Smart City: The Next Generation, Focus South-East Asia

Workshop in Phnom Penh

Time: November 3 - 4, 2012

Location: MetaHouse Phnom Penh, #37 Sothearos Boulevard, Songkhat Tonle Bassak, Khan Chamkarmon, Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia

Aedes Workshop under the guidance of Shelby Doyle, Master of Arch. Harvard, Fulbright Research Fellow.

The Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V. in cooperation with the Goethe Institut Jakarta is pleased to present a workshop under the working title ´SMART CITY: The Next Generation´. The workshop emphasis is on intelligent solutions for environmental, infrastructural, social and sustainable issues in the urban context. 

Read the 'Call for Proposal' in Khmer and English here.

This workshop will consist of several meetings and will culminate in December 2012 when students will propose their visions of Phnom Penh as a SMART CITY, under the guidance of Shelby Doyle, Master of Arch. Harvard, Fulbright Research Fellow.

The range of SMART CITY projects extends from low-tech to high-tech; and from preliminary ideas and visions all the way to successfully realized undertakings. Low-tech approaches are often characterized by their sheer inventiveness, for example in user behaviour, changed habits and practices and demonstrate how solutions can emerge without elaborate technology or substantial financing. Here, a smart city will be a city whose community has learned to learn, adapt and innovate. Projects in this category, moreover, are often transferable to other contexts.

Click to see Pictures of the Workshop on Facebook.

Workshop in Jakarta

Time: January 3 - 13, 2013

Location: Jakarta, Indonesia

The internationally acclaimed gallery of architecture and urbanity, Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V., together with the Rujak Center for Urban Studies Jakarta and the Goethe Institut Jakarta are organizing an international workshop titled ‘SMART CITY = Smart Citizen + Smart Process’, from January 3 - 13, 2013 in Jakarta. This workshop and its results will be part of the Interdisciplinary Urban Exhibition & Symposium of SMART CITY: The Next Generation, Focus South-East Asia” in Berlin on June 2013. This workshop will be run by Dietmar Leyk & Rujak Center for Urban Studies Jakarta. Dietmar Leyk is architect and Visiting Professor at The Berlage (TU Delft).

The Rujak Center for Urban Studies Jakarta, in collaboration with Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V. and the Goethe Institut Jakarta hosted the workshop Smart City = Smart Citizen + Smart Process in January 2013. The workshop aims to explore ideas of ​​young people on how to contribute to the future of Jakarta to make the city a better place.

The Rujak Center, together with workshop leader Elisa Sutanudjaja and under the guidance of Aedes Curator Ulla Giesler, came to the conclusion that intelligence in the city does not only consist of talking about technology, large-scale infrastructure or large information processing (Big Data). "Smart City" is not only a series of products that rely on computers, nor just a building or architecture alone. We share the belief that in order for a city to be smart, the city will require the participation of citizens. The city has an opportunity to educate its citizens. A smart city is a city with a process to be able to make people smart. The technology is just one tool to help. The main actors in the "Smart City" remain citizens and their processes.

The 12 workshop participants come from diverse backgrounds, origins and even education and professions. They share similarities such as being city residents and young people who grew up post-1998 with the ease of using technology. Amongst them are architects, writers, sociologists, philosophers, artists, designers, tour planners and city planners. Some are working in the government, others for research institutions or as freelancers.

The 12 participants were immersed in the subject with lectures, briefings, site visits and insights during the first 5 days of the workshop. Specialists from various fields, professions and of different genders and ages contributed input. They included Suryono Herlambang (urban planner and head of the Department of Urban Planning and Real Estate from Tarumanagara University), Yoga Adiwinarto (director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy), Selamet Daroyini (KIARA environmental activist), Hening Parlan (mitigation practitioner for the Humanitarian Forum Indonesia), Erik Prasetya (one of the 20 best photographers in Asia), Shanty Syahril (campaigner for alternative activities for children in the city), Ricky Lestari (landscape designer and coordinator of the Green Communities Pondok Indah), @ nebengers (social media campaigner on vehicle sharing) and Khairani Barokka (artist and writer, campaigner for disability and the arts). As the main resource person of the workshop Aedes also invited Dietmar Leyk (architect and visiting professor at The Berlage, TU Delft) to provide input and direction.

Each speaker inspired in his/her unique way. Suryono Herlambang showed how Jakarta’s development cannot be separated from the wheels of capitalism, explaining the crony capitalism and how it has become part of the process. Yoga Adiwinarto described the condition of transport and the future of transportation in Jakarta. Elisa Sutanudjaja presented the history of settlement in the city. Selamet Daroyini highlighted the issue of water, specifically the water cycle associated with drought and floods in Jakarta. Hening Parlan spoke about disasters in Jakarta and Jakarta´s condition in terms of mitigation and disaster preparation.

