Salone Gemma, not far from the park 'Muzio de Tommasini'

We move on to Salone Gemma to see the happening "A Taste of Graz". Salone Gemma is an architectural practice /graphic design studio /exhibition space run by Claudio Farina and Kathrin Villwock.

Salone Gemma in Via Francesco d'Assisi, Trieste

Preparations for the happening

Architecture just opposite Salone Gemma

But now for something different...

Just opposite our venue some Italians are playing cards

A typical tavern, just after its discovery by some of our fellows

This boy seems to mourn the death of Giuseppe Rota

"Make a big gift to politics so they have to love us"

By Gernot Stangl

This is an abstract of the second part of the event that was held in the park. The panel discussion was hosted by Andreas Ruby.

Discussion panel

The common element of all the aforementioned activities is the celebration of the city. To celebrate something also implies a certain fear that you might lose it. So this determines our relationship to European cities.
Europe has a stagnation of urban growth, as opposed to Asia and the Third World, where new urban spaces are steadily emerging as virgin territories.
So the transformation of the European city lies in its redefinition.

Two approaches can drive this redefinition: a top-down strategy like a governmental initiative or the bottom-up approach that comes as a grass-roots movement. The latter is a sign of sustainable urban culture whereas the first may well result in an (undesired) 'bilbao effect'.

In real life both approaches interact and this relationship is a crucial point.

Andreas Ruby

The panel members agree that the Architektursommer Darmstadt is a good model and a direction one should take. It was possible to get cooperation in terms of sponsorship from private organizations but also from the government. The strategy was to to make a big gift to politics so they had to love the event and take initiative in the future. On the other hand a lot of people had to be activated to make this gift possible. For the first time many citizens heard about the quality of the architecture in Darmstadt.

The benefit is that this drives sustainable urban culture - even if politics may claim responsibility afterwards and say „we did it“.

A successful event like this also acts as a benchmark. hands-on experience is very useful as a reference point and opens the eyes of the participants. In the future public pressure may arise faster in order to push forward new projects.

We must not forget that if we focus on one single city we laeve out the - perhaps more important nowadays - focusing on networks of cities or regions.
So this is an antagonism and there may be a friction between the very local activities concerning the city and the more global activities that are necessary to enhance a regional network.

When it comes to fundraising experiences with policy makers show that projects can be regional but funding is only local.

So for example 'Projekt_A' was funded by the state of Austria and the country but not by the city of Graz. Graz does not see itself as a region.

We can only agree that local networking today is a phenomenon that causes unexpected side effects: old women from Graz get their hair done in Romania.
British buy houses in Slovenia because flying is so cheap.

A new term for this would be 'polycentric region'.

We see a shifting of centres today that also applies to Trieste, where the proximity to slovenia is becoming more important again.

Kerstin Schultz's presentation

Darmstadt, Germany, is well-known for its heritage of Art Nouveau architecture. Today an astonishing number of 900 architectural practices work in the city but contemporary architecture seems to keep a low profile. The 'Architekursommer (summer of architecture) Darmstadt' was a festival that made the discipline more visible and did so with a minimum of funding and a maximum of activities. After one and a half years of preparation 90 events took place and this cost only 65.000 euros including a web site, a catalog and everything else.

Kerstin Schultz

Kerstin Schultz is chairman of the board and gave us an idea of the diversity of projects that were part of the architektursommer. Several institutions had been linked together and the result was a very dense range of events, one opening every second day. An urban mini golf competition, guerrilla tagging of public spaces or the use of towels as a means to conquer a slice of personal space were playful approaches. Ms. Schultz also had a few lessons for us concerning the interaction with politics and fund raising. (See next post)

Statement by Günter Koberg

Günter Koberg

Graz, although a 'second city' has had a vibrant architectural scene since the 1960s that gained international attention. Due to a fruitful cooperation between both architects, the public and politics, especially in the 70s and 80s, the city is densely populated with notable architectural projects.Martin Krammer assists Günter Koberg

As a result of this and other activities Graz has been the European Capital of Culture in 2003. A certain negative effect occurred after this year when the city had less money to spend on anything related to culture and also seemed to lack energy to develop new visions.
Günter Koberg (Graz, Austria) is one of the coordinators of 'Projekt_A', a local grass-roots initiative that wants to put architecture and urbanism on the city's agenda again and hopes to do this in large scale. Graz shall be perceived as a 'capital of architecture' again (Koberg is sceptical about this term because it implies a claim of territory whereas peer-to-peer relationships are more desirable nowadays). 'Projekt_A' would ideally mount in a festival but through an extensive preliminary phase a close bond to the public of Graz (and therefore a sustainable initiative) shall be established.

Notes from Peter Dobrila

Peter Dobrila from Maribor is member of the multimedia arts centre KIBLA (estd. 1996).

Peter Dobrila

Maribor was chosen as European Capital of Culture 2012 alongside with Guimarães.
In his keynote Peter Dobrila presents some of the initiatives that will be taken in Maribor. The urbanization of the world and the transformation to a cyberspace society will be topics that are anchored in the present and the future - but there is also a link to the past: the Museum of Socialism in Maribor will focus on the the socialist movement; hopefully devoid of "propaganda" but taking an approach that is known to Germans as 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung' or 'coming to terms with the past'

Statement by architect Dimitri Waltritsch

Arch. Dimitri Waltritsch (Trieste) states that his home town shows only little feeling for contemporary architecture. In a survey it turned out that the most beloved buildings were (the habsburg castle) Miramare and the football stadium. Contemporary architecture is perceived as of low quality and therefore local architects are more likely to build outside of town. Furthermore the cooperation between construction companies and architects is not very well developed.

Dimitri Waltritsch speaking

On the other hand initiative have been taken to improve the situation and to influence the mechanics that govern the city. An example is the symposium 'trieste idea' about the urban quality in Trieste.