Creating a creative space. Creative spaces: opportunities for social inclusion and practices of social exclusion. Involve the community in creating the space
Yana Kozak, an analyst at Strelka KB, has prepared for you a list of the 10 best public spaces opened in the past year. I give her the floor.
Developers involved in the development of public spaces this year set themselves goals in three main areas:
— Reducing the cost and facilitating systems for operating spaces. Hence sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions: permeable coatings, rainwater drainage systems, bio-drainage ditches, light-colored paving surfaces that reflect light and prevent overheating.
— Increasing climatic comfort, so almost every selected object has canopies, awnings, and adiabatic cooling elements, that is, fountains, artificial ponds and lakes.
— Multifunctionality. Pedestrian spaces include not only recreational areas, but also areas for games, sports, picnics, and markets. They are equally comfortable for both a cheerful group and a lonely city dreamer.
Here are the ten most striking projects of 2015 that meet the given criteria and are potentially useful for Moscow.
1. Bertha Kröger Square
Hamburg, Germany
Project author: relais Landschaftsarchitekten 
The goal of the architectural bureau was to create a public space with a cozy atmosphere that could become a symbol of the entire quarter. relais Landschaftsarchitekten managed to do what they are now trying to do in Moscow: to give a multifunctional character to a “lost” wasteland. Now there is a place for retail shops, for walks, and for relaxation. 
The central part of the square is divided by seated islands called Sitztiden. The benches are of different heights and resemble waves, with trees growing right through them. 
From the square there is a passage to the nearby railway station. It, like the square itself, is lined with gray paving stones. Its surface is crossed by light, smooth lines of concrete slabs, their task is to indicate the direction from the station to the public space. 
2. central square in Emmen
Emmen, Netherlands
Project author: LandschaftsArchitekten Stadtplaner 
An example of a grandiose reconstruction of the entire city center. 26 thousand square meters have become a new landmark and the largest public space in Emmen. The square used to be filled with cars, but is now reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, with a large number of street furniture. 
Natural stone paved area, wooden canopies, green areas, unusual use of water, sun terrace and stunning lighting are the main features of this area. 
Among best projects The square in Emmen was recognized for its interesting and functional use of water. In the northern part of the square there is a pond in which ornamental aquatic plants are planted. 
It is connected by a long channel to the central part of the square. Here the water is poured directly over the stones, its depth is only 15 cm. There are also ground fountains here. The smooth surface beautifully reflects the sky, buildings and trees. 
3. Hafenpark
Frankfurt, Germany
Project author: Sinai 
Hafenpark is an example of the successful transformation of an industrial wasteland into a public park. In 2012, the first part of the park appeared there - “Cement Jungle” - a skateboard and BMX park. 
But starting in 2013, recreational opportunities and quieter sections of the population began to appear along the river there. The Sinai company managed to rethink the embankment area: spreading groves, shady gardens, and raised green plateaus appeared here. 
An amazing example of how to combine an aggressive type of sport, fields with fitness equipment and calm green areas. There is still the same commitment to the main trends of 2015: permeable surfaces that do not require drainage installations, and light-colored, cool-down coatings. 
4. Trade line and embankment
Ultimo District, Sydney
Project author: Aspect Studio 
The opening of the revamped Ultimo waterfront makes Sydney an even more innovative and sustainable city. The Goods Line is a strategic link and important green space for the developing part of the city. Everything is organized in such a way that spaces for coworking, a picnic, retail, or a children’s playground or tennis table are carefully thought out and used for their intended purpose. 
This unique park was formerly a railway corridor, which was transformed into a green pedestrian vein of one of the most densely populated areas Sydney. This space has become a living metaphor for the transition from an industrial past to an innovative and informational future. 
The waterfront has the potential to host events and festivals and creates a sense of community in a previously neglected space. The intentionally nonlinear design creates a large number of small subspaces that can be used for different purposes. 
