Urban Design Forum

DESIGN4DCITY OBJECTIVES: To co-design the experience of common and shared spaces, by building meaningful bridges with the community of residents and regular users of such spaces, and secondly, by partnering with organisations and individuals that can provide a challenging and practical creative input towards this process.

DESIGN4DCITY shall be engaging with community actors ranging from spontaneous and informal voluntary groupings to Local Councils and public authorities. We want to serve as a channel and a catalyst for action on the local level, identifying areas of intervention where public space, community interaction and social issues intersect. In doing so, we shall be looking at the following three areas:

1. The different ways we use public space, and the relationship between physical space and human behaviour.
2. The different ways by which people with no formal training intervene, create and develop public spaces, often leading to informal city development that shapes our everyday urban fabric.
3. The different ‘seasonalities’ that influence people’s use and enjoyment of public space. DESIGN4DCITY shall develop and implement participatory urban intervention tools that integrate tangible and intangible factors in public-spatial interaction.

The URBAN DESIGN FORUM * is a collaborative project which is an exchange between three creative practices, one German (Something Fantastic) and two Malta-based (Architecture Project and We Live Here). The elements of the project in 2017 will include:

· A public forum
· Workshop / masterclass
· Public talk
· Exhibition
· A small publication, as a precursor to a major publication in 2018

This project will engage broad audiences across the sector including students, industry professionals, artists, designers, curators, administrators, academics and teachers, and anyone with an interest in design and the built environment. In 2017 the project will focus mainly on research, which will be shared with audiences through publications, public and learning programmes, and exhibition. The culmination of this research will be presented in a major production in 2018. The project’s methodology will include long term outcomes and activities for the Valletta Design Cluster. The forum will also look for ways to understand how a German-Maltese cultural exchange might shape and direct changes in the social, spatial and political fabric of the island over time.

KEY DATES
· 9-10 October – Forum, talk and workshop (to coincide with the arrival of participants in the Urban Action International Workshop taking place 11-14 October)
· 22-24 November – Exhibition and public talk to coincide with the Valletta 2018 international conference, ’Liveable spaces and places’

This project is being sponsored by the German-Maltese Circle with the support of the Goethe Institute