Purpose. Within contemporaneity, urban cultures and citizen cultural users experiences are contaminated by social and political information, often disseminated via digital media. The present essay intends to call attention on the relevance of debating propaganda, disinformation, and media manipulation inside the city cultural fabric. For such aim, firstly, it encompasses a theoretical debate on these issues, via recent questions, central concepts and credible hypotheses, in particular on the sciences, technologies and arts of fake news. Such discussion articulates three major axes, among other directions: (a) communication, journalism and fake news; (b) general propaganda and political campaigns; (c) Russian war on Ukraine. The present text aims to analyze the designated ‘Lying Society’, which, while present in many countries against the respective peoples, is reinforced today through the so-called ‘fake war’, produced by Russian Federation state, against an allegedly ‘fake country’, Ukraine, via fake news. Method. This study uses a mixed method approach, by articulating QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) and Critical Artificial Intelligence procedures, for interpreting social processes. The Ukrainian War has been conducted as a ‘hybrid war’, by Russian Federation. In fact, Putin’s military invasion is reinforced with violence perpetrated inside multiple (and some unprecedent) economic, social and cultural spheres, often acting as hybridized social realms. These social dimensions fusions occur among energy conflicts, climate aggressions, people impoverishment, mass kidnapping, genocide commitment, sexual violations, panoptism on citizens, opponents poisoning, human rights knock down, international law disrespect, democracies undermining, nuclear blackmail, heritage destruction, cultural annihilation, to name just a few. As a transversal and also hybrid realm, information and knowledge media discussions are articulating social fabric, through news and, in particular, fake news. Within such broader context, social processes are analyzed here essentially via news and fake news contents and tactics, which make explicit the underlying core communication strategy named ‘hybrid war’, that provokes an unprecedent breed of global crisis. Fake news strategies use, among other communication tactics, alarmism, misinformation, factoids, big lies, post-truth politics, pseudohistory, fallacy of composition, etc. As for methodology and media sources, such investigation is conducted via a method developed by the author, named Hybrid Discourse Analysis, that uses tools as an Alphabet of Interconceptual Relationships and social-semantic networks. The selected corpus of sources includes texts, images, videos and digital media, on the risky global war rising in local Ukraine. However, the present text discusses just the tip of the iceberg, that is, a case study about 4 Wikipedia pages on Fake News and some related ideas, which is only a part of the whole project sample. Results. One of the research outcomes is a Mini-Encyclopedia of Global Fake News, here solely sketched. The whole sample constitutes an unprecedented archive and memory of news wars based on war news. Such project is being developed within a Virtual Sociological Museum, to be consulted by diverse audiences’ profiles, e.g., researchers, professors, students, citizens, tourists and social marginalities (migrants, retired, disabled people). Urban Cultural Studies; urban fake news; Lying Society; Critical Artificial Intelligence; Ukraine hybrid war; Hybrid Discourse Analysis; Mini-Encyclopedia of Global Fake News
This paper elaborates on Joan Tronto’s feminist care ethics with a particular focus on her relational principle of caring-with. Drawing on her broad understanding of care, which includes both informal and formalised forms of care, we argue that the visualisation and interweaving of different practices, experiences, perceptions, spaces, infrastructures, and relationships of care highlight the relevance and emphasise the diversity, interrelations, and multilayered dimensions of care in everyday life in the city. Our considerations offer insights into the conceptual and practical development of a care map of the district of Gries in Graz, Austria. The map is created as a means to reflect on—and make visible—the multilayered dimensions of care in everyday life in the city. So far, it comprises a clustered inventory and mapping of care actors in the city and an analysis of maps created during care walks as a way to sense ordinary care practices. We conclude with a critical reflection of our approach and we discuss in which ways the visualisation of caring-with practices provides both challenges and opportunities to stress the political dimension of urban cultures of care.
This study explores the complex evolution of Baroque garden design within European court gardens and illuminates its importance in shaping cultural, aesthetic and social landscapes. Through a multidisciplinary approach that blends historical analysis, architectural study and horticultural understanding, this study reveals the fundamental principles, key features and social motivations that drove the creation of these emblematic spaces. Using a comparative framework, it examines prominent examples from Italy, France, England and beyond, recognising regional differences and cross-cultural influences. Methodologically, archival research, site visits and landscape reconstructions are integrated to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genesis and evolution of these gardens.
