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Untitled - Api-fellowships.org

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98 Panel 2An appropriate educational program should bedeveloped. All stakeholders, including theauthorities, should be familiar with themethodology.Our project is now starting to test the aboveideas in Surabaya with some local professionals,such as an architect, a sociologist and ajournalist, and with kampung communities. Wewill treat the city as a school campus, and aspecial focus will be placed on issues related toindividual kampung and their histories andtraditions.3: Practice in other Asian citiesThis methodology could be applied to otherAsian cities, where massive urban changes arecausing problems such as a lack of harmonybetween people and the space they occupy. Cityauthorities tend to view master planning as thesolution. However, this rarely pays attention tothe specifics of a community and an urban space.This project hopes to show the way towards anenhanced vision of city life.It is intended that the project will have a mediator tospearhead the process. The mediator should be inneutral position without having any financial interestin a particular party and/or prejudice against it. Themediator should be a professional regarding urbanissues and capable of mediating between differentopinions.Our project could be treated as a first step. In fact, afew kampung and media that cooperated in this projecthave started to network with each other. Localdesigners and students are continuing their urbanstudies by holding meetings, public seminars,exhibitions and by issuing publications.Looking aheadIn cities, meaningful actions lead to other actions. Thisprocess makes for dynamism in city life. In contrast,master planning can destroy social cohesion andencourage instead isolation and alienation. In Japan,locations similar to kampung known as shitamachi, aredisappearing. Kampung are also in crisis. Thedestruction of urban systems is a loss and a tragedy. It isvital to revive traditional and indigenous urbanknowledge in relation to cities and for a broadcoalition of groups to work together in new ways for abetter urban future.NOTES1 An unrealized urban planning project by the French architectLe Corbusier, “a Contemporary City of Three MillionInhabitants (Ville Contemporaine)” in 1922, is an exampleof one of the earliest examples of master planning. Thisclearance/master-plan style was totally new when it wasunveiled. Most people who had affection towards the existingspace were against it. However, since the scheme was clearcutin terms of economic efficiency, construction andmaintenance, it became a model that is still followed today.23The Pruitt–Igoe housing project in St. Louis, the UnitedStates, was designed by the American architect MinoruYamasaki in 1954 and became a remarkable failure of masterplanning. This large complex degenerated into slum-likeconditions quickly and was demolished 16 years afterconstruction was finished.Many Asian cities may follow the urban crisis processesalready seen in Detroit and St. Louis in the U.S. Criticalproblems such as Hollowing and Gentrification will need tobe discussed in Surabaya.Christopher Alexander, an Austrian-born Americanarchitect and urban planner, suggested the problems andlimitations of “tree” type urban structures in his article “ACity is not a Tree” in 1965. He proposed an abstract “Semilattice”model as an alternative. This was a proposal for thephysical aspect of a city, but we should consider how it couldbe applied to non-physical aspects. A “Semi-lattice” is a typeof network structure that can contain diversity andcomplexity.4 The concept and details of the “tree” and “platform/network” system were introduced by Kenta Kishi at theInternational Conference on Creative Industry 2011 in Bali,Indonesia.5Kelurahan Tegal Sari, Kampung Malang Kulon 1, no.3 (wewere attached to “RT2”, a local administrative society)6 Neighbors who cooperated with us to set up a base includeddrivers of becak, an Indonesian three-wheeled, pedal-poweredcart. Becak drivers may also be handymen. For our project,they provided a living archive of handy-work knowledgewhich helps maintain the kampung environment.7 Kumara Sadana (Product Designer / Lecturer at DMPUBAYA), Pandu Utomo (Communication Designer) andBintang Putra (Product Designer) cooperated in this projectas local directors. They named our base OHS -Orange HouseStudio.8The Hotel Majapahit is the most popular historical site inSurabaya. It was built in 1910 as the Oranje Hotel (OrangeHotel), after the Dutch Royal family, by Lucas MartinSarkies of the famous Armenian family whose collection ofThe Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows

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