Unpacking the secrets of city making at Turin’s Utopian Hours

Summary

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The Urbanist by Monocle:

"Unpacking the Secrets of City Making at Turin’s Utopian Hours"

Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Andrew Tuck
Produced by: Ed Stocker, Carlotta Rebello, David Stevens

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Urbanist takes listeners on a rich journey to Turin, Italy for "Utopian Hours," a festival dedicated to exploring innovative approaches to city making. Host Andrew Tuck and Monocle’s Europe Editor-at-Large Ed Stocker bring insights and direct voices from the conference floor, focusing on the theme of "United Cities." The episode unpacks global ideas of urban progress—from imaginative art interventions in Kenya, to revolutionary swimming pools in New York, to Vienna’s mega-neighbourhood, and grassroots architecture in London. The show captures how diverse practitioners are shaping more connected, imaginative, and sustainable cities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Utopian Hours and Its Unique Atmosphere

• [01:20] Andrew Tuck and Ed Stocker reflect on Utopian Hours as a festival-like urban gathering, attracting an energetic, youthful, and non-insidery crowd, including students, architects, and policy makers.
• Diversity of Voices: Notable presence of globally recognized speakers like Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) and Vinnie Maas (MVRDV).
• Ed Stocker [02:17]:

  "It really feels there's a very vibrant young audience... not a spare seat in the venue for these three days of conversations about making cities better."

• Turin’s Urban Ambitions: Turin’s historical significance and evolving identity are discussed, as the city positions itself at the forefront of urban conversations.

2. Kairos Futura: Imagination-Driven Urban Futures in Kenya

• [07:15] Ed Stocker interviews Natasha Muhanji from Nairobi's Kairos Futura—a futurist art collective focused on empowering communities through imaginative, localized visions of the future.
• Imaginative Futuring: Workshops, exhibitions, and performances help Kenyan communities envision a future they feel responsible for.
• Natasha Muhanji [07:52]:

  "When we localize these futures, everyone is responsible for their own future. This gives them some sort of nice pressure to think about what is good for them and their community."

• Outlier Methods: Using local materials for 'space stations' to reframe science fiction as tangible local potential; 'Imagination Station' as a mobile, creative community lab.
• Message for City Makers:

  "You should really consider how people feel. Behaviors shape the cities in which we live." [10:48]

• Upcoming Project: ‘Imagination Station’—a mobile studio for workshops in marginalized communities.

3. Plus Pool: Reclaiming Urban Water in New York City

• [14:26] An engaging conversation with Kara Meyer, MD of Plus Pool, describes efforts to reopen New York City’s East River for swimming via an innovative, floating, water-filtering pool.
• Context & Motivation: NYC, surrounded by 520 miles of waterfront, has little public access to clean, swimmable water.
• Water Quality & Infrastructure Challenges:

  "We were cut off from our rivers for swimming in the early 1900s as a result of industrial pollution... but the waters have greatly improved." [16:43]

• The Plus Pool Solution:

  "There's a filtration system that lives in the hull of the ship, bringing raw river water into the filtration system, treating it, feeding the pool, and then discharging clean water back to the source." [16:43]

• Policy Impact: Plus Pool’s advocacy has led to the creation of a regulatory framework for future urban water access points.

4. Aspern Seestadt: Vienna’s Next-Gen Urban District

• [21:37] Ed Stocker interviews Ingrid Sperk about the transformation of Vienna’s former airport into Aspern Seestadt—a new city district exemplifying polycentric urban growth with a focus on sustainable mobility and social infrastructure.
• Vision: Half residential, half economic, with emphasis on public space and minimized car usage.
• Innovative Mobility Targets:

  "We have a model split goal of 40% public transport, 40% pedestrian traffic and cycling, and only 20% motorized traffic... Now we try to reach 85% sustainable mobility." [23:21]

• Tactics: Collective car parks, shopping trolleys for new residents, pioneering free bike sharing, promoting habit changes upon moving.
• Ripple Effect: Seestadt’s ambassador residents influence wider Vienna.