During the 1960s, a wave of avant-garde art movements emerged, pushing the limits of convention. The worlds of architecture and art started to blend, with artists transforming public spaces into the sites of exhibition and the very medium of their creations. A closer look at these movements may uncover some unapparent connections to the broader political dialogue of the post-war period, especially concerning groups such as the Situationists. The primary aim of this article is to explore the links between the postwar socio-political movements and the evolution of street art forms from the 60s to the present. This exploration revolves around crucial terms such as ‘dérive,’ ‘détournement,’ and ‘constructed situations,’ which are situationist artistic and socio-political concepts. Despite the absence of a direct historical link, these concepts share a discursive unity with post-war artistic events, indicating that contemporary art seeks to assume a more substantial socio-political role, without a distinct political stance. The article examines the work of pioneering artists like Christo, Arman, and Villeglé, who brought art into public spaces. Their work exemplifies how ‘public art’ emerged from the intersection of formalist approaches and the concepts of the Situationists. Notably, the investigation suggests a more nuanced relationship between using space as an artistic material and situationist theory than previously recognized. This article aims to expose the underlying psychological-political layers of modern and contemporary art, particularly emphasizing public art happenings and festivals like the 21st-century Nuit Blanche Parisienne and lately the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics 2024. By analyzing the early works of the artists discussed in this article, we conduct a ‘comparative analysis’ of their characteristics with the texts and manifestos of the Situationists on urban life and cities and investigate the similarities. This process extends to recent public art events that serve as urban interventions in the city, approaching ‘architecture’ as what was presumed by the Situationists.
In cooperation with the European Public Sphere initiative by the IG-EuroVision, the Open Innovation in Science (OIS) Center of the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft organized public Dome Talks as part of the Care Tour. Under the roof of the European Public Sphere Dome, a mobile geodesic cupola, various challenges relating to community health and care were discussed in public conversations. The Care Tour took place at five locations in Austria between June and September 2023. Each stop was hosted by one of the five projects of the OIS Impact Lab “Caring Communities for Future”, a transdisciplinary research hub that promotes participatory projects at the intersection of health promotion, urban and regional development, and social sciences. The aim of the Dome Talks was to better understand the needs of different caring communities by creating opportunities for participation as well as dialogue and interaction between civil society initiatives, municipal administrations, health care services, and research. The open nature of the Dome Talks proved to be an ideal format for exchange between different actors in society. The Dome Talks brought up various ideas for caring communities and highlighted inherent needs, including improving the precarious working conditions of migrant care workers, creating opportunities for family caregivers to connect with each other, experimenting with creative participatory methods, and adapting rural and urban public spaces for citizens and people with disabilities. In the long run, encouraging the dialogue between community members may indirectly foster sustainable caring communities that contribute to improving the wellbeing and health of citizens.
This paper presents a reimagination of urban public space through a site-specific performance. The work is transdisciplinary, engaging architecture and art practice, and is documented through a feminist posthuman autoethnographic approach. Urban spaces are reimagined through coalescing the author’s performative encounters, informed by collaborations with female Ewengki/Evenki shamanic practitioners from northern China, and female Rongo? M?ori healers in P?neke Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand. The performance, Healing Matrix, unfolds as a journey, traversing tangible and intangible relations in public spaces at the edge of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington Harbour, where the city meets the sea. Complex moments of becoming are drawn out as the performance moves around the harbour’s edge, captured through feminist posthuman autoethnographic techniques: through mapping sensory impressions, improvisations, presences of other-than human entities, such as Taniwha (spiritual beings), and the researcher’s embodied shamanic perceptions and experiences. These techniques are influenced by the female indigenous Rongo? M?ori and Ewengki/Evenki collaborators. The research subjectivity is decentred, and intricately connects to a relational, embodied collective of women, colonial urban sites, indigenous multi-species traditions, and technological entities. The Healing Matrix performance attempts to capture complex relations within urban public spaces that are present at the cusp of awareness. In encountering these evasive conditions, and giving agency to them, the work suggests new ways in which urban public space might be understood. This paper positions feminist posthuman autoethnography as a way to understand such complex relations, emerging from creative performances, and shows how these might prompt a reimagining of urban public space.