5. Quarter Etienne-et-Foch Barak
Landau, Germany
Project author: A24 Landschaft GmbH 
The State Horticultural Show Landau 2015 is a grand transformation project of 27 hectares on total budget at 13 million euros. It will provide the basis for the future development of a new residential area; for the same purpose, areas for recreation and sports are being prepared on the territory of former military facilities. 
This area is adjacent to the Edenberg Nature Reserve, so all measures for its reconstruction are aimed at preserving the natural landscape and its reasonable use for recreational purposes. 
The huge green area has already played a role in the development of this area. She managed to bring the newly built residential buildings and barracks. In the center of the new quarter there is a pond with many aquatic plants. The sports and recreation area is located on the territory of a former coal warehouse. 
The park's design is inspired by the shifting tectonic plates of the Upper Rhine Rift Valley, with rough edges, fractures and exfoliated rock creating an aesthetically pleasing appearance. And, of course, everything is surrounded by greenery. 
6. Monash University Campus
Melbourne, Australia
Project author: Taylor Cullity Lethlean Landscape Architecture 
In the era of online learning, university campuses have become even more important for teachers and students. Alleys, lawns, terraces and areas for various activities have great amount educational, social and nutritional opportunities. The architectural bureau has tried to create fertile ground at Monash University for the exchange of ideas and socialization, mental and physical development. 
The center of campus now features event space and a terrace for relaxing, outdoor relaxation. The floor of the central platform is decorated with a large graphic design. There are courts for playing basketball and table tennis.
The roads and parking lot have been transformed into a walking area with water features that create a real sense of being on campus. 
7. Port of Aalborg
Aalborg, Denmark
Project author: C.F. Møller Landscape 
The medieval city center was connected to the adjacent fjord, which was previously inaccessible to pedestrians due to heavy traffic and the location of an industrial harbor. What used to be reverse side city, has become a new, attractive center. 
The pier has become a boulevard for pedestrians and cyclists. Aalborne's medieval castle has once again become the central harbour, now framed by green areas. Stepped descents to the water appeared on the embankment, and areas for trading, ball games and sunbathing were equipped. In general, the architects tried to create an attractive public space for different segments of the population. 
The central area for active pastime is a play space useful for people of all ages. Here you can do anything from beach volleyball in the summer to ice skating in the winter. There are several steel pavilions where sports equipment is stored and ice cream is sold. 
Next to the play area there are green spaces, lush oases for relaxation. Next to the embankment is the former icebreaker Elbjorn, which has been converted into a floating restaurant. 
8. University of Technology Sydney Alumni Green Campus
Sydney, Australia
Project author: Aspect Studio 
UTS Alumni Green is the most significant open space on the City Campus of the University of Technology Sydney. It is divided into three parts. The “Green Zone” is a raised platform with a lawn that can be used for various events and recreation. The shaped boundaries of the zone are used as benches. 
The “Central Zone” is a gathering space for students and visitors. 
And the “garden area” - an oasis of trees, with tables, chairs, sockets, barbecue and ping-pong courts. 
The space has been specifically designed to suit a variety of needs. Here you can hold concerts, show films, organize parties and picnics. 
9. Park on the roof of the building
Oslo, Norway
Project author: OSLO Ontwerp Stedelijke en Landschappelijke Omgeving 
On the banks of the Dommel River there is a low building, and on its roof there is a small park. This place is the rampart of Sint Jan, which was one of the four main entrances to the fortified old city. Here the remains of a gate and a wall made of medieval cobblestones were found. The flanking walls of the bastion were partially restored and lastly a massive roof was erected on steel columns. It is one and a half meters higher than street level and public space is laid out on it. 
The park is only 700 square meters in size, but has plenty of seating. 
It is located on one of the bends of the Dommel, so the site offers wide views of both sides of the river. The tiles that line the area were made specifically for this park: they are shaped like ice floes. 
Trees planted along the perimeter create shade and shelter vacationers from prying eyes. A carpet of gravel allows tree roots to receive water and air. The trunks are painted with a brown natural pigment that matches the rusty structures. 
