Amateur Cities presenting at 2016 edition titled ‘Resilient Architecture‘.
The exhibition and conference at the CANactions Festival 2016 titled ‘Resilient Architecture’ addressed various topics that emerged out of the Future Architecture Platform’s open call. It related to the burning issues of contemporary architecture, like energy (from fossils to renewables, from buildings as consumers to buildings as producers), materials (recycling, deconstructing, buildings as future resources), city (systems, integration), new models (cross-discipline and cross-sector work, development, approaches), citizens (collaboration, participation, motivation, users as creators). The conference also explored topics crucial for the Ukrainian and larger European architectural community, through discussions with various experts, local authorities, NGOs, and members of the platform. Selected emerging participating artists were Amateur Cities, Miloš Kosec, and Tiago Torres Campos.
During the festival, Amateur Cities presented a lecture ‘We Need to Learn Cities Anew, not as Masters but as Amateurs’ with a plea for a different approach to architecture and its relation with its social and political role.
While architects keep debating about their profession, urban development just happens without their participation. Cities grow and transform, not as places of habitation, but as investment machines. Developing without a vision neither by architects and urban planners nor by politicians they seem to offer a rather dystopian future. In order to bring their role as a human habitat back to the centre of urban and architectural discourse, not only architects but also citizens ought to become more critical about urban development processes and their relationship with economy, technology and politics. Amateur Cities has been established to build awareness and enable exchange between citizens, theoreticians and practitioners who focus on finding better alternatives for urban habitation.