City Acupuncture
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
12 years ago architects Rene and Kristina started an initiative for treating the city with acupuncture, in the belief that urban space can be successfully regenerated with small interventions placed on the right spots. This resulted in numerous realizations like bicycles that illuminate the riverbank, a playground in the middle of an illegal parking lot, living room in an elementary school... Their lively experience has inspired institutional and NGO activities, locally and internationally.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Other Funds
The Cultural program of the European Union 2007 - 2013
Description of the project
Summary
City Acupuncture (CA) is an initiative started in 2009 within the Zagreb Society of Architects by Rene Lisac and Kristina Careva, at the time both research fellows at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb (FA). It aims at improving social cohesion and general quality of city life by regenerating public spaces.
The idea has 3 main pillars: small and precise interventions in the urban fabric can significantly improve urban life; such interventions should be designed in the interdisciplinary discourse; residents, NGOs, government structures and all other stakeholders must be involved in the process.
CA is most often conducted in the form of interdisciplinary and participatory workshops with students and young professionals that are mentored through a carefully designed creative process, which includes different methods of public/citizen participation at key co-design stages. The workshop locations have differed in topic and spatial scope, from school and faculty interiors, hospital and student centre complexes, to urban pockets and whole city quarters. A comprehensive project with numerous realised interventions, also named City Acupuncture, was implemented from 2012 to 2014 as a part of the EU Culture program. An extensive project based on the CA initiative, named Zagreb for Me, was launched in 2015 to regenerate public spaces of the whole city combining top-down and bottom-up methods.
12 years of CA: delivered 20 workshops in 7 cities with more than 250 professionals; hosted 40 mentors and 30 lecturers; designed around 120 spatial interventions and realized 20; held 30 lectures on methodology and results; published scientific and professional articles; transferred the methodology to other cities/states, and inspired many institutional and NGO activities.
Kristina and Rene, meanwhile, received their PhDs, became assistant professors and launched the course Participatory Space Design as part of the curriculum of the FA, also based on the idea of CA.
Key objectives for sustainability
The City Acupuncture method aims at improving city life quality through regeneration of public space. The environmental aspect of sustainability is a value embedded in every co-creation process and design, like preserving or improving public greenery, pedestrian and cycling focus, preserving microclimate and biodiversity and so forth. Since projects were based on volunteering activities and institutional funding, economic sustainability is indirectly affected by supporting beneficial circumstances for local entrepreneurial activities.
Still, key objectives of the project originate from social sustainability principles: inclusion, cohesion, equality, diversity and flexibility. Well designed public space can be observed as one of the key elements of a healthy community, a place where people enter from their private space to public space for interaction and sharing.
Core objective of the project is to design small and sometimes unexpected interventions that trigger social cohesion and livability of the space. Furthermore, a highly participative approach in design and planning has proven to improve citizens' relation to public space they use: appreciation of its qualities, enhancing the sense of spatial identity, and motivation to participate in protection, maintenance and improvements.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The anonymous aesthetics of Zagreb's urban settlements from the socialist era of the 20th century encouraged the idea of improving public spaces by the method of City Acupuncture. Designed according to the principles of modernism, the public spaces of these quarters abound in open spaces and greenery with all the necessary functionalities, but they lack innovative design and aesthetics and are generally perceived as generic and anonymous. Encouraged by this, the authors of the initiative soon realized that citizens generally value aesthetics as an extremely important component that could improve their built environment, so the method of City Acupuncture was applied to different urban areas where there is a need for refinement or change.
Acupuncture intervention sometimes changes a small key functionality that is missing, but is always aesthetically driven on bringing a new diversity and identity to the space, additional visual value, landmark, interactive element or social generator for empowering cultural realm. They range from paintings, installations and events to urban furniture and construction.
Key objectives for inclusion
City Acupuncture tackles inclusion on two main levels, the process level and the result level. Citizens participate in the process of co-creation and regeneration of public spaces, and as a result we have spaces that foster social inclusion of different groups. Since the project locations differ in topic and spatial scope, co-creation includes those methods of participation that suit each location. Applied methods are: informing, interviews, focus groups, creative workshops, as well as participating in realisation of interventions.
City Acupuncture within the Zagreb for Me project has set high standards for inclusion in the planning of public space regeneration on the whole city scale. The process of identifying either the precise locations or precise citizen needs without a location in the city of Zagreb included interviews with people in different public spaces (park, main square, market, shopping centre), focus groups with NGOs that have their focus on any aspect of public space, round tables at local municipality meetings in most city quarters.