5. Building Better: The Social Architect’s Perspective from London

• [27:34] Jan Kattein, founder of Jan K Architects, shares his ethos on civic-centred architecture, genuine engagement, and reviving local spaces.
• Civic Practice:

  "We create gardens, spaces for learning, spaces for enterprise, spaces to meet, spaces for culture—and we create them together. That means opening up design processes, being open to scrutiny, and becoming accountable." [27:34]

• Avoiding Rhetoric:

  “Building better can mean just building what you were going to build anyway. We don’t do that... and that can be not a building; the best solution is not always to do a building.” [28:36]

• Examples: Town centre regeneration, library redesigns, community gardens reconnecting people with nature and each other.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Imagination in Urbanism:

  “These barriers that we usually have as human beings in our brains. Yeah, and I think that's amazing.”
  — Natasha Muhanji, [10:11]

• On Urban Water Access:

  “There was no existing regulatory structure for the project that we are proposing, so we had to create that. We made sure that the regulation that we were advocating for created pathways for all kinds of river access.”
  — Kara Meyer, [16:43]

• On Shifting Mobility Culture:

  “The way to your car is no shorter than the way to the next public transport stop. So you have plenty of opportunity not to go by car.”
  — Ingrid Sperk, [23:21]

• On Civic Accountability in Architecture:

  “You suddenly become accountable as an architect because you've developed personal relationships and people start to rely on you.”
  — Jan Kattein, [27:34]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• What is Utopian Hours? – [02:17]
• Kairos Futura, Imagination & Social Change – [07:15 to 12:42]
• Plus Pool, Urban Water & Swimmable Cities – [14:26 to 19:24]
• Aspern Seestadt, Sustainable Districts in Vienna – [21:37 to 26:03]
• Jan Kattein on Civic Architecture in London – [27:34 to 31:34]
• Announcement: Utopian Hours 10th Anniversary—Rotterdam & Turin – [31:55]

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Looking Ahead

• Utopian Hours 2026: The festival expands for its 10th anniversary with events in Rotterdam (May) and Turin (October).
  “They did make an announcement... they're splitting the festival into two parts, an extra celebration, if you like.” — Ed Stocker [31:55]
• Elizabeth Diller Interview Teaser: Next episode promises a conversation with one of architecture’s most influential voices, touching on New York’s High Line and global cities.

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Takeaway

This episode captures the vibrant present and ambitious future of city making, spotlighting global practitioners who place human experience, imagination, equity, and sustainability at the heart of urban innovation. Whether empowering communities in Nairobi, engineering healthy rivers in New York, building next-generation neighbourhoods in Vienna, or championing social value in London’s architecture, the festival’s “United Cities” theme resonates: a better urban future is built when cities—old and new—embrace creativity, collaboration, and care for citizens’ lived experience.

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Transcript

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

I put Real Estate is Dublin's leading property investment company for almost 60 years a custodian of the city, embracing excellence in design, sustainability and occupier experience. More than that I put understands that real change means transforming how valuable, vibrant and loved a neighborhood is. Discover how they build and invest. Head to I put.com now and and learn about their passion for their projects and their unique presence in Dublin. I put creator of exceptional places Custodian of the city.

[Andrew Tuck]

Hello and welcome to the Urbanist, Monocle's programme all about the built environment. Your host, Andrew Tuck. Coming up, we make our annual pilgrimage to Turin, Italy's old capital, to join the conversation at Utopian Hours, the festival dedicated to city making. Monocle's man in Milan, Ed Stocker gathered a collection of conversations from the conference floor talking about everything from micro utopias in Kenya to a floating pool in New York City.

[Kara Meyer]

What are the creative interventions that we can create to facilitate that kind of access and start to reopen the waters, not just so that people and swim in them, but also so that people can start to understand their water quality, be reconnected to their waters, be reconnected to nature and start to advocate for a change in infrastructure that we desperately need.

[Andrew Tuck]

We also look ahead to next year's edition of Utopian Hours and the big plans for the festival's 10th anniversary. That's all ahead here in the next 30 minutes on the Urbanist. With me, Andrew Tuck. Well, welcome to today's episode and I'm pleased to say that I'm actually joined now by Monocle's Europe editor at large, Ed Stocker. Ed, thank you for joining us. Now, regular listeners to the Urbaness will know all about Utopia Nows, of course, but unbelievably there are some people who are not always regular listeners. So Ed, let's explain to them a little bit. What is this event?

