The run up to this year’s European Street Design Challenge at the Futur en Seine festival in Paris began with a “Mini-Challenge” workshop on the afternoon of Friday, 17th May at the Make It Center in Saint Petersburg.

Two teams of young design and architecture professionals and students were set the task of redesigning the area around the Make It Center, an old, disused printing factory complex which lies on the Karpovka river and is surrounded by several universities, a botanical garden and historically rich residential areas with a mixed social demography.

Heavy rain prevented the design teams from touring the area on foot. As a substitute, Maxim Shkapovskiy, the creator of the Make It Center and host to this workshop, gave a description of the immediate area from the roof of the Make it Center, after which the groups carried out the emotional mapping exercise: gathering their initial individual impressions to formulate their first collective reactions and ideas.

This was followed by a value ladder, which yielded the following results.

‘Design Garden’:

• Family
• Free of charge
• Self realisation
• Creative collaboration
• Recreation

‘Urban Peppers’

• Open to communication
• Ecological
• Aesthetic beauty
• Unpredictably cult
• Historic

The value ladder should normally have been followed by an appreciative inquiry. However, given the limited time available, the teams pressed straight on to the brainstorming and building process.

The two teams showed real creativity and imagination both in the concepts for their solutions, and the resources, which they used to build their design prototypes.

The two design prototypes present a strong reflection of the different approaches and concepts developed by the two groups:

Urban Peppers: An “all-embracing”, very contextual approach at a meta-level, encompassing the whole factory complex, its ecological setting, and its relationship to the surrounding area. The concept integrated interaction with the surrounding area and its inhabitants, a very open and accessible approach, with strong use of digital media for communication. A strongly aesthetic and “green” design of the landscape also included pointers towards the historic heritage of the sight.

Design Garden: A more micro-oriented approach, with a focus on one building which integrates recreation for the whole family with opportunities for creative collaboration under one roof.

Given the very limited time available to the participants in the workshop, both solutions should a high degree of focused creativity and potential.

The European Street Design Challenge would like to thank:

Risto Wallin, Kouvola Innovation and the Finnish Digital Creative Industries for creating the initial framework for this workshop.

Marina Lebedeva for establishing the valuable contact with Saint Petersburg designers and creative entrepeneurs.

Maxim Shkapovskiy for his vision, collaboration and hosting of the workshop.

Anna Kholina for her insights and support during the workshop.

We look forward both to welcoming the Saint Petersburg design team to Paris for this summer’s European Street Design Challenge at the Futur en Seine festival, and also to collaborating further with our colleagues in the Saint Petersburg Make it Center.

This year, from 13 – 15 June, the event will once again focus on the area of Seine-Saint-Denis, bordering on the 19th arrondissement of Paris, close to the CentQuatre, where the ESDC, and the Futur en Seine festival, will take place. Traditionally a heavily industrial and multi-cultural area, with large numbers of immigrant workers and a dense population, Seine-Denis les Plaines, and its neighbouring areas on the border of Paris and its suburbs are now being redesigned and developed within the “Grand Paris” project. In addition to its strategic position, the area also has significant infrastructure potential, for example, the revitalization of a good canal network, and re-use of disused railways lines. Many of the old canal warehouses are now being used for creative work, and the building of a new university also offers the opportunity for interesting housing development. Despite present development, there are still many social, cultural and economic challenges. One challenge, for example, is to maintain a strong, vibrant urban identity, while creating a new urban vision and sustainable quality of life.

Architectural visions for the ‘Grand Paris’ project.

The focus area for the ESDC 2013 – the ‘A’ is the location of the CentQuatre.

Whether the first “Great Exhibition” in the Crystal Palace in 1851, the Exposition Universelle in Paris, the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1929, or the Lisbon Expo of 1998, international Expos have always had the humanistic ambition of creating a better urban quality of life. International Expos, such as the recent Shanghai Expo in 2010, give designers the opportunity to reach millions with their visions for the future, particularly as a catalyst for urban regeneration.

