Rethink Re:Place is a New Union project that makes place-making user-friendly by offering training opportunities and upskilling techniques. The toolkit serves as a support and toolbox for all municipalities, associations, planners on how to design the post-COVID-19-city and engage the community through Tactical Urbanism.

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How to engage a community, re-connect people to place and build resilience? A question that is currently even more important in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Tactical urbanism, for example, is an innovative approach to transform public space and engage community. Through low-cost, temporary changes to a built environment, tactical urbanism creates greater sense of place in local neighbourhoods and city. New Union, a UK-based not-for-profit civic innovation organization, provides a toolkit, that is free and opensource, and includes all the materials you need to run your own tactical urbanism training workshop. The toolkit makes tactical urbanism accessible to all, encouraging participation through hands-on activities. The in-depth guide to the workshop means anyone from any area of expertise can facilitate the workshop. To download the toolkit, visit: www.new-union.org/rethinkreplace.html

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The toolkit is based on the Rethink Re:Place festival, that was run in February 2021 by UK based volunteer activists to inspire people to think differently about how change can be made in urban space and to catalyse conversations around the opportunities of tactical urbanism for cities post-COVID-19. More than 100 people over five continents were involved in the festival, including urban planners and designers, city councillors, policy officers, activists, and university students.

Tactical Urbanism: hands-on influence

Organised by New Union, Director Nathan Coyle explained: “We had no intention of trying to find funding for the festival as we wanted it to be 100 per cent organically created and facilitated by activists who are passionate about the community having a hands-on influence over where they live. It was really important to us that there was a lasting legacy, that’s why we wanted to put together the toolkit so towns and cities all over the world can download and benefit from it, for no cost at all”.

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According to New Union the workshop can help you if: You have community groups or Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in your area that want to learn how to improve their community spaces using a limited or non-existent budget. Or if: You want to learn how to build narratives from the activities that your community do.

Ross Barney Architects present their completed park project in Rogers, Arkansas: the Railyard Park. The architects have worked with the City of Rogers and the Walton Family Foundation (WalMart) over the past several years to reimagine and redesign the historic downtown area. Through the use of community engagement, the architects have involved community members in the design process through both physical and digital methods.

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With a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, the City of Rogers, Arkansas has embarked on a project to design a new downtown park that will enhance economic development, spur placemaking, and improve connectivity. Situated on the east boundary of Rogers’ historic downtown district, the new park has the potential to capitalize on recent public space investments and help to make downtown Rogers a regional destination.

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Community engagement

The project utilized a robust community outreach effort, which has helped build a sense of ownership and pride from city staff and the residents. Through a digital survey that collected over 1,000 responses and inperson charrettes the design team has helped define the park’s desired outcomes and objectives through the words of the community. This shared vision has resulted in five emerging priorities: Inviting, Memorable, Challenging, Beautiful, and Authentic.

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Railyard Park along the railroad

Rogers, as a city, has been defined both economically and physically by the railroad. The first plat of survey, completed in 1881, uses the rail to create a strong dividing line. The park’s design ignores the rail as a barrier and stitches the east and west together. The result is a series of plazas that can transform throughout the day, week, month, and year. These versatile and flexible spaces create a new and distinct rhythm that extends beyond the park into adjacent streets.

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Between the ribbons, which are formed by the adjacent city context, a “room” is created. These densely vegetated and programmed spaces help create unique experiences throughout the park and further frame this piece of downtown as the new center instead of the edge.

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Project Team:
Ross Barney Architects, Chicago, IL – Architecture and Landscape Architecture
CEI Engineering Associates, Bentonville, AR – Civil Engineering and Land Surveying
Goodfriend Magruder Structure, Chicago, IL – Structural Engineering
HP Engineering, Rogers, AR – MEP Engineering
Schuler Shook, Chicago, IL – Lighting Design
SPAN (formerly Thirst) Chicago, IL – Branding and Environmental Graphics
AFJH Architects, Fayetteville, AR – Associate Architect
Crowne Group, Fayetteville, AR – AV Consultant
Nabholz Construction, Rogers, AR -Contractor/Construction Manager

All pictures and text © by City of Rogers Department of Community Development

Train Station Park, located in a central residential area of the City of Buenos Aires, is the result of a participatory planning process carried out by the local community and the City Government.