10. Ulls Hus Park
Uppsala, Sweden
Project author: White Arkitekter 
Bureau White designed the landscape area in front of the new building of the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala. An enclosed courtyard, alleys and several entrances became the basis for it. Vegetation plays a leading role here. 
A large courtyard is a collective space for relaxation, meetings, Everyday life and festive events. The site is covered with gravel and is crossed by paths made of large granite slabs. Granite channels level the gravel and drain rainwater. In the center of the site there is a minimalistic fountain. 
On the south side there is a yew hedge, bicycle parking and an area with tables. 
The development of creative spaces is the main library trend in the next 15 years
Creating creative spaces in public libraries where the community can come together for informal and collaborative learning is a rapidly growing trend around the world in last years. This trend is accelerating, including in Australia. Here is the program strategic development Libraries 2030 defines this trend as the main one for the coming years. What is the significance of such spaces for libraries and their communities, and how can they be successfully designed?
Emily Boyle, Michelle Collins
What is “creative space”
Makerspace, hackerspace, tech shop, production laboratory, creative space... - all these are different names for essentially the same phenomenon (although there are certain differences in the principles of operation of these spaces). Simply put, creative spaces are places where a community can come together in an informal setting to learn together. They are characterized by hands-on experimentation, innovation, play, learning crafts and the spirit of a DIY culture.
Creative spaces are defined not by the type of equipment and tools they provide (such as 3D printers, software or woodworking machines) or the type of activity, but by the principles of self-directed learning, knowledge sharing and community organizing. Cooperation, community and co-creation are the three principles that underlie the very idea of a creative space. Each creative space is unique and reflects the needs and desires of its community and the hosting library.
Spaces vary in the programs they offer, but generally offer digital and technology-based workshops and workshops in the arts, crafts, urban science, and other areas that reflect the interests and needs of the community. They allow people to learn new skills, invent and create things, and repurpose existing items into something new. They bring together people of different ages, levels of education and skills.
Evolution of libraries
As the era digital technologies As libraries continue to evolve, they continue to explore ways to further engage with communities beyond their traditional role of being repositories of information and providing access to knowledge. Public libraries are increasingly seen as communication centers, integrated with a variety of public services and serving a range of social needs. This trend invites libraries to re-evaluate what they can provide to society and see what new opportunities they can open up within themselves.
Creative spaces also position the library as a place of creation, invention and “making” instead of consumption and absorption. This opens up significant prospects: libraries are becoming less and less a repository of books or information and more and more a center for participation in public life, offer innovative forms of service and training, turning into laboratories of inventions and new ideas.
What benefits will creating a creative space bring?
There is no doubt that the expectation that the creation of creative spaces will help libraries find their place in the future makes a difference. In a recent study by Slatter & Howard, participants concluded that the development of makerspaces reflects a “reshaping” of public libraries: “By providing materials, technologies, and spaces, makerspaces create new learning opportunities, strengthen community collaboration, and enable equitable access to learning.” for a variety of users."
Creative spaces also allow libraries to adapt to changes in society and remain centers of learning. The development of creative spaces enriches the concept of literacy with new meanings and allows us to talk about “creative literacy”, or “trans-literacy” (this is an umbrella term for all the new types of literacies that have been developing over the past ten years). Library users have long been taught information literacy in the library, just as they can learn skills, tools, and the ability to create.
Libraries can strengthen their role as knowledge centers not simply through lending books, but through the direct exchange of experiences between people. Creating creative spaces in public libraries is consistent with the library's mission to provide access to education for the entire community. Once libraries made self-education possible for those outside the elite, now creative spaces make it possible to practical training accessible to everyone. Access to equipment, tools and software that are otherwise unavailable due to cost gives the community the opportunity to express their creativity and implement ideas. Tech-enabled makerspaces provide access to those who cannot afford expensive new gadgets, hardware and software, and give people the opportunity to learn new skills that would be difficult for them to acquire on their own.
