Koliwada in Dharavi, connected to the Mithi River, embodies a unique amphibious landscape shaped by traditional practices,ecological stewardship, and community resilience amidst urban challenges. The Garden of Festivities project highlights thesettlement’s fight for sustainable coexistence with Mumbai’s shifting coastal terrain.
Spaces have inner and outer lives that inevitably make for a multi-dimensional experience. We just need to observe, listen and map all their layers with dimensions and care. This is especially true in a place like Ebertplatz – a complex square and transport hub in Cologne whose future has been in the spotlight of a polarizing public debate for years. The six students of the GDI workshop who worked on this space (Cen, Samreetha, Hwain, Ryan, Reona, Febi) did precisely that, to eventually conclude that empathy is the force that holds Ebertplatz together - despite the perennial threat of closure…
NeuLand is a community garden in Cologne: a successful urban farming project in need of attracting a larger community, especially since its recent re-location to a new site. The six GDI students (Jonas, Kryzsztof, Vanessa, Stanley, Momodo, Beilei) who worked on NeuLand paid a lot of attention to the idea of circularity at every level of their engagement. Inspired by the circularity of seasons and agriculture, and by the uniqueness of the “round table” – around which exchange and interaction happen in a more dynamic form than elsewhere –, they saw the potential for the garden as a centering…
The Langer Tisch is an art installation by Uschi Huber and Boris Sieverts in Cologne, Germany: a long wooden table placed on a very long strip of grass. It embodies everything a successful public artwork should be—practical and inclusive, yet also utopian and provocative. Like a lot of public art, it strives for survival. The six GDI students who worked on this site (Samuel, Nathan, Roy, Ninji, Satoka, Lucy) grasped these qualities and expanded upon them, building on the idea of length as the central motif. They unlocked the project's full potential by imagining an even more ambitious…
‘The Garden of Festivities’ is a project that attempts to unite livelihood concerns with an ecological imagination that grows from the Kolis collective, ancestral knowledge and expertise. The project's first step is a participatory landscape intervention on the last remaining commons within a habitat they are struggling to preserve.
As part of Proyecto Escape, urbz Bogota and the community from Cazuca put their hands together to build community toilets.
Pramod Vishwakarma, a carpenter working with the urbz team, talks to us about his connection to the dual places or worlds he belongs to and his indecisiveness over what 'home' truly means to him.
Dharavi’s massive redevelopment project aims to turn it into a ‘world-class’ neighborhood, but this vision risks erasing its unique identity and thriving homegrown economy. Instead of replacing it with glass towers and luxury spaces, Dharavi could be a model for a ‘world-grown city’—one that values its community-driven development while staying connected to the global economy.
In Portugal, Architects are revolutionising participatory urban planning by actively immersing themselves in a collaborative efforts with local municipalities. Through our interaction with Mariana Licenciada, we try to understand the negotiation process, the limitations within existing frameworks and how Res Do Chao has embedded co-Design as a tool in their participatory approach.