The result was a comprehensive database of citizens' requests for Zagreb public spaces. In the form of an informative city map, all mentioned city locations were ranked by importance and described in direct words from citizens, to feel the connection to the individuals and their needs as directly as possible. Results of this bottom-up process were successfully put together and overlapped with top-down urban planning analysis of the city and each of its quarters. This effort for inclusion was strongly recognized and appreciated in all sectors involved in the project: local government, civil and academic.
Results in relation to category
Methodology and the City Acupuncture project itself aims at small scale interventions to bring the change in the city but in a manner of integral and comprehensive urban planning, a sort of small but wholesome steps. In that sense it is no surprise that interventions tackle most of the NEB categories, at least partially. Tools for co-creation, circular and recycling design, protection of natural elements and urban greenery in the city, microclimate, attractive and interactive urban elements and furniture, reaffirmation of urban and cultural heritage, introduction of arts and design in public space for social cohesion, modular and flexible urban solutions, integration with scientific research as well as dissemination through education and academic curricula… all these are elements and results present in the City Acupuncture processes, interventions, projects and realisations.
Category “Regenerated urban and rural spaces” is one of those that open the issues that are at the core of the project objectives. Among many, a realisation in Zagreb named Small Cube is a regenerated improvised children’s playground in the middle of an illegal and overcrowded parking lot between residential multi-storey buildings. Architects, designers, artists, landscape architects have, together with local children and their parents, redesigned existing huge jardiniere, that children already used for their play, with additional benches and pavement coloring to give an affirmation to this small urban activity. Another example, Dynamo I love, are three fixed bicycles designed to power an isolated street lamp in a dark part of the riverbank promenade. Promoting sustainable energy and recreation, and motivating the City to illuminate the area, it created a landmark that citizens accepted and maintained. The City Acupuncture involvement in the Zagreb for Me project started a territorial regeneration of public spaces with large participation and deep involvement of citizens and all stakeholders.
How Citizens benefit
Participative approach represents a core value of the City Acupuncture project, being implemented as comprehensively as possible. Inclusion of interested groups brought benefits of this interaction on many different levels. Acupunctural interventions actively interact with the public by enhancing conviviality, dialogue, interactivity, bring criticism, exploration and humor. Small interventions released in 5 different cities during the EU project brought fresh, creative and functional design into previously anemic public spaces. In Savica quarter in Zagreb post evaluation showed how interventions have changed the citizens' attitude towards their public space, namely protection from vandalism, enhanced identity of space, self maintaining of intervention by locals, awareness of the public space value and potential. Collaboration of academia, citizens and NGOs continued after the workshop, leading to the defence of public space against the self-will of the city Mayor: protection of a local park from constructions.
Intervention On the Way involved local graffiti artists in painting a pedestrian bridge. The reaction of the population was so positive that the neighborhood city library organized workshops on several occasions for enrichment of the pedestrian experience of the space with graffiti art. A civil action named "Would you like a Square?" included collecting signatures for establishing a new square, so far missing in the neighborhood. Perhaps the most interesting example to illustrate how citizens and civil society have benefited by the project is the redesign of a poorly functional entrance space of a Zagreb primary school. School staff noticed the problems and asked for help in solving them, thus a participatory workshop was organized. Selected designs were realized through joint work of students, parents, school staff and workshop participants.
Innovative character
Before it became a new standard for the 21st century design and planning, especially in Croatian context, values of participation and interdisciplinarity were brought into spotlight by City Acupuncture activities. Although one could find some worldwide particular examples announcing new trends in inclusive planning, detailed and comprehensive methodology for City Acupuncture had to be reinvented almost from scratch. Instead of big city projects, the focus was on small and easily applicable interventions to assure methods could be tested and improved through practice and also through scientific observation and research. In other words, let's make things that are as simple as possible, but can be lighthouse examples for integral and inclusive design and planning.
When reshaped and implemented on the city level in project Zagreb for Me, this innovative approach faced the former mindset system of the municipality. Many conceptual differences showed City Acupuncture is still a bit “ahead of time” for local context.
Through 12 years of practical experience The City Acupuncture methodology was continuously and gradually developed, based on precision, interdisciplinarity and participation as fundamental principles.
Codesign workshop methodology presents the 1st innovative method, a carefully programmed sequence of activities for fast and precise results in a short period with divergent (broad mapping of all relevant facts and ideas) and convergent phases (focusing on key aspects and actual interventions). Moderating the interdisciplinary discourse presents the 2nd method that brings the language, values, principles and concepts of different professions to a “down to earth” level for mutual understanding. Broader communication with citizens and public presents the 3rd innovative method, which is participation process design that includes carefully picking and individual planning of communication and inclusion activities from the beginning to the end of the process.
