 Welcome back. I'm Pedro Rivera. I'm the director of Studio X Real, so I'm a little bit a kind of self-indrager to do kind of similar things back in Rio de Janeiro, and I want to read this table. So this table is about, the name of this table is Why Not the Whole City as a Play Site. So we have been looking at a sequence of presentations. So for example, Alexander yesterday mentioned the pattern language. Alexander's pattern language team mentioned affordancy, which he gave the example of this step here that we can use as a stage or as a seating place. He has mentioned infrastructure as playscapes in Colombia with the example of the water reservoir. But now we are going to look at people who are actually doing those things, who are actually designing or actively transforming spaces into the city. And also we're going to bring the question which, what if the whole city is a play site? Not only dedicated spaces, but also what would happen if the whole city functions as spaces that we, the kids, the toddlers, the babies can enjoy. So our first speaker is Edgar Blitz. Edgar runs a practice called CAR in the Netherlands, which has a focus on public space, especially looking after children and youngs. So welcome. It's good to be back and I'm happy to be re-invited again, because it's the second time for me in Istanbul in relation to Istanbul 95. Just let's start, because otherwise it will take too long. I only have 15 minutes and I tend to speak along. The city as a playground, something that intrigued me always. First of all, I'm the speaker, but I want to say what I'm going to show is a project. I'm going to elaborate on the project, but it's the whole team that is actually involved. It's not just me. And I always show this image, because I want to know that we still try to think as kids. It's the same people that you just saw before. We try to be maybe surprised unwittingly when we start a project. We work all around the world, although I would rather like to work in, let's say, Europe, because it's ridiculous that you invite someone here to work in Asia, at least. That's what I think. This is one of the projects we're known for. This is actually a renewal of a former mine site in Belgium. This is a project in Eindhoven that we did together with a landscape architect and team Outdoors to make an interesting public space at Strype S. This is probably the best known project for the Turkish audience, because this is at the Zorla Center, a commercial play space, but actually it's public and everybody is happily invited to go play there. And another one in Copenhagen. Copenhagen and Amsterdam have been meant frequently. I cannot help it. This is at the new blocks building site at Copenhagen, Copenhagen Harbour. But today I'm going to tell you about the van Beuling plan. The van Beuling plan is a project that we actually started with in 2007. We finished the preparations of the design in 2008 and I think it was constructed in 2010. But I'm going to relate this to a publication called The Active City that we did an essay in there and was commissioned by the City of Amsterdam and the main part is written by Orhan, an urbanist agency in Amsterdam. And our part was of course about playgrounds, leisure, etc. But the whole thing or purpose of this book is how can we rebuild our city in a sustainable, active, healthy city. And what are the design tools for playing and leisure and activities that we can implement? The whole book is about cycling path, healthcare, public transport, and so on and so on. Actually also walking, I never hear walking. The discussion is also, walking in the city is also very interesting. But the main conclusions already about play spaces is that they need to be multi-purpose. And they need to be challenging but without borders. That's the most important thing. And we need to understand that we're talking about a densifying city. Although Amsterdam is not as dense as Turkey, we have the same problems. There's developers. We need new housing. And how can we deal with the spaces that are left actually as public spaces? And how can we deal with that as playgrounds? So, we're talking about the importance of physical activity and we're also talking about the importance of spatial justice. And I'm not telling anything new here. Everybody knows this image. Everybody knows that whatever HR you need to be physically active is to stay healthy. Actually, from an economical perspective, it's good to stay healthy. Maybe if we put it to a financial point, that's something to be considered by people as well. But then I thought, let's introduce a very honest comment from a Dutch politician. She's no longer active, but she wanted to introduce the 3% rule for play spaces. And actually, I thought when we compared this to Istanbul, it already showed that even the 3% rule that never made it as a law actually is not even catering for all the kids in Istanbul. It's only catering for the half of the 0 to 3 years old. But we're talking about the whole group, 0 to 14 here. Even in a country, the Netherlands, where youth think that it's all being done well, there's lots of space, there's lots of place, we are suffering less than 3%, so we're not even there. OK, van Beunenme, I'm going to join you through a history because there's a history behind playgrounds. In the 19th or the 20th century layout of Amsterdam, there was the whole thing about healthy movement, getting people outside, doing gymnastics, and in our urban fabric we kept open places and they were meant to be playgrounds for the neighborhood. In the 30s of last century, they really became these hubs, it's actually all 7, as you can see. They had organizations there, they organized things for the neighborhood. The kids that was the place near their home, very nearby, reachable and safe because you knew that all kids were playing there. 