OK Talk is a platform for bringing people together to discuss and develop the societal role and practices of the creative field. It combines different skills and approaches in events and publications with the aim to generate critical discourse, including asking relevant questions, raising insight and bringing forth tools for designers and artists to put to use.

OK Talk WDC discussion in June 2011 with Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould, Tommi Laitio and us. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The OK Talk session at DMY opened up a discussion around alternative models of creative practice in Helsinki and Berlin, while reflecting on their value and support structures. The hour-long talk was accompanied by short presentations on different aspects to the topic by each of the participants.

Participants

Carson Chan, Architecture Writer and Curator / PROGRAM

Carson Chan presented PROGRAM, an initiative for art and architecture collaborations that tests the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through exhibitions, events and a residency programme in Mitte, Berlin and online.

Kaarina Gould, Programme Director / World Design Capital Helsinki 2012

Kaarina Gould presented Helsinki’s agenda for the World Design Capital 2012 project, which uses design to support cultural, social, and economic development in the city. The year of events under the theme ‘Open Helsinki’ aims to set a global standard, while serving as a meeting place for the world’s design community.

Tommi Laitio, Researcher / Demos Helsinki

Tommi Laitio presented his work on cultural politics and citizen participation with Demos Helsinki, a think tank for developing democracy to suit the needs and capabilities of the 21st century and the Dutch platform Premsela’s Republic of Design programme, striving to stimulate the development of design into an open cultural field.

Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela, Writers and Curators / OK Do

Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela presented a residency project that turns empty spaces in different cities into arenas of site-specific collaboration as well as temporary homes for OK Do, their peripatetic creative practice and online journal for bridging design, art and society.

Carson Chan, Kaarina Gould and Tommi Laitio. Photo courtesy of Bernhard Ludewig.

The event also saw the launch of ‘OK Talk Helsinki/London’, a book drawing from a series of earlier OK Talk discussions between twenty Finland- and UK-based designers, artists and theorists in autumn 2010. In addition to the best parts of the talks, the publication widens the discourse, offering new perspectives to design through essays, interviews and visual material. It is edited by OK Do and designed by Åh, including contributions by Åbäke, Bryan Boyer, Martti Kalliala, Zak Kyes, Markus Miessen, Karen Mirza, Anni Puolakka, Jenna Sutela, Teemu Suviala and Finn Williams.

The project has been supported by World Design Capital Helsinki 2012, The Finnish Institute in London and British Council Finland.

An overview of OK Talk and HEL YES! pop-up restaurant.

Making Places

The first event brought together six creative practitioners – Åbäke, design practice; Nene Tsuboi, designer and artist; Sarah Ichioka, director of Architecture Foundation; Teemu Suviala, co-founder of Kokoro & Moi; Tuomas Toivonen, musician and co-founder of NOW for Architecture and Urbanism and Finn Williams, urban planner and founder of Common Office – as well as an audience of fifty people.

Using different disciplines and projects, as well as the cities of London and Helsinki, as starting points, the discussion focused on the creation, evolution and essence of places. The panelists, having experience in making places through graphic identities, public saunas, events or urban planning, talked about utopian ideas and practical solutions, participatory spatial practices as well as the role and significance of localism and globalism, or planning and spontaneity, in their activities.

The gathering was complemented by Antto Melasniemi’s mushroom brunch, and it also included the London launch of Tuomas Toivonen’s Urbanism in the House album that continued on a boat ride in the canal, and was celebrated by listening to the record in the Islington Tunnel.

Nene Tsuboi, Benjamin Reichen, Sarah Ichioka, Teemu Suviala, Tuomas Toivonen, Finn Williams and Jenna Sutela.

Anni Puolakka, Nene Tsuboi, Benjamin Reichen and Sarah Ichioka.

Tuomas Toivonen and Finn Williams.

Teemu Suviala, Sarah Ichioka and Nene Tsuboi.

Antto Melasniemi, the chef of HEL YES!, and breakfast.

Urbanism in the House by Tuomas Toivonen.

