Chance encounter with the residents of Baratashvili bridge, who are transforming a very public traffic node into an art space.

Mohammad moved to Zaatari village from Syria when he was a young boy with his grandmother. Now a teenager, he helps his uncle by tending to the sheep and plans for a safe future in Syria.

A school is built just minutes away from Dhorkin Tanda, a hamlet in Maharashtra inhabited by sugarcane-cutting labor near Paithan, Aurangabad. The district had one school accommodating a total of 30 students, which was dilapidated over time. What the old structure lacked, the new structure had it hacked: ample lighting and ventilation achieved with the help of vaulted roofs, 140 sq ft stand-alone sanitation facility, a kitchen area of 95 sq ft for mid-day meals, and an overall conducive environment for knowledge to reside in and foster with the ‘play and learn’ ideology. The vaulted school is designed to evoke and satisfy the curiosities children are capable of, and answers them in the most natural way possible: the breeze on their faces that flows because of the Venturi effect, the green buffer zones that cut off the UV radiations, and the importance of planting native flora and fauna in and around the school. The planning provides ample space for one of the most essential needs of a school—the playground, tucked on one side of the site. The overall site of 3000 sq ft offers a 420 sq ft classroom equipped with storage shelves for books and educational toys, a 95 sq ft staff room for the teachers, designed with storage units for examination papers and academic journals, and lastly, 205 sq ft multi-purpose hall which doubles up as an additional classroom or a dining hall if and when need be. All these spaces are carefully designed in the 1110 sq ft built-up area the premise offers. The classroom’s orientation responds evidently to the breeze pattern and sun path. Considering the soil conditions present, a pile foundation is constructed to strengthen the substructure on which the load-bearing brick walls find their ground. The process is furthered with the vaulted metal sheet roof that minimizes the heavy structural cost and makes the form structurally rigid with minimal support. As one looks deeper into the shape of the structure and the design of the classrooms, the semi-circular volumes serve as noise buffers to the disturbances caused by vehicles passing by on the adjacent side of the road. A free path for ventilation and light is created by the high ceilings, which on the outer side are made up of non-reflective roofing material to reduce heat gain. Each and every wall is painted with pieces of information the child will imbibe even while sitting idly; one of the prominent being a depiction of The Big Dipper on the classroom’s low-height ceilings which is a craft intervention made by inserting an acrylic rod within the slab. Waste stone pieces are used for flooring, and are painted with mathematical learnings and traditional floor games to utilise the flooring area at its best. Moreover, the playground, just like the classroom, is a product of psychologically backed design thinking, subtly introducing the concept of an amphitheater to its tiny users. The steps under the overhang double up as seats for when the school is to conduct a recreational activity that requires staging and audience areas. The superstructure revolves around recycled timber, cycle rim, plastic bottles, and eco-bricks as infill materials to bridge the gap between technicalities and aesthetics. The project was completed over a period of 6 months under a budget of ₹25,00,000, with a vision to build a sustainable and eco-friendly school, which can become an example for other villages. While following the precept of maximizing the use with minimal available resources, it empowers the community through involvement of local volunteers in a construction that advocates a sustainable design concept in a remote and environmentally fragile location. The school utilizes local materials and construction techniques to derive a role model structure that not only reduces the dependency on conventional water and electricity sources in the village through innovative design but also evolves from a strong set of noble parameters—of climate responsiveness, resource availability, affordable building, and constructional feasibility. Lastly, while taking care of all needs and inclusions, the structure does not fail to accommodate physically disabled students, making it a design worth taking ahead.

The assumption that all people are able to actualize the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of citizenship within the built environment is misleading. African Americans’ ownership of property and use of public space for personal enjoyment has been historically perceived as transgressive behavior, and often met with punitive legal action, violence, and, at times, death. Given this context, the ability of African Americans to successfully navigate and shape the physical spaces within their lives has amounted to de facto survival strategies. Addressing this fraught social-spatial condition and its impact at the scale of the citizen, Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line), an intervention in the courtyard of the US Pavilion, is rooted in the historical spatial practices of African Americans, yet speculates upon new spatial strategies that support the most precarious of populations. We foreground these practices as manifestations of civic agency and freedom that move all citizens beyond mere survival toward thrival and full participation in the democratic ideal.

