co+labo radović   co+labo in UPC-Keio collaborative project in Barcelona   
This year, Darko was in charge of Keio Architecture Tour of Europe, which he conducted in collaboration with Professor Kohiyama. The trip included Barcelona and several Dutch cities. Visit to Barcelona offered great opportunity to further advance our discussions for collaboration with Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and their rich architecture and urbanism programmes. The visit was organised by professors Helena Coch and Estanislau Roca, and masterfully managed by their assistants Glòria Serra, Jordi Oriol Serra, Miquel Marti and Inés Aquilué.
What an architect could say about the event which started with reception in the Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, with fine jazz concert and surrounded by a number of dear friends?! 

And ... what to say about  the proposal by colleagues from UPC to, in parallel to our Debordean dérive and wonderings through their fascinating city, have an intensive joint design workshop #FABRICs? 

We accepted the idea, and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of Barcelona in early spring, and the intensity of the workshop.  
Architecture Tour of Europe is an undergraduate course. In 2016 the members included three new co+labo students, Morimoto Mei, Onishi Keitaro and Yamashita Yohei. Our workshop team was further strengthened by three co+labo Masters students - Ueno Wakataro (who has just completed his Masters degree), Akitaka Suzuki (who is doing his double degree at Politecnico di Milano), and Miyatake Sotaro (who was on his way back from Copenhagen and Gehl Architects to Tokyo). The workshop produced some interesting design proposals and, more importantly, helped students from UPC and Keio meet properly and establish good contacts, perhaps even the nuclei of some future friendships.
Discussions about future collaborative projects were happening on the sidelines, and we hope that they will get to the very centre of UPC and Keio agendas in the fields of architecture and urban design very soon.

co+labo radović  visit to Memu Meadows opens co+labo Barn House research activities in 2016 
Since construction of the co+labo's Barn House at Memu Meadows, with generous support by LIXIL Foundation our laboratory conducts regular fieldwork and research sessions at that beautiful site in Hokkaido. In March, co+labo Masters students accompanied new undergraduates and international students, to conduct regular maintenance and monitoring activities and discuss work to be done in the forthcoming year. They also had the opportunity to see the latest of buildings, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design project Introverted House, soon after its completion. As always, the visit to Memu Meadows was a combination of fun and hard work ...
 

co+labo radović Urban Design Studio Radović @ MIAW-Milano International Architecture Week 

Politecnico di Milano  invited Darko to hold an Urban Design Studio within MIAW, Milano International Architecture week. His Urban Palimpsest Studio was one of nine, along with architectural and interior design studios led by Suzie Attiwill, Jesus Donaire, Donatella Fioretti, Go Hasegawa, Luis Antonio Jorge, Yichen Lu, Jo Van Den Berghe and Bin Zhang.
The studio was conducted in an intensive format, in the period 25.2-5.3.2016, by co+labo's Darko Radović and Davisi Boontharm, with technical and teaching assistance of PoliMi's Mina Akhavan. 

 
MIAW Studio Radović produced a project entitled

dreaming a smarter, smart Città Studi

This project records the dreams and discussions of another, better Città Studi, thought and conceived as a smarter, smart city within the old, vibrant city of Milano.

The project was conducted at the MIAW Urban Design Studio Radović, 25.2-5.3 2016. Conceptually, it was based on the New World City Hypothesis, which seeks:

- “to redefine urbanity, so that it embraces environmental responsibility. If good manners, which are central to the original meaning of the term urbanity, get extended beyond interpersonal relations towards the whole of the city – then we can speak about decidedly urbane environments. If the same attitude is extended further, towards the whole of our environment –we can speak about truly sustainable environment, an eco-urbanity;

- to reinforce Lefebvre’s powerful requests for the droit à la ville, the renewed right to the city, and for le droit à la difference, the right to difference – the rights to be empowered and to be different (against forces which he called homogenisation, fragmentation, and hierarchically organized power, and which we are experiencing as globalisation); and

- to reclaim our rights to (each particular) city and to (each particular) urbanity, as fully-developed local cultures. Each city need to have its own rights, the right of and the right to (its own, particular) urbanity. We need to reclaim an ability to live multiple worlds and for that we need multiple practices that generate, and multiply the rules which define excellence – parallel worlds of class and excellence. Radović (2008)

Our MIAW 2016 Urban Design Project started by tapping into the perceptions of the existing Città Studi, by seeking, sensing, finding, exploring and mapping both current and promised, but never realized qualities. It sought to dialecticise the objective criteria for assessment of urban quality with subjective, bodily experiences in and of those spaces, as continuously and variously conceived, perceived and lived.

