a network of independent urban initiatives in South Eastern Europe

In cooperation with local initiatives launched by architects, planners, artists, urbanists, sociologists and other professionals engaged in the process of improving various political and social dimensions of the urban environment, Archis Interventions intends to establish a network in South Eastern Europe (SEE) and thereby to foster the exchange of knowledge and best practices, to integrate the issues discussed in international discourse on urbanism, and to support local initiatives.

The task of creating a sustainable urban environment and maintaining architectural values cannot be left entirely to local authorities and international organisations: civic society stakeholders also have a crucial role to play. Artistic interventions, political lobby groups and independent initiatives launched by architects and urbanists have already redrawn the boundaries of urban development: sustainable concepts from and for the community are now irrevocably on the political agenda. By mediating between the private and public spheres in support of concrete development proposals, the Archis SEE Network intends to build on what has been achieved to date and help take grass-root demands from the drawing board through to completion.

The Archis SEE network was initiated by Kai Vöckler, on behalf of Archis, in cooperation with Srdjan Jovanović Weiss in 2008. The Archis SEE network will be extended in 2009 to other parts of South Eastern Europe. Several initiatives in Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria have already been invited to join the network. In addition, the network is seeking to incorporate other initiatives from the Western Balkans.

Information about future activities will be available on seenetwork.org

Supported by ERSTE Stiftung.

ARCHIS in cooperation with Abitare, Netherlands Architecture Institute and the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Tech are holding an RSVP event in Warren, MI, February 20-22, 2009 focused on finding pragmatic answers to how we can move from crisis to project within the current real estate crisis. The upcoming RSVP event will focus on the communities in the City of Warren with the highest rates of foreclosure. Participants will explore approaches to residential housing in an attempt to move beyond merely stabilizing our neighborhoods and toward rethinking our vision for them and creating the next generation of suburban development. This event is hosted by the City of Warren and Macomb County and generously sponsored by the Michigan State Housing Development (MSHDA).

The 3-day event has the potential to infuse new energy into a very difficult situation.  I hope you will be able to join us sometime throughout the weekend, please see the schedule below for details. As space is limited, please rsvp to tonimoceri@gmail.com stating which part of the weekend’s events you will be participating in. Also note that Friday’s bus tour has a limited capacity of 25 people so rsvp as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

Be sure to stop by Kuhnhenn Brewery Saturday night to meet our international guests more casually.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20   
Introductions, Presentations and Tour of the City of Warren, 9a.m. – 5p.m.
Location: Warren City Center, One City Square, Warren, Michigan 48093

9:00a.m. – 9:30a.m. Welcome and Introductions (Mayor Fouts, City of Warren)
10:00a.m – 12p.m. Contextual Presentations (25 min presentation and 15 min for questions)
-    Warren Demographics and Overview / Development of Macomb County
-    Residential Housing Market  (Builder’s Association)
-    Regional Forecast (SEMCOG)

12p.m. – 1:00p.m. Lunch

1:30p.m. – 3:30p.m. Community Bus Tour, capacity 25 people (Guides: Gina Cavaliere and Rose Furlong, City of Warren)
-    Includes stop at Warren Community Center and presentation by the Warren Historical Society
3:45p.m. – 5:00p.m. Contextual Presentations 25 min presentation and 15 min for questions)
-    Suburban Development (Lawrence Tech)
-    Use of history and language in development of metro Detroit (TBD)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21
Public Forum, 4p.m. – 8p.m.
Location: Winnick Homes, Heritage Village, 29112 Heritage Pkwy, Warren, Michigan 48092

-    Presentations on scenarios for dealing with housing and the real estate crisis (Alexander D’Hooghe, Ole Bouman, Arjen Oosterman and Lucia Tozzi).  The presentations will be followed by an open forum to discuss and exchange ideas about the scenarios focusing what is most suitable for locations in Warren.
-    Light dinner provided

Welcome Party/ Networking, 9p.m. – 1a.m.
Location: Kuhnhenn Brewery, 5919 Chicago Rd, Warren, Michigan 48092

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22
Workshop, 12a.m. – 4p.m.
Location: Conference Room B, Warren Community Center, 5460 Arden, Warren, Michigan 48092

-    Workshop to develop proposals based on scenarios from Saturday’s event, open to anyone interested in participating. The outcomes will be discussed at the end of the day.
-    Light refreshments provided

2nd Workshop
Beirut, Lebanon, 1 – 8 February 2009

BEIRUT: Walk its streets, visit its hip quarters, check the destroyed but completely resurrected city centre, talk to the armed soldiers at the street corners, listen to the old and not-so-old war stories from the cab driver, explore its old, new and upcoming neighborhoods. Only a few cities in the world offer so many layers of hidden meaning as Beirut does. In the public realm of this town there seems to be merely suggestion, projection and differences of opinion that somehow interact with peoples daily movements and actions.

