This year, studio mo man tai in collaboration with Eindhoven's skate community plans to present ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ at Pennings Foundation; an experiment in inclusive participation and co-creation where skaters are challenged to contribute ideas to transform the city into a skateboarding paradise.
Cocreation
Picture this: Eindhoven, a city where skaters are not only users of urban space, but also the designers. What would happen if skaters were really involved in the creative process of urban planning? The answer will be on display at the end of DDW as the result of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’.
Skating is often seen as ‘counterculture’, a world where freedom, creativity and rebellion come together. Skaters used to be seen as the ‘lice in the fur’ of architects and urban planners, always looking for a place to do their thing, often to the annoyance of the establishment.
But what would it be like to harness the ‘creative minds’ of skaters and see them as pathfinders of urban planning and design. ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ highlights the value of skateboarders as designers of their own spaces, with a special focus on Eindhoven's role as a design city.
As a design and technology city, Eindhoven provides the ideal starting point for this co-creation workshop, which shows how skateboarders bring their unique perspectives and creative solutions to the design of public spaces.
Skate in a gallery
During DDW, Pennings Foundation is also programming the exhibition ‘With one eye open’. In the middle of that exhibition on visual documentation of graffiti and the graffiti scene, there will be a mini skate ramp and skaters are invited to use it.
A low-threshold workshop space will be reserved at the entrance to the Pennings Foundation for the duration of DDW, where visitors/participants can add inspiration, sketches, photos and designs to a number of pre-selected and presented projects.
Skaters possess a unique and deep understanding of their ‘play’ spaces. Their daily interaction with urban architecture enables them to create functional, challenging and aesthetically pleasing spaces that not only meet social and technical requirements, but also inspire and match their specific needs and preferences.
‘Heart’ project
With her studio, Ulrike Jurklies chooses each year to present a ‘heart’ project during DDW, with no commercial intentions, highlighting for her important social, community or sustainability themes in an innovative way.
Ultimately, this interactive project will offer a wide group of users and ‘specifiers’ of public space a multitude of new insights that facilitate accessibility, mutual understanding and innovation of those spaces.