Fueled by strong desire for alternative, radically different and better futures, our team questioned who has the right to tell the citizens (students) what is, and what is not realistic in and for their own city (UniverCity). A truly smart Città Studi could be only the one which empowers its resident to become makers, to seek, to find and to liberate the “beaches” which lie imprisoned under the concrete and asphalt of present realities.

Seeing the city

 “… as a projection of society on the ground, that is, not only on the actual site, but at a specific level, perceived and conceived by thought, which determines the city and the urban” Lefebvre (1996)

the resulting vision of a smarter, smart Città Studi emerged as palimpsest of diverse spatial projections of existing and potential, (im)possible and (im)probable, ideal and of not-so-ideal worlds (of learning) on the ground.

That palimpsest of ideas reflects the new reality of Politecnico di Milano, which is, gradually, steadily and beautifully, becoming true Polietnico di Milano. The dreamers who produced this palimpsest, all students of Politecnico di Milano, came from a number countries, creating the rich tapestry of cultural and educational backgrounds.

That fascinating multicultural environment possesses the unseen, complex and untameable potential of an intellectual beehive, the best thet globalisation can offer. That potential needs to be embraced, nurtured, cherished - and empowered.

  “Cities are units of human accountability to the planet.” Sorkin (1993) (1993)                       

Urbanity and environmental responsibility are two aspects of a single sensibility, which departs from the narrow anthropocentric views that still shape our ways of dealing with the environment. Based on those values, smarter, smart Città Studi explored diverse spatial and programmatic, in some instances irreverent and provocative “what-if” scenarios for the future. The sole unifying thread of those explorations was an imperative of environmental and cultural responsiveness and responsibility.

The imagined smarter, smart Città Studi would be an incubator of urbanity for 21^st century, simultaneously rooted and open to future, able to think critically. Such smartness would include (but should never be limited to) the latest knowledge. The key to wise sustainable communities is in establishing the capacity and responsibility to continuously evaluate own performance and to make informed decisions. That is why

“instead of definite general project, as was the practice at beginning of this century, city development needs elastic “general programme” capable of taking into account changes over  time.” Giedion (1967)                             

Our palimpsest illustrates the urban patterns of Città Studi flexible and loose enough to remain responsive to unpredictable, to the unknown, able to generate and support cultural, spatial and functional diversity and continuity.

“The quality and the character of everyday life, together with spatial expressions of ordinary activities are going to be the measure of success or failure on the road towards sustainable development.” Radović (2012)                 

For any university, to succeed in becoming a smart, sustainable community, the highest standards of education and research related to environmental and cultural responsibility need to be(come) part of everyday life. 

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DR

Milano 4.3.2016 (Vuku)

Giedion, S. (1967), Space, Time, Architecture, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press; Lefebvre, H. (1996), Writings on Cities, Oxford: Blackwell.; Radović, D (2008), “The World City Hypothesis Revisited: Export and import of urbanity is a dangerous business”, in World Cities and Urban Form, Jenks, M., Kozak, D., Takkanon, P. (eds), Oxford: Routledge; Radović, D (2012), “The greatness of small”, in Future-Asian-Space: Projecting the urban space of new East Asia (eds. Hee, Viray, Boontharm), Singapore: NUS Press; Sorkin, M. (1993) Local Code - The Construction of the City at 42. N Latitude, Princeton: Architectural Press

MIAW Studio Radović members: Kevork Aragelian, Britta Arends, Martina Atanasovska, Gizem Aydin, Martina Brambilla, Ceren Cagli, Priscilla Maame Kweiba Cann, Hakan Erdin, Veronica Garbaccini, Minoo Javareshkian, Ivona Kovacević, Ksenija Krsmanović, Mengsha Ma, Natalija Marinković, Kamal Naseri, Rahul Vijay Kumar Parmar, Maryam Qayyoomi Bidhendi, Dušana Sakotić, Lana Salameh, Iliriana Sejdullahu, Mengqi Shao, Lei Sun, Cristina Trevia, Sara Vaccari, Amirhossein Vaseghi, Mesfin Alemu Wondimu, Sichen Zhang, Zhen Kai Zhang + Mina Akhavan (tutor) + Davisi Boontharm (Studio associate) + Darko Radović (Studio leader)

MIAW Studio Radović guest critics were Politecnico di Milano professors Antonella Bruzzese, Manuela Grecchi, Bertrando Bonfantini, Antonio Longo, Gabriele Masera and Gabriele Pasqui.