Participate in the BEYROUTES guide project organized by Studio Beirut, Partizan Publik, Pearl and Archis. A project that enables you to go beyond an exotic visit to the people, buildings and places of Beirut, and to get engaged: in its past, present and future. To produce a guide that provokes to construct your own anecdotes, actions and architecture of the city.

Do you want to contribute in writing, drawing, research, photography or design:

Sign up now for the 2nd RESEARCH workshop at ranije[at]yahoo[dot]com

You can also join and keep up to date with this event on Facebook

Macomb County, U.S.A - February 2009 – with Abitare and NAI

Macomb County, one of the suburban counties surrounding Detroit, is currently undergoing a process similar to the economic devastation that the Motor City has been experiencing over the last 40 years. Tax foreclosures, social fragmentation, budget crisis at every level of government, the fragility of the auto industry and a dearth of leadership have intersected to create a growing state of emergency. The current real estate crisis is hitting homeowners in Macomb County hard.

In the USA and beyond there is a desperate need to reframe the issues at stake in a creative and sustainable way. Which truths are becoming evident? Are we seeing the end of natural order of Suburbia?

VOLUME 9 ‘Suburbia After the Crisis’ proposed a three-way approach: 1. redefine urgency, 2. organize communality and 3. create monumental gravity

ARCHIS in cooperation with Abitare and the Netherlands Architecture Institute organize an RSVP event in Macomb County from 20 – 22 February 2009 focused on finding pragmatic answers on how we can move from crisis to project. More concretely, by making an inventory of the effects of the crisis we will develop a series of intervention proposals, based on the reality of Macomb County.

Issues to look at will be: How to impose history in a place that has largely functioned a-historically to redefine urgency? How to transform the role of political decision making towards more visionary planning? How to re-assess the concepts of home and homeownership and their relationship to taxes and citizenship in Macomb County?

Practical outcomes could be: a media campaign on values of homeownership, history, mobility, etc.; a redevelopment plan for a neighborhood with foreclosed homes; DIY Kit for Homeowners.

SIGN UP NOW AT:  rsvp@archis.org

A bit last notice, but better late than never. Archis Intervention’s Kai Voeckler (who recently published Prishtina is Everywhere and Arjen Oosterman will be in Zagreb present at the conference: The Neoliberal Frontline: Urban Struggles in  Post-Socialist Societies (from 4 till 7 dec). The conference is part of the Operation: City 2008 program.

The Neoliberal Frontline is an international conference aimed to reflect on transformations of cities, urban landscapes and urban governance in Croatian and other post-socialist societies in the Eastern Europe at a moment of urgency when the development of cities in those societies increasingly comes under pressure of neoliberal policies and economic overexploitation of space.

The conference will take stock of the following issues: effects of globalization and transition in the context of East-European cities, introduction of neoliberal governance instruments, city-planning policies damaging public interest for the benefit of business, dismantling of process of citizen participation, urban struggles against disfranchisement of citizens and cultural practices contesting privatization of public space.

Many of the developments that can be observed in East-European cities resemble urban developments in Western societies in the post-industrial and globalizing 80-ties and 90-ties, yet are characterized by particularities of post-socialist transition - a transition marked by democratic deficits, corruption of public governance, failed privatization of economy and now economic pressures on space.

And while developments in the Western societies are well researched, there is not much research and reflection available on the developments in post-socialist societies. This occasion will provide an opportunity for international scholars, researchers, urbanists, urban activist groups, cultural practitioners and local initiatives to look into those early research efforts and expand on them with first-hand accounts from the participating actors. (…more info and program)

RSVP #11 KABUL: Secure City, Public City [pdf]
In October 2007 Archis Interventions went to Kabul to examine security and public space beyond the Western media, power and security bubble.

RSVP #12A NAPLES: reconnecting Naples [pdf]
In February 2008 Archis and Domus where invited in Naples to assist N.EST in thinking about Naples and developing its spatial and social program.

17:00 till 19:00 19 February, Grote Vergaderzaal, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft

An event on how to work as a designer/architect in (post) conflict areas and contested spaces. Presenting work from the ‘Public Space’ summer workshop held last summer in Beirut and the MSc Studio Border Conditions (TU Delft) reflects on 5 years of work and research. Afterwards an open discussion will be held.