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The City of Buenos Aires is divided into 15 districts. The community chose a vacant area with an abandoned warehouse at the border between two of the districts as a potential new small park and space for various public activities. The lot, owned by the national train operating company was adjacent to the railway tracks of a local urban line. The warehouse had been formerly used for loading and unloading trucks and for storage purposes.

Participatory process

Back in 2000, a group of residents, living in the two districts, but also close to the abandoned lot, got together with the firm intention to transform the site. In 2014, they successfully managed to change the originally envisaged land use from urbanization area to park area. Two years later, a bill was introduced to the City Legislature and eventually enacted into law. The “Law for Participatory Design of the Train Station Park” provided the legal framework for the park’s construction and the preceding participatory process of diagnostic assessment and preliminary design.
The City’s Ministry of Urban Design, in charge of the project, invited the General Direction of Urban Anthropology to manage all initial meetings and workshops with the local community. The final proposal was developed by the government’s design team.

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A linear platform at the highest level

The project aims to connect the lot’s interior space with sidewalks and a small park across the street. A wall that previously closed off the site was knocked down and the differences in height were either compensated with access ramps, stairs and paths, or naturally shaped with green mounds. The former truck lane was transformed into a semi-covered pathway running along the full extension of the renovated warehouse, connecting the opposite sides of the park and creating a linear platform at the highest level of the site.

The creation of two new spaces was of great importance to the neighborhood group: an amphitheater and a space for cultural and educational events and activities. The amphitheater was newly constructed in a fairly central area of the park, taking advantage of the existing natural slopes.

Green indoor spaces

The old warehouse was completely restored and renovated and turned into a meeting point for locals. Inside, two access courtyards offer green indoor spaces: an area full of native vegetation and a small plant nursery for educational purposes. The group of neighbors emphasized the use of autochthonous plant species as a major goal of the project. Now, with the first entirely indigenous groups of shrubs and herbaceous plants established in the park, butterflies and birds have become a daily presence.

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A certain level of historical protection was assigned to the building by the City Government, its renovation therefore followed a consistent and careful sequence of steps. The most remarkable and meaningful change took place on the roof, the clay tiles of which were cautiously restored in the section facing the park while they were replaced on the opposite side. In order to maximize the amount of natural light in the building, part of the roof was removed for the sake of a linear skylight that follows the line of the ridge.

New Spaces now available for the local community

The new spaces now available for the local community include a large library, a newspaper and magazine library, a production room, government offices, an adaptable space for food stands and a large area for sports. Adjoining rooms displaying colorful, inviting furniture create a fluent walking circuit, allowing visitors to experience a wide range of activities while always overlooking the new park.
The administration and management of the new venue is coordinated by different divisions of the City Government, ensuring an efficient and integrative approach and the necessary specializations for every aspect of the project.

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Client: City Government of Buenos Aires (Mayor H. Rodriguez Larreta) / Ministry of Transport and Urban Development (Minister F. Moccia).
Project planning and design: Subsecretary of Projects: SS Álvaro García Resta / Director: Martin Torrado / Project managers: J. Bedel, M. Clusellas, P. Ledo Koliesnik, F. Marino, F. Planas Penadés, R. Fernández Rojas / Coordination of participatory process: Direction of Urban Anthropology, Director: Javier Irigaray
Date of completion: 2019
Areas: 13,708 m2 (site) / 8,366 m2 (park) / 5,342 m2 (renovated warehouse)
Photography: Javier Agustín Rojas

Skanderbeg Square, the economic centre of Tirana and a place of great symbolic value for the whole of Albania, is the result of the 1939 urban renewal plan under the occupation of Italy. During the dictatorship Enver Hoxhas, it was a parade ground and a busy traffic square in the 1990s. Its name goes back to the national hero Gjergj Kastri, who still today represents identity, integrity and national independence for many Albanians against the background of centuries of oppression in the country. Its redesign also has a long history, accompanied by controversial discussions.

