As Doreen Massey (2005) pointed out, space matters. Does public space still matter today? Since the early seventies, several studies have explored public space as an emerging, and in many ways innovative, universe of actors, spatiality and socio-territorial practices which invaded the public spheres of our citie…

This paper describes the approach of architecture/urbanism practice and research workshop “orizzontale”, based in Rome, Italy.The approach of the group is heuristic: it is to get involved, to put themselves on the line, to “play the game”. As a machine that absorbs and transforms every kind of things, orizzontal…

Across the globe, the transformative powers of cultural districts have been widely noted, particularly with respect to how they add value to the lives of individuals and to society as a whole. Yet the ways in which cultural districts deliver and evaluate their social impact have yet to be fully explored. Importantly, t…

In November 2018 The Journal of Public Space published the special issue ‘Art and Activism in Public Space’, that was launched in Barcelona at RMIT Europe headquarters, during the SkypeLab Sympolab (http://www.skypelab.org/), and was introduced by Estanislau Roca Blanch, Vice Rector for Infrastructure and Archit…

For centuries the urban environment has been painted, designed, shaped and built in order to answer to specific needs and desires. Visions and drawings of ideal and perfect places still today behave as appealing images, offered to the public domain. During the last century, well-known icons, made of visionary an…

The Public Art projects that Harbinger Consultants undertake always provide a curatorial framework and strategy that draws out and documents the multi-layered histories of the area/site and its communities of users (both historic and contemporary). These are central to the development of the brief for the artist…