Types of creative spaces
Creative spaces can be classified according to the type of activity, equipment and materials used:
- 3D printing and digital manufacturing;
- digital design;
- multimedia, audio, video production;
- electronics, such as robotics, electronic gadgets, circuit boards;
- production of mechanical, industrial, for example, wood, metal, radio-controlled and other “real objects”;
- crafts, such as sewing, knitting, patchwork;
- modeling, sculpting and casting, for example, from plaster, plastic, clay, fiberglass, acrylic sheets;
- “sharks of the pen”, for example, creating magazines, poetry workshops, bibliotherapy.
Choose the right type of creative space
If you decide to create a creative space, the first thing you need to do is understand what kind of space will best suit your library and its community. Understanding your community, its characteristics and needs is the first step. You need to figure out what kind of creative space would benefit your community the most and what kind of audience it can attract.
Here are some tips to help you gather data on age, ethnicity, education level, and other audience characteristics:
- See what creative spaces already exist in your area to avoid duplication, fill gaps in serving local community needs, and see potential partnership opportunities.
- Understand your library's strategic framework so you can see which creative space will best fit into your library's plans and goals.
- Keep up to date with strategic programs for national libraries so you can take a higher-level view of the creative space.
- Try to understand the many types of makerspaces and their costs to help you decide what type of space is best for your library and how to finance it.
Involve the community in creating the space
A key element to success in creating a creative space in a library is to reach out to the community and find out exactly what resources and information they need and what potential they would like to express through this space. If you carefully study the needs of your community, they will be eager to participate, to contribute to the formation of a new space. But every audience is different, and what works for one library will not necessarily work for another. Creative spaces are the result of collaboration between the library and the community, and this balance must be continually maintained throughout the life of the new space.
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To form an idea of the essential role of artistic technique, material and tools in creative activity; Contribute to the preservation of spontaneity and liveliness of the result of creative activity, the development of content, form, composition, and the enrichment of the color scheme of compositions; Expand artistic perception, develop skills of observation, attention and building associative connections of an idea through a variety of technical techniques; Stimulate interest in creativity. We are guided by the following objectives:
Creative spaces, as places where creative people can realize their creative potential, practically do not exist in our country.
What we call a creative space is only formal.
If we talk about creative space operators (those who will occupy the space), it is extremely difficult to find them.
It is even more difficult to find a sufficient number of consumers of a creative product.
Creative space – what is it?
Everyone understands what a creative space is in their own way. As well as the question: who should develop creative spaces: the city, the developer or representatives of the creative professions.
So far, all the created creative spaces have been created, to a greater extent, by developers. And they differ fundamentally only in the volume of investment and management competence.
Investments in creative spaces, or Why developers choose the creative path
So far, creative spaces are developing in areas that are not interesting for classical development. During development industrial territory It is not always profitable for a developer to demolish a building, because demolition is associated with considerable costs for the demolition itself, clearing the territory, excavation and disposal of soil, etc. This increases the cost of the project and ultimately it will be economically ineffective. In addition, in many cases, industrial buildings are architectural monuments and are protected by the state, which is very typical for our city.
Therefore, as often happens, development is carried out within the framework of financial or urban planning restrictions. That's why we have so many exes industrial buildings, which have now been converted into offices, warehouses, car services and small industries. They have been re-equipped, and not re-purposed, since, most often, no significant investments are made in the property complex and the work is carried out in the original premises. Maybe with a little cosmetic renovation.
How developers become creatives, or what problems the creation of a creative space solves
But, nevertheless, more and more information appears in the media about plans to create a creative space or cluster in one or another former enterprise. Every owner understands that if he wants to accelerate the capitalization of the property and the profitability of the business, then he needs to develop the property. And when the classic concepts of an office or public business building are difficult to implement, the investor thinks about developing a “creative” concept, which for the developer is simply a fashionable marketing gimmick. Fortunately, anything can be included in this concept: from the offices of design studios and advertising agencies, to clothing stores from little-known brands. This concept creates a radically new approach to the positioning of an object and enables the developer to attract attention to his project.
