Framing Protest

Abstract

The section of the street, being a constitutive unit of every city, as a design task requires constant reworking and adjustments according to changing socio-political conditions. The society of the 21st century looks different than it used to, the authorities changed along with social stratification models, technological solutions evolved and, hence, the surrounding urban tissue needs to be updated. The street design of a 21th century European, democratic city needs to be reworked in order to host its citizens’ activities and needs most appropriately, otherwise it may turn out too restrictive. Remodelling the street in the spirit of democratic expression, whether it means agreeing or disagreeing, became the main premise of the project.

The project assumes reworking of the street profile, reaching beyond its traditional surfaces of a pavement and a facade, by adding depth and topography to the street and reusing existing buildings and adjacent empty plots as protest-related infrastructure edifices. Architectural solutions assume the creation of multiple ways of framing the protest, creating plurality of perspectives, providing both panoramic and immersive experience of the crowd. Carefully designed surfaces of the street pavement and varying ceiling modules provide orientation for the crowd. The subversive use of small architecture, i.e. benches, lamps is inherently contained in their design. The space is meant to provide all the infrastructure for protest as well as to allow for multiple creative uses of space through appropriation.

The project devises a system of protest street, which in its universality may prove replicable in various contexts and is not bound exclusively to the chosen location of Allee de la Robertsau in Strasbourg.