Inspirations: Estonoesunsolar
The inspiration for CultureHouse comes from similar urban design and cultural institutions around the world. Studenterhuset, a non-profit student center in Copenhagen, serves as a public space where students from all across the city come and mix. Nearby, Copenhagen Street Food, a pop-up food truck market, also achieves a strong cultural identity. Taking from Better Block’s DIY urban design philosophy, CultureHouse employs tactical urbanism to create livable spaces and streetscapes that works for everyone. Drawing from Design Museum Boston, CultureHouse uses the city as a base to build off of. Like the Olin College Library, the space facilitates the exchange of ideas through collaborative co-working. As we reflect on our first long-term pop-up, we are highlighting our inspirations to see what we can learn from these unique spaces.
In 2009, the city of Zaragoza, Spain, had many vacant lots. These vacant lots gave the impression that there was a lack of life in the city. In order to breathe new life into the empty spaces, a project called “Estonoesunsolar” or “This is not a vacant site” employed previously unemployed residents to transform the empty lots into vibrant public spaces. Since the project began, Estonoesunsolar volunteers and employees have staged interventions at 33 sites, recovering more than 42,000 square meters of public space and involving 60 citizen associations. They reactivated the spaces by adding programming and physical changes, using temporary methods so that the interventions could be easily taken out if they did not work well. This approach allowed them to take bold chances in what they tried, ultimately leading to more revolutionary changes.
The Estonoesunsolar project was not initially conceived of as an urban design intervention. Instead, the municipal housing office hoped to address two of their top problems with one initiative: high unemployment and a plethora of complaints about the city’s abandoned lots. The idea was to hire unemployed workers to clean up the plots. In the first six months, they hired 61 workers. After 13 months, they had created 110 jobs. It soon became apparent that the project could go even further — the newly cleaned lots could be turned into public spaces. With a desire to open up abandoned areas to public use, Estonoesunsolar, a joint effort by the Municipal Housing Society and architects Patrizia Di Monte and Ignacio Grávalos, was born.
“We understand architecture and urbanism as a way of creating a platform that can produce multiple routes, intersections, and interactions. And that was one of the main premises of the program: discovering spaces that could become places.” — Patrizia Di Monte, in an interview with the Project for Public Spaces
Estonoesunsolar leaders emphasized citizen participation, hosting meetings with local officials, neighborhood groups, and NGOs. As the Project for Public Space’s profile of the project describes, the plans for each of the new public spaces were “based on the specific social and spatial needs of the surrounding area.” Some of the initial plots to be reactivated became urban gardens, green spaces, playgrounds, and street bowling courts. After the programs initial success, the City Council decided to continue the program, turning more sites into event spaces, basketball courts, and game centers.
Today, the city of Zaragoza is facing the challenge of consistent funding and maintenance for the program. Despite these setbacks, Estonoesunsolar demonstrates an inspiring approach to urban redesign. At CultureHouse, we gain inspiration from the Estonoesunsolar project in three main areas. First, the initial success of the program was largely due to their attempts to include a variety of citizen voices and to adapt designs to the specific contexts of the places they were working with. Urban spaces do not exist in isolation and therefore cannot be properly transformed without an understanding of the larger ecosystem. Here at CultureHouse, we believe that no urban design project that is imposed upon a community will be as successful as one developed with the community. A truly meaningful project is one that prioritizes local voices.
Second, Estonoesunsolar’s early success came from the fact that it used flexible and low-cost interventions. Their approach was similar to that of Better Block, because they recognized that an effective intervention does not have to be expensive or elaborate. Instead, temporary and simple changes to a space can be meaningful and provide the foundation for long-term and large-scale change. With CultureHouse, we are exploring tactical urbanism, focusing on low cost and often temporary changes to a landscape that work to improve public space.
Lastly, Estonoesunsolar was effective because the reactivated spaces were designed to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple uses. The types of gatherings that occur in the space could be both spontaneous and planned, and could change by time of day and time of year. A great public space does not just host cultural events like concerts and classes, but also allows for the spontaneous meeting and connection of neighbors. We hope that CultureHouse can be this kind of public space: one that provides a platform for many different kinds of connection. Using the lessons of Estonoesunsolar, CultureHouse serves as a gathering point for both everyday encounters and special events.
