Pop-up City
Searching for instant urbanity
OPEN ACCESS POLICY
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City Space Architecture
Non-profit Cultural Association
Operational headquarters via Paolo G. Martini 26/d
40134 Bologna (ITALY)
Legal residence via Saragozza 135/2
40135 Bologna (ITALY)
T/F +39 051 6142934
www.cityspacearchitecture.org
info@cityspacearchitecutre.org
A photograpy research project in the city of Bologna, Italy
promoted by City Space Architecture
Curator: Luisa Bravo
Photographer: Fabio Mantovani
Curatorial statement
Our world is made of architecture.
We move in an almost entirely uninterrupted architectural environment. We feel places and spaces as being connected to an urban experience.
Every part is fixed on a static self-consciousness, based on known elements. We became accustomed to our own mental representations of the city we live in. Our eyes are often unable to perceive elements that appear and disappear, altering the physical realm. We pass through, but we don’t see.
Small improvements, spontaneous and creative interventions continuously add content.
Handmade and tactical activities are like-minded expressions of a real need. A need to create something better, a need to exist and act.
Living communities are reclaiming their right to the urban game.
A pop-up city is overlapping onto the designed, existing city.
It is unexpected, unconventional and exciting.
It is cheap and freely accessible to everyone.
It gives vibrant accelerations, embedding life and aspirations.
It is able to change your perception, but only if you are ready to catch it.
The pop-up city is full of emotions at a glance.
It asks for direct experience and dynamic exchange.
Running in a park, on a sunny afternoon.
Crossing a square, in a hurry.
Looking for some inspiration, in a secret place. In the traffic, moving through flows and colors.
Working outside, on a mid-afternoon break.
Exploring the downtown, along the porticoes. On a pleasant walk en plein air.
Hacking the urban space, joyfully.
Sitting on the sidewalk, in a full moon night.
Playing in an out-of-the-ordinary soccer field.
The pop-up city can be a scenario of the unreal. It can be a dream, an intelligible product of our mind.
It can be a retrospective memory or a déjà vu.
It can be everywhere and nowhere.
Just a snapshot and it’s gone.
“Pop-up City” is willing to highlight existing places with a potential for public life, looking for invisible dimensions of the public realm, searching for an “ordinary magic” along everyday streets, squares and neighborhoods, delivering new powerful images of the urban world. We explore in particular those suburban places, generally disconnected from the mental representation of the urban narrative plot of public spaces made of beauty and fascination, with no identity and continuity with the historic environmen, moving further from the European mental attitude that immediately links the concept of “public space” to the idea of a traditional designed square.
These suburban places are part of the everyday existence, but common people are accustomed to experience them as fragments in a sort of jump-cut urbanism, affected by the use of cars. We pass through but we don’t see.
The suburban world can be banal, sometimes ugly, not interesting, but full of life and can transform itself into an enchanting environment. People simply have to understand a new kind of urbanity, made of small, temporary, spontaneous and creative episodes of emotional exchange.
The Pop-up City project is trying to document what is now largely undocumented. We are representing the city of Bologna, but actually the Pop-up City could be anywhere.
From left to right,top-down:
1. Giardini Margherita, Lion’s cage.
2. Piazza Liber Paradisus.
3. Giardino del Guasto.
4. Via Fioravanti, multi-storey car park.
5. Via Ferrarese, Casaralta barracks.
6. Via del Borgo di San Pietro.
7. Pilastro neighbourhood, public library.
8. Piazza VIII Agosto.
9. Viale Masini, bus station.
10. Piazza Verdi. ‘Campu by night’ event.
Giardini Margherita
Lion’s cage
(outside the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Piazza Liber Paradisus
(outside the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Giardino del Guasto
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
(inside the historical perimeter)
Via Fioravanti
Multi-storey car park
(outside the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Via Ferrarese
Casaralta barracks
(outside the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Pilastro neighbourhood
Public library
(outside the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Piazza VIII Agosto
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
(inside the historical perimeter)
Viale Masini
Bus station
(along the historical perimeter)
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
Piazza Verdi
‘Campus by night’ event
Photography: Fabio Mantovani
(inside the historical perimeter)
Exhibition in Bologna
Palazzo Pepoli, Museum of the History of Bologna
27 June / 20 July 2014
Opening at the closing session of the ‘Past Present and Future of Public Space’ International Conference on Art, Architecture and Urban Design, on June 27, 2014.