The aim of the study is to create an architectural model configuration for rehabilitation of the spatial combinations in street markets with dynamic usage of screens which redefine the spatial layers of retail and circulation spaces and to offer a suggestion for this configuration to trigger spatial interaction processes. In this context, by evaluating the literature data of the prominent figures (authors?) studying street markets, examining how the related themes present common intersection areas and in which contexts they overlap, publications touching on the ability of digital media components to play a role as components in the spatial configuration of street markets constitute the conceptual and practical scope of the study. Therefore, the following street markets are aimed to be addressed: Ballarò Market (Palermo, Italy), Maltby Street Market (London, UK), Market Day (Sarlat, France), Mathallen (Oslo, Norway), Markthalle Neun (Berlin, Germany), Mercado de San Miguel (Madrid, Spain), Mercato Centrale (Florence, Italy), Östermalms Saluhall (Stockholm, Sweden), Belvarosi Piac (Budapest, Hungary), Mercado da Ribeira (Lisbon, Portugal). The findings of the study show that spatial transformation processes provided through dynamic horizontal components of screens create social intersection areas, unlike conventional space production processes. These intersection areas trigger a dynamic series of spatial solutions and bring into question the role of screen modules in the use of space in cities for the formation of new spaces. Consequently, for rehabilitation of the spatial combinations, data obtained from decisive points in the work of pioneering figures (authors?) give rise to the need for the configuration of an architectural model. This need provides a basis for the potential of open, semi-open and closed spaces to be incorporated into the functioning of street markets through dynamic usage of screens, which will be created by a series of media components in different sizes and arrangements for the ground and upper layers.
In the long and ongoing process of planetary urbanization, urbanity has appeared as a ubiquitous topic in disciplines ranging from sociology, urban studies, and economics, to literature, design, and contemporary art. As the chosen environment for most of today’s cultural, economic, and academic elites, urban space constitutes an ever-present backdrop for unfolding posthumanity. How to live together in todays’ cities, how to confront challenges together, and how to think about urbanization as a global phenomenon, have become pressing and ongoing questions that stir the curiosity of researchers, artists, politicians, and contemporary urbanites alike. In the face of multiple crises, we are confronted with the cascading effects of climate change, intercontinental migration as well as political and economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, urban centers with their cultural capital, innovative potential, and economic power appear as ideal places to look for inspiration, change, or maybe even revolution. As an approach that takes the ubiquity of the urban into account, the concept of planetary urbanization tries to describe urban existence as interwoven in international networks of production, consumption, and sociocultural interaction that span the entire globe. Hence, the urban is understood as an all-encompassing concept, which holds the potential to change the world and how we experience it.
This research aims to examine the effects of historical urban landscapes on urban identity in the city of Van (Turkiye), where concrete cultural landscapes that have hosted various civilizations are layered. The research was conducted through a literature review and after expert evaluation in the selection of historical urban landscapes, which are cultural landscape areas, and a photo-survey was conducted with 415 people with a user-oriented approach. In this way, city images, identity and memory spaces in minds were determined. City users it has been concluded that historical urban landscapes are the dominant elements in the formation of urban identity in the central districts of Van. In this sense, some suggestions have been developed for the protection and development of historical urban landscape elements that provide a connection with the past and are important and effective in the formation of urban identity for their sustainability with their surroundings.
The mental processes that an individual starts to develop from the moment he/she is born and continue throughout his/her life differ according to the society, level of education, past and current cultural environment and the experiences he/she is going through. Visual perception may differ from individual to individual. Therefore, the quality of the visual formations in the environment is an important factor in the formation of visual perception. Visual perception is a component that enables users and designers to meet in a common language, in other words, it has an impact on how architects present the design to users. It can be said that architecture and design is a discipline shaped around visuality and has an important role in the perception environment. Therefore, it is important for both the user and the designer architect to create the structures and designs to be designed by taking into account the title of visual perception. Visual perception criteria should not be ignored, especially in the design of living spaces or places where more time is spent. It is aimed to examine the factors affecting visual perception.
