I am very pleased to share the news that the next version of Reprogramming the City will launch in June 2015 at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes) in Stockholm, Sweden.
I’ve just returned from laying the foundations for the project there, and am particularly excited about this iteration of Reprogramming the City. ArkDes is a great institution with a very talented team, an enormous exhibition space and public outreach, which will enable the project to be experienced at an entirely new scale.
If you’re new to the project, Reprogramming the City is an exploration of ideas, prototypes and proposals for how the existing structures, surfaces and systems of the city can be repurposed and re-imagined to do more than their original function. It is about looking at the existing assets of the city and asking “What More” could they do, and “What If” the city did more with the things it already has.
Reprogramming the City is about experiencing the hidden potential of the city.
The word experience is an important one to highlight in the context of the Stockholm project. The focus at ArkDes is going to be about directly experiencing repurposed and re-imagined urban structures, surfaces and systems. Information and imagination are vital, but touching, feeling and sensing new urban ideas makes potential seem probable.
Among many meetings there last week, I had the pleasure to meet with Rahel Belatchew Lerdell of Belatchew Arkitekter, the firm behind Buzz Building, a proposed repurposing of an existing Stockholm roundabout into a future food source for the city (below). The project has been a favorite of mine since I first came across it, and plans are underway to make Buzz Building an exceptional experience within Reprogramming the City. I’m not giving any spoilers away just yet, but it’s going to be pretty fantastic.
More news will come as the project develops. Any questions or want to know more? Please do get in touch.