Coming from European and some domestic experience, it can be argued that with the advent of creative industries, the capitalization of the territory increases significantly. Berlin, for example, uses the creative cluster format to qualitatively reformat depressed areas. The situation is similar with factory No. 798 in Beijing. St. Petersburg is still making timid attempts to follow this path.
But to implement a comprehensive creative concept, the developer must not only prepare the premises, but also select a pool of tenants in such a way that an overall synergistic effect is achieved that will make the property interesting for visitors. Those. the visitor must clearly understand why he is going there: to an exhibition, buying something along the way, for furniture and light, soaking up new ideas from design studios, to some kind of master class or lecture that will make him a client of the craft schools of the space and etc. There are few examples of such balanced synergy and a clear concept of space.
This is partly due to the fact that it is very difficult to ensure high-quality filling of space. In St. Petersburg there is no “creative industry” that should act as a tenant and generate income. More precisely, it exists, but you have to look for it and select it bit by bit. Representatives of creative professions are scattered, have small groups and are not reliable tenants.
Another nuance that prevents creative spaces from actively developing is that, unfortunately, in Russia the creative industry is not very profitable, so it is used by developers as a temporary marketing function to popularize the place until a more effective use for the buildings and land plots with an already increased price.
The low profitability of creative products is solely due to the low volume of consumption. In our case (in the case of St. Petersburg), consumers in 80%, if not 90% of cases, are city residents. Despite the fact that the country is now going through difficult times better times- consumption volume decreases. Thus, it is important for a creative product to expand its geographic presence.
Why does the city need creative spaces?
It seems clear why developers need creative spaces. But is it worth the city wasting energy and developing something that is not a highly profitable business? We need to look at the situation more broadly: for a city, the development of creative business is the solution to a number of problems. The main task of creative spaces for the city is to create an innovative environment, because creativity is a prerequisite for innovation and the creation of not an industrial, but a creative or intellectual product: design objects, books, films, multimedia technologies, etc. Actually, from the city’s point of view, creative spaces can be defined as an infrastructure where you can hold or attend events, find supporters, employees, contractors, as well as partners for the implementation of innovative socially significant projects or commercial start-ups.
In addition to the innovative product, I would highlight several more important, from an economic and social point of view, factors for the city that will develop with the development of creative spaces:
- Providing creative youth and self-employed people with an environment rich in opportunities for learning, sharing skills, experimenting and creating innovative products. In addition, this allows the state to control representatives of those professions that are mostly located in the shadow sector of the economy: designers, photographers, freelancers, etc. Those. the city provides its opportunities for development and implementation in exchange for taxes, which are usually in the shadows.
- Compensating for the shortage of jobs in traditional areas.
- Bringing depressed urban areas out of their doldrums.
- Increasing the tourist attractiveness of the city. Originally painted walls of buildings, many art workshops and mini-galleries, as well as a huge number of restaurants and shops in an eclectic style can be attractive to visitors to the city.
- The development of a creative society, as a market of ideas, will contribute to the development of industries that will be able to buy ideas, rather than create them themselves, retaining only the production function, reducing the cost of production and making it competitive in the global market.
But such interaction between the city and creative components requires attracting creative entrepreneurs to business cooperation and creating not only conditions for them, but also a legal framework. You can’t just highlight several zones, call them creative and stop there. This requires comprehensive work not only with the formation of infrastructure, but also with the development of demand for creative products. Then the industry will attract more and more new people for the purpose of creative self-realization.
conclusions
If the city is interested in receiving income from the work of creative spaces, then for their emergence, development and marketing of the creative product, the city should:
- develop a mechanism for providing premises located in state property, under intended use, with the possibility of paying a rental rate as a percentage of the revenue of the creative enterprise,
- develop, together with banks, a system of small targeted loans, in which the city will act as a guarantor,
- organize support in matters of doing business, because creative specialists do not have special education in the field of management, marketing, advertising,
- develop incoming tourist flow and organize traveling exhibitions and shows outside the city
By implementing a set of measures, the self-employed creative population will be able to create an innovative product that will become a permanent source of income for the city.