70s cars started dominating also in Amsterdam. Again, it doesn't compare to Istanbul at all, but we thought this is a problem and kids have no place to play anymore, they have to play on the street. So in the end of or actually the zeroes, we started re-improving the neighborhood and we organized it a little bit nicer and we have nicer car parks, but still the cars are the enemies and block actually. If you live in that building there, you cannot reach the playground that is here because you're always behind a car. And what will happen if you come from behind a car and you run over because you don't see it because you're probably higher than 95 cm, let's say 120 cm. This is how it is today, this is part of the building plan. It shows actually, because I'm telling you about playgrounds, but it shows actually why it's so important actually to see it holistic. All cars are taken out, we could do this here because we had the opportunity or there was the opportunity actually that we're going to build a parking garage underneath so we could take this out. And the interesting part is that all social housing here is now connected to the playground again. People have their own private space in front, it's not private, it's semi-private. It becomes part of the plan. It is a shared space, but surfaces or ambulances can still come there if there is a problem. This is the new playground that I'm going to tell a little bit more about later on. This is the sports area, this is the play area and a small facility to get coffee or child, I have to say. But I had the opportunity to actually look at my own projects last year when I contributed to the book. It's an opportunity that everybody always asks, have you looked into your old project? What do you think about it? On one hand it's judging your own needs, on the other hand it is a good opportunity to see why things work. Because designing is very often an intuitive process and then in the end you start rethinking why have you done this, what are the reasons that you have done this and can you still after a couple of years see that this work. So first I start to understand whom my influences were. And one of them is Alder van Eyck who is a known Dutch architect that built 700 up to 1000. People still discuss about how many playgrounds he has built in Amsterdam. But he actually and I'm going to read because otherwise I'm going to elaborate too long. I can learn from him how playgrounds can act as a catalyst in a new modernist environment, inviting people outside and meet through their children's activities to build a community. The second one is Konstant Nieuwenhuijzen who is an artist that belonged to the Kogla group and also to the Sitzu Asianist International. And he had a visionary idea on architecture. His new Babylon project is a world in which people no longer have to work long days, are free to move and play and he frequently refers to the Homo Ludens. And he advocated for car free cities in the 60s already and his artistic models that you see here actually represent his city new Babylon but they're almost like a playground aren't they? And it's very interesting actually to read what this guy has been doing in the 60s and 70s. Then another influence is of course William White's social life of small urban spaces. Most of you might have seen the footage of the movie because it shows actually how people are using public spaces. I heard Petra say talking about affordances, you see how they use ledges, benches, how they flock together, how they ignore certain corners. It's something that you as a designer take into consideration but it's very interesting to see someone who really studies or has studied this. And then of course Beatrice Colomina. I learned from her that people's expectation is built up by mass media but they are actually very conservative in their ideas because that's the image that they see and you can actually extrapolate that to a playground. A soccer cage is a soccer cage period and a playground is a post-platform system and when it is something else you find it very difficult actually to accept. And the last but not least is the design of everyday things and that is about perceived affordances Donald Norman is the director of the design lab at the University of California and he introduced this term perceived affordances and it is about design and usability engineering and perceived affordances describes in short to look at the usability of things not from the perspective of how they can be used rather than what they are intended for. So it's an island to be older, how you can use something. And I'm showing you this because afterwards I realized that we implemented all these thoughts in our design for the, from building a plan. So now we have to do some building a plan. I'm starting on that. I'm good. Okay, I tried to do it really fast. Okay, you have to understand where we are. The purple line is the periphery of Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a small city. It's actually exactly as big as Tirana, 800,000 inhabitants. We think we are a really big city in the world but we're just a little dot. And middle grey area is actually the pre-Second World War layout of Amsterdam that is a neighborhood that at the time, when from building a plan was rebuilt I have to say, was not gentrified yet. If you go to Amsterdam now you will probably pay an enormous amount of money to get an apartment there, but it wasn't at that time. I have shown here where the verbatim plan is situated. Here is a big road and actually this piece of the neighborhood was mainly, I think people from Moroccan