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USA

It took more than a decade of community-led advocacy (1985-1998) to convince leaders to transform the defunct Port Authority terminal into a park. Through their dedicated participation and many years of public engagement, Brooklynites inspired the idea that the park should feel democratic and reconnect people with the riverfront. After opening in late 2021, rather than speaking about the design himself, Michael Van Valkenburgh wanted to know what people think about the park and how they use it. The user experience is what makes the design, and so Spirit of Space spent a week observing the many experiences and chatted, completely at random, with people at various places within the park. Through these many observations and insights with the public, the design intention was revealed. “I was taking care of this elderly gentleman who lives up on Columbia Heights, and I was describing to him what was happening on the piers. He had a big picture of the piers with all the warehouses on it from when he first moved here…and he was in his 80’s, he was blind and sort of housebound. And, once they opened I said I really want to bring you out of the house, take you to the park, and take your shoes off and let you walk on the grass. That was a really special moment, to be able to give that to him…You think, this is probably the only opportunity this man is gonna have to come put his bare feet in the grass after living in Brooklyn all these years.”

Georgia

This film is a try to show the environment, city and people from a different point of view. A view, different from the usual one and how excluding it can be if you are a bit different.

Azerbaijan

The movie is about a packed poor community living in Darnagul. Azerbaijan is oil reach, but most of the profit is gathered under the power of the ruling elite class. Poverty is real in most of the districts and people move to Baku with a hope of a job to cover their basic needs. It leads to over-population and high centralization of the capital city where already around 5 million people (taking into account the whole peninsula) are residing (official statistical numbers are modified/falsified to show less). These kinds of communities living outskirts of Baku are mostly people who migrated to Baku from the other districts or are internally displaced people after the Nagorno-Karabagh/Artsakh war. These Neighborhoods are under very poor conditions and people live in very anti-sanitary conditions. Toilets are usually public where most people use the same toilet in the neighborhood (mostly outside the apartments) and people mostly do cheap labor work to survive. They mostly sell goods or repair things for so cheap and they open a bazaar/market every Sunday to offer their services or sell their goods.

Albania

The booming, architecturally and socially chaotic city of Tirana, Albania, as seen through the eyes of the many stray dogs who, thanks to an ear tags (they are vaccinated and sterilized) live in the streets of downtown, in harmony with the people and their surroundings.

Denmark

The fridges are placed in an urban context with a sense of history and conflict. On one side is a gentrifying neighborhood; on the other is a cultural center guarding the under-represented. When a domestic object speaks its mother tongue of intimacy, boundaries begin to dissolve. Giving and receiving, entering and leaving, opening and closing, are all packed and shared inside these two fridges, by the name of food, from these fridges to all the fridges.

Hong Kong

Metropolis is often used as a broad term, and sometimes boring. Perhaps we have neglected that the build-up of a bona fide city is always gradual, progressive and partial. The fact that it is indeed more intriguing can always be found in the inconspicuous corners, and in each corner there resides a bunch of hidden stories vividly shining concurrently. In Hong Kong, the outlying islands are the hidden gems. Many of us cannot even imagine how resilient and inclusive this city is until we see the living evidence. It may surprise some if we take some daily snapshots at the same time, the diverse timelines are manifested - fIshermen, jossmen, villagers, artists, swimmers, hawkers, and visitors… their journeys being also the crucial parts of the city coexisting with the traders and bankers sitting inside the skyscrapers. If we spread those moments on live, we then have a series of overlapping histories in pixelated form being a rich and flavorful color palette that composes the pearl of the Orient. This video aims to capture the metropolitan cinematics in different interpretations to retrieve the hidden historical scatters from the unique stories and cultural legacy behind the often-forgotten islands - that to have witnessed our once significant transformation from a fisherman village to the international city. By cutting from an angle of the current lifestyle alternatives we aspire to impress the audience by showcasing the contrast to our usual understanding of a “metropolis” and “socio-economic development need”. The visual narratives on the living habits, interactions, struggles and growth of the people around passively respond to how we chose to battle with the “prescribed” ways of living then in turn reminiscing us about the genuine comprehensive story of Hong Kong.