“Bairro Criativo” launched in Porto, Portugal on 24 May, the latest of my City As Platform projects which approach the urban landscape as a creative platform. I’m pleased to say that Porto has responded in style.

The agency ADDICT, lead by creative industries maestro Michael DaCosta Babb, asked me to create and direct a project exploring the question “how creative can Portugal be?”. The result is Bairro Criativo (Creative Quarter). Bairro Criativo combines the question they wanted to ask with one that I always like to ask:

We hear so much about ‘The Creative City’, but when do we get to see it?

For Porto, Bairro Criativo is that chance.

The framework for the project is quite simple. I put out the call through ADDICT’s communication channels to invite anyone in the city – designers, homemakers, business people, kids with crayons – anyone – to think of one thing they’d like to do to temporarily improve people’s daily lives in Porto. The only criteria was that the proposed ideas had to be simple, quick, and go in and come out with only a light touch on the city – nothing destroyed before they are installed, and no damage when they leave.

Of paramount importance to me was that this was an opportunity for a direct relationship between creative ideas and the physical city. No months of planning, no public workshops with post-it notes – let me know your ideas, let’s talk about how they’ll work within the framework of the project, and let’s make them happen. There are times when the long game is appropriate, and there are times when you just need to make the ideas happen.

It was interesting that a lot of people instinctively thought in what you could say were modular ideas – creating objects and opportunities to plug into the existing city to create new experiences, opportunities, and at times even temporary infrastructure. It was wonderful to see people think in modular, incremental terms – there was a pragmatic quality to the ideas at the same time as a fresh imagination which I enjoyed.

For a preview of a couple ideas I’m particularly excited about seeing happen…

"Farmville for Real" by Rita Maia, José Ricardo Cardoso, Pedro Cruz Lopes

Farmville for Real is a collection of modular structures made of two interlocking pieces. These small strucutres can exist on their own or in a group to enable pop-up community gardens anywhere, depending on the desire of the residents. The objectives of the project, say the creators are to:

• Provide people with an inexpensive opportunity to participate collectively in a project of common good.
• Promote shared responsibility in public spaces.
• Renew the urban landscape, making it more pleasant and healthy.
• Teach children and young people to start early to enhance the environment.
• Create an alternative way of spending free time.
• Create neighborly ties among the participants of the project.

Estrutura Simbiotica by Dioga Aguiar and Teresa Otto

Another piece, Estrutura Simbiotica by Dioga Aguiar and Teresa Otto is a modular construction that, as they say, “aims not only to increase the space of existing bus stops, but also to entertain those who are still waiting for their transportation.” I like it for both the visual qualities, but also for its symbiotic relationship with the bus stop (as the name would imply), and for its role in getting us to think of other areas and objects of the cities that could host a designed structure that plugs in to existing objects to increase both functionality and enjoyment.

Bairro Criativo article, Time Out Porto (click for full image)

More information on the project can be found on ADDICT’s website (in Portuguese).

For Portuguese readers, you can find an overview of the project in the current issue of Time Out Porto – scanned above.

If you’d like to keep track of future updates to Bairro Criativo or other projects, please subscribe to this site.

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Open Chairs by Nina Mrsnik

As the folks at the Exchange Radical Moments Festival explain in the festival catalogue:

Resourcefulness has become one of the most important skills for people to develop today. What resources do you see being treated as waste in your city that could be used to benefit others? The Urban Guide for Alternate Use is a catalogue of city-specific opportunities for resourcefulness  within existing urban environments, compiled simply by asking the city’s residents to devise alternate uses for things already present in the city. It is a guide that acts as a catalyst for a new form of resourcefulness in the city, and as a communicative vehicle for exchange among residents.

For the festival Exchange Radical Moments, a guide will be created for one of the participating cities, filled with the ideas submitted by the city’s residents, as gestures of donation to their fellow citizens. The city guide will be written by the imagination and resourceful thinking of its residents,  and can serve as an alternate guide to the city.  Together the different submissions will form a powerful collection of insights into how people mentally and physically play with the urban landscape  as a conglomeration of readymade objects ripe for intervention.

From hacks such as using traffic bollards as ladders to gain a better view of a football training session (top image), to re-imagining Amsterdam street sweepers as bird baths between shifts (as seen below), the Urban Guide for Alternate Use is an open platform for people to explore and re-imagine the uses of their existing city’s objects and areas. It’s early days, so release date, call for contributions, etc., still to come, but thought I’d share one of many things to come in 2010. Stay tuned.

Improvised Amsterdam Bird Bath

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I’m pleased to share the news that the latest book to feature my work and approach towards urban creativity has just been launched in Italy. The book, Disegnare le città (Drawing cities), is an overview of a more organic and people-driven approach to design, creativity and the city rather than the top-down model that has been dominant for so long. As the introduction to the book states:

Drawing cities today cannot simply mean creating (or re-designing) an emblem for public administrations. As the populations’ needs change and diversify, so do the competences and the ways they are represented and communicated. Therefore we now can observe, alongside traditional elements, the more or less aggressive affirmation of new instruments requiring attention, specific cultural standards and creative sensibility.

In it you will find text and commentary from myself, images from some of my projects, and a number of superb contributions from others. More information can be found here.

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Until I can find the time for some quality updates, you can take a look at my flickr photos of the preparations here.

