In this week’s Editor’s Desk, head of digital Lauren Grace Morris shares learnings from Turin city-making festival Utopian Hours, looks at the inspirational power in architectural photography to reframe adaptive reuse and recounts a surprisingly stress-free experience in a hospitality-forward airport transfer hall.

Cover and above: Drawing a global audience, Utopian Hours'7th edition focused on the ideas 'undensity', 'polyspaces' and 'egomobility'.

Placemaking, place-taking

City-making festival Utopian Hours, the brainchild of multi-disciplinary organization Stratosferica, took over Turin with its seventh edition a few weeks ago. The main aim behind Utopian Hours is to uncover new ways of approaching our urban environments, making them more healthy, sustainable and efficient. Joined by a lively group of professionals from architecture, design, urban planning and more – as well as students in the field – the three-day event focused on three key themes this year: ‘undensity’ (recreating urban core density in non-urban places) ‘polyspaces’ (flexible, multi-use spaces) and ‘egomobility’ (autonomous public transport). Terms coined by Stratosferica’s team of researchers, the themes were explored by international speakers from UNStudio, podcast The War on Cars, the Massachusettes Institute of Technology and many more. Talks included contributions from Italian city officials and designers who have been a part of innovative urban projects, like New York City’s High Line and Amsterdam’s Schoonschip, offering exchange between the theoretical and the practical.

How will AI change cities? Can concrete become an eco-friendly material? What do we need to do to make urban environments happier places for ourselves – and younger generations? And how are we going to mitigate the disastrous consequences of increased urban heat? Utopian Hours itches the scratch of some of the most relevant questions in city-making today – ones you probably have found yourself asking at some point already (no surprise, as Stratosferica encourages its audiences to think along with them in conceiving focus areas for following editions). A particularly powerful idea that has stuck with me from the festival is that of ‘place-taking’, a concept raised by Bram Dewolfs of Urban Foxes, a placemaking collective based in Brussels. It speaks to the importance of citizens exercising their democratic power over space, and involves architects and designers facilitating participatory processes to foster this action. It can be easy to get stuck in the ideation phase of making our cities better, and innovating beyond the red tape is necessary. But this relies on heightened collaboration between practitioners and the public. Without such openness, it’s hard to imagine that we will find urban solutions to these questions that will truly endure.

Luckily, the brainstorming isn’t over this year yet. Utopian Hours is extending its 2023 footprint with a mini-edition in Miami, its first time being present in the United States. To take place on 18 November, the one-day festival will look at placemaking, sustainable city planning, urban activism and more in the American context, taking the cross-cultural dialogue even further.  

Photo: Alastair Philip Wiper

One of the spaces featured in Alastair Philip Wiper's Building Stories book is the 2004 Olympic Aquatic Complex in Athens.

Reimagining reuse

While rates of adaptive reuse are slowing from a surge of popularity seen between 2019 and 2020, a renewed interest in alternative conversion is expected, RentCafe reported on Yardi Matrix data. The underlying potential in buildings that have lost their original function or fallen into disrepair is not always obvious and requires an iterative cycle of imagining and reimagining. Building Stories, a recent book release from photographer Alastair Philip Wiper, highlights the inspiration to be found through this process in focusing on the ‘hidden narratives’ of architecture. The images capture the personality of seemingly mundane built spaces, like nuclear test sites and the homes of cultural figures including Steve Jobs.  ‘Looking at neglected and forgotten buildings in a new light – and figuring out how to reuse them – seems to be the future,’ Wiper says. ‘Hopefully, the days of knocking down interesting old buildings with character and starting from scratch with a new building are coming to an end. I want to bring viewers into a fantasy world where their interpretation of the buildings escapes reality, and people make up their own stories about the personalities of these buildings, those that designed them, and those that use them.’

Aéroport Roissy Charles De Gaulle’s Terminal 2G was reimagined by Dorothée Meilichzon with a hospitality-centric approach.

The stress-free airport

 Could airport transfers become. . .pleasant? A recent transfer through Paris’s Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport has me thinking, for the first time, yes. Arriving at the transport hub’s Terminal 2G, I was pulled out of my sleepy haze, surprised to see vibrant colours, rich textile upholstery, terrazzo finishes and even a working water fountain (a facsimile of that at the Luxembourg Gardens) in the most unexpected of places. Founder of global agency CHZON Dorothée Meilichzon –  a specialist in hospitality spaces – reimagined the boarding hall’s interiors in 2022, inspired by visual cues distinctly of Paris. The impact of a more design-forward space was clear: despite the sun not having risen, people – sprawled on cushy green seating or perched on curvaceous wood platforms – didn’t have the usual zombie-demeanour you often encounter in transport spaces. The Terminal 2G project ties in with Extime, a brand launched by CDG operator Groupe ADP to ‘transform the airport experience’ through joint retail-hospitality endeavours, making the travel experience one of enjoyment and not stress.