Basic City selected for Ankara workshop

Basic City was selected among eight emerging Dutch designers and real estate developers to meet with a counterpart group of Turkish professionals in Ankara and work on new investment strategies for public space.

Workshop will focus on these key questions:
How can good-quality public space and affordable (public) housing projects go hand in hand?
What constructions can we think of within the specific context of The Netherlands and Turkey?
What solutions can we develop by looking beyond our own borders?

Our application suggests that the relation between affordable housing and quality of public space can be looked at from multiple perspectives: architecture, landscape design, social housing policies etc. Even though all those points of view are relevant and needed, the discipline of urbanism is of utmost importance to approach the subject. We believe that precisely this discipline could integrate and critically balance all relevant efforts and concepts that deal with these two often contradicting issues of urban development. Our principal goal would be to anchor projects that relate affordable housing and quality of public space into a wider (city) context, which would more than anything else secure their purpose, durability and relevance.

The workshop is organised by Architectuur Lokaal from Amsterdam, withing the De Olifantenkooi (The Elephant Cage) debate platform. It includes a number of high-profile experts from all sides of our discipline: mr. Hugo Priemus (Delft University of Technology), Harm Wassink (UNStudio) and Herman Kok (Multi Development) as Dutch tutors, the participants will work on cases about Turkish housing – and shopping mall projects. During a return visit in March 2015, Dutch cases about public space and investment strategies will be studied. Those who are interested, can apply for participation until 1 September.