The session of @ nebengers showed the effort and initiative of young people to reduce the burden of the city through a variety of vehicles, and their ways of using social media to support these initiatives. Shanty Syahril demonstrated her concern for children's access to schools and school materials and also presented creative and intelligent solutions to increase the activities of children in their school environment and housing. Shanty showed how social capital actually can be an advantage in the process towards intelligent citizens. Ricky Lestari showed how middleclass neighbourhoods are often stigmatised as individualistic and elitist, and how she is able to proceed in educating citizens and the environment all together. Inspiring input also came from Khairani Barokka, who invited participants to reflect on 'What is Normal' and to look at what an extraordinary world emerges from behind the eyes of disability.

The participants also got the facts directly from the citizens who, as we consider, hold the potential for the smartness in the city. They met and discussed with the urban poor who are members of the People's Network Urban Poor in Muara Baru, an area dense with families that live around Pluit Reservoir. In order to prepare for the visit, participants and residents held a series of small workshops to put together presentation materials and to understand what their version of the city is. Participants also visited Bukit Duri and met the Ciliwung Merdeka, a group of citizens working to improve the quality of the environment with a variety of standalone programmes, ranging from cultural to social disasters.

Reflecting on the input from a variety of lectures, sharing sessions and visits, the participants gained a diverse wealth of knowledge. Some new knowledge was scary and some facts were horrifying, but knowledge also brings hope and compassion, even laughter and creativity. All of this enriched the proposals of the participants, which reflected more closely the lives of the citizens and certainly became more intelligent.

For the rest of the workshop, the participants responded to comments and input from various groups of sources, including Ahmett Irwan and Tita Salina (both artists), Avianti Armand (architect and author), Hizrah Muchtar (town planner), Bayu Wardhana (community activist) and Famega Syavira (journalist).

The process of the workshop was open to the public. People could directly see the processes, enjoy sharing sessions and lectures and even participate in site visits. Some people were visitors one day and contributed to the workshop as speakers the next. On the second day of the workshop, Erik Prasetya came in and shared his expertise in the field of street photography, so that participants were able to capture urban phenomena through the lens.

Smart City Workshop is a new model for the Rujak Center: a model that keeps adapting to its surrounding conditions and continuously provides space to grow, both for itself and for the participants throughout the process. The participants came up with 12 different individual proposals and in the end realised the advantages and disadvantages of their proposal. They collaborated and worked together, even though most did not know each other previously.

On the final day the participants presented their workshop proposals publically. The Rujak Center invited the public to attend these presentations. The Rujak Center also invited both local and national governments as well as the media.

The workshop shows that knowledge is everywhere: it is not static and it is dynamic. Expertise is not exclusive to one elite. Solutions for problems can also emerge from the ideas of a 25 year old who is not a professor or a high-level government official. For this particular solution it has emerged from the poor or those who are stigmatised by society. Such people are trying to educate the citizens and the city, freeing the knowledge to become common property.

Workshop in Manila

Time: March 4 - 15, 2013

Location: Manila, Philippines

Aedes - Smart City Workshop in Manila under the direction of Joey Yupangco, Dean SDA, Manila and Dietmar Leyk, architect and Visiting Professor at The Berlage Institute (TU Delft).

Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V., together with the Goethe Institut Manila are organizing an international workshop in Manila from March 4 - 15, 2013.

Interim Report: 30 distinguished architects from Manila presented an impressing collection of work, during the opening of the Smart City Manila workshop on March 5, 2013 at the Polo Club Manila. The works have been prepared to lay out a basis for the smart city project on Manila. Over the next 10 days the team will work on several proposals to "smarten" up Manila. Escolta, a historically meaningful street, located in the center of Manila, which is almost forogotten today, represents the physical manifestation of all larger strategies. Escolta - a smart street?

Final Presentation “Smart City: The Next Generation” Workshop in Manila:
On Thursday, March 14, 2013, the public final presentation of the “Smart City: The Next Generation” workshop took place at the Manila Polo Club. The workshop, organized by Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V. in Berlin and the Goethe Institut Manila, resulted in ten innovative proposals to improve the city of Manila, based on critical observations of current urban phenomena in Manila in regards to its citizen's behaviour.