[Ed Stocker]

Unbelievable. They're not regular listeners. Yes, this is a regular. It's an annual October time event, as you say, in Turin, over three days, so Friday till Sunday. It's basically focused on city making, on all things urbanism. It's run by people who've become friends of Monaco, haven't they? Luca Bellarini and Giacomo Biraghi who run this organization called Stratospherica. They've been very involved in, I guess, making Turin a better place in terms of urbanism. And they run what I guess you could call a conference. It is a lot of people in this world taking to the stage for conversations. There's also round tables, but they Kind of like to call it a festival. And in many ways it is, Andrew, because first of all it's always impressive. The crowd, you know, no disrespect to urbanism conferences and you've been to a few, Andrew, you know, it's quite often quite insidery, isn't it? And here it really feels that there's a very sort of vibrant young audience. I think a lot of them are students, but not exclusively so you see a lot of people sort of scribbling away furiously taking notes and they always just get an incredible amount of people to go to this. And I believe this year was the most attended ever. There wasn't a spare seat in the venue for these three days of conversations about making cities better. And I guess as it goes on, it's now in its ninth year, they get sort of bigger and bigger names. You know, Elizabeth Diller from Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, who of course are the New York based architecture firm behind the High Line and the Shed and many other things. She was there also Vinnie Mars from mvrdv. They had some great speakers and it was just a great celebration of our built environment really. Andrew.

[Andrew Tuck]

Now Ed, they normally have a theme. What was it this year?

[Ed Stocker]

The theme this year was United Cities. And there was just a really fascinating sort of mix of people I guess representing that topic, some of whom we're going to hear from pretty shortly. But a great sort of geographical spread, I guess people in your home city of London. You know, we had someone who'd come all the from Kenya to speak on stage. It's always a fascinating, I guess, forum in a way really Andrew, to sort of get you thinking differently about cities. Whether it is building with the community in mind or in the case of Kenya, an organization called Kairos Futura. I think we'll talk about it in a minute. But they were really looking at the city from a cultural and arts point of view. So plenty to think about and maybe even I dare say a few story ideas.

[Andrew Tuck]

And just before we start listening to the interviews, Turin has, you know, been an amazing industrial heartland. It's changed over the years. But you're based in Milan. A nice little bit of rivalry between the two cities. Is it interesting to see the debate about urbanism being owned a little bit by this organization, by Turin?

[Ed Stocker]

Yeah, I mean it is super interesting. You're right. There's a bit of rivalry between the two, partly to do with football teams, but not exclusively. So they are quite different places. Of course, Milan has become this capital of Business and fashion and design. And Turin, I guess it sometimes flies under the radar, but it's such a beautiful city, it's very elegant. Of course, it has this royal past and they are doing interesting things. You know, Utopian Hours is a case in point. You know, there's some interesting developments happening there as well, including their sort of push to try and reactivate the Riverway more than it's being used currently. Although I believe Lucca is a keen rower on the river. So lots of interesting things happening and always nice to kind of go there from Milan. It has a different feel, it has a different pace. So it's always great to sort of, as you say, make that annual pilgrimage to Turin for this festival.

[Andrew Tuck]

Okay, let's start. So who was the first person you tracked down with your microphone?

[Ed Stocker]

Maybe we should head to Africa first, to Kenya. And this organization I mentioned when we were talking at the top, Kairos Futura, a really kind of fascinating organization that's kind of hard to explain, but they label themselves as an arts futurist organization. So it's all about art for social change. They also do local design innovation and community engagement and through lots of different ways, through exhibitions, exhibitions, through workshops, through performances, essentially sort of trying to make people in Nairobi and elsewhere in Kenya think about the future in a sort of vibrant, inclusive and positive way. And as I say, they do that through these events. I guess, you know, we sometimes look at city making through actually, you know, the buildings, building these things, or how do we develop the street, but they're looking at it through, I guess, community. How can arts and culture be a catalyst for all of that? And I spoke to one of its members, she's also a writer and editor. Her name is Natasha Muhanji.