How do we want to innovate lived urbanity in a more and more commodified city centre? From a social design and urban anthropology perspective, the paper explores the co- creative use and therefore enhancement of urban liquid structures as open access common spaces, using the example of the Swimming Association of Vienna’s Danube Canal (Schwimmverein Donaukanal - SVDK). SVDK started o[ as a collective of four social designers at the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna in 2020. As of today, it has grown into an open, bottom-up, non-profit and non-partisan cultural association with around 250 members between the ages of 13 and 79 years. SVDK’s aim is to revive the urban swimming culture in Vienna’s Danube Canal, a side arm of the Danube River that flows through the very city centre. Unbeknownst to most Viennese citizens, this practice is not a novelty but indeed a revival, as the canal has been a popular bathing and swimming spot until the 1920’ies. The authors, both active swim association members themselves, will trace the blossoming and weaving processes of a community within the local context and the steady pop-up of community-created urban swimming infrastructures as well as various artistic, creative and environmental interventions. Moreover, the paper will look at collaborations with fellow urban bathing initiatives across Europe as due to climate change, urban open water swimming becomes relevant for a growing number of cities. Ultimately, the project seeks to examine how disruptive, yet inclusive interventions can lead to a more liveable coexistence in the 21st century city.
A bench is there to sit on. That’s its purpose. That’s what it was built for. But if this bench is placed in public space, it can do much more than that. It livens up a place. It offers a place to rest. It leads to random encounters. But it can also displace, erect boundaries, restrict the scope for action. Although the German term “mobiliar” (furniture) derives from the Latin “mobilis” for mobile, urban furniture usually stands for the opposite: uniform and immobile elements. These are subject to legal norms and strict regulations in terms of design and use. What forms can and should urban furniture take? Is it just about sitting down or can it also contribute to new (social) qualities of public space? Can urban furniture promote exchange between people? Does it create new meeting places? Can it foster transformation processes in a neighbourhood that go far beyond a purely physical redesign? Together with residents Social Design Studio redesigned a park in Vienna’s second district. The park is located in a neighbourhood with a high density of large social housing complexes and home to an above-average number of children, young people and people over 65. A previous study by the Social Design department in 2017 – which conducted an artistic and research-based analysis of the area – showed that the open spaces close to the residential area offer too little recreational quality and are hardly accessible and used despite the high need for social spaces in the area. The creation of new urban furniture in a new micro-centre with the involvement of the residents was identified as a possible lever to improve the opportunities for local recreation and to promote neighborhood and coexistence. (see Schraml, Färber, Kohlmayr, Plášková and Valencic 2017; Schraml 2018) In the continuing project "Stadt aufmöbeln - eine Plattform zur Erforschung unentdeckter Möglichkeiten von Stadtmobiliar" (2021; supported by MA 19 - Architecture and Urban Design), the potentials of urban furniture, participation processes and ecologically, socially and economically sustainable urban design were explored – with special consideration of the previously defined target groups (predominantly young and older people). Parallel to this, the redesign of the park was set up in collaboration with Wiener Stadtgärten and the second district of Vienna. Within a year, the park was redesigned based on the principles of citizen participation and circular economy. By identifying and utilizing (previously) unnoticed resources in the city, the project questions linear routines in the design pf public space and demonstrates an alternative, scalable and (internationally) transferable approach to a socially circular city.
