The competition entry combined a number of contemporary and historic methodologies into what we term ‘Direct Architecture’. It argues for a renewed relationship between the architectural and urban space and engages the city on its own terms. The site, August Allebéplein, is notoriously known for what is in essence a cultural phenomenon; a disintegrated sense of community. A series of undertaken direct actions and related articles were presented in an edited format most familiar in the shaping of the site; the cities main newspaper Het Parool. The initiated (spatial) campaign used a public square that has been the focus of several anti-social events to demonstrate the effect of targeted, well-designed event orchestration and branding campaigns on the use of public space. The aim with the series of events was to demolish the idea that physical upgrades are essential in order for people to manifest themselves in a self-confident and respectful way. This is something that is achievable through non-physical means when spatial issues are taken into account and leveraged. We would therefore argue for a design intervention that we would call ‘Direct Architecture’: the alteration of activities and non-physical elements in order to create or augment architectural space. The project therefore embraces an architecture that moves from being reactive towards an architecture that is interactive. In collaboration with Matthew Murphy.
The team admitted funding, organising and directing early events including the unannounced arrival on 28 November 2009 of ten politicians –friends of the architects wearing masks – an event that garnered the front page of Het Parool, and served to keep August Allebéplein in the borough of Slotervaart, Amsterdam, in the public consciousness. This was followed by a series of direct actions (borrowed and ‘perfected’ from the Situationsist movement) that directly engaged local residents and stakeholders and tested the spatial parameters, culminating in a manifestation where residents claimed parts of the Allebéplein“
What can architects, town planners and landscape architects do in aid of a further development of an existing city’s sense of community? By way of what intervention might they be able to stimulate people of varying ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to manifest themselves within public space in a self-confident and respectful way? In other words: what can designers contribute towards an open society where the population’s different segments no longer have their backs turned towards one another? And might such a contribution perhaps not be a part of radical changes in architecture and urban planning, seeing that these often take place in times of worldwide crisis? These questions, prompted by a professional outlook in which there is once again room for commitment, idealism and optimism, are at the heart of the preliminary round’s commission for the Prix de Rome Architecture 2010.