[Natasha Muhanji]

Kairos Futura is an artist led and a futurist art organization based in Nairobi, Kenya. And we do quite a couple of things, but the major thing is giving people a chance for them to imagine their futures. Locally. We do this through workshops, exhibitions and community engagement through imaginative futuring.

[Ed Stocker]

Okay, so you're in many ways sort of looking to improve people's lives in a way, are you looking to give them different horizons? What do you hope to achieve? By allowing them in a way, to travel beyond their frontiers from home, we.

[Natasha Muhanji]

Enable people to think about their futures as things that they are responsible for. Because, you know, when someone thinks about the future, they think of the future as a far off thing that doesn't really happen to them. But when we localize these futures, everyone is responsible for their own future. And this gives them some sort of nice pressure to think about what is good for them and their community. Because they're going to be existing in this community, I guess.

[Ed Stocker]

Have you seen a change in attitudes from people who've experienced your workshops or your installations? Have people changed the way they perhaps think about community?

[Natasha Muhanji]

There's certainly been a lot of change that I've seen because most of our projects make people face their own selves. They don't just think that things happen to other people. They realize that things happen to them as well in their communities. And also, of course, with things like workshops, we help people form relationships with each other. Because, you know, as human beings, relationships are very important. I mean, the unconventionality of the organization's methodology really draws people in. It's a bit of a different. It's an outlier sort of organization.

[Ed Stocker]

Give listeners an idea of that outlier sense, maybe. Tell us about the space stations, for example.

[Natasha Muhanji]

The space stations came about from the idea of localizing a space fantasy. Because you know, when you watch this sci fi movies and read the sci fi books, people are usually maybe on different planets, different non existent planets or existent planets. And they are in the future when they're there. So now we thought of a way to bring this idea into a local context. So the very first one was in Lamu in 2021 where we created this spacesuits using locally sourced materials. So people in that communities were able to see that these space fantasies can actually be realities in their own communities. And this reframed their minds around the idea of the future. Because you don't just think that the future is a high tech place that's so far off. It ends up being something that you can experience locally as well, you know.

[Ed Stocker]

Is part of that getting people to think bigger, to value themselves more perhaps and think that they can do bigger and better things than perhaps they thought they could?

[Natasha Muhanji]

Yeah, most certainly. Because it's all about how far your imagination as a person can stretch. And through giving them a space to think about fantasy and localizing this fantasy, we enable them to stretch their imagination to lengths that they would never otherwise have thought of. These barriers that we usually have as human beings in our brains. Yeah, and I think that's amazing.

[Ed Stocker]

There are city makers from all over the globe here in Turin for Utopian hours. What's your message to them maybe about thinking differently or how they can sort of incorporate perhaps some of this thinking into their own city?

[Natasha Muhanji]

In terms of thinking differently, our message as an organization would be to think about how people will feel when they see their designs, for example, you know, architects, designers, you should really consider how people feel. Because how people feel really shapes their behavior and behaviors shape the cities in which we live in. So in terms of driving action, I believe that it shouldn't just be very technical and very, you know, like we're building something and it's concrete. Of course there's that aspect, but at the same time there should be this consideration of how people will feel when they get to interact with their designs. This of course needs a bit of wonder, it needs a bit of imagination beyond reality. So yes, it's just to encourage people to stay playful.

[Ed Stocker]

I mean, we talked about space stations. You kind of had these micro utopias as well, which is good. Utopian hours already. Some great crossover. Can you give us an idea of anything you've got coming up? Any new projects at the moment?

[Natasha Muhanji]

We have a long term project that's going to be going on for some years to come. We launched it in mid June this year, 2025. This project is called the Imagination Station. It's a mobile art and design studio which travels around different areas, specifically marginalized communities and informal settlements. And we set up there for a couple of weeks, then we give people in the community a chance to come and sit in the studio. It's very open. They sit in the studio, engage in workshops. And we have some tools inside this Imagination Station which give them a chance to think about crazy stories, then localize these stories to their own context within their communities. And we're looking into moving through other parts of the country as well with this mobile art and design studio.

[Andrew Tuck]

Well, Ed, that was obviously fascinating and it's interesting obviously, with the theme being the United City, how they're using art to, as you say, build community and really great, great work there. Who else did you track down?