Fragments from the MIAW Studio Radović palimpsest..

co+labo radović   Urban Thinkers Campus in Alghero - "The City We Need: City Open for Art" 
Urban Thinkers Campus ”The City We Need: Open for Art”,  held in Alghero, Italy, 18-2-.2. 2016, was  part of preparations for the Habitat III campaign “Towards a New Urban Agenda". The Campus onceived as an arena for innovative, critical multidisciplinary thinking, and Darko was invited to give an opening key-note address there. His well-received talk, entitled "Towards not measuring the measurable: about the ways of seeking, sensing, perhaps discovering, sharing and making ... 'IT'" presented some of the conceptual thinking which frames  research at co+labo radović, and illustrated it with some of our recent and current work.

The presentation offered to discussion three contentious issues: the need for cultural specificity in the times of globalisation, the need for non-reductive approaches to investigations of the urban, and the need for explicit inclusion of subjectivities and sensuality in urban research. It was polemological in its tone as, in de Certeau's tradition, Darko hopes to help “force theory to recognise its own limits.” The opoening position was Henri Lefebvre reminder that, in order to address the urban, we need to think its spatiality as simultaneously l’espace conçu, l’espace perçu, and l’espace vècu, as directly lived. Lived in its fullness. Nothing less than that.  

An immoderate oeuvre.

The Campus provided a plenty of opportunities for discussion, to which Darko and co+labo associate Professor Davisi Boontharm gave their contribution.
Besides the key-note and discussions within the UTC, Darko was asked to deliver a PhD seminar, as part of the architecture and urban design programme of the University of Sassari.

co+labo radović          co+labo's exhibition 8-15 February 2016 at LIXIL Gallery in Ginza      

LIXIL Foundation has generously invited co+labo to exhibit in their prestigious Ginza Gallery. That comes as the outcome of long and fruitful collaboration, which started with our team winning LIXIL Competition for the next Generation Sustainable House in 2011, which continued with construction of the Barn House and an ongoing support by the great foundation for our research and design-research efforts at Hokkaido and in Tokyo ever since. 

For the Ginza Gallery project, co+labo team was characteristically cross-cultural (combining students from Japan, Belgium, Brazil, France, Spain), with exhibits completely designed and built by students, embodying the ethos established by the Barn House itself. As it included all six new co+labo undergraduate students, in educational terms this was also an excellent opportunity for direct, kohai-sempai transfer of knowledge.

The exhibits were designed to resonate with proportions, materiality and sensibility of co+labo research pavilions, and after the exhibition they will be used for various fieldwork, as nodes of attraction and interaction co+labo urban and architectural research projects. 

Ginza Chuo Dori - an curious passer-by during the installation of the exhibits ...

… setting-up the boxes ...

… and the exhibition itself, discussions with visitors and doing a survey about environmentally and culturally responsible urban development and architecture.

co+labo radović with nomikai 飲み会  co+labo celebrated the end of the school year 2015-16

In February, nine co+labo students - Sato, Suzuki, Ueno, Kusano, Ito, Magome, Narumi, Tajima, Yamamori have completed their Masters and undergraduate studies, and graduated with Keio University degree. Along with pending departure of two great, visiting co+labo members from Brazil, Carolina Muraki (University of Curitiba) and Vitor Endo (University of Sao Paulo), that was a very good reason for 飲み会, a farewell party,  attended by laboratory members and our associates.   

co+labo radović co+labo's Sotaro Miyatake completed internship @Gehl's in Copenhagen

During the second part of 2015, co+labo Masters student Sotaro Miyatake undertook an internship at Gehl Partners, as part of our joint efforts to establish meaningful collaboration and help contextualise Gehl's quality in production of quality urban environments worldwide to Japanese cities. Miyatake-san was cordially received in Gehl's Copenhagen office, where he worked under close supervision of David Sim Creative Director and regular contributor to various co+labo activities. He is bringing back to co+labo valuable direct experience and knowledge to share with his fellow students and researchers.

David Sim, Sotaro Miyatake, Helle Søholt, Scott Przibella.

co+labo radović     co+labo team wins an award the JIA architectural design competition   

co+labo team which has won the Keio University HAPP Competition 2015 has received another award for their design - this time at the "What is architecture of the darkness?" competition organised by Aichi Federation of Architects and Building Engineers Associations. 71 works took part in the competition which focused at "expanding the concept of architecture design". co+labo team, headed by Wakataro Ueno and Soyoka Tsuji, received the Norihiro Ejiri Individual award, recognising its innovative qualities (structural) and poetic (the experience of immersion into the darkness of the night) ).

