Empathy for the place: the city is there for everyone

In his monthly newsletter, the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Foundation of Baukultur, architect and urban planner Reiner Nagel, recalls a sentence by Luigi Snozzi: "When you build a house, think of the city". Nagel suggests rephrasing the sentence: "When you rebuild, develop empathy for the place".

The Federal Foundation of Baukultur is an independent organisation that promotes the interests of Baukultur and aims to make the built environment a topic of public interest. Baukultur concerns individual building projects as well as the conversion of city centres, large housing estates or single-family home areas and the conversion and expansion of infrastructure.

"With an open mind, ideas for their conversion can be derived from space-intensive car parks. The space and the surroundings are already there - we just have to look closely to recognise the project," writes Reiner Nagel. With this in mind, ten car park conversions were selected from over 100 designs submitted to the "10 m² Baukultur" call for projects. They emphasise the conviction that less sheet metal in public spaces allows for a gain in liveliness and building culture.

The Technical University of Dresden is pursuing a similar approach with a research group's co-design tool U_CODE. The research team developed a workshop for children and young people to try out a new focus. In schools in Dresden and Hamburg, among others, the participants scrutinised their route to school: What are striking places? What is beautiful, loud or dangerous about the neighbourhood? They then used a 3D model to plan their school neighbourhood or their district: Which houses would you build here? Should green spaces be created? Cycle paths? A football pitch?

"The contributions and designs repeatedly showed a remarkable wealth of ideas and vision," says Andreas Wilde from the U_CODE team. "And they provided an extremely exciting insight into the students' imaginations." Fears and needs came up, for example for security or space for personal development. The children and young people proved to be very attentive city dwellers who, like seismographs, can recognise weak points and develop good ideas.

(Photo: © 422737, Pixabay)