The Urban Islands Project - reviving places
[Unlocking the City #04.]
The Urban Islands Project is part of an ongoing pilot we introduced in 2009 under the title of Unlocking the City, which is aiming to create PLACES within our cities – places for people living somewhere between madness and reality. It also aims to involve young people in the making of places, to engage them with their environment and to excite them about their city.
The Urban Islands Project launches as part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture [LFA’10], 19 June – 4 July 2010, in Southwark, South London.
‘In 2009 a citywide survey has been run to find out what is needed from young peoples’ perspective to create better places in London and how they feel about their City. Most youngsters complained about the rising lack of places to play, performance areas for young people at the heart of our cities and along main streets.. .’ – The Urban Islands Project is a direct responds to their call to create places where they can meet each other and feel save.
We are inviting local schools and youngsters to collaborate with us and to actively take part in the development and unfolding of the project. – Rather than proposing to build new places though, together with the help of young people themselves, we aim to detect existing or potential urban spots, overlooked and/or ignored, to revive them into Urban Islands and map them for future use and transformation. As such, we are challenging the idea of space as a repository of accumulated action instead of pure physical mass.
The project will be extended throughout the whole of London in order to create a complete London-Urban-Islands-map that can be accessed and downloaded by everyone; and in the long run, help making youngsters experience and use their neighborhood in new or different ways.
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Supported by:
In Association with:
Love Your Street. Love Your Street is a key capital-wide programme which forms part of the London Festival of Architecture 2010. It will bring together building and landscape professionals with local communities to pro-actively improve streets, spaces and places.
For more information, to follow the project and/or if you are interested to support the project in some way – visit our site at the LFA’10 webpage.
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About the LFA’10
The London Festival of Architecture takes place from 19 June to 4 July 2010 and will be a city-wide celebration of architecture in the capital.
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