Every last Fri­day of the month, cyclists meet in both large and small cities to take to the streets in con­voy and as sheer mass. The prin­ci­ple of this gath­er­ing uses a rule of the road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions accord­ing to which a group of at least twelve cyclists is con­sid­ered a vehi­cle and can, there­fore, pass through a traf­fic light that turns red. Those who cycle in front decide where to go. The cyclists want to draw atten­tion to the fact that even today, the car-friend­ly city from the last cen­tu­ry is still a real­i­ty in many places. Thus, Crit­i­cal Mass is a peace­ful and sol­idary protest against the hege­mo­ny of motor­ized traf­fic in urban plan­ning worldwide.

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In 2009, the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Tilburg, togeth­er with two large real estate and con­struc­tion groups, acquired a mas­sive plot direct­ly behind the main rail­way sta­tion. The orig­i­nal plan was to demol­ish exist­ing build­ings, such as the for­mer loco­mo­tive hall, or LocHal for short, and to con­struct huge office and apart­ment com­plex­es. How­ev­er, the deci­sion was reversed. Instead of demo­li­tion, rede­vel­op­ment and con­ver­sions took root. And so, in 2019, the munic­i­pal library—which is much more than just a col­lec­tion of books—opened here. Its glass hall pro­tects an inner-city square with a café and open stair­case. There are also archives, offices, as well as event rooms and, on the perime­ters, work­shop areas and small meet­ing rooms. The many peo­ple who use the build­ing for a wide range of activ­i­ties make it clear that pub­lic space will con­tin­ue to play an essen­tial role in the future.

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Why is the cur­rent mantra in the con­struc­tion indus­try build, build, build—when reuse, recy­cling, or oth­er forms of respon­si­ble use of resources should be the focus of atten­tion? The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lec­tive Bel­la­s­tock address­es this and oth­er major prob­lems in the con­struc­tion indus­try. La Fab­rique du Clos in Stains, a small town in the north-east of Paris, was used to store mate­ri­als from the demo­li­tion of res­i­den­tial tow­ers. Yet the yard also became a meet­ing place and stage for the neighborhood’s res­i­dents. There were dis­cus­sions: about future urban spaces, how and by whom and with what they will be designed. These activ­i­ties result­ed in pro­to­types for sheds, plant­i­ng beds, arbors, street pave­ment, play­ground equip­ment, bench­es, pavil­ions, and much more. They show how small-scale alter­na­tives can chal­lenge estab­lished systems.

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Thomas Hirschhorn’s works address the chal­lenges of our time. They deal with cli­mate emer­gency and jus­tice, con­sumer excess and alien­ation. Many of the geopo­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sions raised by the artist, which we can usu­al­ly hold at a dis­tance, col­lapse over and upon us. We break in. We become part of the Hirschhorn­ian cos­mos, which so clear­ly says how impor­tant it is to take a stance. At first glance, the exhib­it­ed col­lage seems strange­ly sober, almost alien­at­ed. Val­ues and atti­tudes, not solu­tions, are at its core. We seek sim­ple answers to the mul­ti­tude of ques­tions in vain. Rather, the project is about estab­lish­ing social rela­tion­ships, act­ing togeth­er, the inven­tion of prac­tices that pro­duce or change spaces.

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The work of Rotor and Rotor Decon­struc­tion (RotorDC) is not con­cerned with the con­struc­tion of build­ings or cities as we know them. Instead, the office devel­ops strate­gies for the care­ful decon­struc­tion of hous­es slat­ed for demo­li­tion. Mate­ri­als recov­ered through these process­es of dis­man­tling are re-claimed and offered for sale on a web­site. The spec­trum is broad and ranges from cab­i­net han­dles to oak par­quet, from lamps to porce­lain wash­basins, from glass blocks to floor tiles. Rotor’s gen­er­al aim is to raise aware­ness of exist­ing assets and cre­ate a legal frame­work for reuse. Many local author­i­ties now use the collective’s hand­book when con­sid­er­ing new lives for exist­ing pub­lic buildings.

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An increas­ing num­ber of wild ani­mals are liv­ing in our cities. The diver­si­ty of species in urban agglom­er­a­tions is even greater than in the areas sur­round­ing them. The pho­to­graph­ic series by artist Tue Green­fort pro­pels this coex­is­tence of human and fox into plain sight. He points out that the abun­dant and grow­ing diver­si­ty of ani­mal life in cities con­fronts us with new challenges—because not every­one is hap­py about this cohab­i­ta­tion. As a result, plan­ning faces sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. It must not only take increas­ing and more com­pre­hen­sive care of the diverse needs and desires of dif­fer­ent peo­ple but also those crea­tures with no voic­es of their own in urban devel­op­ment processes.

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The large, up to sev­en-sto­ry res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ing in Zurich’s Wiedikon dis­trict is any­thing but ordi­nary. The build­ing is like a small town: com­plete with day­care cen­ter, doctor’s office, bank, art-house cin­e­ma, bars, restau­rant, flower shop, and tram depot. Fur­ther­more, Kalk­bre­ite is a cer­ti­fied »2000 Watt site in oper­a­tion«: Through active sus­tain­abil­i­ty mea­sures, those liv­ing and work­ing there reduce their eco­log­i­cal foot­print. Peo­ple cook and eat togeth­er, work­rooms are shared, an object library makes it pos­si­ble to bor­row equip­ment, and no one has their own car. The result­ing sav­ings are cur­rent­ly around 50% com­pared to aver­age house­hold usage in Zurich. The vision­ary approach of the Kalk­bre­ite will, in the long term, be applied to the entire city in order to con­tribute marked­ly to cli­mate justice.

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All over the world, large hous­ing estates like Cité du Parc rise upwards out of spa­cious park land­scapes. They are often con­sid­ered »social hotspots.« As is the case here. In the ear­ly 2000s, the French state decid­ed to rethink the future of such hous­ing estates. This is where the archi­tec­ture firm Laca­ton & Vas­sal with Druot comes in. The team had been work­ing on this ques­tion for some time: How can spa­tial trans­for­ma­tions be planned and imple­ment­ed so that they do not lead to occu­pant dis­place­ment? The office’s work illus­trates that alter­na­tives to demo­li­tion and new con­struc­tion do exist. And they define new qual­i­ties in build­ings, which many believe can­not be improved.

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