Strategies of Participation

On Thursday 23rd, five speakers – Céline Condorelli, architect and founder of Support Structures; Ulla-Maaria Engeström, founder of Thinglink; HyperMarketo, communication platform; Karen Mirza, artist and founder of no.w.here and Suvi Saloniemi, curator at Kunsthalle Helsinki – and a small audience came together for a discussion about Strategies of Participation. Using tools such as an off-schedule (inspired by Brutally Early Club) and a potluck breakfast to which all the OK Talk visitors brought their favourite ingredients, we aimed to create an intimate atmosphere for sharing thoughts about encounters, interactions and collaborations.

The discussion evolved around topics such as spatial, cultural, psychological and communicative support for participation, self-production, online markets and communities as well as the concept of ‘non-participation’. Looking at strategies of participation from the perspectives of art, interaction design as well as cultural production of events and exhibitions, we also talked about the meaning of institutions, alternative cultures and friends in participatory projects.

The potluck breakfast, coordinated and cooked together by Antto Melasniemi, ended up including everything from fried British portobellos to Finnish crispbread.

Céline Condorelli, Ulla-Maaria Engeström, Jerome Rigaud, Karen Mirza, Suvi Saloniemi, Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela.

Céline Condorelli and Ulla-Maaria Engeström.

Jerome Rigaud, Karen Mirza and Suvi Saloniemi.

A potluck breakfast.

Audience at the OK Talk on Strategies of Participation.

Borderlands

The third OK Talk London dealt with the borderlands between different disciplines and featured five speakers – Revital Cohen, designer; Martti Kalliala, architect and one half of Renaissance Man; Zak Kyes, graphic designer and founder of Z.A.K.; Max Lamb, designer and Aamu Song, designer and founder of Company – and a record-breaking audience of nearly one hundred people.

The discussion revolved around the blurring of boundaries between design, art and other fields with an emphasis on collaborative practices. It explored the role and characteristics of a designer in an increasingly interconnected world where the ambiguity of professional identity, often connected with varied locations, people and modes of practice, was, in many ways, seen as an asset. The panelists also looked at the idea of designers creating their own economies, the culturally varying ideas of the concept of design (in Chinese, the word for design literally means ‘dream-shaping’) as well as the relationships between architecture and music, or design and science.

A salmon and potato breakfast was served by the HEL YES! restaurant.

Revital Cohen, Martti Kalliala, Zak Kyes, Max Lamb and Aamu Song.

Revital Cohen, Martti Kalliala and Zak Kyes.

Max Lamb and Aamu Song.

OK Talk London tabloid and a salmon and potato breakfast by HEL YES!.

Audience at the OK Talk on Borderlands.

OK Do thanks all the OK Talk participants, it was good!

According to Antto Melasniemi’s plan, instead of an entrance ticket, the participants were asked to bring a breakfast ingredient each. Tuula Pöyhönen’s home was a perfect backdrop for making breakfast and enjoying the discussion.

Taking a fresh view on spatial practice, the discussion looked at the creation, evolution and essence of places. Using Helsinki and London as starting points, it revolved freely around placemaking in relation to cities and citizens, planning and spontaneity, as well as infrastructure and spirit of spaces. It will be documented in a publication following the series of events in Helsinki and London.

Shohei Shigematsu and Nene Tsuboi

Hanna Harris, Amanda Levete, Shohei Shigematsu and Nene Tsuboi

Bryan Boyer

See you at OK Talk London on 18, 23 and 25 September at HEL YES!, Wenlock Road 1-3 as Part of London Design Festival! The OK Talk London tabloid will be out on Friday, 10 September.

Photo courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

The project started in May 2010 with a Saturday brunch discussion at Sitra. We invited around ten Helsinki-based people from different fields to imagine a more interesting and enjoyable city and ended up with a bunch of ideas.

Dreaming up life-improving initiatives for Helsinki. Photo courtesy of Kaarle Hurtig.

After the workshop, we started taking the ideas forward, consulting experts and compiling our strategic design proposals into a set of concrete examples; some easily applicable and some crazier Clues to Open Helsinki. The team was also joined by illustrator Nene Tsuboi and graphic designer Anna Mikkola. In the end, we presented the ideas in the form of 17 + 1 postcards from the future.

Photos courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

Here’s a couple of examples picked up from the set of postcards from Helsinki 2012:

A City of All Shapes and Sizes

In 2012, the city is built from the bottom up. There is more variation in the urban pattern: townhouses, bigger complexes, new and old buildings next to each other. Communal housing is becoming popular and people combine living and working under the same roof. A lotting system is introduced to distribute the urban spaces for different organisations.

