Architect's hands: how can we design better streets | Evelina Ozola | TEDxRiga

Translator: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Denise RQ We have long believed that an

architect

's hand should look like this. Architects are known to be intelligent and sophisticated. They always wear black and know

better

than anyone how our cities should work. They build models and look at them from above. The hand of an

architect

is like the hand of God. This particular hand belongs to Le Corbusier, and in this iconic photo he presents a model of the Voisin Plan, a utopian modernist vision of Paris that fortunately was never built, but the impact of his ideas was enormous. In fact, urban planners today are trying to fix what this guy, with his hand from above, did to cities.

Modernist urban planning produced spaces

design

ed specifically for automobiles, a city where different functions such as shops, offices and homes are strictly separated; a city where the traditional street, along with all street life, becomes obsolete. Unlike Le Corbusier, I care deeply about

streets

and want the

streets

of our cities to offer a more balanced space for mobility and social life. I also think that an architect's hand can look like this, and he or she can be working inside the model, directly on the street. During the last five years I have had the opportunity to work on several urban

design

projects in public spaces.

I have used my own

hands

to build these things. I spent many hours at the site and made some interesting observations while I was there. It all started with a project in Bastejkalns park in Riga, that's when I spent a week crawling on the ground, painting green circles and constantly explaining to curious passersby why I was doing this. In fact, he was setting up an outdoor exhibition dedicated to a Latvian writer. My experiments with color continued in the Sarkandaugava neighborhood of Riga, and this time I painted everything red and, of course, kept explaining why. It was Riga's first public square, designed jointly with a brave local community.

But today I would like to tell you more about the Miera Street project. The street name means "peace" in Latvian and the project name "Mierīgi" translates as "peacefully" or "easily." At our studio, Fine Young Urbanists, my colleague Toms Kokins and I began working with Miera Street three years ago. Now, this was when I had just returned from Rotterdam, Netherlands, where I had spent several years studying and working. When it comes to urban design, the Netherlands truly is a superpower. In Dutch cities there are many different types of streets: with beautiful big trees, with canals, with wide sidewalks - and I know you're probably already thinking about this - with bike lanes, of course.

Living in Rotterdam made me realize that healthy lifestyles and vibrant street life can be integrated into urban design. Without even thinking about exercising, I rode my bike for at least 20 minutes every day. Without even looking for a park, I had access to greenery right there on the street. I saw people having barbecues, watching television or selling their furniture on the street, and I gladly participated in it. I felt like I had the freedom to move around the city however I wanted, I was fit and happy. And then I returned to Riga. I saw the streets here from a new perspective: how sad they really are, how empty, especially the ones that have been built recently.

Riding a bike was uncomfortable for me and I soon switched to a car because it's so easy. Today, Riga repeats the same mistakes that American cities made in the 1950s: it builds highways to solve traffic problems, allows large shopping centers to spring up next to these highways, and suburban towns to grow just outside the borders of Riga. At the same time, the historic center is rapidly losing inhabitants, the air quality is the worst in the Baltic countries due to traffic congestion, and almost every block has an empty building. Riga made me feel restricted in my choices and unconsciously switch to a lifestyle that makes me unhappy and unfit.

With all this in mind, we decided that we could do something with at least one street in Riga. The reasons we chose Miera Street were that there was an active local community, which is quite exceptional for a street in the center of Riga, there was great spatial potential for high-quality street life and there was a very obvious problem: 90% of cars circulate on tram rails, leaving the lanes designated for them empty. At the same time, pedestrians and the growing number of cyclists have to share a narrow sidewalk and navigate between signs, open doors and parked cars. We were sure that the space available on the street can be used in a more balanced way.

By creating a shared lane for cars and trams in the middle, space would be freed up for a bike lane on each side of the street. That, in turn, would allow us to clear the sidewalks for walking, sitting, bike parking, outdoor cafes, planting and trees, beautiful, green, leafy trees. Did you know that in those almost 700 meters of Miera Street that are considered a creative and fashionable neighborhood, there are only 15 trees? It is a 45 meter tree, on one side of the street. That doesn't seem so modern, does it? With a

better

designed street profile, it would be easier and safer for pedestrians to cross the street, small businesses would have better spatial conditions to develop and there would still be parking available where needed, the liveability of Miera Street would improve and in fact everything This would leave the current traffic situation practically intact.

People will simply feel better, more comfortable on a street that offers more options. What we also wanted to explore with this project was the relationship between an architect and the local community. Locals are surely experts on their street and we, urban planners, want to know what they know because we want to create a design that fits their needs and truly improves their street. So at first we made these drawings and photomontages to have something to talk about. Then we try to engage people on the street by showing them our visions. The response was mostly positive, but we still weren't really sure if the proposed solution was the most suitable or if they even understood us.

