goals, while there is a relatively aged and shrinking population.
can we still apply 20th century top-down planning strategies?
or a responsive design process activated by negotiative agents [designer/inhabitants] can deliver better results?
participants
16 young professionals/students of design, planning and sociology will be based for 5 days in the city theatre of almere. from here they will go out for field research, interviewing almere’s citizens, examining their adaptive behaviours. finally, together with almeerders, they will develop strategies for further growth through an interactive design game: agency 2.0.
self-organizing website
www.theresponsivecity.org is the platform where anyone can publish posts for opinions, related documents, videos and images on responsive design, istanbul and almere’s formal and informal neighbourhoods. there are possibilities for commenting on other posts. on-site collected information will also be shared with a larger community by utilizing open source programs such as google earth, flickr, youtube etc…
participants’ performance will be ascertained by the number of posts and conversations run with other participants, thus interaction is the major parameter.
masters
prof. juval portugali is the author of cutting edge books such as ‘self- organization and the city’ and ‘complex artificial environments’. he is also the founder of the environmental simulation lab at the tel aviv university. for further information on the writings and projects of juval, please click here.
city sociologist prof. arnold reijndorp is a freelance-researcher for more than 15 years. he specializes on the relations between cities and society. he is the author of influential book ‘in search for new public [with maarten hajer]. since 2005 reijndorp is professor of socio-economical and spatial developments of new urban territories at the university of amsterdam.
-ir. ekim tan is a researcher and architect from istanbul, based in rotterdam. her doctoral research at the tudelft focuses on adaptive design systems and theories of self-organization.
the friction between the top-down-ness of design and bottom up responses to it forms the motivation for ekim tan’s work. -she obtained her master degree in architecture at metu and was winner of the national archiprix award. she earned her master degree with honors in urbanism at the tudelft.
dr. murat yalcintan returned to istanbul after finalizing his doctoral degree at london school of economics. at the moment besides teaching at the mimar sinan university he is working in informal neighbourhoods of istanbul together with the ‘solidarity atelier’, a think tank of 170 people among which there are practitioners, academicians and students.
contributers
margie burger [city of delft, inti]
thomas stellmach [maxwan architects and urbanists]
merve bedir [tu delft]
orhan esen [freelance historian, istanbul]
ella von der haide [video artist, germany]
related researchers
jing zhou [tu delft]
simone rots [crimson]
masterclass 2:
self organizing urban agriculture
27 october - 31 october 2008
gulensu, istanbul, turkey
both masterclasses are supported logistically by archined, dysturb, city of almere, tu delft, uva, mimar sinan university and bilgi university.
more information will follow soon…