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“A ‘no’ in many countries signals the end of a discussion. In Albania it can herald the start of a negotiation.” (Alan Andoni in The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Albanians)

What does it mean today, to make a 15 million euro project in the center of a country where an experienced construction worker earns around 25 euro per day? If the duty of the state is to offer its citizens security, would it not be better to invest in a welfare system, in social housing, in infrastructure in peripheral areas … instead of investing in such a symbolic space? Although it is hard to argue against these claims—who could be against a welfare state?—the recent history of Europe makes a case for not neglecting the power of symbolism, for a clear narrative of togetherness, for the need to represent, in a tangible way, what we aspire to be. If we look at Belgium, we see that similar investments—I think for instance about the Stadshal in Ghent—have raised similar discussions, with similar arguments. It only goes to show that this debate—all differences considered—goes beyond Albania.

Redefine community relations by confronting them

The question of Skanderbeg Square is a political and a personal one: it is not about what Albania is today; it is a project about what the people who will use the square would like to become. And it is exactly in this “becoming” that the physical aspect of Skanderbeg plays its role: as a space where the tensions between “what is” and “what could be” are played out. It is about making spaces that make it possible to organize the big events in life, as well as to perform daily, in many small ways. Spaces that are not reduced to a set of predefined functions but focus on producing a broad range of possible situations that invite you to relate to people, to redefine community relations by confronting them, even just through contemplation while watching how people react and connect in such a wide-open emptiness and its multiple borders.

Architecture not as a spectacle, but as a stage

Skanderbeg Square is a place to be, to become aware of yourself, and also to look back and reflect. It creates a ground, as a background, a common ground. Its openness generates a tension, with a center that is not occupied yet, but that issues an invitation, even a challenge, to be occupied. An empty center, creating a sense of infinity. A sense of belonging, as a choice. Architecture not as a spectacle, but as a stage, creating conditions to perform public life. A common space, with a multiplicity of situations, of possible actions. This range of spatial situations is necessary to produce a common world, whether on the scale of a house, a building, a square, a city.

Context as a resource

Designing a space with this ambition starts with acknowledging the fact that Skanderbeg Square—in its 2008 state—already contained these qualities. It was a place that inspired a sense of awe, and that had a lack of definition that inspired a feeling of openness. In this sense, the task at hand was to look closely at what was already there, and to do so with the eyes of the foreigner, who can look beyond what things have ended up meaning. To discover how things were put together, what remains of them when you take them apart, and then to put them back together again, in a new set of relationships, appealing to evolving sensibilities.
Designing in such a space, laden with history and aspirations, is to reframe and reveal, like creating a new image that contains the previous ones. It is about not placing yourself in a binary opposition of old versus new, but about seeing history and the heritage that it has produced as a long sequence of ideas and interventions, and seeing the current intervention as simply one of many, which have come and which are still to come. Inscribing yourself in this long history is also considering context as a resource. Like a palimpsest, it contains a story that has been written and will be rewritten many times. It is a living thing that needs to transform to stay alive.

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Contrast between timeless frame and chaos and proliferation of life

In the case of Skanderbeg Square, the intervention consists of inserting a new form—a square that is also a pyramid—and surrounding it with a green belt. These two together create a frame that is also a spatial sequence, and a decision on how things relate to each other. Setting the frame is setting the stage, the general hierarchy; deciding what can be dominant, and what cannot be; deciding what is changeable and what is not. The decision to see the center as empty is also to see it as a civic space, not serving a commercial logic, instead allowing all remnants of history to be equally present, together creating a pantheon of beliefs and ideologies. The decision to access this center through a dense belt that equalizes buildings and nature, is also to imagine how people will go through that sequence, and how it will structure their experience, affect their bodies and mind. To set the frame implies to structure life and to use the autonomy of architecture to create a sense of timelessness, a structure that will survive in time. The project derives its character from the contrast between this timeless frame and the chaos and proliferation of life.

