Architekturzentrum Wien - Hands On Urbanism

Whether in Brazilian Favelas, Turkish Gecekondu, or in Vienna’s Schmelz: For their strategies of self-empowerment, citizens do not need any ideological superstructure. The exhibition "Hands-On Urbanism" at Architekturzentrum Wien from 15 of March till 25 of June 2012 reflects historical and contemporary strategies of city development initiated from citizens. An exhibition-portrait by CastYourArt.

Cities’ official image is usually focused on the consequences of urban planning, the representative and tangible parts of architecture and of the “hard” infrastructure. Urban planners generally focus their work on planning interventions on a big scale, in order to attain qualitative transformations of the urban environment. Therefore the informal city usually tends to stay invisible. In the last years, due to a significant decline of public investment, and unfavourable financial circumstances for this kind of projects, varied citizen’s initiatives on a small scale have been created.

The approach of informal urbanism is mostly based on civic participation as an important element of a city’s design. The citizens as producers of bottom-up urban planning are in contrast to the bottom-down vision of traditional urbanism.

Gardening as an impulse for bottom-up urban development – cultural scientist and curator Elke Krasny has researched and visited improvised urban green spaces worldwide in the last three years. Elke Krasny documented her research in the exhibition “Hands-On Urbanism – 1850 to 2012. The Right to Green” for the Architekturzentrum Vienna. Together with Alexandra Maringer, curator Elke Krasny is responsible for the design of the exhibition, she sees gardening as “a seismographic indicator for crisis” and as a global phenomenon. “Under political, economic and social pressure people devote themselves more to the green spaces and start cultivating their own vegetables.”

The exhibition is dedicated to appropriation of land in urban spaces, to the solutions that citizens come up with autonomously, and in self organization in situations of crisis, and to the bottom-up urbanism they carry out. Under the prime aspect of food supply, self organization and independent agriculture, autonomous appropriation of arable land, and vegetable gardens lead to new forms of solidarity, neighbourliness, and distributive justice. The show gives an overview of self-organized, collective and informal movements, and of the spaces they generate. Little projects can lead to big changes - as illustrated in the show by contemporary and historical examples for bottom-up urbanism from Chicago, Leipzig, Vienna, Bremen, Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Hongkong, Istanbul, Porto Alegre, Havanna or Quito.

The show should also be a thought-provoking impulse for contemporary planners, in order to include urban dwellers more actively in the development of urban green spaces. Questions on the responsibility of architects and planners are posed, about the lessons to be learned from a bottom-up urban history, and how to react to these developments.

In „Hands-on Urbanism“, a hitherto unwritten alternative history is demonstrated, by means of examples like the Gecekondu in Istanbul, the Organopónicos in Cuba but also the Schreber garden plot movement in Vienna with its origins in the war garden plots, self-organization is illustrated – ranging from garbage collection initiatives in Brazilian Favelas to organized resistance to property developers in Hong Kong.

Self-organized urbanism is essential for cities’ survival. In the light of the question whether if new digital media will lead us to a new paradigm of urban renovation, time will show if interaction of the new media with civic participation will enable spaces of self-empowerment. The focusing on concepts like transparency, open processes and free access to information will hopefully lead to a new understanding of a more humane city. (written by Cem Angeli)