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Azerbaijan

Parking is one of the significant city planning problems of Baku. The neighborhoods with high buildings usually lack parking lots and the cars pile up in the backyard of the residence buildings. Children in the neighborhood reclaim the streets! They want to play one more round of soccer, but the already existing limited and shrinking space for a playground is taken away by the cars coming in and out of the yard. Also, children playing in the “playground” of the residential buildings put parked vehicles in danger, and many incidents usually occur. You could see a grumpy person taking their head off of the window and shouting “go play your soccer somewhere else”. City design and the built environment around the residential neighborhoods should take everyone’s needs into account. Including kids who love to play games in the backyard of their apartments…

Georgia

Every day, we see different urban spaces around us; some are where we live, while others are work areas or streets that we frequently walk or pass by. I grew up in Tbilisi, and my home is near the most famous bazaar in Tbilisi, called the Deserter's Bazaar. It's the most chaotic, noisy, and filthy place I’ve ever been. Public spaces are areas where different people meet each other for different purposes. The bazaar is one of the strangest examples of public space and relations. The people who are here every day at work are boxing everything as much as possible. My main character is space itself, which we see in the first scene. The area really looks like an ocean, but inside the bazaar, people are boxing the spaces. Everything is boxed, like the fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and even the fresh fish are boxed in glass boxes.

USA

Increasingly, nature has become more of a luxury for city dwellers to access in our everyday life, an indicator closely tied to real estate value and the process of gentrification. Meanwhile, our building industry is established upon the constant exploitation of nature and the production of waste. Can we redefine and up-cycle trash to create public space that serves us all? This project by Ensemble Studio transcends the shackles of a tight budget and designed a public corridor with recycled CDs and leftover quarry stones - a gigantic sculpture, a playground, a microcosmos of nature that welcomes everyone to rest, wander, play, and decompress.

Georgia

Georgia

South Africa

Community architect and environmental activist Kevin Kimwelle from South Africa is demystifying architecture for people with a social cause, who wouldn't be able to afford an architect. He and his team of engineers and volunteers are building community centers, creches, schools and other social structures by entirely relying on local and repurposed industrial materials that he recycles for construction. His idea of a cycle economy expands also to independent energy production through bio gas from human waste.