Katu Mayors

In 2012, Katu (‘street’ in Finnish) Mayors live in the neighbourhood and are elected by their peers. They participate in city-level planning relevant to the area and ensure that the residents and local businesses are heard, breathing diversity into the city. These local trustees are supported by grants and permits which allow them to manage the environment, services and facilities.

Winter Holidays

In 2012, the unique seasonal circumstances of Helsinki are cherished through moving part of the holiday from summer to winter. Today, people stay in the city for most of the summer, making it more active, enjoyable as well as attractive for tourists. The value in cold and short Helsinki days will be discovered through encouraging interaction between people in the winter, too.

Urbane Industry

Few places have a craft legacy as strong as Finland. In 2012 the local talents have been saved from the brink of extinction through programmes to encourage and foster small scale industry in the heart of the city. Multicultural skills merge in the new collaborations between designers and manufacturers working closely together.

Finally, we organised a party on the occasion of the postcards from the future. Held at the Palm House of Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, referenced in the set of clues as a living room in the city that could be used more actively, the event also featured super raw chocolate smoothies and music by the Katu Mayor of our choice Timo Kaukolampi.

Photos courtesy of Hertta Kiiski.

Please find more information as well as the rest of the clues at www.cluestoopenhelsinki.fi.

Marina, Esther and Florence on the construction site of a multicultural kitchen in Kalasatama.

Helsinki inhabits tens of thousands of immigrants who have all brought their memories, habits and delicacies with them. However, for some reason, this barely shows in the cityscape. Ahmet Aslan, the owner of the only Kurdish restaurant in Helsinki, Café Caisa, explains how difficult it is for a foreigner to open a decent eatery in the city. “Already when I came to Finland in the nineties, I wanted to open an à la carte restaurant serving food from my home country,” Ahmet says. “However, I didn’t have a Finnish education at that point, so I wasn’t able to get a license for serving wine – so, I ended up opening a lunch place first. When I finally received a local diploma, I returned to my original plans and put up a proper Kurdish à la carte restaurant in Kaisaniemi.” Café Caisa serves oriental home food including meze plates and fresh salads. “On the side, I also try to provide the customers with some insights to Kurdish culture,” Ahmet adds. He hopes that the Finnish government would learn from the likes of France and give more support to entrepreneurship within the restaurant industry. “This way, we might soon be known for our rich food culture, too,” he notes.

“It’s difficult for a foreigner to open a decent eatery in Helsinki.”

Opening an ethnic kitchen in Helsinki wasn’t easy for half Israeli and half Ukrainian Alexander Bitsak, either. Alexander moved to Finland a couple of years ago because he considered the country, in his own words, the best place in the world. He found a perfect space on Kustaankatu in Kallio for his Ukrainian pelmeni restaurant but, coming from Israeli at the time, was denied entrance to the country by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “So, I left my beautiful space, went to Kiova, and decided to try again,” Alexander explains. “Finally, I returned to Kustaankatu with a Ukrainian passport. Then, I renovated my restaurant and tried to make it special for customers and Finnish friends.” Alexander used to have a pizza place in Israel, but didn’t want to found one in Finland as he believes we have enough pizza already. “As a matter of fact, in addition to Ukrainian food like pelmenis and soups, my menu consists of traditional Finnish delicacies such as Karelian roast (karjalanpaisti) and Finnish fish pasty (kalakukko). It is easy to feel at home at Pelmenit, Alexander’s restaurant – and not just because of the familiar food. “The customers don’t come here only to eat, but rather to meet me,” Alexander says. “I ask how they are, how their family and health is. Unfortunately, now I’ve become so popular that I don’t have time to speak that much anymore.”

Like Alexander, Ahmet and us, also Marina Lindström from the multicultural co-operative Q-Coop thinks that Helsinki needs more ethnic kitchens. That’s why she’s planning to open a big restaurant and central kitchen in Kalasatama, a harbour area freed for residential construction only a few years ago. Her idea is to bring together people and cuisines from all over the world (e.g. West African, Iranian, Ethiopian, Indian and Kurdish) under the same roof, organise lunches, dinners and events as well as prepare food to be sold in smaller kiosks around the city. As her co-workers, the Finnish-born Marina has two Nigerian women, Esther Ademosu and Florence Awoyemi with whom she used to run the Yoruban Kimito Kitchen in Sörnäinen. Like many old harbour areas worldwide, food might help bring interesting people and activities to Kalasatama, too. But more than city planning in its traditional sense, Marina is interested in helping immigrants integrate and making Helsinki’s food culture – and through that, the whole atmosphere of the city – more international and open. After all, in the end, it is the cultural aspects that make a true city.

