From June 17 to 21, 2019, Intrestik participated in the world's largest urban development festival, the "We make the City" Festival, in the Amsterdam metropolitan region. As a member of the Munich delegation and as part of the city partner program "Dialoogkreativ," we invited international festivalgoers to try out and evaluate the results of our experiments for themselves. Our question was: "How can we revitalize urban spaces?"
We developed the idea together with our partners from the Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan Solutions (AMS). The key inspiration came from the work of the Dutchman Aldo van Eyck. Aldo van Eyck was an architect, member of the artists' group COPRA, and initiator of Gruppe X. Starting in the 1950s, he created a network of over 700 different children's playgrounds throughout Amsterdam. No neighborhood, whether densely populated inner city or sparsely built suburbs, should be without a playground. These spaces, sometimes temporary, sometimes tiny, invited children to play and adults to linger and observe. He succeeded in creating vibrant spaces with a few, recurring, aesthetically pleasing, and multifunctional objects.
His ideas formed the basis of our concept of developing places for encounters and communication using playful elements. We wanted to appeal to different age groups, not just children. We chose the Kreativquartier in Munich and the Marineterrain in Amsterdam as our experimental spaces. The plan was to start the experiments in Munich and then transfer them to Amsterdam. Of course, we failed, as was almost to be expected. Because no artistic object in itself creates encounters, only the people in specific places. Our playful objects and interventions were not accepted; people didn't even linger there.
What were our errors in thinking? In a second attempt, we tried to understand the creative quarter system with its squares and outdoor facilities. A half-day exploration of the district gave us a clearer impression of the nature and extent of the existing meeting and recreational spaces.
However, for the workshop in Amsterdam, we lacked the time to conduct thorough empirical counts and longer observations independent of the time of day. The solution presented itself in the experience-based approach to data collection.
We invited the workshop participants on the Marineterrain to first explore the space themselves, to experience it with all their senses. Alone, in pairs, and in large groups, we played with the space in front of the AMS Institute's office complex. The exercises were taken from theatrical plays by artists such as Augusto Boal. Only then, with our own impressions as a basis, did we begin to place the locations for the floor plans of various objects and offerings in the space. But that's another story.