- Site-specific cases
The “Urban Carpet” is a qualitative method to gain specific knowledge of culture and use of public space. It gives the possibility to interact with experts as well as inhabitants who are not familiar with architecture and urban planning. This specific method can be modified for specific topics and/or different places and can be enlarged to a bottom up participatory process. The Urban Carpet is an instrument too, which reacts on the higher demand for participation. In times of digitalisation, where everything can be put into an application, the Urban Carpet gets “back to the streets”, where you can find all social classes and age groups. The future goal should lead to broader and more focused partizipation, where the opinions of the inhabitants as well as the urban culture should be recorded and included in further projects.
The research aspect of the project was to find out how young people of Tirana perceive the current urban planning status in their capital. Is there identification or rejection with the built past of Tirana? To what extent can differences be ascertained here? Which places or developments represent modern Tirana? Tirana is a melting pot of the events: The old meets the new, the new displaces the old, the older becomes rediscovered and the future influences the present.
Together with the residents of Tirana, we were able to communicate opinions, stories and discussable places with the help of the Urban Carpet. Known places provided an opportunity to meet actors and broaden our view of things that were unknown to us, and to search and find the side locations of public space. Thanks to this flexible research tool, we were able to act spontaneously in the city.
The project was documented every day in a short portrait. The direct communication of observations and results, especially via social media, quickly turned out to be helpful in order to use synergies.
Tirana has a diverse history, which is also reflected in its architecture and public space and has developed it over the years. With regard to the the upheavals currently taking place in the country, the course of the transformation from autocratic Albania into a liberalized society changes both the structural self-image as well as actions in public spaces. This project shows in a storytelling journey the relation between the inhabitants of Tirana and public space.