Creating a frame

This is a quality that architecture can offer, a quality that is so easily forgotten: to step out of a permanent present. It is something that we deeply crave, that we long for: to live with a reference to the past and an outlook towards the future. A society where this time horizon is not created, where nothing is institutionalized, is scary and gives rise to fear and populism. It is this frame that creates the possibility for engagement, as a starting point for a negotiation, an activation. The goal of this frame is not to give a definite order: it should just give enough structure for freedom to cling onto. The frame is only an opportunity to reset or to unsettle, not an end in itself. Fixing the frame is indeed dealing with things past, but is equally looking towards the future, and taking the responsibility to prescribe it, acknowledging that fixing something is the necessary condition to structure the future. By offering resistance, new liberties appear. In that sense, creating a frame is also to claim a certain safety, a safety that gives us the comfort to feel connected and be free.
Paradoxically, to design such a frame only works if the focus is not on the frame itself. It is a concept that has to be liberated from an all too aesthetical debate. It is important to realize that the project does not stop with setting the frame. The project is not in the form, more in the tension it creates. Especially with a project on such a scale, the decision to “let life arrange itself” would not amount to much. With the frame, a new set of rules also has to be set; opening up to and inventing “new ways to play.” After setting that frame and making the decision as to what is negotiable and what is not, the afterlife of the project and the conditions and practices that make it bloom, can and should be actively shaped.

Shape the afterlife in two different ways

In hindsight, the huge opportunity we had was that the process of designing the square was interrupted due to municipal elections. When we picked the design back up five years later, we saw to our own astonishment that the gardens we had imagined were actually very sterile: they were conceived only to support the idea of framing the void, but did not have a real quality and logic of their own. Also, the ease with which the design had been cancelled made us realize that the design had no real ownership beyond the closed circle of politicians and municipal technicians we had been dealing with. It was a wake-up call, to start thinking beyond the frame and to organize and design the tension it generates. When the project restarted, we took up to shape the afterlife in roughly two different ways.
First of all, we started seeing the design of the square as an opportunity to intervene in the metabolism of the context: to look at the conditions that shape it, and to set up the conditions that will allow it to stay alive. In the case of the square, this meant caring as much about the car traffic that has been expelled from the square as about the pedestrian zone that was freed up by this move. It also meant getting deeply involved in the resource management: how and where to get the stones, the plants – what kind of stones, what kind of plants? This resource management is an approach in which interdependencies come to play a big role: imagining how the plants will stand changing climate conditions, and how they can start to become a system of their own, both functional and resilient.

The space as an urban ecosystem

We designed the space as an urban ecosystem: something that protects us from the climate by creating a new climate, fusing natural and artificial elements, and beyond that, to also see human beings as part of the equation, which in turn puts the focus on creating an ecology of practices. Designing these systems comes with setting up new ways of doing things, even if it is as simple as avoiding pesticides. These mentality shifts are challenges that are, by default, complex and multidisciplinary, requiring a discussion between fields that use vastly different vocabularies. Here, the frame merely serves as a starting point. It is the beginning that is set to generate an open-ended system that has economic and cultural impact, and that can grow beyond what the project is today.

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Designing for empowerment

A second way we started to activate the frame is by imagining how it will allow others to contribute. We could call this designing for empowerment, be it in the dialogue process during the design or in the opportunities for appropriation generated on site.
We organized an intense three-month period of interaction, activating different stakeholders who in previous conditions would only have heard about the square once the elections came up. Setting up the space and the time to discuss, critique and intervene in the project was a very rewarding experience. New ideas came out of it, and new investments were also triggered. The idea to thematize a garden and link it with the rehabilitation of the national library is just one example that is a direct result of opening up the design process to so many different voices. One of the new investments that was triggered was the integration of the entry zone of the Tirana International Hotel.