So we finally decided to test the idea spatially and did what architects normally do: we built a model. But instead of building something small and looking at it from above, we decided to become those little plastic people inside the model and test the idea in real conditions on a one-to-one scale, right on the street. The model was built in three days and remained in place for almost a week. The street changed instantly. On the one hand, we added only 30 centimeters of sidewalk, which was enough to create space for benches and small coffee tables along the wall; which is very convenient if you want to sit and wait for someone, eat, reorganize your bags after shopping, rest after a long walk or just enjoy sitting and watching other people.

On the other hand, as soon as we left the tables and chairs, people from a nearby cafe started serving coffee and pastries. People instinctively know how to use a good street when they see one. At Fine Young Urbanists we believe that this type of urban prototyping with mockups is the cheapest, fastest and most reliable way to test changes to the urban environment. The creation of urban prototypes is collective imagination, collective illusions. It allows you to feel the space with your body to see if you can find a comfortable place for yourself, if you want to stay there.

It's also a way to avoid costly design mistakes later. We have learned that these small actions in a public space are a great way to involve the public in the design process. During the construction time, we were there constantly: building, painting and talking to people interested in this. The most frequently asked question was, "Why is this thing blue?" Well, the bright color caused people to start a conversation with strangers about the design of the streets; That's truly an urban planner's dream come true. And this time we received all kinds of questions: from very positive and supportive to quite critical and even aggressive.

Understandably, not everyone supports the idea of ​​more cyclists on the streets, it's a nuisance. Not everyone wants to give up their parking space for an outdoor cafe or potted plants. But here I would like to remember a smart piece of advice that my mother once shared with me: "No one can resist good manners. People have the right to have an opinion different from yours, but be polite, speak calmly and listen." to what others have to say. Maybe you'll learn something and maybe they'll start listening to you." As urbanites, we must understand that bike lanes are not built just to please cyclists, and street furniture is not installed for the benefit of merchants, and streets in general.

They do not exist only for the convenience of cars. To think that would be like continuing to believe that telephones are only made for calling. Cities are very complex organisms where everything must be in balance and where all - young people. , the healthy and financially secure, as well as those with modest incomes and whose movements are limited - can equally participate in mobility and social life Why do I think streets are so important? The American urban planner and character observer. William H. Whyte famously once famously said that streets are the rivers of city life. Of course, streets help us get around efficiently, but streets are also a stage where public life can take place.

And public life is really the essence of cities. People have not built urban settlements to stay hidden from each other in their homes or in their cars. They have come together to exchange knowledge, share resources and create something collectively, and the good city has the ability to encompass all the different options of the people who live there and help balance them spatially. After finishing the "Mierīgi" project, a video was made and we posted it online. The idea resonated with people around the world. Our little video has already been viewed, tweeted, shared and received more than 60,000 likes.

This shows that urban planners, activists and community leaders around the world are looking for new ways to let their cities know that people want to take street space from cars and profit-hungry real estate developers. And we are definitely not alone: ​​there is a whole new generation of architects and urban planners who are less concerned with designing iconic buildings and more interested in humanizing the rigid and unbalanced city. They are not afraid to take risks, to work with their own

hands

and are masters at finding loopholes in regulations and alternative forms of communication. Forget the arrogant modernist.

This new architect is more of a hacker. Practices such as Exist in France, Raumlabor in Germany or Assemble in the UK are successfully transforming the role of architects and changing the way we see congested streets, empty buildings and unwanted areas in our cities. For example, Parkin Day started as a small initiative by Rebar Art and Design Studio in San Francisco and in 10 years it has grown to become a global movement, with several cities even incorporating it into their urban policies. Or the ZUS architecture studio from Rotterdam managed to transform an unwanted office building, which had been empty for 15 years, into a creative meeting point and a testing ground for new ideas.

That's a place many other cities now envy. How could we convince more architects and urban planners to actively participate in city creation? I think one of the ways is through education. Every year we organize a summer school for students and young professionals in architecture, urban planning and design. And in this summer school, you will have the opportunity to complete a complete design cycle in just two weeks. This is something rare in architectural education. Participants do research, come up with a concept, and immediately test it by building it in a public domain. Through this, they learn how heavy real materials are and how scary power tools can sometimes be.

And they don't build just by exercising; They create something that the local municipality (in our case Cēsis) or a local organization is really interested in. Finally, at the end of summer school, they see the public taking ownership of the finished construction. They see if it works as intended or if it doesn't live up to the concept. This hands-on experience completely changes the way these young architects view their profession. In our summer school we teach that architecture goes beyond buildings and that urban planning is not just the space between them. We believe that building is a social act, but let us not forget that prototypes are only one step towards the creation of real public spaces, and a summer school will probably never replace auniversity.

I really don't think Miera Street should be painted all blue, and I know that professional builders are much more skilled at using a screw gun than architects. What I am suggesting is that to maintain a clear and critical mind we often need a change of perspective. To build better cities, we need both: a deep understanding of life on the street and a view from above. I believe that taking small steps can lead to big transformations in our cities. And I really hope that in the future there will be more architects and urban designers who rely less on the visions of Mega Lo Mania and more on their humanity.

Thank you. (Applause)