The film explores where the boundaries of inclusive design are and how they can be further extended by setting pre-determined barriers. The project fictionalises the story of a traveler without knees and how he lives in a modern city. In the process of social discipline, it is a necessary thing to deconstruct the single-mindedness and wishful thinking of the designers in a playful way. In the process of making the film, I tried to identify similarities in the symbolic forms of everyday life and intertwined them with ''poor images'' to examine the tiny narratives of fragmentation and chatter from the position of a spectator.

The film aims to portrait The New Bazaar: a modern public space; a lively scene with many happenings; inclusive for the people; a space that makes no seggregation between those who visit. But as you look at it, the design itself has no link with the Old Bazaar: the booming point of the whole city of Tirana, that has existed for over 300 years, and was demolished in 1959. As you walk around, the glass structure reflects the old mosque, an element that recalls the fact that before the new buildings composed this space, less than a hundred years ago, other buildings, another bazaar lived there, and they shaped the collective memory of the habitants. But there is no other sign. No translation of the history into the design itself. The film tends to implicate the fact that the new bazaar as a public space has proven to be successful in terms of inclusivity for the people. But it is just as important for the design to represent the history of the old bazaar, which people cared about and remember with nostalgia, but risks to be just a vague memory, and for which new generations 100 years from now will have no idea about.

"The Green Chair" is a film by Andriana Theochari and Anna Katrine Tan. The film explores the contrast between the simultaneous overdevelopment of cities and the right to "sit" which symbolizes the right to take time to reflect on what is happening. Highlighting a kind of public furniture, a chair becomes a medium between fast and slow processes in our lives.

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.

Our short film investigates matters of urban spaces and their perception and critically approaches their potential for the adaptation of new residents. The particular potential of becoming a new or a second home to each individual. How easy is it to achieve this effect, and how can we measure this city's quality? Can the urban landscape define notions of home, and what properties of the city's spatial organization can create a homelike atmosphere? The notion of home is very personal to everyone, it is hard to quantify, but the concept is united by a strong shared sense of values. Home means a friendly place, a comfortable one, accessible and open. Such a perception can contribute to the natural development of both young people and adults. This story is about two friends who recently moved from their native Kyiv to Berlin and Warsaw and faced the need of adaptation to the new context, both cultural and urban. We reflected on the process of interaction with the new urban environment, up to the point where the new city and its architectural landscape started to shape the sense of a home.

The World And The Flock speculates about the capacities of the famous Geneva sheep flock to change our perception of the city. Thus, the flock that roams the gardens of Jardin des Nations, the heart of so called International Geneva, becomes a connecting and form-making element. The project offers an alternative reading, beyond the dispersed, isolated and fenced estates of International Geneva. The circulating flock becomes a spatial factor that is ordering social realtions through the (un)built. Seen, observed, monitored, the event unfolds its impact on multiple channels: from the physical to the digital. Thereby, the public space which nowadays is weakly articulated, scattered and isolated within the city of Geneva, becomes more connected and attractive to both locals and tourists and not only for members of International Geneva. Ingredients Grass, fences, water, trees – everything the flock needs can be found on site. The only missing elements, were a barn and salt for the sheep to winter. The flock is kept on rotating pastures, called padocks. There it grazes for four days before moving on, rotating from land to land, using normal asphalt roads. In the course of one year, the flock visits the United Nations, the U.S. Mission, the Rothschild estate, and many others. Every last weekend of the month, the flock leaves the Jardin des Nations and moves into the city. This urban event reconnects the isolated Jardin des Nations with the city of Geneva which is itself a city of (dis)connected madows.

Most streets of Baku are unsafe and hostile for women and queers due to their design and location. There is a cultural practice that women* need a company to go out in the streets in the dark or even sometimes in daylight to have more security. Unfortunately, there are many reported (and mostly unreported or uninvestigated) cases of women* facing harassment in public spaces in Baku. Most of the incidents happen in side streets with poor lighting and narrow sidewalks. Also, the local chaikhanas (where mostly cishet men come together to play board games and drink tea) cover the corners of the inner streets of suburban areas, making it very hard for women to pass by due to the risk of harassment or general discomfort of being subjected by men.

The film is about the lacking soul of Baku. The bright and beautiful capital is lovely for many and is the center of entertainment, beauty, tourism, trade, and culture. On the other hand, many people have a “boundary” between the beauty of these things due to poverty, mental health, or bad memories with the city. Baku has its part as well. The rapidly growing city has almost no soul left. The town's history is wiped off due to the construction of new sites and fancy buildings to attract tourists and guests and turn it into a business/entertainment hub in the South Caucasus.