The article also appears on We Are Helsinki magazine’s food issue, 3/2010.

OK, a street shop for xiaolongbao.

1. Street

In Shanghai, life extends from rooms to the street. From mahjong playing to washing laundry, people use asphalt as a base for carrying out daily activities together. Cooking, selling food and eating being some of them, we were taken by xiaolongbao as well as other local delights prepared on the spot.

One day, we tried to find a pair of Lilliputian stools which locals use a lot yet which don’t seem to be sold anywhere. The trick was to find one on the street and ask the owner if she wished to sell it. In fact, she wasn’t the owner of the stool, but a neighbour who happened to be the closest person standing by. In only a few seconds, she set up an ad hoc sales team: another neighbour brought a calculator for price negotiation, someone else went in search for more seats while a third person fetched us a carrier bag. Finally, the payment was delivered to the owner herself, busy doing laundry.

Instead of inviting friends to their homes, Shanghai people like to gather in some of the countless eateries of the city. Noriko Daishima, a Shanghai-based designer of Japanese origin (read our story about her), explains this through the fact that Chinese homes are very small, but also through the love of the streets. “I’ve heard that there are around 30 000 restaurants in Shanghai,” she points out.

Noriko shares a garden with her neighbours. It's both a meeting place and a working site.

2. Sharing

Sharing is caring, they say. Sometimes we got the feeling that Chinese people care about each other more than, for example, Finns. This caring and trust was manifest in doors that are left wide open in the middle of the city or a shop owner that left her outlet as well as a one-year-old child (slightly anxious) in our hands in order to go and find out whether another store had the product we sought.

The contemporary Chinese architecture is keen on addressing the concept of sharing, too. Metropolises in China are like laboratories where traditional practices of everyday life get tested against modern concepts and contexts. Meng Yan from URBANUS, the office behind Tulou low-income housing concept, has been surprised by the level of communality shown by Chinese inhabitants in their projects. “I know that it is crucial for many Chinese people to exchange information about jobs etc. with their neighbours, but the Tulou residents even take turns in cooking for each other.”

“In China, everything happens through friends,” describes another local architect, Kok-Meng Tan of KUU. We like the idea. A big city doesn’t have to mean a loss of trust towards others, or living detached from your neighbours. Having learned to be so independent, it might be the time to search the villagers inside us for the sake of “better city, better life,” as Expo 2010 Shanghai puts it.

Laundry day in the neighbourhood around West Mall.

3. Straightforward

“In Finland, people think a lot and in Shanghai, they do a lot,” our friend, a Shanghai-based artist and designer Pan Jian Feng reviews his experiences of both cultures. Although some areas of the Chinese society, such as doing bigger business in Shanghai, are extremely complicated, the methodology of daily life is often very straightforward – and extremely efficient. Working with Mr. Feng himself, we have found that plans are taken into action very quickly. While we might still be pondering which of the alternative concepts might work the best, he would have already tested them out.

Going back to the food, some of our favourite restaurants were tiny, anonymous noodle places where one would pick up the chosen ingredients (like pak choi, fried tofu and fishballs) in a basket and have them quickly turned into a soup by adding stock. Quick, flexible and uncomplicated. A recipe that, at times, works like a good design method, too.

When it comes to the relationship between design and production, China is full of opportunities for finding direct collaborators for handicrafts. People are still familiar with materials and accustomed to doing things with their hands. “Inspired by the traditional Chinese way of working, materials are my starting point,” says a Hangzhou architect Wang Shu. “I think we should look at rural construction methods and materials when trying to solve issues of, for example, sustainability. Hands are good for thinking.”

Goodbye Shanghai, so long xiaolongbao!

Noriko in her home and Le Petit Xiaoxiao café and shop.

