A new exhi­bi­tion at the Cana­dian Centre for Archi­tec­ture, Actions: What You Can Do With The City, explores the thou­sands of exam­ples around the globe of people reclaim­ing urban space through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) actions in order to human­ize the failed urban real­i­ties around them. While urban action has become a hot sub­ject over the recent years, the CCA has approached the sub­ject from a broad cri­tique that mixes 99 Actions done by artists, archi­tects, design­ers, politi­cians, activists, ath­letes and most impor­tantly aver­age cit­i­zens. In many cases the actual museum arti­fact didn’t exist, thus giving the museum the chance to create the work.

The show has been curated by Mirko Zar­dini, CCA Direc­tor and Chief Cura­tor (cura­to­r­ial essay); and Gio­vanna Borasi, CCA Cura­tor for Con­tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture (cura­to­r­ial essay). The show runs until the 19th April, 2009 in Montréal.

For many design­ers and artists, they will already be famil­iar with some of the work. And for many of us, we’ve already been involved with our own DIY actions for many years. In this regard, the exhi­bi­tion is espe­cially impor­tant in its pre­sen­ta­tion of these largely hidden actions to the greater public. In com­pil­ing the 99 works together under themes such as: Excess, Choice, Fric­tions, Guer­rilla, Plan­ning Smarter and Shar­ing; the public finds their own worlds recon­tex­tu­al­ized through an optic of change and imag­i­na­tion. This is hugely impor­tant to soci­ety, that an atti­tude of DIY per­me­ates through­out or col­lec­tive con­scious so that our daily lives become more cre­ative. In essence, this is a con­tem­po­rary stim­u­la­tion of the inner ten­den­cies that many avant-​garde urban utopias, such as Constant’s New Baby­lon (images) project, and the Sit­u­a­tion­ist’s Dérive cham­pi­oned. His work, based on the­o­ries of Homo Ludens, now finds itself in nearly all urban exhibits around the world, most recently in Ams­ter­dam (related article).

But many of the actions are polit­i­cal and eco­nomic, with actions started by local civic groups, city coun­cilors and mayors, as well as urban trans­port engi­neers. Many of these are the most inter­est­ing, because it sig­ni­fies non-​designers encroach­ing into design ter­ri­tory. Speak­ing with Mirko Zar­dini at the press open­ing, he sig­nals a loss of faith in cur­rent city plan­ning and urban­ism prac­tice. Cit­i­zens and users/stakeholders (ie. the public) are rarely the centre of design and plan­ning deci­sions. It is there­fore an inten­tion of the show to stim­u­late the debate as to what we need as a soci­ety within our soci­eties, and how can we get there. Per­haps it isn’t through the design prac­tices that we actu­ally arrive at a user-​oriented, acces­si­ble and muta­ble urban environment.

But could there be such a thing as a plu­ral­ist approach to urban design where a sort of long-​tail of urban activ­i­ties can be inte­grated into the built shared built envi­ron­ment? Or is every­day life left to the cit­i­zenry and the urban design is merely the place­holder and facil­i­ta­tor of action. This ques­tion was exactly the goal behind a project by Maxwan a+u in Rot­ter­dam. For the Port of Rot­ter­dam, they pro­posed a “harbour park” through­out the unused strips woven between the enor­mous net­work of port activ­i­ties. [Full dis­clo­sure: I worked on the project.]

From the Press Release:

The exhi­bi­tion and its accom­pa­ny­ing pub­li­ca­tion present spe­cific projects by a diverse group of activists whose per­sonal involve­ment has ini­ti­ated vital trans­for­ma­tion in today’s cities. These human motors of change include archi­tects, engi­neers, uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sors, stu­dents, chil­dren, pas­tors, artists, skate­board­ers, cyclists, pedes­tri­ans, munic­i­pal employ­ees, and many others who address the ques­tion of how to improve the urban expe­ri­ence. Their actions push against accepted norms of behav­iour in cities, at times even chal­leng­ing legal lim­i­ta­tions. The indi­vid­u­als and groups pre­sented in the exhi­bi­tion employ a range of approaches, from skat­ing and park­our to dump­ster diving and urban for­ag­ing. Some engage archi­tec­ture directly by find­ing new uses for aban­doned build­ings, while others create tools for guerilla gar­den­ing. In their indi­vid­ual cri­tiques of urban modes of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion, these actors share a con­vic­tion that the tra­di­tional processes of top-​down civic plan­ning are insuf­fi­cient, and new approaches and tools must be devel­oped from the ground level upwards.

Actions: What You Can Do With the City fea­tures inter­na­tional con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­tural projects, design con­cepts, and research con­veyed through a range of mate­ri­als includ­ing archi­tec­tural draw­ings, pho­tographs, videos, pub­li­ca­tions, arte­facts, and web­sites. The 97 dis­tinct actions pre­sented in the exhi­bi­tion are drawn from a larger number iden­ti­fied by the cura­tors. They include projects related to the pro­duc­tion of food and urban agri­cul­ture; the plan­ning and cre­ation of public spaces to strengthen com­mu­nity inter­ac­tions; the recy­cling of aban­doned build­ings for new pur­poses; the appro­pri­a­tion of urban sites into ter­rain for play, such as soccer, climb­ing, skate­board­ing, or park­our; the alter­nate use of roads for walk­ing or rail lines as park space; the design of cloth­ing to cir­cum­vent urban bar­ri­ers against loi­ter­ing or rest­ing on benches; and many others. The exhi­bi­tion places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the activists’ tools, which com­prise unusual mate­ri­als rang­ing from large-​scale inflat­a­bles and fruit-​collecting dresses to seed-​bomb rocket launch­ers and wheelbarrow-​bicycle hybrids. Included are masks dis­guis­ing chil­dren as horses, or sneak­ers cus­tomised for slid­ing along railings.

Over the past couple years, the CCA (Youtube Chan­nel) has made a greater effort to extend itself pub­licly through dig­i­tal media and it is work­ing, with the qual­ity of work and method improv­ing with each new exhi­bi­tion. An inter­est­ing web­site has been cre­ated, CCA-​ACTIONS, and they’ve pro­duced a promo-​video (below).

Another fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Actions in the city is the recent snow­board video (below), Forum or Against’em, from Forum. The just released video espe­cially doc­u­ments urban riding in Montréal and Québec City last year when we had a near record snow­fall which left the city under meters of snow, turn­ing the con­crete and steel envi­ron­ments into an end­less snowpark.