[Ed Stocker]

Why don't we head to my old stomping ground where I was before Milan, New York City, and look at this fascinating organization called Plus Pool. They are trying to essentially bring a plus shaped, hence the name pool, to the east river in New York City. Now you may know that it's not fit for swimming. Currently. They've invented this incredible system that basically filters the water actively. So it's using the river water, but filtering it all along the way, then flushing out clean water. I spoke to its managing director, Kara Meyer, who explains it much better than I do. But I guess, Andrew, it's kind of interesting to look at this movement that's happening and I think, you know, you've talked about it on the Urbanist before this push to more swimmable cities. You know, Zurich, north of where I am right now, is just amazing, a pioneer in that. Just incredible, the work they've done in making their city swimmable. But there are others that really want to get in on the action. The mayor of Rome here in Italy has been talking about it quite a lot recently. That sounds quite ambitious. But in New York, it really does seem like it could happen. And the point being that, you know, New York has an incredible amount of waterfront. 520 miles, and yet only part of it is swim ball. Just a few miles of beaches. This swimming pool could radicalize, I guess, how New Yorkers see their water, and of course, could lead to a whole new string of projects. Super exciting. And Cara Meyer told us more about it.

[Kara Meyer]

I started this journey because a group of friends of mine had an idea for a plus shaped water filtering, floating swimming pool in New York City. And they came to me and said, hey, this is an idea. People around the world have liked it. You've been helping us raise crowdfunding to test the feasibility. We've done that. And do you think we can make an organization to make it a reality? Will you do that with us? And at first I said, no, I would help them find someone. But ultimately they talked me into it, and here I am 10 years later running that same organization that we created.

[Ed Stocker]

Are you a swimming lover? Is it something you do a lot or it's something you got into through the organization?

[Kara Meyer]

Admittedly, I am more of a lounge by the pool with a cocktail kind of girl. I actually, funny story, did not make the swim team in high school. One of two people that denied my friend Anne and I. I've always grown up around water, as have the designers of Plus Pool and a lot of the people that have gotten involved and catapulted this idea forward. The joy of swimming, the joy of being around water, natural water in particular. I grew up near a lake. I visited a bay frequently that my family vacationed at all the time in Ontario, Canada. And we went to the beach all the time. And there was just this weird, surreal moment when it connected for all of us that New York City is surrounded by water and we're closer to it than we've ever been. There's 520 miles of waterfront in New York City. That's more than Boston and Miami and San Francisco combined, which are really considered coastal cities in the United States. And we don't have all that much access to it. There's only 14 miles of beaches in that 520 miles of waterfront. And so that idea for all of us who had really grown up in and around natural bodies of water, made us want to make that change in New York and open up the waters. And the idea for plus pool really ignited that.

[Ed Stocker]

As a former New York resident, I've done that bike ride down to the Rockaways a few times, but we're talking obviously about fresh water. This would be on the east river, given that the water, I believe, isn't clean enough to swim in. Tell us a little bit about the plus pool concept, this floating idea, and also, how near to a reality is it?

[Kara Meyer]

First of all, the waters have greatly improved over the past many years. You know, we were cut off from our rivers for swimming in really the early 1900s as a result of industrial pollution and environmental degradation. When there was an environmental revolution around some of that and the advent of the Clean Water act in the 70s, we stopped doing that, right? We stopped polluting the waters in the same ways we had been. But unfortunately, New York City, like many other cities, is still built on what's called a combined sewage overflow, where the storm drains are connected to the sewer lines, and during heavy rains, they discharge raw sewage water into the river without being treated. And so that is one of the main reasons that the rivers have not been designated for swimming. But we argue that since that time, not just with the water quality improvements, but the fact that there has been advanced engineering, process controls, and new engineering strategies that can facilitate safe public access and that the waters are clean a majority of the time and safe for swimming. So what are the creative interventions that we can create to facilitate that kind of access and start to reopen the waters, not just so that people can swim in them, but also so that people can start to understand their water quality, be reconnected to their waters, be reconnected to nature, and start to advocate for a change in infrastructure that we desperately need. So the concept for our facility is that it is floating in the river. If you think of it like a boat, it has been designed as a vessel, really. There's a filtration system that lives in the hull of the ship, and it's bringing raw river water into the filtration system, treating it, feeding the river pool, and then discharging clean water back to the source. We are modeling how fast we need to turn over the water. Since there's an endless supply of water all around us. Can we push the water through at a rate that does not require chemical disinfection and so that's what we are engineering right now and finalizing with the health agencies so that we can have a pilot facility installed hopefully by next summer in terms of access. The facility itself of course is doing that. But a majority of the work that we've had to do in order to facilitate the construction of plus pool is create a pathway for realizing it where there was none. There was no existing regulatory structure for the project that we are proposing, so we had to create that. And because we were interested in free and safe access everywhere and something bigger than just our idea, we made sure that the regulation that we were advocating for created pathways for all kinds of river access. And that would create a vision for the future where there are multiple swim access points and swim sites across the city.