A place for appropriation

The energy that we felt during these discussions inspired us to design the square even more than before as a place for appropriation. We developed the architecture so that limits provoke productive moments. Designing a chair that is 80 centimeters wide produces a proximity that can be annoying or comfortable, depending on the person you are sitting with. In providing that “obstacle,” using something suddenly provokes a choice, a choice that makes an encounter meaningful. Designing for empowerment also means that you become aware that these things make a difference, because what they reveal (or enable) touches on every single person in an equal way. Seeing the square as this multitude of touch points is seeing the frame as a system that produces a rich and complex environment with a very simple set of basic elements. And to produce with those elements a space that produces a memory because of all the actions that it has triggered, the encounters that have happened, that have been performed. What we can wish for is that this type of space will go beyond the symbolic with its infinite capacity to trigger new practices. This is what we imagine when we talk about frame.

Multiple-design approach

During a learning curve that took us nine years, designing the frame has come to stand for managing different design logics at once, from designing the form over designing the metabolism to designing for empowerment. By now, the combination of these three logics allows us to manage the often contradictory forces a project is dealing with. This approach helps to structure complexity, while still allowing it to remain fully and forcefully present.
We have learned to use the tension between these different logics as enriching rather than limiting; this multiple-design approach allows us to conceptualize the multiple ways needed to produce a common world. It requires a process with points where one needs to say no—as architects have been trained to do—but even more points where it is much more interesting to say “yes, but.” It is an attitude that sees tension or conflict as an opportunity to provoke different realities, and to see these realities not as something that should be reduced, but as situations that can be revealed and can even surpass themselves. Like in a good improvisation, a “yes but” attitude is a way to deal with conflict as a source of innovation, or as a provocation for more creativity and imagination. The Skanderbeg Square project has thought us to see “a good plan” as a way to structure our awareness to be able to react to different circumstances in a diversified way; design as a method to prepare ourselves for the opportunities hidden in the process.

Intentions that go beyond the square

Skanderbeg Square acts as a proof that we—everyone involved in the process—can go for results that are very rich, engaging, and qualitative. Overall it also shows that the Albanian context can be “taken seriously.” In that sense, it is a display of the capabilities of the context, of its capacity to make things happen and produce excellent results when activated in the right way, when people work together as they did for the square. The result of Skanderbeg should not be presented as an end or a conclusion, but rather as the start of a new dynamic, a first step inaugurating a string of projects aiming at improving the urban condition of Tirana. The project was a first attempt at defining leading intentions that go beyond the square, that have a longer time span.

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An opportunity to produce themselves

During the opening ceremony, the point of reference was still the statue of Skanderbeg. Let us hope for Albania that it will eventually be the openness of the square. This is also how we can imagine the role of architecture and public space today: not as the confirmation of a solid identity, but as the frame to investigate and offer means to construct an open and fluid one, offering the test zone for the citizens we would like to become. Public space can be a space for potential, a platform.
In the end, the project has delivered not a fixed frame, but a set of situations, potentially there, ready to be embodied. With boundaries as places, as possible point of connections that generate openness, at once orchestrated and by chance. The goal is that this openness will invite others to take over: to use the stage as an opportunity to produce themselves. But the truth is: this is something that one cannot really plan, but only hope for.
The inherent problem of a space is indeed that it is nothing but space. The potential it offers only exists when brought to life: performed and used by the people that believe in it, that make it happen every day. Witnessing the beginning of a renewed ecosystem grow in the heart of your city. Looking at historical buildings you cannot relate to, but still accept as part of your history. Walking barefoot in the center of the capital, using space as if it were private. Creating this possibility is a strong sign that an institution, a city, a state can give.

It is a striking fact that 25 percent of Albania’s population lives in a 2.5 km radius of this square. If they decide to, they can use Skanderbeg Square as part of their daily urban system. If they do so, it will not be the space, but their common practices that can have a lasting impact.

Outdated shopping mall transformed into new city center with world’s largest green roof in Cupertino, California

The Sand Hill Property Company plans a new city center in Cupertino in the Silicon Valley, California. The outdated Vallco Shopping Mall is about to become The Hills at Vallco. The 30-acre park will not only be the largest community green in Cupertino, but the world’s largest green roof. Before Rafael Viñoly Architects and OLIN Landscape Architects created the design, Sand Hill asked residents and entrepreneurs in several meetings about their ideas and dreams, almost 3.800 suggestions were collected.