originally, and this was a little bit mixed working class, although you cannot really use the word anymore. Form a square. What is interesting to know there is a big line of trees around it, trees of sacred in Amsterdam. It's always interesting to see that in a course that you cannot reach there is also almost an urban forest. But these are sacred, you cannot take them out, they kill you. If you take them out they kill you. And for the rest, actually there was nothing, nobody went into this square anymore because it was surrounded by green. And the new plan, actually we took out all traffic on three sides. There is a possibility to park here because we need to cater for disabled parking spaces. Here is the big road and there is actually three areas on the square and there is a clubhouse for youngsters. Sports area, sitting area, playing area and it's surrounded by lots of green. So programmatically it looks like this. But more interesting are the transitional zones. We usually don't design transitional zones. We think in programmatic solutions. We need to cater for a playground, we need to cater for a soccer court, we need to cater for benches, we need to cater for young kids, for toddlers, for juveniles, for everyone. And then they all get their location. And that's not possible in a damn city because you have a small place. This is the smallest basketball court that we could make. If you just put it in the middle it already fills up the whole space. So the transitional zones are actually zones and this brings me back to Norman that you have to figure out what it is for. And I'm also relating this to the participation process because if you talk to people they want to have everything. They want to have a water feature, they want to have a soccer court, a basketball court, they want to have a skate facility, they want to have a playground, a tower, everything. And you cannot do that in space anymore, it's impossible. So what we try to do is combine sports and play. And what you see here is a very small kit in summertime, usually it doesn't get that warm in Amsterdam, but here it's actually a water feature. And if there's many people playing soccer, here's a big one, but here are small ones, but you can also use it in this direction. Assurances. Is it seating? Is it the playground? Is it the green area? Who's it for? Borderless space is very important. You can actually, as a user, occupy in a certain moment in time this space. And that actually asks for conflicts and we know that. But these conflicts dissolve in, say, 12 weeks because people learn how to use that space. Unexpected possibilities. Kids find their own space. This girl is on roller skates. Actually this little girl is learning from children that are older that they look at. This is one of my favorites, I call this for toddlers and teenagers, because we tend to design for age groups. But nobody can tell who it's for. It actually toddlers, three years old, uses a climbing structure where in the evening I see girls, 12 years old, sit there and talk to each other. And why is everything so directed when we design a playground or a public space? Why not make it UD, universal design? So it can actually cater for many more things than we actually had expected. Again, this part, this is a stage. Is it for children? Is it for parents? Another thing that we learned, or that I learned by looking at it, that it's important that it doesn't look like a stage, that it doesn't look like a bench, that it doesn't look like a playground, because actually that rules out all the possibilities. You cannot use a bench to walk over if it looks like a bench, but if it's just some undefined obstacle, you can use it for many more things. States of seeking, you can go sit in there. And we also always look in the design for smaller spaces. So we have the large space and we break it up in smaller spaces for more intimate things. If you want to sit together with friends, or in this case, I'm struck by the fact that there is a discussion here about parenting in relation to men. That is something that so you actually see it here. It's very common in the Netherlands where the men actually also take care of the children. Seating and skating. You can do whatever you want. And actually spectators are also a very important group of users on a certain space. So this guy is actually sitting there and watching what is happening on the square. Skating and basketball. He's for sure a professional basketball player. He has found his time slot here to use the space. And there is actually no conflict because the skaters come in at Sunday afternoons because they're cool. Basketball and waterplay. We said that before. Waterplay and festival. All this can happen in this space and we think of this as impossible because it's so small. Playground and neighborhood hub. This is where people meet. Actually, if you see, well, here's a nice combination of rubber flooring and sand. That can work very well together. And I also have to tell you, I really had to press to get sand in. I think this is the general image of the square. There is so much going on there, but all we tried to cater for as many user groups as possible in a very small place knowing that it's a 24-7 public space and not a playground that is only being used after school or Saturday afternoon. I want to point out one more thing. There is a commercial-run coffee shop here. The tables that you see in the front are public. They don't belong to the coffee shop. This is actually to stimulate people to sit there and bring their own lunches. And the one that runs the coffee shop is instructed to allow and do so. That is a condition for him to use that space. That was my story. I told you I kept it short.