[Andrew Tuck]

Another great interview. And as you say, interesting how all these cities are getting in on this move to being more swimmable cities, or many are, and embracing their waterfronts. Although I do have some advice for people out there. You know, I think all this cold water swimming is rather dangerous. I think you should stay in warm water for me. Just so you know, Ed, if you ever want to invite me swimming in a city, I don't like getting in any water where you gasp as it goes above your trunk line. So my theory is if you go, that's too cold, Ed, we'll move on from our swimming trunks. Where should we go next?

[Ed Stocker]

We will move on. Let's move to Austria now where there's this incredible project taking place. One of the largest urban developments, development projects in Europe. It was started in 2010 in Vienna in the capital, this former airport that basically stopped functioning in the 1970s. And so they had this vast plot of land, they've created this man made lake there and they've been building since 2010 and it's due to finish around 2032. And you know, you think of Vienna, you think of the old continent, you think of these historic cities and you don't necessarily think about them having space to do something like this. And they're pretty ambitious. You know, this is a public private partnership. And so, you know, it's not just a purely commercial thing. And they're trying to really think carefully about the sort of messages they want to send. What do they do about trying to reduce the number of car parks per household? What do they do about increasing mobility, making sure that, you know, there's great public transport and people don't need to use their cars? How do they get people out and about walking to do their food shopping? So these are some of the questions that are being raised by this project, which is there's just so much to it. There's a food makers quarter, biotech cluster. They're building educational establishments there. And they're due to have more than 25,000 residents and over 20,000 workplaces. As I say, it's already being lived in. They've already started building, there's already stuff completed, and it will be fully completed by 2032. So I wanted to hear a bit more about it. And that's why I spoke to Ingrid Sperk. She works for the development organization behind this new neighborhood. And the new neighborhood is called Aspern Seestadt.

[Ingrid Sperk]

Aspern Seestadt was actually an airport in the past blot of land on the outskirts of Vienna, very close to the River Danube and to the Donaun. It's a national park. And this former airfield was given up in the 1970s, and land there belonged to the Republic of Austria and to the City of Vienna. So there was a huge amount of land which could be put to innovative use. And that's what the city of Vienna really wanted to do. The idea was to develop Vienna in a sort of polycentric way. And Aspen Seestadt, future aspensierstadt was to be a new suburban center in the northeastern part of Vienna. The idea was that it would be half residential, half economic area and a lot of social infrastructure. That was the general idea. And with time, the city of Vienna developed a new development axis. And for that reason they extended an existing subway line.

[Ed Stocker]

Obviously, when we create new builds now, when we create new neighborhoods or new towns, there are amazing opportunities to do things better, to do things differently. How is this new mega neighbourhood, if you like, trying to do things differently?

[Ingrid Sperk]

Aspen Cisted does something that every city says they do. We put human beings in the middle of our thoughts. And one of the approaches we follow is a form of mobility that really serves people, not cars.

[Ed Stocker]

So how is it not car central?

[Ingrid Sperk]

We have a model split goal of 40, 40, 20. So that's 40% public transport, 40% pedestrian traffic and cycling, and only 20% motorized traffic. Now, at about half of the development period, we have more or less reached this goal and we think we can do better. And the City of Vienna wants to do better. So we put up our goals now. Now we try to reach 85% sustainable mobility. So before in Vienna, it was compulsory to build one parking space per flat, more or less. And when we started development, we started out with 0.7 parking spaces per flat. We are still there at this number and we Think that by doing this we set the tone for the city. And we always had the strategy of collective car parks for neighborhoods. So there is not one, one single building and the garage with it, but there is one collective car park and it serves several buildings so people are required to walk. And the idea is that in general the way to your car is no shorter than the way to the next public transport stop. So you have plenty of opportunity not to go by car.

