‘Crossroads 2015. Human cities_challenging the city scale’ is a creative workshop organized by Cité du design for the Human Cities program during the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2015. Focused on the conversion of vacant shops and ground floor premises in the Jacquard district, it will bring together local skateholders, designers and international networks . It will be animated by the Carton Plein association, which occupies B.E.A.U. – the temporary urban action office during the Biennial. Carton Plein leads an atypical study in connection with the planners of the city, partners of the EPASE project – Etablissement Public of Saint-Etienne – in order to imagine collectively different scenarios to initiate new dynamics in the neighbourhood. The aim of the workshop is to try to stimulate the emergence of new services, new ways of investing spaces and new ways of inhabiting and living in them. The keys to get a district moving and to bring life to its streets for cities and towns are in their human capital, creativity and design.
“Crossroads 2015” will show how design tools – such as prototyping, script and visualisation – can help to invent new urbanistic tools where creativity is at the service of innovation in the territories. It will create also a dynamic network between the members of Human Cities and the UNESCO Creative Cities of Design network invited by Saint-Etienne, by a collaborative experimentation.
“Crossroads 2015” is also the gathering moment of the 2 main international workshops of Biennale International Design Saint-Etienne : “Human Cities” and “All Champions-People Olympics”: 2 initiatives focused on collaborative experimentation to make an active, creative, vivid city.
Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano will run two Experiment Labs to involve visitors, citizens and the representatives of the 11 partners to “challenge the city scale”.
The first Experiment Lab will take place at BASE during the exhibition of Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano starting from the design experience of the Masterclass “Temporary Urban Solutions”. Two of the best actions developed by the students and the local associations will be put on place: how to upcycle second hand objects into an urban setting and how to hack abandoned public space with acupunctural playgrounds.
The second Experiment Lab will take place @LaPiana. It will involve all the representative of the 11 partners in several activities in direct contact with the local associations and the public space of La Piana. It will be the chance to get in touch with the theatre, the neighbourhood, to explore the context and to experiment this local urban reality in Milan.
This conference is part of the initiative of Human Cities 2014-2018 program. Organized by the Cité du design, this conference was about the workshop and the idea of Crossroads 2015, part of the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2015 program. It took place on 17 March 2015 from 5 PM until 8 PM at Cité du design , and gathered the international workshops “Human Cities” and “All Champions-People Olympics”, and their relative participants from international networks : Human Cities, UNESCO Creative Cities Network, Living Labs, People Olympics.
Keynote speaker Charles Landry, researcher, inventor of the “Creative Cities” concept was invited to give his expert point of you on these initiatives using design to make a more active and human creative cities. European Commission expert Marc-Hector Vanderhaegen introduced the Creative Europe Program, framework of Human Cities 2014-2018 project.
With State of the Art as its first theme, Human Cities: Challenging the City Scale aims to set up a common ground in tackling the issue of how people challenge the urban scale and flow in Europe today.”
The Human Cities partnership is currently reviewing different case studies that contribute to rethinking and reactivating public space in contemporary European cities. With a bottom-up approach – projects initiated and run by the civic society groups – these case studies describe and explain how people organise themselves in specific territories, to question local issues and to see how ideas evolve (or not) out of these environments to influence the city on multiple levels.
During the Milan Design Week, Human Cities presents “Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano”, an interactive exhibition in a 500 sqm space at BASE Milano (Via Bergognone 34, Milano) during the Milan Design Week, April 12th-17th 2016.
The event is the first stage of a traveling exhibition across Europe: in the next 3 years, all the partners will exhibit the work in progress of the research. This is a wandering path, an itinerant circus sets up in the partners cities to show how they are “challenging the city scale”, like a continuous experience in different places and contexts where everything is connected to compose the story of all the experiences .
It will be an itinerary, a path throughout Europe, a way to tell how we are “challenging the scale”. A wandering circus to be settled in the partners cities.
The Circus will be the main concept of the exhibition: as a continuous experience place by place and as a suspension like an acrobat in, a place without space-time. The exhibition during Human Cities Challenging the city Scale/Milano will be focused on the equilibrium inside the circus where everything is connected to create a story of all the experiences together.
During the exhibition there will be an on-going Experiment Lab where people could interact and activate the space. The exhibition and the Experiment Lab are results of an active design experience between Politecnico di Milano – Design Department and School of Design, with “Atir Ringhiera” theatre in Milan and 11 local associations around “La Piana”, a square of 6000 sqm in front of the theatre. This design experience took place during the Masterclass “Temporary Urban Solutions”, where 62 international students from more than 10 different countries worked for 5 months to develop spaces and services which could reactivate “La Piana”.
“Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano” will host the College of Design and Innovation of Tongji University – Shanghai, showing the research projects done in an extra-european urban contexts and in collaboration with local organizations: the street food trend, “Open Your Space” involving the Siping Lu’s community, “Design Harvest” in Chongming Island, the biomimicry, the community FabLab(s).
Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano will host the Human Cities annual meeting involving more than 30 participants from the 11 partners.
The meeting will be an opportunity to share how the European cities involved in the programme, are activating public spaces, to schedule the future steps, to promote the activities of the network through a seminar, to deep dive into the Experiment lab at “La Piana” and to visit key public places in Milan.
PROGRAMME:
April 12th-17th//HUMAN CITIES EXHIBITION/ MILANO
BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
April 13th//ANNUAL HUMAN CITIES PARTNERS MEETING
13.00-18.30 in Politecnico di Milano – Bovisa campus, via Candiani 72, Milano
April 14th//LAB
10.00-11.00 Visit to exhibition + Experiment Lab @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
11.00-12.30 Human cities Seminar @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
12.30 Exhibition Opening @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
13.30 Bike tour to La Piana (Teatro Ringhiera ATIR), Via Boifava 17, 20142, Milano
14.30-18.00 Experiment Lab @La Piana (Teatro Ringhiera ATIR), Via Boifava 17, 20142, Milano
18.00 Bike tour to BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
18.30 Event at Triennale Exhibition @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
April 15th//TOUR
9.30-13.00 New Public spaces in Milan: guided tour
13.00-14.00 Lunch and end of the activities