10 photographs, as the first result of this work, were selected for a three-weeks public exhibition.
Thanks to Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna and Genus Bononiae, for the generous hospitality and for supporting our project.
Special thanks to:
Elettra Bastoni, Raffaele Burzi, Danilo Calza, Camilla Carmagnini, Valentina Casalini, Silvia Di Vincenzo, Chiara Fassio, Simone Fenu, Andrea Ferrari, Valerio Francia, Sonia Gamberini, Simone Garagnani, Noa Matityahou, Antonella Tandi, Ivo Tudgiarov, Francesco Vaselli, Ilittle rene, staff at Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
Exhibition set-up curated by Valerio Francia.
Pop-up City invited to exhibit in Hong Kong
Tin Shui Wai, Tin Sau Bazaar
8 / 15 November 2014
3 photographs were selected and displayed at a big scale, approximately 1:1 scale.
Tin Shui Wai is a city formerly known as sadness: located at the margin of Hong Kong, its space has no identity, it lacks street spaces for communal encounters and micro-economic activities. All these result in the stigmatisation of Tin Shui Wai with problems such as social isolation and a high unemployment rate.
The Magic Carpet project team at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Tin Sau Bazaar see that Pop-up City resonates the situation of Tin Shui Wai.
Bologna and Hong Kong share the same suburban reality, in a way that is not difficult to perceive: even if they are related to different geographical contexts and cultures, the two cities are dealing with living communities in new, large urban landscapes far away from the historic downtown district. Through staging Pop-up City at Tin Shui Wai, the Magic Carpet project team and Tin Sau Bazaar hope to re-envision, activate, and transform the public space of the district, and thereby make the community more vibrant. In addition, the project aims to foster art and cultural exchange in Tin Shui Wai, where creative activities are scarce.
Thanks to Hendrik Tieben, Francesco Rossini and Yip Kai Chun from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Architecture for the valuable and generous support.
Thanks also to Loiix Fung for the set-up in Tin Shui Wai.
Organizers Partners
Photography: Loiix Fung
Backstage of the exhibition in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong
We spent one full day at the Tin Sau Bazaar in Tin Sui Wai, the venue of our exhibition, to observe how the community from the neighbourhood reacted to our exhibition, looking for some sort of interaction with our images from Bologna.
Photography (in this page and on top left, top right and bottom right in the other page): Fabio Mantovani.
Photography (middle and bottom left in the other page): Loiix Fung.
Pop-up City | Exploring Hong Kong Island
While in Hong Kong, we explored the city during the Umbrella Revolution, a large protest that took place for 79 consecutive dyas, from 28 September to 15 December 2014, on the main island, in Admiralty, Causeaway Bay, Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui. The name ‘Umbrella Revolution’ was coined by Adam Cotton on Twitter on 26 September 2014, in reference to the umbrellas used for defence against police pepper
spray, and quickly gained widespread acceptance after appearing in an article in ‘The Independent’ on 28 September reporting the use of teargas against protestors that day.
Photography (all pictures in these two pages): Fabio Mantovani.
Pop-up City | Exploring Public Housing in Hong Kong
While in Hong Kong, we explored several complexes of public housing, in particular:
Kwai Shing estate, North West New Territories
Wa Fu estate, South West Hong Kong Island
Upper Ngau Tau Kok estate, East Kowloon
Tin Shui Wai, New Territories
Photography (all pictures in these two pages): Fabio Mantovani.
by Luisa Bravo
Backstage
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Graphic layout
Arturo Del Razo Montiel
City Space Architecture
Non-profit Cultural Association
Operational headquarters via Paolo G. Martini 26/d
40134 Bologna (ITALY)
Legal residence via Saragozza 135/2
40135 Bologna (ITALY)
T/F +39 051 6142934
www.cityspacearchitecture.org
info@cityspacearchitecutre.org
