People can improvise the city; people can improvise architecture. That means the city shouldn’t resist [its] inhabitants, but obey [its] inhabitants… We need to get back to elasticity.
In this interview from the Louisiana Channel, architect and theorist Yona Friedman discusses the plight of the contemporary city, and how it is the responsibility of architects to design structures that can be inhibited for the widest range of individuals and purposes.
In the video, Friedman discusses his breakthrough work ‘Ville Spatiale’ (1956), an enormous superstructure that could span over existing cities and would allow people to construct their own habitats within the larger framework. With the growing influx of refugees and immigrants currently challenging many of Europe’s cities, the principles behind the work are once again topical – by allowing people to select their own environment, new residents are empowered to operate independently and to the benefit of all.
Yona Friedman’s “People’s Architecture” Inhabits Space Using Hula Hoops
Architect and theorist Yona Friedman has brought his playful “People’s Architecture” installations to Rome’s MAXXI Museum, Paris’s Les Halles and Denmark where they were recently assembled in a workshop at the Danish Association for Architects. Built using plastic hula hoops, each installation is assembled spontaneously, creating new variations of space with each turn.