workshop « making cities for people …

On September 15^th we experienced a “method day”. Vannesa Ahuactzin, Cultural Planner at Gehl together with David Carlson, founder of Designboost, planned and facilitated the day.

The method days happens twice a year. They are a meant to bring the Gehl Office together to discuss relevant topics. This method day was about discovering ways to build a mindset of knowledge gathering and innovative practices within.

+Why is it important for office to experience a method day?

We travel a lot and work independently in many ways. This time of coming together to discuss, put our minds on a topic together for a whole day, is very valuable to the people who work at Gehl. It is about pushing the boundaries and developing new ways to gather and approach knowledge.

Beginning the day with Vannesa's beautiful illustrated ideas

+Why explore the theme of knowledge and innovation?

Knowledge is important to our business. We focus on changing knowledge to innovation. The core of the day was to understand how we can find new knowledge, how we work together and apply knowledge to our projects and thinking. Knowledge is a strange thing; it is nothing and everything, it is everywhere and nowhere. In fact it is very much here [we are talking together by the yellow table at the office library], but it doesn’t mean anything until someone uses it. What’s interesting is trying understanding that mental and practical process of changing knowledge to innovation, and by having this method day, we can go deeper into this topic.

Discussing ideas - David is as always very passionate

A group went to the café downstairs to explore and discuss their ideas

+The day was planned as a workshop – Why do you think this structure was fruitful in dealing with this specific theme?

Workshops are about bringing people together to discuss different matters or themes. The success lies in our ability to create an environment of openness that allows the participants to freely express their ideas. But it is also crucial to create a sense of expectation and to push the boundaries of what people already know. When they get tired, they get more honest. From the beginning of the day we made our expectations and gave the participant’s parameters to produce their ideas. We divided the day into smaller working groups, had two working sessions with presentations and discussions. By doing this you take the temperature of the discussion – how is it going? And it gets more dynamic and exhausting J

Gathered after workshops and putting our ideas on the boards

+What came out of it?

Lots of good ideas that we can keep pushing forward. Innovation is like a cake: You are continuously building up the layers. The method day brought a lot of the ingredients and layers, but we are still working on making the rest of the cake. Sometimes the actual answers that come out of the day – the well-worked sheets themselves – are not the most interesting output. It’s was behind them, the interpretations of the presentation, the small comments, seeing how the behavior changes. Going beyond the unexpected.

Emmy: For me the most unexpected was that innovative practices are about the workspace culture. It is about how people at the company work together and how they share their knowledge. Vannesa: It is about how children are taught to share. Are they hiding their findings from each other or are they open? Are they willing to discuss before the unfinished? If you want to be innovative, you must break the practices and change the minds by coming together and pushing the boundaries. Basically creating a culture where people take up something and change it into something new.

Brainstorm in Gothenburg – A collaborative workshop could replace design competitions as the model for how politicians and design experts plan and build cities.

The workshop brought almost one hundred international city design experts together with local decision makers for 6 days of intense collaboration in Gothenburg's Townhall

Can the way we produce new ideas to cities be made more productive through intense collaboration and open dialogue rather than design competitions? Helle Søholt and Gehl Architects led an advisory board of experts that facilitated the collective input of 10 international design teams to develop a design vision for Gothenburg’s waterfront and city center. The Gothenburg Advisory Boared included Lars Reutersvärd (former director of UN Habitat, now director of Mistra Urban Futures) Martha Schwartz (Director of Martha Schwartz Partners), Rob Adams (Director of Design and Culture for Melbourne) and Helle Søholt (Gehl Architects). The advisory Board had a direct dialogue with Anneli Hulthén (Mayor of Gothenburg) and Bo Aronsson (Project leader for Centrala Älvstaden) and shared their own experience as inspiration to the future planning proces for Gothenburg River City.

The process represents a new direction in city building that moves away from wasteful competitions where a majority of the material produced through thousands of man hours are essentially ‘thrown out’ in choosing a single ‘winning scheme’. The Gothenburg Process was a 6 day long event is a more open and collaborative process where invited international teams work together with local decision makers to determine a new plan for Central Gothenburg. Each team was given 250,000 SEK to participate in the workshop and then 100,000 SEK to finalize their work after the workshop’s conclusion.

The process represents a radical departure from the traditional architectural competition process and concentrates on harnessing the collective wisdom of many experts rather than awarding the often imperfect, yet winning ideas of one team. This new process fosters an environment of learning from each other and challenging the idea that good ideas grow out of competition to arrive at better solutions to city problems.

According to Sweden's Arkitekten publication, Gehl's Helle Søholt together with Mayor Hulthén, Project Leader Aronsson and Advisory Panel member Reuterswärd are the most important people in the Gothenburg Central City Plan - image Arkitekten

The process was both daring and inspirational and challenged the Architect’s way of thinking and competing. After two intial days of pleasant niceities, and limited knowledge sharing between design teams, a refocusing of intentions and knowledge sharing on the 3rd day led to an incredibly productive and inspiring final stretch. The event culminated on Saturday with an inspiring and open presentation to the public, the politicians and to the other design teams.

While innovative, the workshop was the easy part. The challenge will now be to continue an open and collaborative process with local politicians to ensure that difficult decisions are made through productive collaboration and coordination between design, good governance, as well as social and cultural sensitivity. Any ideas/references of how we can continue a productive and open process are welcome.