The Center for Applied Urban Studies makes an interactive exposition "RE-City" at the "Zodchestvo'18" festival. What is the pavilion dedicated to? What is the interactive part?
Svyatoslav Murunov: This is our long-standing idea with Mikhail Priemyshev (environmental architect, designer, curator of the “Kurbanistika” festival - ed.) - to make living thinking about the city, territories, urban planning the central part of the exhibition project. Usually stands at Zodchestvo look standard - these are pictures or models and people near them. We want to place the very process of public reflection and social interaction at the center of the presented special project, to tell, argue, ask. That is, to some extent, return to the basic meanings of the city - and they include the accumulation of experience, its search, rethinking, complication and evolution.
The idea was supported by the organizers of the festival. Thanks to the current curator Vladimir Kuzmin: he somehow immediately realized that we just need a philosophical angle in which two strange people who have traveled half of the country will talk about cities. A lively discussion with a large number of examples is planned. We will discuss with Mikhail Priemyshev everything that worries us in the urban environment. We will not have architecture in the literal sense - only that which precedes architecture: sensations, experiences, meanings, subjects, scenarios … Let's talk where architecture comes from and why a crisis is always a crisis of worldview and position.
Why are you interested in the "public reflection" format? How can he interest the general public?
Why do we need communication with others? Why do visitors come to Zodchestvo? Perhaps for new questions, for a response to their ideas. There are those who are not afraid to publicly say how he feels. For example, I want to share my hypothesis that the post-Soviet city cannot be restarted without rethinking the village. And it seems to me that just through reflection - public, open, built on one's own experience, on real experience, one can understand and evaluate reality and one's place in it, concentrate on the causes of certain processes, find new meanings.
Public reflection is the main resource for inspiration and the formation of one's own position. Any participant will be able to contribute their ideas and experiences to this public experience. The strategic goal of public reflection is to show that behind-the-scenes conversations do not change the situation, and shop-floor “get-togethers” only help to prolong the technocratic approach to cities and their inhabitants.
What motivated your participation in the Zodchestvo festival this year?
It is impossible to scale your activities without being part of the community and without changing the scale of the system. On the other hand, for many years I have been observing a crisis in professional communities, a crisis in the content of discussions at public events. The Moscow Urban Forum has actually turned into a large development and administrative stand, the content has been replaced by a show. "Zodchestvo" remains the last professional platform where you can openly talk about exciting topics. Therefore, the strength of “Zodchestvo” lies in openness, discussion and the ability to compare positions with colleagues, partners and participants in urban processes.
What results of the work of the Consortium "Best Practices of Smart Cities" will you share at the festival?
The last three years of development of the CPA network (
here you can see a map of urban communities) helped shape the specialization of each of its participants and work out complex project management models. Quite indicative for our method is the study that resulted in. prepared urban planning analysis of Pushkin. Over the course of several years, one way or another, I managed to work with many institutions and companies related to urban development and management. For example, with the GoodLine company, we managed to work out the connection between social and digital technologies - the design of services for the city with the involvement of users. Together with Mikhail Priemyshev, we improved the method of the City Workshops, and with some large development companies we were engaged in social design of development concepts. In fact, the consortium is a method that develops the urban development market bypassing the monopoly of the state and the Strelka institute, protecting the market from rash copying of foreign experience.
It is possible to accumulate competencies only in a complex distributed system that is in active operation. This is what our conference "New urban planning policy, what is more important and to whom: smart cities or smart population" on November 20 at Zodchestvo will be about this. Let's try to throw our approaches into the public space of the industry: we will design, involve all participants in the situation, openly coordinate the interests of different actors and stakeholders, criticize and develop new urban planning methodologies.
What, in your opinion, is the specificity of the dialogue between an architect and society?
Dialogue is a universal way of interaction, when each of the participants can express their position on an equal footing, share their understanding of the situation. The fear that dialogue is a substitute for the professional activity of an architect or urbanist is also a consequence of the lack of dialogue. But the dialogue has its peculiarities - you need topics that are of concern not only to you, you need questions around which the discussion is built, you need norms and ethics of the process itself, and you need to summarize the results - has an understanding emerged in the dialogue? Is there any new content? Has the position of the participants changed or strengthened?
