Urbanism for sale-Feld72, An Austrian practice perspective

Urbanism for sale is multidisciplinary approach writing; the book was written by different people from different cultures and backgrounds. Moreover, there was a strong governmental and nongovernmental support to finalize this book. The federal minister of education and art in Austria and the ambassador of Austria in Brazil where main contributors in assisting not only the book to see light but the project of the book. Authors are from four educational backgrounds, a journalist from Austria worked in the field of curator in architecture and urbanism, a university professor having his own practice and taught in various areas in USA and Europe, A specialist in historical and postcolonial studies published different books on modernism and culture, A critic in architecture and art where her interest the intersection between social studies and architecture and art. As illustrated the book is written by a mix of people that are not from architecture or urban design major except one; there work is mainly is social studies and art critic and culture.

Regardless that the book includes theory base knowledge and experiment and practice projects, but the major parts are about the projects and the experiments the architects from Austria feld72 applied to various locations in the world. For that, the book is written to serve various audiences, students or practitioners interested in social science studies and the influence of perception theory on people behavior, art and culture critics interested in the role of art and people culture and ethics in rehabilitating societies and architectural environment, architects interested in experiments of turning deprived buildings and urban landscape to life, urban designers interested in developing their knowledge in the strategies of brining derelict urban space and developments to human use, theorists interested in the role of urban theory influence on the production of urban development’s and cities, and government and non-government bodies interested in planning community and exhibition events.      

Urbanism for sale is not about selling buildings or developments, it’s about experimenting numerous strategies in urbanism work, and it’s about the discovery of spaces and urban objects that could be sold for use to city inhabitants and tourists. Places in the city unused or derelict to turn them to useful locations for people in the city and brining notice to hidden cultural locations in the city to people sight. The book is centered as well around how government and non-government bodies could benefit from the climate change challenges for solving problems in the city and specifically in Netherlands. In various areas it presents the importance of encouraging various interest groups from multicultural backgrounds to participate in volunteer to community work.    

Austria has brought and delivered renowned architects who have international reputation. A new young generation of architects who responded to their social environment with innovative and unconventional and sometime surprising ideas.feld72 is one group of these architects considering themselves as experimental lab. The work of this group highlights many issues in urbanism ranging from architectural, urban environment, and natural landscape contexts; these architect’s concern is to develop strategies within the running urban and environmental systems seeking the quality development with least invasive intervention.

The book comprises two parts; one part related to theory, and the other is focused on experiments. In very limited areas the authors discuss the relationship of their experiments and projects in various locations in the world to production of space and perception theory. The reader realizes that the group work reflects theory on the project itself. In the urban development and urbanism field of knowledge, ideas could be found applied to cities and urban developments in other countries of the world. The architect’s work here in some cases is similar to the practices used in other countries in Europe and some Asian countries like turkey. Urbanism is about experimenting ideas and new concepts to reveal the human behavior and response to draw a new knowledge to develop our urban environment and cities.

The book includes four mini chapters focusing on one concept of the whole book theme; the four authors who wrote the book presented four papers. The first focus on the idea of finding the public and private space, the human perception of it , how to reuse the derelict spaces , and the most important how to sell this space meaning how to make it productive as social activity and providing financial benefit. The second is the consideration of the city as theater and the inhabitants as art performers to examine how these performers act in the city regardless of the form and function of the city they need adding to that their ritual activities. The third idea is that architecture is created in a specific timeline with strong relation to traditions and how these affect and challenge the architectural design process itself; the architect is considered the mediator between principals and what he creates in real life. The fourth is the architect’s reaction to two theories the production of space and the image of the city. The writer discusses the failure of Kevin launch theory as it neglects the meaning of the created spaces and the stories behind it; he presents five principals of space production as social activity. As illustrated it is obvious that a contradiction in building and nesting the book chapters. Every space is created with a specific human function to reflect a design program that respects human culture and tradition as these do not need to be studied.

Returning to the part related to strategies; most of the strategies are built to examine human reaction to an idea related to a specific point in daily activity: a traffic jam, a double use of parking space, spaces in between buildings and how to reuse them, rehabilitant a derelict building in historical area, lifting the social problems from areas of high crime and poverty. Most of these strategies are repeated in many areas in the world and they have been used by other specialist and proved its success like the city of Barcelona. The strategies introduced are concept strategies without any provided results; the experiments are with no presented outcomes.

Every chapter idea is underpinned by various graphical presentations ranging from info graph, real world photos, maps, drawings, and perspective drawings. Many of the ideas are supported by relevant theory base knowledge such as Henri Lefebvre and the production of space.

As shown in this discussion the book include variety of ideas related to different fields of knowledge; the projects and experiments from architecture to urban design and inspecting social behavior does not reflect precisely the book theme, but the content reflect only one idea it’s how to find the spaces and make it productive in use and revenue.

It is not clear from the index of the book on what every part includes in terms of content regardless of reading the introduction because of the variety of ideas in the book and the introduction focus on one idea selling the urban space. The architecture part shows ideas that are totally different from the mentioned in the index; adding to that the concepts presented do not contribute positively to architectural professional practice or improving design process or theory. This book review was written based on my method of writing a book review check details click here.