Originally from Tokyo, Noriko, 42, has lived in Shanghai for 7 years. She first visited the city through her work for Muji, where she designed interior products and dealt with many Chinese manufacturers. “I have always been interested in production,” Noriko tells us. “The Shanghai area is special as there are many small factories here. I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

“I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

Noriko explains that she felt as if she was going back to her own roots when she moved from Japan to China. “Many cultural traditions in Japan actually come from here,” she notes. “I was also intrigued by the fact that Shanghai was so chaotic, so unfinished, and much more aggressive than Tokyo. You know, life easily gets shallow if everything is just beautiful. Here, it’s harder, but more interesting. However, Shanghai is starting to get more organised now, and people are getting more gentle. The city is developing, and maybe becoming less exciting than before, too.”

Noriko’s house is small and white. Built in 1948, it consists of two rooms – a bedroom and a living room where we sit drinking tea from cups hand-made by the host herself. The same cups are sold in Noriko’s home shop: a shelf of items from pottery to woodwork and textiles, most of which are designed by her and made by Chinese artisans – just like almost all the furniture in her house, too. Moreover, the shop selection includes some traditional Chinese everyday objects Noriko has found in random street shops around the city – beautiful and practical things that are often underestimated, and thus hard to find, in the globalising city.

Le Petit Xiaoxiao features ceramics crafted by Noriko and other products designed by her and made by local artisans.

“I’m very interested in primitive design and production methods,” Noriko explains her interest towards Chinese crafts. “In my own work, I try to combine traditional methods with new design.” One of her projects, factory-tshirt.net, sets out to create an online platform for designers and manufacturers to collaborate and learn about different design and production methods through the medium of a classic white t-shirt. On the website, Noriko presents her own T-shirt project involving indigo dying in a farmhouse in Zhoucheng, Yunnan and printing with plaster and soya in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. “It’s nice to know about things,” Noriko says.

The garden in front of Noriko's place is taken care of by her together with her neighbours.

In addition to more traditional crafts, Noriko is also interested in web design and programming. “I don’t like to distinguish between different fields of creative work – people are more complex than that,” she notes. Working at home and for herself, she also likes to experiment with the boundaries between labour and leisure. “I hate the office,” she says. “It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

“I hate the office. It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

Like us, many people found their way to Noriko’s through a friend’s recommendation. We heard about the place from Satoko and Kok-Meng, a Shanghai-based couple who met each other at Le Petit Xiaoxiao and later founded KUU design office together. “I wanted to create a small creative community by making my home a meeting place,” Noriko tells us about her activities resonating Chinese communality. “I have made many new friends at my place.”

Daniel Palillo, Nene Tsuboi and the hooded tower of Helsinki Central railway station.

Traditionally known for its architecture, we believe Finland has recently been more innovative in other creative areas such as fashion and art. So, we sat down with Nene Tsuboi and Daniel Palillo to discuss architecture and urban design in Helsinki from another point of view.

While Tsuboi has contributed to the style of the city through architectural projects with NOW for Architecture and Urbanism, she has also designed colourful flags to take over the grey facades of Helsinki. This art project simulated the urban way of drying laundry outside the windows in Japan, Tsuboi’s home country. Palillo, on the other hand, shapes the street scene through his expressive frocks worn by people ranging from grannies to teenage boys all over Helsinki. He is known to be a big fan of the Austrian painter and architect Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (1928-2000), famous for his experimental projects in urban environments. “Hundertwasser made his own clothes from what he found on the street,” Palillo tells. “He also had projects where people could, for example, paint anything a meter outside their own window in a block of flats.”

Nene Tsuboi enjoys city planning that is not too planned.

Tsuboi finds the spontaneous evolution of places very interesting, and enjoys city planning that is not too planned. “Walking past Tokoinranta almost every morning, I have noticed a melted spot full of ducks in the middle of the ice,” she explains. “One day, The Public Works Department had put up a sign with biological images of ducks as well as information on the species. The place became an official bird-watching spot by accident.” This kind of attitude makes Helsinki a more interesting place. Tsuboi tells that one of her urban design projects with NOW was based on the idea of giving people spaces and seeing what kind of places they make out of them. In the same vein, Palillo is planning to turn his backyard in Ullanlinna into a movie theater next summer.

Finding the digital clock and the hood with a 1:1 print of the building underneath covering the construction site in the tower of the Helsinki Central railway station (normally displaying an analog clock) a good design solution, we talked about dressing up buildings with Palillo and Tsuboi. “Construction sites could be vanished in the spirit of David Copperfield’s airplane trick where he uses a mirror and some smoke to make a plane disappear,” Palillo says. “The City Planning Department should hire magicians!”

