citizenship

Article: Critical Imagination

The Racism Onion

The racism onion has discrimination at its core.  You do not need to be American to be moved by the seismic events that shook cities and mobilized people around the world in response to police brutality against Black people in the US in the summer of 2020. However, if you have ever been subjected to […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Bottom-up Turned Inside Out

Decision-making in urban development today isn’t defined by the needs of empowered citizens but by two mutually supporting mechanisms: big corporate interests and retreating governments. Rather than a political vision of how life in cities ought to be organized, contemporary planning resembles a managerial task that coordinates flows of money, materials, people, and information. Paradoxically, […]
Article: Critical Imagination

The Other City Map

Urban spaces are usually identified through the borders and boundaries drawn on a geographical map. City lines, streets and corridors are often worked out in great detail. Today, however, another city has emerged, which cannot be detected directly from physical characteristics, with borders that are no longer easy to identify – a computational city. Cities […]
Publication
Book cover Kto Odzyska Plac Defilad?

Kto Odzyska Plac Defilad?

In this book, published by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw on the occasion of the 9th edition of the Warsaw Under Construction Festival of Architecture Tomasz Fudala, Werner Huber, Grzegorz Mika, Michał Murawski, Ania Molenda and Cristina Ampatzidou, Artur Jerzy Filip, Marlena Happach, Magda Grabowska, Aleksandra Litorowicz, Bogna Świątkowska, and Tim Tompkins write and discuss how to turn a parking lot into an urban square, the shadow of Stalin and the Palace complex.
Article: Critical Imagination

Bersih 4: Street Protests as a Form of City Making

Cities and architecture are not devoid of politics. Produced and governed through political processes, they often become the canvas upon which power is mapped. But this can also backfire. A square, designed to provide the setting for showing off the architectural grandeur of an institution, often becomes the very place where the populace gathers to […]
Article: Wishful Thinking

Liquid Citizenship

There are many reasons to question the form and the idea of citizenship today. On the one hand citizenship becomes something we tend to detach from by declaring our belonging either more locally, regionally or continentally rather than nationally.  On the other, it becomes a commodity as suggested by Femke Herregraven. Our multiple attachments to […]
Article: Wishful Thinking

State of Exception

The objects left behind in the desert by undocumented migrants on their journey to the U.S. are the unnoticed traces of the human experience of transit. Forced and illegal migration may receive a lot of attention in the media and political debate, but on a human level, it often remains distant and is rarely discussed. […]
Article: Critical Imagination
James Brown - Cage Free

Cage Free?

I live in Westmont, New Jersey, a small town in South Jersey just outside of Camden and not far from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Westmont and its neighbouring town of Collingswood boast an urban lifestyle without the expense of Philadelphia; and the main thoroughfare of Haddon Avenue that runs through both of these towns has shops, cafes […]
Article: The Unmasters
Mark van der Net - Amsterdam

Fewer Regulations, More Open Source and a Broader View

This is what Mark van der Net thinks can uncover new perspectives for architecture and urban planning. CA: Mark, you created OSCity – a free online platform that combines cutting-edge technology, open source and spatial planning. Can you briefly explain what it is and how it started? MvdN: It started about two years ago. Around […]
Research

Nearest Neighbour

How to use maker ethic, creative tinkering, and critical thinking to strengthen citizenship? The Nearest Neighbour was a research collaboration between Creative Coding Utrecht, Creative Urban Methods of Utrecht University, and Amateur Cities with the objective of learning how to think critically about the relationship between urban politics of space and technology through hands-on creative […]
Article: Critical Imagination
Military check point in the street, Kimihurura Neighborhood, Kigali, 2017.

Contemporary Urban Paranoia

Why We Should Look into the Surveillance Camera The permanent spatial state of exception in the urban environment is a much-discussed topic in postmodern discourse, yet a critical re-assessment of the contemporary situation is needed. The global proliferation of urban enclaves, and in consequence their ghettoization, indicates an urgent need for social sustainability.1 There is […]
Research

Possibility Space

Over Hundred Years of Transformations in Six European Squares Possibility Space: Over Hundred Years of Transformation in Six European Squares was a research project commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw for the 9th edition of the Warsaw Under Construction Architecture Festival, presented at the Palace of Culture in 2017. This research and […]
Article: Wishful Thinking

Housing is a Human Right

Following this year’s Habitat III, it is worth remembering that “Adequate shelter for all” was one of the two key issues of the previous Habitat conference in Istanbul. Ten years later we are looking at an even deeper housing crisis that does not only embrace homelessness and growing population of urban slums, but also growing […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Call to Action – On How the Political Potential of Architecture can Give Power to a Marginalized Community

With the unstable political ground in recent years, the subject of architecture in the political setting has suddenly gained new interest worldwide. As a response to the post-2008 financial recession and its inevitable repercussions within the built environment, the prevailing doctrine of corporate ‘iconic’ architectural production is now being greatly challenged by the daring alternatives […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Lost Cities and Losing oneself in the City

What if we gave up the wish to contain cities and citizenships? The ambition to welcome newcomers within spaces of hos(ti)pitality1 such as camps, asylum and detention centres is not only an assured formula for segregation, but it fuels fear amongst localities and (trans)national imaginaries.2 It fundamentally conditions citizenship, (urban) identity and human relationship to […]
Article: The Unmasters
Stalker

Walking across Actual Territories

Rome-based collective Stalker has been exploring the neglected areas of the Italian capital and engaging with their marginalized populations for more than 20 years. Stalker co-founder Lorenzo Romito reflects on the group’s evolution and future plans. CA: Can you briefly explain what your practice is about? LR: I am one of the founders of Stalker, […]
Article: Wishful Thinking
Borders - Ania Ruminska - 2014

Borders

The red-white border brutally cuts through the landscape on the premise of protecting cyclists on a path that meanders for its largest part right in the middle of nowhere. Protecting from what? – one might ask. Perhaps from forgetting that they have left the city and the rule of order that reigns there. To what […]
Article: Critical Imagination
Amateur Cities

On Amateurs

The word amateur has two meanings. One refers to the etymological origin of the word and is derived from French – amateur ‘lover of’ or from Latin – amator ‘lover’. Both come from the verb amare ‘to love’. According to this definition an amateur is a person that engages in a pursuit on an unpaid […]