Taiwan

Presenting the perspective and state of mind of the homeless living in the downtown area.

United Kingdom

Ilford is a diverse and growing neighbourhood of London. Access to green and public spaces in the heart of Ilford however, is greatly compromised. According to the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation, it features amongst the 10% most deprived areas for access to high quality local living environment. Wilderness Street is a temporary living urban landscape which was installed in Oakfield Road in Ilford in 2022, launching the town centre as a cultural destination at London's north-eastern fringe. Before large-scale urbanisation started from the C19, the Ilford, Barkingside and Hainault area was characterised by forests, fields and meadows. Our design strategy seeks to temporarily revive these lost landscapes. We have selected Uphall Camp Beacon, the former Royal Forest of Hainault and the Essex Grazing Marshes as blueprints for plant species and landscape character to be replicated by our proposal for Oakfield Road. The project advocates for the preservation of ancient natural landscapes and their role in maintaining biodiversity and supporting well-being. The legacy strategy will see all planting including trees and shrubs given away to community organisations and Ilford residents at the end of the project. Enticing local people to adopt the plants will see elements of the ancient Essex landscape re-instated in public places in Ilford, in peoples gardens, front gardens, planters and allotments.

Azerbaijan

Baku hosts almost 5 million citizens and there are 2 million cars on the roads. The expansion of roads and the construction of new bridges almost paralyzed traffic for the past decade and even now, after the constructions, things are not better. Mass tourist waves and the large number of people moving to Baku every year for better opportunities worsen the situation. Thus, overpopulation and bad city infrastructure leave many citizens of Baku going through a hell of traffic and congestion during rush hours. Public transport is also very packed and not so safe for many to use. The situation proves that there is a significant need for more alternative and green forms of transportation. Cycling is proven to be one of the most sustainable ways of transport and the city’s road infrastructure exclusively leaves cyclists behind. There are no bike lanes in most parts of the city, and only a few parks have them that have no point or connection points. Also, the drivers are very aggressive and impatient with the cyclists. Many drivers create very precarious situations for cyclists and the aggression is the same for those who ride motorcycles as well. Driving on big roads with no bike lane and around the sidewalks with many underground paths make things really worse for cyclists. Also, the lack of community and cycling culture kills its potential for the future. Baku needs sustainable and innovative solutions to its major urban problems and leaving the cyclists behind only challenges the situation further.

Albania

The Skanderbeg Square is a beautiful place and space for inclusion in daily life in Tirana. The site welcomes you the way you are, the way you move, the way you sound and the way you appear. When I first came to the square I was overwhelmed by its diversity and complexity. I got inspired to use the inclusive concept of football to get in contact with locals in Tirana and create the Dreamteam of Skanderbeg Square.

Russia

Attention economy is the largest and most disruptive innovation in both the information and in marketing. Smart homes are ubiquitous, connected devices that enable people to monitor, and that which is exploited by a large number of people. Attention economy is, therefore, revealed in the transformation of the public sphere into a panorama of relationships of things, of affects, of intentions. The singular constellation of social relations is the ‘state of Things’. It is also, in a way, a mode of production, which throws light on and gives expression to the intensities of this social process and appears in it a kind of objectivity and a mode of definition so that the political process may more appropriately be regarded as a kind of activity. A space is thus less a specific place or a general archetype of entities, and more a particular constellation of relations and a particular object. A space is thus, one in which, what is stored in the ‘actual’ is also what can be transformed into a modulating effect of that, and the inclusivity of the non-human perspective, be it nature or machine.

Switzerland

Unlike the promises of modernity in design, a single solution fulfills no one's wish. Even if all of us live in the same city under the same environment, everyone is different. Each one of us has individual voices filled with different needs and wants. However, in cities full of modernist structures across the globe, individual differences or cultural uniqueness can no longer be seen. Can design provide a space for uniqueness? Can every citizen be represented equally in a collective space? Instead of alienating ourselves in this concrete habitat, can we re-learn from nature and cultural expressions?" This film speaks for providing people opportunities to design our future knowing the importance of belonging, of nature, of community and connection. Instead of learning from standardized modernist practices full of concrete and computer programs, we need to learn from our past, from nature, and from our own hands. In order to let everyone's voice be heard, we need to first create a space that enables us to embrace our differences in its design.