One of the late-night visitors of co+labo HAPP pavilion, amazed by its structure and darkness of the night, and Ueno and Tsuji-san with Professor Norihiro Eiji, at the awards ceremony.

co+labo radović                           co+labo wishes you a Happy New Year                                   

co+labo radović     2015@co+labo ends with bonenkai - the end of the year party at Harajuku 

The end of the year at co+labo was, as always, marked by traditional Japanese bonenkai which, translated literally, means forget-the-year-party. But, in and around our laboratory, in 2015 there was a lot to remember. Last year was full of events, the intensity of which we hope to see flowing into the New Year - successful international workshops and symposia, award-winning architectural and urban design competitions, fresh ideas coming from an intensified exchange at both student and staff levels, new research projects - all of which combined made our dream about strong international architecture and urban design programme feel closer to reality than ever before. For us, the end of the year gathering was, thus, a please-do-not-forget-this-year-party, an opportunity for current co+labo members, graduates and associates to get together and to welcome a group of new Keio undergraduates who will be joining co+laboradović in 2016: Morimoto Mei, Mikogami Mayuko, Takasu Yukie, Kobayashi Daisuke, Onishi Keitaro and Yamashita Shohei. Special guests were co+labo's Kira Horie, who is now doing her Masters ar Harvard GSD, and Akitaka Suzuki, a first Keio-Politecnico di Milano Double Degree student in the field of architecture and urban design. 

co+labo radović         a successful completion of the  Keio-PoliMi Symposium in Milano       

A joint Symposium, Workshop and small, focused group meetings related to the future of growing collaboration between Keio and Politecnico di Milano in the fields of architecture and urbanism, which started with an initiative od Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović were a great success. Inspirational Smart Communities Symposium has presented immense resources and potential for collaboration in the fields associated with production of space at two universities and, above all, made obvious that the time for intensification and diversification of collaboration has come. Professor Giovanni Azzone, the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, opened the main day of the event by announcing the commitment to strategic partnership between two universities in the fields of architecture and urbanism. It was great to see the initiative which started at co+labo evolve into the potentially university-wide project.

Since 2009, co+labo was at the forefront of the struggle to make architecture and urban design at Keio, the oldest university in Japan, strong and truly international. We made our ambitious aims known at La Biennale di Achittetura in Venice in 2010, when Keio Professors Radović, Sejima and Kobayashi joined forces to establish IKI - International Keio Institute for Architecture and Urbanism. IKI was, and it remains (at) the heart of co+labo ... or the other way round.

8. 2010: Hitoshi Abe (UCLA), Yaishi Ikeda (Keio), Wang Shi (Academy of Art, Hangzhou), Heinrich Wolf (NoeroWolf, Sth Africa), Shun Kanda (MIT), Kazuyo 
Sejima (IKI, Design Director), Hiroto Kobayashi (IKI Managing Director) and Darko Radović (IKI International Director) at the IKI Symposium in Venice.
With IKI at heart, we have staged numerous numerous international research, educational and design-research workshops, fieldworks, Symposia and Conferences, hosted major research project Measuring the non-Measurable - Mn'M and did our best to contribute to better thinking and making good architecture and urbanism worldwide, in Asia, Australia and Europe. With truly top-global strategic partners such as Politecnico di Milano, the time to turn that dream into reality has come.

co+labo radović     Smart Communities @ Politecnico di Milano, co-organised by co+labo    

In the period 15-19.12, Politecnico di Milano and Keio University will conduct a joint Symposium, Workshop and small, focused group meetings related to the future of our growing collaboration in the fields of architecture and urbanism. 
The forthcoming Smart Communities Symposium will build upon concentrated efforts by Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović, which started from idealistic, brave ideas about the best possible ways for two universities to collaborate and advance the fields of architecture and urban design. Over the years, Politecnico and Keio established fruitful exchange of students and staff, flow of guest lectures, and started Double Degree programme in those fields. 
By hosting professors Imperadori, Masera, Grecchi at Keio, receiving Politecnico exchange students, Colistra, Spallina and Nastasi and sending our own best, Sasamura and Suzuki, co+labo was central to those efforts. 
In 2015, professors Davisi Boontharm and Darko Radović visited PoliMi, to make sure that two institutions are ready to advance to the next level, research collaboration within the Top Global University Smart Communities initiative. 
All that, combined with enthusiasm of the colleagues and Politecnico, made the December 2015 Smart Communities Symposium Symposium, Workshop and the rest possible. 
At this blog, we will keep you updated about  our afforest to make thinking about Smart Cities - smarter.