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The design of the green roof is ambitious: a 3,8 mile track for walking and jogging, orchards and organic gardens, a vineyard, an amphitheater, children’s playgrounds and a refuge for native species of plants and birds. The greening will be adapted to the hot and dry climate of the area. The green roof is part of the energy concept of the complex and –combined with natural ventilation and smart technology – is to regulate the temperature in and around the buildings. Recently more and more projects –and even whole cities such as Paris – focus on roof and facade greening to cope with extreme temperatures.

Once a thriving spot in the city, the Vallco Shopping Mall has lost most of its tenants and costumers, over 50 percent of the building are empty. In 2014, Sand Hill bought the Mall and all of its 50 acres from the four owners. For the first time a unified vision is now possible. “We’ve done some research and we haven’t found a single shopping mall that’s started construction since 2006. This is clearly a dying model. That’s on display at Vallco”, says Reed Moulds, Managing Director of Sand Hill. The huge empty concrete massif is surrounded by the empty parking slots, totally lost in Cupertino. “I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities to be very creative about how we reinvent our malls that aren’t used the way that they’ve been used in the past.”

The Hills will offer space for retail, restaurants, 800 accomodation units and entertainment plus venues for ice skating, bowling, sports and an AMC Theater. There will also be room for the whole life cycle of companies – from Start Up to established business – on more than 2 million square feet of office space.

Additionally to the project Sand Hill aims to change transport and education in Cupertino. Infrastructure is to be changed in favor of pedestrians and cyclists; residents will be able to use a shuttle-bus for free. A new elementary school and an innovation center will support children and teenagers in their development. The mixed-use innovation center will serve as a hub for work-based learning initiatives with workshops, room for exhibitions and robotics competitions.

The project is a 3 billion US-Dollar investment in the technologic heart of the United States. Cupertino is home to many advances in information and computer technologies, that changed everyday life forever. Computer company Apple is the most important employer for the 60.000 inhabitants, the construction of Apple Campus 2 will surely cement this fact. The Hills at Vallco will only profit from the development, as it will be located between Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters and Apple Campus 2. Currently the project is in the official approval phase.

All visualizations: The Hills at Vallco.

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The idea was born in the neighborhood: A green park on top of a grey massive bunker from World War II. It didn’t take long to convince the owner, Professor Thomas J. C. Matzen. The historic site in St. Pauli, Hamburg, Germany, is now to be redeveloped with a lush roof garden, free to anyone. The neighbors continue to play a big part in the planning process and for the years to come.

The garden on top of the bunker will be connected to the ground via a ramp, 300 meters (360 yards ) long and more than six meters (20 feet) wide, that will also contain trees and bushes. An elevator will guarantee a barrier-free access to the roof-top garden, where young and old will have the opportunity to do gardening.  Additional to the 8.000 square meters of greenery, there will be rooms for concerts, culture and media and guest apartments. The income generated from the rent ought to refinance a part of the private investment.

Neighbor-active process

The public is frequently informed on the project and its process by the Planungsteam Bunker, the executive planners under Robin Houcken. They are supported by the Hilldegarten Project, a group of volunteers, that organize workshops and meetings with neighbors and interested participants. The volunteers work in five groups: Garden and Landscape, Energy, Utilization, Museum and Public Interest.

The long-term building lease of the bunker was bought by Matzen in 1992. Since then he enforced a gentle development of the bunker, that is now a music- and media-realty, where bands practice and artists display their work.

St. Pauli City-Garden on the Bunker, Hamburg, Germany

Client: Prof. Thomas J. C. Matzen
Planners: Buero 51, WTM, Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, Argus, Lärmkontor, Sumbi Ingenieure, Metapol Studios, Landschaftsarchitektur L+
Area: 8.000 square meter park and garden, 9.500 square meter total floor area
Time Period: 2014-2017
Costs: 25 – 30 million Euro