[Ed Stocker]

But how would you like to change the rest of the city? And are you already seeing things that you are doing in Aspirin Seastar making other than neighborhoods in Vienna change?

[Ingrid Sperk]

First of all, setting the tone for everybody who comes new to Aspen Seestadt. This is very important because when people change the place where they live, they often change their habits and that's where we want to catch them. So we did all sorts of things like presenting every newcoming family or new resident with a free shopping trolley just to make them walk, make it comfortable. We set up a free of charge bike sharing system. Our tiny island in the very beginning of development of Aspen Seestadt had its own free of charge bicycle sharing system with electrobikes even at that time. And this was really innovative, things like that. We are very lucky that many people who live in Zestad or work in Zeestadt have become our ambassadors for our ideas, especially mobility. And we have become quite renowned for this way of living, for this kind of mobility. And it can't be our work alone. So there must be ambassadors convincing others that you can try this, that you can live life a bit differently. And it makes a lot of sense and it makes a difference.

[Andrew Tuck]

There's a final interview for today and then we'll come to a little note because people need to watch out for one more interview. But today there's a final one. Ed, who's the last person we have being serenaded and caught up with by you?

[Ed Stocker]

Oh, serenade. Thanks so much. It is Jan Kitain. He's originally from Germany, but he's called London home for a long, long time. He's the founder of his own studio, Jan K Architects, that's been running for more than 20 years. He's also a teacher, he lectures at UCL in architecture and he just has a really interesting practice. They have a very strong moral compass. You know, he makes ethical choices about who to work with. And a lot of his architecture is based in the civic and the social. He works a lot with city councils. They've been respons responsible for redoing town centers. They sort of Quite famously did the High Road in Leighton before the London Olympics, sort of helping repaint all the houses on that street and rebranding the businesses there to sort of give it a spruce up. They also work with a lot of libraries. Another great project they've done is the Paper Garden in Canada Water Again in London, which is a transformation of the old Daily Mail print works. So. So he has a lot to say about building better. And so it was interesting because, you know, as I say, and you'll hear this in the interview, I sort of say that's banded about quite a lot. But I feel that he really does try and do that every day with this practice. So let's hear from Jan Kitain now.

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

I think of architecture as having a civic purpose as well as a spatial consequence. And my practice works at that intersection between the spatial and the civic. Most of the work that we do is very public. It involves individuals, it involves community groups, it involves stakeholders, residents, sometimes school groups. We create gardens, spaces for learning, spaces for enterprise, spaces to meet, spaces for culture, and we create them together. That means opening up design processes. That means being open to scrutiny from people outside our profession. That means also that you suddenly become accountable as an architect because you've developed personal relationships and people start to rely on you.

[Ed Stocker]

I'm going to pay you a compliment now, Jan. I feel like you really are committed to building better, even though that's the sort of term that gets thrown around by a lot of architecture practices. So how do you go beyond mere rhetoric and actually do it for real?

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

Building better can mean just building what you were going to build anyway. But talking to communities about this, and we don't do that, we go out there to work up briefs, through dialogue, through consultation and through engagement, to decide together with communities in true collaboration what the solution should be that we should be pursuing. And that can be not a building. If there are environmental challenges, if there are social challenges, if there are cultural opportunities to embrace. The best solution is not always to do a building. It can be to reconfigure an existing building. It can be to improve public spaces. It can be to invent a new program or set in place a new governance structure. And we enter the design and engagement process with an open mind and without preconceived ideas about what the outcome might be.

[Ed Stocker]

What do you like about sort of grassroots or civic architecture? Is it the amount of people you're able to engage with?

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

It's a real passion for me to work with people on the ground and outside my profession. I Also teach at university, which sees me exposed to young people and their ideas. And the dialogue that I have in the course of teaching is something I get very excited about. I think I'm very much a people person and that's probably where this comes from.