What do textile fabrics, residential streets and urban dwellers have in common? They are all part of the “living room on your own doorstep” – the public urban and social space that can be shaped by people. This article examines three projects by the Viennese urban and cultural initiative “space and place” that strive to enable the co-creative exploration, reinterpretation, and invention of new urban spaces: First, “Stoff fu?r’s Gra?tzel” (“Fabric for the neighbourhood”, 2021/2022), honoured with an award by the Chamber of Commerce, uses the medium of fabric to shed light on a Viennese neighbourhood. Textiles like a pair of painter’s trousers, a baby bodysuit or a tea towel from a pub are sewn together to form a “neighbourhood rug”, symbolically intertwining the community’s diverse threads. Second, the project “Residential Street Culture”, initiated by “space and place” in 2018, explores residential streets as urban oases. It challenges car-centric views, redefining these areas as democratic spaces for people. Third, the award-winning project “We speak ...” (“Wir sprechen …”, 2014-2023 – honoured by “SozialMarie”) celebrates the linguistic diversity of a city’s inhabitants by showcasing language skills of local business employees through window displays. In language-sharing events, native speakers are teaching phrases in their first languages to interested neighbours. These projects employ various methods to activate local neighbourhoods and to support the redefinition of public spaces. This article discusses the role of art and culture in co-creating urban coexistence, questioning established social patterns such as mobility behaviour and throwaway culture. It highlights the potential of city dwellers to contribute to a redesign of urban life.
The significant displacement of populations worldwide is continually creating a greater separation between humanity and the natural environment. This phenomenon has resulted in various negative impacts on the global ecosystem. The development of sustainable architecture and green buildings highlights the environmental impact of buildings through the implementation of strategies such as energy conservation, utilization of modern technology, and reduction of water consumption. However, to ensure long-term sustainability, the biophilic design must also be incorporated to establish a spiritual connection between the users and the buildings. The concept of biophilic design relates to the influence of natural elements on human beings. The many advantages of biophilic design, including stress reduction, enhanced well-being and productivity, heightened sense of tranquility, and improved concentration and relaxation, make it the most suitable design to be implemented. This study employs an extensive literature review methodology and utilizes photographic illustrations from various examples in order to explain the importance of biophilic design. Additionally, the study provides a brief introduction to the biophilic design models.
This presentation explores the approach of architectural education to collaborative practices and complex social contexts through projects that intervene directly in public space, creating constructive and material solutions that establish points of dialogue with the community and the identity of places. In particular, the presentation focuses on the conception and materialisation of a permanent project for the Quinta do Loureiro neighbourhood, at the request of the residents, through a partnership with the municipality of Campo de Ourique City within the scope of the Architecture degree at theUniversidade Autónoma de Lisboa. The choice of materials, the constructive solutions and the execution itself clearly reflect the ambition to create a dog park as a community space with new programmatic features and a poetic dimension. The aim is to contribute to the debate on the importance of exploring the relationship between teaching and intervention in real contexts, in order to obtain results that, both from the point of view of the materials and their form and function, contribute to social dynamics and urban enhancement, helping to solve urban problems specific to a location, but at the same time capable of generating thoughts and methodologies of analysis and intervention applicable in other cultural and geographical contexts.
Vibrant Fields is an artistic research project that seeks to explore the impact of climate change through an artistic lens. The project’s central hypothesis posits that urban nature is a dynamic amalgamation of biological and human-made technological elements, interconnected in a symbiotic life cycle within the urban environment. By meticulously observing and deciphering these intricate relationships, we aim to construct a comprehensive portrayal that sheds light on the influence of climate change. Our research focuses on understanding how atmospheric effects influence both living and non-living entities in the urban realm, and conversely, how these diverse particulate matters affect the climate. The project’s objective is to present a holistic depiction of climate change and its impact on urban nature by elucidating the intricate relationships among the diverse interacting entities. The Vibrant Fields team consisting of Zeynep Aksöz Balzar, Mark Balzar, Galo Moncayo Asan, and Bernhard Sommer is based in the Energy Design Department at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and endeavours to transform human perceptions of their immediate urban environment by creating digitally mediated narratives, offering an accessible and tangible perspective on climate change through the lens of energy flows. To achieve this, we employ high-resolution surveys of urban environments under extreme climatic conditions, utilising custom-developed multi-spectral sensing machines. By mapping the dynamic exchanges occurring within urban environments, we investigate the interplay between natural and artificial elements within the urban realm, focusing specifically on energy flows. Integrating these instruments into immersive experiences, the Vibrant Fields team provides an alternative viewpoint that transcends the human sensory spectrum, generating an interactive environment that enables visitors to engage with and influence energetic exchanges, perceiving the built environment and its inhabitants as vibrant matter (Bennett, 2010). Through their mere presence in the same space as the sensors, participants can actively shape the environment by interacting with sensory tools. This transformative space becomes a site for interacting with environmental information beyond our conventional senses, offering novel embodied experiences.
