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28 June 2013 Unpublished

City Rhythms

by Minh Toan

Our space and architecture is literally framed by ninety-degree angles around us delineating things like neighbourhoods, uses, ownership, private and public. As we move across these lines we establish a rhythm in space as we go from personal reflective realms to public interactive ones depending on our own tendencies. Often these individual rhythms clash in shared public space – how often do we find ourselves reading and reflecting quietly in a café to be perturbed by the boisterous conversations and laughs of others? Or conversely are we the ones enjoying ourselves with friends oblivious to the fact that we are acting to someone else’s annoyance? Clearly we share different rhythms in urban space in our struggle to find balance between our need to find connection as social creatures and desire for peace and isolation as spiritual begins.

17 June 2013 Unpublished

reSITE conference Prague - Metropolis Central / Infinite Resources

Marko&Placemakers will be at this year's reSITE conference and festival in Prague - a driver for a new generation of thinkers and doers in Central Europe. Petra Havelska will moderate City Combine discussion on Urban Ecosystems, while Igor Marko will feature on a panel discussion following screening of "Human Scale" (Andreas M. Dalsgaard, Denmark, 2012).

16 June 2013 Unpublished

Hidden Lungs of the City

by Veronika Kovacsova

The human civilisation is becoming ever more urban. With the growing densification in our cities, open, green spaces are put under pressure. As a person living and commuting between the Austrian and Slovak capital, I see the increasing number of built, non-permeable surfaces (such as asphalt and concrete) increase. Occasional and sudden events such as overflowing streets of Vienna after a heavy rain or snow melting down, an overheated square in central Bratislava during the summer period are a result of continuous, reckless paving of our cities. This is not climate change. This is visionless urban planning.

20 May 2013 Unpublished

Placemaking Lecture at Archip Prague - Cooplanning Series

Igor Marko will give a lecture on [url=http://www.archip.eu/en/news/cooplanning/]Placemaking and The Role of Experience and Urban Narratives in Shaping Cities[/url] at The Architectural Institute in Prague (ARCHIP) on Tuesday 21 May at 7:00pm. The lecture is part of Cooplanning series - Cooperation in Urban Planning, prepared in cooperation with Atkins&Landford Development, reSITE and The Centre for Central European Architecture.

18 April 2013 Unpublished

Highly Commended – The Vauxhall Missing Link International Competition

[url=http://www.markoandplacemakers.com/?q=projects/oneday-vauxhall-public-realm-strategy-london-uk/]Our proposal[/url] imagined through narratives of people living and visiting Vauxhall was highly commended in the RIBA Vauxhall The Missing Link Design Competition, which attracted 100 Entries from 21 countries all over the world. Architects and Landscape Designers were asked to put their ‘High Line – High Level Thinking Caps on!’ to design the Public Realm for the local BID Vauxhall One.

16 April 2013 Unpublished

Competition Winner - Park Racianske Myto in Bratislava

Joint team Marko&Placemakers and 2ka landscape architects won competition for revitalization and redesign of Racianske Myto park – a major city park in Bratislava. Our proposal is carefully integrating the existing green with new experiences that will transform the park into a vital resource for the local community. The project's ambition is to set a precedent in rethinking the city’s attitude to public green.

15 March 2013 Unpublished

NETWORK conference, Aliancia Fair-play

Igor Marko will talk about the value of storytelling and urban narratives in shaping public spaces at the [url=http://network.fair-play.sk]NETWORK conference[/url] on Saturday 16 March. NETWORK organised by Aliancia Fair-play presents influential leaders who shape the face of Slovakia from within as well as from abroad, presenting the stories of inspirational social, cultural, digital and creative entrepreneurs exchanging ideas how to drive positive change.

28 February 2013 Unpublished

Harrow Around Here - Supporting Inward Investment

Marko&Placemakers were comissioned to undertake a study of employment on the industrial estates in London borough of Harrow by the borough council and the Greater London Authority. Through mapping of the industrial estates and an in depth visual ethnographic research we will tell the stories of the local businesses and people behind them, proposing practical interventions to support inward investment.

17 January 2013 Unpublished

Hackney Wick - From Fringe to Centre (Part 2)

by Petra Marko

I have taken the opportunity to revisit Hackney Wick after the Olympic Games (read about my previous ventures in the area in part 1 of this blog), through tutoring the Urban Transcripts workshop. The interdisciplinary workshop under the umbrella topic London the (n)ever Changing City was alluding to the nature of London as a juxtaposition of the old and new, and came very timely as the public eye shifted from the success of Team GB to the legacy of the Games. In collaboration with my guest tutor Joanne Pouzenc we decided to focus on Hackney Wick and its transformation From Fringe to Centre. We wanted to investigate whether it is possible to integrate the unique and until now relatively protected existing community with a completely new part of the city with a fundamentally different character, without losing some of the diversity and richness that Hackney Wick has developed in the last decade.

16 December 2012 Unpublished

Hackney Wick - From Fringe to Centre (Part 1)

by Petra Havelska

For me, London 2012 Olympics have been an opportunity to study the process of city transformation in real time and place: not far away from where I had moved almost 8 years ago, the London Olympic Park started shaping up. In 2005, London emerged as the unexpected winning bidder for the 2012 Games, overtaking Paris in the last round with an aspiration and promise to create first truly sustainable Olympics, not only in terms of sporting legacy, but in terms of regenerating east London’s Lower Lea Valley. An area with vast zones of deprivation, the Olympics presented a once in a lifetime opportunity for the centre of London to be expanded towards the east with investment into the Games trickling to the neighbouring communities.

10 December 2012 Unpublished

Urban Transcripts London - International workshop on the city

Igor Marko, Petra Marko and Francis Moss supervised Urban Transcripts London multidisciplinary workshop on the city. In collaboration with guest tutors Sandra Annunziata, Joanne Pouzenc and Aslihan Senel, their groups focused on gentrification in Hackney Wick and every day consumption patterns in the City of London.

15 November 2012 Unpublished

International Landscape Conference, Luhačovice, Czech Republic

Igor Marko gave lecture focusing on contemporary value of “urban green” in our cities, based on experience from previous projects including Northala Fields Park in London. The International Landscape Conference in Luhačovice is an annual conference gathering specialists from the field of urbanism and landscape architecture.

6 November 2012 Unpublished

UCL International Conference for Urban Sustainability and Resilience

Francis Moss presented the Green Beans in the Global City at the UCL International Conference for Urban Sustainability and Resilience. His paper and case study explore how large-scale issues such as carbon emissions can be understood through the lens of everyday local urban consumption choices in a global city. The focus is on the consumption of food because of its roles as both a necessity and a consumer commodity.

14 October 2012 Unpublished

Olympic Legacy - Contesting Space Lecture Series - VUT Brno

Petra Havelska gave lecture on Olympic Legacy in the context of 'right to the city' (Lefebvre, Harvey) as part of Contesting Space Lecture Series at Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology. The lecture series attempts to render architecture and city-making as inherently political issue and an architect as a figure, who can not claim innocence in his/her relation to power.

22 September 2012 Unpublished

Freedom Square, International Summer School, Bratislava

Supervised by a team of international architects including Igor Marko, the summer school focused on revitalisation of Freedom Square in Bratislava. The initiative was promoted by Goethe Institute and DAM in collaboration with FA STU as part of City of the Future - Making Heimat project.