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At the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris today as part of the final jury for the architectural design class being taught by my friends Karsten Huneck and Bernd Truempler of Office for Subversive Architecture fame.

As with most student work, there was a healthy range of ideas and varying degrees of talent on offer, but overall it was an fairly impressive selection of new thinking towards architecture by the next gen (well, France’s next gen). One piece that really stuck with me as I was walking around after the day was a project by students Berenice Gaussuin and Clair Tournier.

With a brief to redevelop an old firestation, they presented some impressively polished and well-thought out plans to gut the interior of the firestation and create an organically developing natural space within the building. Their ideas and execution of the project as they presented it reminded me of a lot of the thinking done in the second part of the Shrinking Cities project and even more radical explorations in terms of designing for shrinkage instead of growth in cities. Some nice work coming out of the ESA, guided by OSA. All hail the power of the acronym!

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Previously, on scottburnham.com…

As I wrote last week, I was an instructor for UQAM’s (University of Quebec in Montreal) Design International Masterclass. My workshop functioned as an creative urban laboratory to explore the objects and areas of the city with a new approach to design and the city: how can shared spaces, objects, visuals and aesthetics be created which invite creative participation by the public?

To say I was pleased with the outcome would be an understatement. For a more visual overview and a play-by-play in French, with a cameo by some of Montreal’s city officials who wanted to get inside the concept a bit more, go here.

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It’s been an inspiring week working with a team of about 40 advanced design students to explore the notion of urban intervention as a design process. The mission was simple: “The city as source material and canvas.” And with each day that passes, I’m continually impressed with the work coming out of the class. That, and the fact that the “Intervention Unit” van (above) is parked around the corner from the building. Coincidence?

Participating in these intense international workshops are always great fun – mostly because the students had to apply to get in, so they’re at their best, and also because the other guest lecturers from across the departments are all key players in their fields, so there’s also a great a vibe in the cafe in-between lectures, swapping ideas and contacts.

Come back soon for the flickr pool of resulting student work. You won’t be disappointed.

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Image Credit: Mark Jenkins

With Milan just around the corner, Droog and I have been putting together a few communication documents for Amsterdam’s 2008 International Design Biennale – Experimenta Design (EXD08), of which Urban Play will be the main event. Doing this, I realised the majority of public attention right now is on the new designs being created for the project. These are staggering, believe me. But in parallel to the design work is the work that’s being put into the Urban Play exhibition. So as a taster, here’s the PR info that’s going to be released about the show in Milan:

Urban Play: The Exhibition
international unauthorized collaborations and urban interventions

The Urban Play exhibition will provide a global overview of urban design interventions done by the public, for the public. While some refer to the latest wave of urban creativity as guerrilla design, and others term it “3D Graffiti”, the common definition is that this work is where creative expression in the city streets becomes physical and is literally transforming cities around the world. Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents, as the title states, unauthorised collaborations which exist at the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design. The Urban Play exhibition will show how this latest wave of urban intervention is not only challenging the rules of engagement between people and allowed creative expression in the city, but is also changing the language of creativity in the city. While social attitudes have previously dismissed urban intervention as a form of vandalism, at the heart of the current wave of guerrilla design is in fact a deeply sophisticated movement with a dedicated attitude concerning their role in the life of the city. The Urban Play exhibition is the definitive overview of the next wave of street art and the creative urban interventions that are literally transforming cities around the world.

The Urban Play project is conceived and curated by Scott Burnham and produced by Droog Design. For both the exhibition and the design commissions which create the Amsterdam route the renowned Dutch design studio Thonik (www.thonik.nl) will provide the design of the interface and interactive media campaign.

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I have my own version of Newton’s Third Law, which states that the amount of sheer hell I experience traveling somewhere is usually equal to the immense satisfaction experienced during my time there [there has to be some justification for spending a third of my life in airports]. This was soundly proven after it took me 14 hours to get from London to Amsterdam this weekend. Yes, 14. A two hour flight delay, then three hours stranded on the runway, an hour back to the terminal after that flight was aborted, two hours on a coach across London after all this caused me to miss the last flight out of London City Airport, then the usual lifetime navigating through Heathrow, and an hour delay on that flight just for good measure. Anyway…

It gives me great pleasure to announce that after two years of development, Urban Play has the green light from the city of Amsterdam, and this weekend sees the first wave of designers, artists and architects arrive in Amsterdam for my briefing, spec’ing out the city, walking the route, and meeting with me, Droog, and others to begin work. And for the proof of Burnham’s Third Law: after the travel hell endured getting here, my time with this immensely talented pool of people has proven to be far beyond expectation.

The photo above shows part of the Urban Play entourage exploring the city. It was always a goal of mine for this to be a decidedly international project, and I was incredibly pleased that the first wave represented that in true style. For those of you who want to play a bit of Where’s Waldo with the photo, the team above is comprised of MVRDV (Netherlands), Martin Ruiz de Azua (Spain), Nothing Design Group (South Korea), Studio Wrap (India), Rebar (USA), EXYZT Architects (France), Autoban (Turkey), Manuel Rapoport (Argentina), Office for Subversive Architecture (Germany | United Kingdom), Jan Konings (Netherlands), Fernando Brizio (Portugal), and Veronika Valk (Estonia).

Drop me a line if you’d like to know more about Urban Play, and watch this space.

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