This article will discuss artistic audio walks as a contemporary approach to exploring cities and their history from a different perspective. It will compare three different approaches in three projects dealing with audio walks, distinguishing between artistic audio walks and touristic audio guides in museums and cities. Audio guides introduce listeners to a place through story telling. At the same time, other approaches towards making cities more visible artistically are gaining prominence. Walking through places with an audio guide is nothing new. This article shows that audio walks are not only guiding people through urban spaces but are artistically approaching listeners by making them (re-)act. It also demonstrates that walks like Johanna Mayrhofer’s “Working Borders”, the walking tours of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, and the experience of Janet Cardiff’s audio walks all send a message to the listener, while giving them the chance to act and to perform in a spatial context mediated through the audio walks. The experience of an artistic audio walk itself educates the listener—either on a specific topic or about themselves.
As performative approaches to urban studies and urban transformation have continuously gained influence in recent years, this journal issue aims at charting new ways towards methodological pluralism and multidisciplinary research from a perspective of performativity. In this context, research is understood as a performative act creating outcomes and performing knowledge in multiple research media. The performative as a conceptual term also reunites arts-based, artistic, and traditional research approaches, closing the gaps created by an orthodox understanding of scientific methodology solely based on quantitative and qualitative methods. Performative research or research as performance, therefore, holds the potential to provide a comprehensive, transdisciplinary understanding of knowledge creation which can reunite a plethora of methods and disciplines under the concept of performativity as the expression and creation of knowledge as a collective, transformative endeavour. The performative and its power to change existing urban realities and collective worldviews ultimately offers a conceptual tool for bringing researchers form different disciplines together and co-developing solutions for current problems together with affected populations. In the context of urban studies, performativity may guide the way towards a participatory understanding of contemporary urbanity and societal co-evolution based on a collective ownership of urban spaces. The contributions to this issue present a methodological toolbox, indicating what performativity may imply in the field of urban studies and which benefits it entails for researchers, engaged citizens, and urbanites.
Buildings that witnessed the Industrial Revolution, one of the turning points of history, bearing the architectural traces of the period and described as Industrial Heritage, can maintain their structural integrity despite losing their original functions over time. The aim of this study is to determine the satisfaction of the users regarding the buildings that were brought back to the city with a different function.? Accordingly, the Merter ExpressoLab Roastery example was investigated and the success of the functional transformation, spatial setup, existing and added furniture in the space, furniture comfort, lighting elements, and the light balance created using natural light were reviewed in terms of architecture and user comfort. For the purposes of the study, a detailed literature review was followed by on site discovery. During this process, the features and details on the structure were visually documented by means of photographs and video footage. The visual data was recorded for subsequent analysis. Issues associated with user dissatisfaction were identified along with the reasons thereof. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the Merter Espressolab Roastery case was a successful refunctioning project from the user perspective.
Many of us have come to depend on the internet and software as part of our daily lives. The virtual world is increasingly an integrated part of our physical world. As such, they tend to mirror one another, leveraging similar design approaches and principles. There are patterns and echoes in the digital world of UI/UX that clearly mimic the proven methods of urban planning and architecture practitioners. Today’s world of websites, mobile apps, and digital services has permeated nearly every aspect of life. Most applications don’t literally interact with our world, but they certainly resemble the ways we move about our physical cities. The user journey of going out into your town or city to find a store to buy new shoes is not all that different from ordering them from an e-commerce site. In fact, the relatively young field of user design unknowingly borrows a lot of fundamentals of urban design that facilitate this type of real-world transaction. As services move to the digital world, the problems they solve are still grounded in reality, as such they often reflect their physical replacement. We have “virtual shopping carts,” “home screens,” “email,” and so many other digital artifacts that mirror their physical counterparts both in name and function. Designers have digitized elements and services of the city and unknowingly, replicated the city in a virtual setting. As a result, the same design values that have grown out of centuries of canonized design are highly applicable to this new digital landscape.