World Expo 1889 Paris, France and World Expo 2012 Yeosu, South Korea.

In this Challenge, we will focus on the idea of an Expo for the Paris Region, which would both present wider visions of an urban future, whilst providing a practical legacy of sustainable urban regeneration for the local area. Participants are invited to create an international Expo concept for the area, then design a pavilion, installation, an application or space which would inspire, excite and transform on an economic, social or cultural level.

At the core of the Expo concept is the idea of “international”, bringing people together to create and share ideas across borders for the greater good of all. In this sense, the European Street Design Challenge 2013 will unite a broad range of international design teams from Paris, Ile de France, London, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Russia to develop, present and fuse their ideas for urban regeneration and progress.

And the winner of the European Street Design Challenge June 2012 is:
Ecole Boule, Paris, with ‘Les Sentiers de la Plaine’

Against some very tough opposition from the other designer teams, with excellent and imaginative digital solutions, Ecole Boulle won the approval of the jury with a very practical and innovative proposal to bring the whole community groups together in Saint-Denis La Plaine to celebrate their colourful diversity within a shared identity.

The Boulle team noted emotions of “Emptiness, Disproportionate Scale, Boundaries, and Loss of Identity”. They therefore proposed a solution that would “Show the Existing Life, Develop an Intimate Scale, Connect the Local People, and Create a Visual Identity”. This would also give the members of the community an opportunity to “Leave my Imprint, Share my Messages, Meet my Neighbours, and Evolve our Identity”.

‘Les Sentiers de La Plaine’ by Ecole Boulle, Paris FR

To this end, Team Boulle proposed a 4-Step solution:

1. The Path – A path would be created to represent the main thoroughfares used by the members of the community in their daily lives, for example between the school, warehouses, metro station and port. This path would be created naturally by the inhabitants as their left their imprints on a surface of erasable gray paint, white flooring and tar which had been laid over the original covering.
2.  The Lights – A line of “fire-fly” lights – small LEDs – would follow the path. As these lights are also equipped with batteries and light sensors, they would light up naturally in the darkness, drawing people’s attention to messages left by other members of the community.
3. The Messages – The Messages left by the community – for example drawing the attention of the inhabitants to a party for the “Fête des Voisins” – would be projected on the wall. Interaction with the projection is possible through motion tracking or a smart phone.
4. The Events – The physical events – such as the party for the “Fête des Voisins” – are an excellent means to bring the various groups and cultures together in a traditional and natural way within the community.

For a more in-depth report of the ESDC 2012 click here

In the European Street Design Challenge, international teams of top young designers, in close cooperation with local residents and policy makers, compete to create innovative, “smart” urban design solutions and applications through the use of open and collaborative methodologies, together with digital tools and prototyping.

Across cultural, social and professional layers:

• The international teams apply their own “cultural” perspective and experience to the local urban design issues
• Collaboration with local residents and policy makers gives the challenge local “roots” to ensure relevance, ownership and a shared vision of a desirable, feasible, and sustainable future urban community, landscape and experience.

Impact of the Challenge The Challenge targets a strong impact for participating cities, governmental organisations, schools, designers, architects, and resident communities:

• Greater awareness and use of digital technologies, tools, prototyping and open, collaborative methodologies in the design of innovative, sustainable and desirable urban design solutions
• Growth of “organic” understanding and collaboration between designers, resident communities and policy makers; integration of the Cultural and Creative Industries as a critical regenerative force within the community
• Greater exchange and understanding within cultural diversity: shared and complementary creative perspectives on a global scale

The Challenge so Far… The Challenge, devised and run by The Creative Cooperative with the support of Cap Digital, Paris, “kicked off” at PICNIC in Amsterdam in September 2010, and is already in its third year. In all Challenges to date, the international designers have produced highly innovative, practical yet poetic “smart” urban designs, which have demonstrated cultural perspectives – from Dutch pragmatism to French reflection – together with acute awareness of the need to create socially inclusive urban solutions with shared identity and ownership.