The Pavilion of desires. Artistic co-creation for the improvement of public space

Abstract

In order to rebalance the city and create a more sustainable urban transformation model, new participation processes re-emerge in the urban and architectural processes in cities around the world. Our research studies both traditional and new strategies for the urban project. Both tools focused on new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as well as other creative tools such as tactical urbanism, are proposed. The main objective of this article is to evaluate the use of co-creation and tactical urban planning workshops within urban design processes. The use of these methods is not only intended as a way to listen to the voice of the population, but also to get involved as actors, inducing a change in habits and mentality. “Pavilion of desires” project is the result of a third experience of the Open Space Workshop (TEA), with a group of students within the framework of Park(ing) Day, an event that temporarily transforms parkings on streets in other ways of public living space. This article provides two levels of results: The first consists of the results and conclusions of the data recovered through the artistic installation, imagined by the student body, and the second, the evaluation of the workshop as a participatory and pedagogical tool by the students. To obtain the results, a quantitative evaluation using surveys and data collection was employed, as well as a qualitative evaluation through the use of general impressions, conversations, reports and level of participation in the workshop. The results teach us that the implementation of this type of workshop in an academic field improves motivation, involvement and satisfaction in urban project.