The workshop group, 30 distinguished architects, designers, ngos and other experts conducted by Dietmar Leyk, worked closely together to explore relevant intelligent, integrated, and networked strategies to encourage the rethinking of the city. Mobility, a condition precedent for a modern metropolis, supported by the wide diversity of transportation modalities in Manila, became one of the fundamental drivers for new ideas. The ubiquitous presence of walls, physical and non-physical, resulted in proposals to instrumentalize these walls in favour of the beginning urban transformation process of Manila. Beyond the question of architecture being a public or rather a private concern in Manila, the important context of the river Pasig including the historically meaningful street Escolta became the focus points for all proposals.

The collaboration between the Smart City Group Manila, Aedes, and the Goethe Institut will continue throughout the year 2013, resulting in a second “Smart City: The Next Generation” workshop in February 2014 in Manila.

All results of the workshop will be shown in the exhibition “Smart City: The Next Generation”, Focus South-East Asia at Aedes am Pfefferberg in Berlin from May 17 – July 4 2013, curated by Ulla Giesler, Cultural Scientist, Berlin. For more information visit www.aedes-arc.de.


Workshop in Düsseldorf and Berlin

GRID STRUCTURES - Phase 1: Analysis, Design and Concepts

Time: September 2012 - February 2013

Location: Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences / Aedes Berlin 

November 5, 2012  Meeting Students / Curator in Berlin at Aedes Pfefferberg

December 10, 2012  Interim Presentation in Düsseldorf

January 28, 2013  Final Presentation in Düsseldorf 

GRID STRUCTURES - Phase 2: Realisation

Time: March 2013 - June 2013

Within the scope of the design seminar Grid Structures a group of 23 students from Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Design, developed spatial concepts based on the notion of grid and network structures: open spatial interfaces for the exhibition Smart Cities – The Next Generation at the Aedes Architectural Forum in Berlin. The seminar consisted of two phases (phase 1: analysis, experiments and spatial concepts / phase 2: realisation).

During Grid Structures phase 1, students did research on basic spatial elements of grid structures – experimenting with points, lines and volumes in space, a great variety of students works resulted in grid-like and network constructs, walk-in and „usable“ spatial geometries and relational mesh organisations that were in their materiality fixed, elastic, flexible, rigid or movable. All of those developed structures became „carriers“ for a vast amount of architectural and artistic projects, dealing with the question of a „smart city“ that are now part of the exhibition. All of the developed spatial grids had in common that they created non-architecture-like open spaces without roofs, walls or doors, defining rather open zones than boundaries or closed spaces - enabling interaction and change with its users.

After reviewing all students projects during a final presentation end of January in Düsseldorf, one spatial concept was selected to be realized: The exhibition structure "Klettwerk" will now be realized by a group of students within the framework of the Smart Cities exhibition. It consists of spatial lines that are made out of Velcro tape, tensed up into Aedes´ gallery space. The interlocking and joining of those black linear ribbons provides an levitating open grid-and city-like structure, an open space that is both continuous and multi-directional. The line´s materiality (hook-and-loop band) and its geometrical manifestation in space offers opportunities for visitors to perform, to participate, to change. The construct becomes a mediator between the gallery space, the content of the exhibition and its visitors, changing their behaviour and therefore experience in space. By moving and re-arranging Smart City projects, leaving comments on existing concepts, the linear exhibition structure is subject to constant re-organization and becomes an open, flexible spatial system that „behaves“ itself performative and adaptive.

Project Credits

Students Seminar - Grid Structures

Stephanie Butzen, Yiqing Cai, Teresa Christ, Marcel Czeczinski, Rouven Dürre, Tabea Faß, Wibke Gocht, Iris Hamers, Nadine Hofmann, Xiao Fan Jin, Andrea Krämer, Adalbert Kuzia, Marie Märgner, Bea Meder, Nadine Nebel, Niklas Reiners, Carolin Reisensohn, Jonas Schneider, Jenni Stark, Jana Stenzel, Luis Torres, Janina Ungemach, Sina Wassermann (Winter 2012/13)

Exhibition Concept Smart Cities - selected exhibition structure

Design and Concept

Rouven Dürre, Marie Märgner, Adalbert Kuzia, Tabea Faß  („Klettwerk“ - Selected Project / Winter 2012/13)

Realisation

Adalbert Kuzia, Nadine Hofmann, Marie Christine Keppler, Jonas Schneider, Anna Wibbeke (Spring / Summer 2012), in cooperation with Michael Swottke | Model Building Workshop FHD and Nadine Nebel | Tutor EDI, Exhibition Design Institute

Project Supervisors

Prof. Gabi Schillig | Gestaltungslehre - Räumlich-Plastisches Gestalten / Studio for Spatial Design, Düsseldorf  University of Applied Sciences / Faculty of Design - in cooperation with Ulla Giesler | Aedes Berlin