“The City Planning Department should hire magicians!” – Daniel Palillo

“Being Japanese, I find it interesting how the functions of buildings are changed from offices to apartments here without the exterior changing at all,” Tsuboi says. “Looking at Helsinki facades, the inside of the buildings is a mystery while in Japan, the purpose of a building is clearly visible from the outside, and when the function changes, they change the whole building.” She likes the big sheets outside Ateneum, the Finnish National Gallery, that tell it’s an art museum. “What if more buildings had costumes saying ‘I’m a home for many kids!’ or ‘I’m a hospital!’?,” Tsuboi suggests.

Better City by Biking, OK Do's first column for We Are Helsinki magazine.

The first OK Do column for We Are Helsinki features a meeting with Marek Salermo, a former cyclist in the Belgian racing team, as well as a bicycle traffic planner working for the City of Helsinki. So far we’ve also met up with artists and designers Daniel Palillo and Nene Tsuboi to talk about dressing up Helsinki and asked local restaurant owners of foreign origin how food can make a city. In addition to these articles, all our Helsinki stories appear on the OK Do site, too.

Dressing Up Helsinki, the second column for We Are Helsinki magazine.

Food Makes a City, the third column for We Are Helsinki magazine.

Tour Eiffel by Armi.

The capital of boredom?

Le Monde recently wrote about Paris as the European Capital of Boredom (Paris, capitale européenne de l’ennui), comparing it to Berlin, London or Barcelona – cities “more cosmopolitan, more insane, and more free”. It referred to the imminent death of the Parisian nightlife due to the anti-smoking law resulting in noise on the streets and, ultimately, administrative closure of club nights as well as the low-cost aviation taking clubbers to the neighbouring cities (see e.g. Tobias Rapp: Lost and Sound – Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set).

However, I managed to come across some more institutionalised fun. For instance, one of the central figures of the Parisian night, the French composer and DJ Laurent Garnier could be found playing records at the Louvre. The evening, Inventaire avant disparition (Inventory before disappearance), was part of a series of events in the honour of Umberto Eco. It presented Garnier interpreting scenes from the silent film footage of the early 20th century life shot for philanthropist Albert Kahn‘s The Archives of the Planet project.

Also, some weeks ago at Palais de Tokyo, a Boston band Prince Rama of Ayodhya played an evening of psychedelic folk surrounded by Paul Laffoley‘s art brut, combining words and imagery to depict a spiritual architecture of utopia. The singer of the band, Taraka Larson, an assistant to Laffoley for four years, described how “the songs strive to reach infinite time”.

“To change ways of being, one has to first change ways of seeing.” – André Breton

One of the central figures of art brut was the French surrealist theorist André Breton, who believed that one way to discover who you are was to have your photograph taken. At Centre Pompidou’s La Subversion des Images exhibition, I saw Breton and his friends’ photos taken in the first photo booth, Photomaton, in the Paris of 1928. All the surrealists subjected themselves to the camera with their eyes closed, recognising “the omnipotence of the dream”, like Breton wrote in the first Surrealist Manifesto. These were photographs of dreamers.

Like the surrealists, also Jean Renaudie, the architect behind the social housing blocks of Ivry sur Seine in the suburbs of Paris, dreamt about changing life. Rejecting the structures of functionalism, Renaudie focused on creating housing that stimulated social exchange. The complex of eight buildings in the centre of Ivry from 1971 to 1980 must be one of the most interesting places I’ve visited. It proposes an alternative to classical and modernist urban spaces, offering different apartments for different people – all equipped with a garden terrace, and all mixing public and private space (see e.g. Irénée Scalbert: A Right to Difference – The Architecture of Jean Renaudie). Renaudie’s random room heights, shapes and sizes require the inhabitants to agree with a way of life, the apartments being stronger than them.

Renaudie believed in changing the social environment, and even social hierarchies, through spatial practice. However, the question is, does his architecture actually create behaviour or rather attract it, like my architect friend Pierre pointed out. Does the social housing at Ivry sur Seine actually change its inhabitants or rather bring similar souls closer to each other – more cosmopolitan, more insane, and more free than in Berlin, London or Barcelona?