[Ed Stocker]

Give us an idea about the sort of projects that you work on. Because it's everything from green spaces to libraries to town centres.

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

So one of the things that we do a lot of is regenerating town centres. A lot of the town centres in the UK have really fallen into disrepair. Shops have closed. They're stuck in a vicious cycle of low viability, economically low investment, which then results in physical decline, which starts the whole spiral and vicious cycle again. So we work with stakeholders on the ground, shop owners, business owners, building owners, to refurbish shop fronts, to reinvent marketing strategies, to redesign building facades, to tidy up the public realm, to introduce new businesses into vacant units, to revive shopping centres with multilateral strategies. We have done a lot of library projects recently. Libraries are some of the few internal public spaces that are still around after a lot of community centres have closed down, youth centres have closed down. And libraries need to do of a lot, lot more than they used to do. They're no longer just about books. So we've been working with local authorities to reconfigure libraries to accommodate all of these uses. Alongside the books, we build a lot of gardens with community groups. There is a real disconnection in London that's occurred between communities and the natural world. And building biodiverse gardens is a way of reconnecting people with the natural environment and actually through the natural environment, also with each other.

[Andrew Tuck]

Great, Ed. And interesting actually hearing all four of these interviews. Cause there's some nice interplay between them all. And they come back to this notion of the united city. Now, this was the 9th edition, meaning next year's the 10th. Look how I worked that one out. Is the Trinostratisfarica team planning to do anything special next year? A cake, maybe?

[Ed Stocker]

Well, Andrew, it's funny you should say that. You've teed me up perfectly. Because they did make an announcement at this year's festival. It is indeed the 10th anniversary and they want to celebrate in style. And what they're actually doing is they're splitting the festival into two parts, an extra celebration, if you like. So there's going to be one part of the festival. The first part will be in Rotterdam in May and then there'll be the second installment, if you like, as usual, in Turin in October. So Plenty to look forward to next year.

[Andrew Tuck]

Now, as I mentioned earlier on, there was one final interview that we're going to run next week, and that's with Liz Diller, just so that we entice people to become regular listeners. Give me a little glimpse of the kinds of topics that you raised.

[Ed Stocker]

I mean, I'm just trying to make your life easier, Andrew, by doing this. Hopefully you're appreciative. Liz Diller. Yeah, I mean, she's an incredible person. And, you know, I used to live in New York, which I mentioned before, and we actually interviewed her for the magazine back in 2018. So it was really nice, although she did not remember me, I'm sad to say. It was nice to reconnect with her and sort of catch up with all the things she's been doing. I mean, just so busy. She is in her 70s. She has incredible energy. She was in London just before Turin and was off to Paris the next day. So still traveling all around the world. She's got projects in so many different cities from the uk, from London and elsewhere to obviously still New York to China and beyond. So really interesting. And of course, you know, her presentation, what she talked about in Utopia now, did focus quite a lot on New York City and the High Line. So I wanted to ask her a little bit about, you know, how she feels about that project, if she's still happy talking about it, because she must get asked about it so much. But she generally is, you know, she also organized this incredible opera on the High Line, which I had the privilege of going to, and she's apparently thinking and hoping to do another one very soon. So you can hear a bit more about that when you tune in, which you will, of course, to the next installment of the opening.

[Andrew Tuck]

Well, Ed, a fantastic roundup there, some great conversations. Thank you so much for reporting for us. And that's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism too. Just visit monocle.com this episode of the Urbanist was produced by Ed Stock, Carlotta Rebello and David Stevens, who also edits the show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening, City Lovers.

[IPUT Real Estate Representative]

I put Real Estate is Dublin's leading property investment company. For almost six decades, they've owned and developed the best workplaces in Ireland, setting standards and attracting global capital to the Irish market. As a gateway to Europe, Dublin is a global centre for investment. I put leads the market by delivering innovative design led workplaces and public spaces that enhance the occupier experience and neighbourhood life. Their ambition to set new benchmarks in workplace quality, attract leading businesses to Dublin, all while delivering strong, strong, sustainable returns for their investors. Find out how they're building this Future. Head to IPUT.com now. I put creator of Exceptional Places, Custodian of the City.