Special Guest: Michael Stanton (practicing architect and teacher at American University of Beirut and coordinator of the Public Space summer workshop at Studio Beirut.

Archis, Studio Beirut, Studio Border Conditions and Partizan Publik will be present.

The event is supported by ARGUS

ARCHIS RSVP EVENT#12A SHELTER

Specially invited by N.EST AT MADRE MUSEO in NAPELS

Join from 15-18 February 2008 the open research/editorial event with VOLUME and DOMUS in the city Naples. This special RSVP will focus on the topic of SHELTER and results in a locally produced tabloid. We’ll be confronting the post-industrial fringes of the city, the spatial and the social program.

What are the urgencies and opportunities of these spaces in terms of design of social security and cultural sustainability, as well as housing and business?

NAI Rotterdam, 6 February 20:00 hrs

Architect Jolyon Leslie manages the historic cities programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Afghanistan. He has been working in Afghanistan since 1989.

Ole Bouman, director of the NAi, Archis and Partizan Publik started the conversation with him and a variety of Afghan stakeholders in the field of architecture and culture during the archis rsvp event in Kabul in October 2007.

Since then ideas for research programmes and interventions are being exchanged between the Netherlands and Kabul. Join the debate on possibilities, constraints and chances for Kabul by inscribing at www.nai.nl/register

Jolyon Leslie will lecture on cultural heritage at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam on February 7th, invited by the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development

In the Lebanese Lebanese National Museum the room dealing with modern history is not there. Apparently there is no agreement on what Lebanon’s ‘National History’ is. Yet Lebanese seem to be united in the love for their capital. Although it is a contested and violent city, Beirut encapsulates many places, which are full of sweet, loving, memories and nostalgia. Indeed it is a city saturated with favorite places.

Find out more by exploring The Lost Room website, and find these special places and read about the their memories.

An evening of no future, little hope, desperate songs and great movies

Saturday December 22, 8 pm, Studio Beirut (Rue Gouraud, Gemmayze, red building, first floor)

Back in the eighties, right when the US were heading for a permanent void, REM came up with its classic song. Across the ocean, in Margaret Thatcher’s darkest days, the Specials had just captured the whine of the times: Ghosttown became the anthem of a sinking generation.

There’s something about the moment when the world as we know it grinds to a standstill. The future looks grim. Violence seems to be the only prospect. Yesterday was a mess, people said in Belgrade during the nineties. Today is even worse. Good that we have no tomorrow!

But just when all looks lost, there is this song, a book or a movie. It is bleak and desperate but it just cannot lie down and die. By saying goodbye to the world as we know it, it is already inventing a new one. It has to. There is no choice.

Chris Keulemans is a writer and journalist based in Amsterdam. He will be talking about today by showing clips from REM, the Specials, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Haneke, Salman Rushdie, Sinead O’Connor and Lionel Richie.

Followed by the movie ‘Before the Rain’, Milcho Manchevski (Macedonia, 1994)

[viewbook http://archis.viewbook.com/xml/archis/5311/3704d576313f27]

Back from Kabul here some of the first images and thoughts. Read George Agnew’s extensive and personal reporting on the event at his blog. The Architecture of Fear. The photo report can be watched in full size here.

Stay tuned, there is more to come.

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images of The Lost Room workshop

In November 2006, Archis, Pearl and Partizan Publik together with local group of architects and designers (later organized as Studio Beirut) organized an the Unbuilt RSVP event in Beirut. A series of events in Amsterdam and Beirut later resulted in summer workshop on Public Space in Beirut last August.

So it happend that an international assembly of students and profesionals from Europe and the Middle East gathered in Beirut and joined in a two week workshop. Besides the lectures, design proposals and discussions; public interventions where executed around Beirut. From a guerrilla street cinema night to graffiti tagging sweet beiruti memories (Lost Room workshop)

Check studiobeirut.org/thinktank for the report and more projects to come…

[viewbook http://archis.viewbook.com/xml/archis/5312/008600a033268e]

After a reconnaissance and fact finding mission in November 2006 Archis Interventions developed an action plan that was presented at the Alpbach Forum 2007 [pdf]. This as a prelude to further action and research.

The situation in Prishtina is typical of cities that find themselves in a period of upheaval after a conflict. Most of the time, there is a complete lack of public bodies with the capacity and jurisdiction to enforce laws. In addition, a lack of social self-regulation leaves the field wide open for uncontrolled forces that cause lasting damage to a city’s urban fabric. Moreover, there is always a profound crisis of confidence in the public dimension of urban life.