Designing the Possibility for Interaction

Ghigo di Tommaso: ReBar started with a couple of projects, and at the beginning, there was no specific idea of creating an organization. There was simply a desire to make a few projects happen. The very first project of ReBar was almost a land art project. It was not related to urban public space and was located in the New Mexico desert. It was called the National Cabinet, and it was an installation of a micro-library in a rather random spot in the New Mexico desert. This library was made of small cabinets and had three drawers. In the first one, you could find actual publications; in the others, food and drinks – snacks for people who visited the library.

GT: Yes, it was really in the middle of nowhere. That was part of the plan. The project was related to a very interesting magazine called Cabinet, a magazine that deals with art and temporary projects. The magazine offered the public a chance to buy, as a subscription to the magazine, a plot of land of the actual size of the magazine in the New Mexico desert, complete with a real lease that regulated the transaction. So it was really precise – half or a quarter of a square meter. ReBar’s crew at that time – John Bela and Matthew Passmore – thought that if there was this « kingdom » or « republic » of micro-property owners, they could start with the library. They drove all the way from San Francisco to New Mexico to install this cabinet and create a dirt structure around it to protect it. So that was the very first project.

Then the second one was Parking Day. Parking Day, like the first one, I think already had many of the ingredients that define the classic recipe for ReBar projects. It focused on the problems related to automobile-dominated cities and the lack of public space for expression. That was the objective. But Parking Day also defined the DNA of ReBar in terms of process. I guess Parking Day is the project that focuses on allowing open-source design. So it is not a project in the traditional sense, where a spatial configuration is proposed for the space. Rather, it is a platform that allows people to self-organize the space however they want it to be. So it’s very much an example of open-source design in the public space – probably one of the most successful and pure expressions of open-source design.

GT: There is an intermediate step between the beginning of the project – the installation you mentioned – and the project we call Parking Day today. The project began as Parking – that was the name of the first installation. This wasn’t specifically conceived as an introduction to Parking Day. It was just an experiment in itself. It was about reclaiming one urban spot for a short period of time. It was very much an art project in the sense that the message was stronger than the actual impact. This is often something that differentiates art from design, I think – design is interested in making a wide impact, while art is more focused on the message itself.

So Parking was an art installation, but it was an art installation that later propelled a design project. The photography of Parking – the art installation – was put on the web and became viral, so then ReBar decided to create a manual to allow people to do the same. That triggered Parking Day. ReBar was born with this project. And, project by project, bit by bit, they realized that they were not only doing installations but starting an organization, or a movement, or a practice, if you like. There was a lot of ambiguity about what they were, and that was something they embraced.

GT: John and Blain are landscape architects, and Matthew is trained as a lawyer. This is not by coincidence because many of the initial ReBar projects were art projects focused on exploring the boundaries of the regulatory system within the city. They used design tools to explore these issues. Gradually, they decided to become an art and design practice. They gave themselves the name, and it became something more concrete. John and Blain were trained as designers and had worked for landscape architecture offices before. They wanted to continue their path as practitioners. Matthew, in addition to being a lawyer, studied art and wanted to pursue a career as an artist. So, in a way, I think ReBar didn’t have a specific identity at first – it fluctuated between fields and disciplines, and eventually, the will of its creators narrowed it down to become a practice. This is roughly the story – after a few years, they became an art and design practice. That’s when I started working with them.

GT: Among the key elements of the projects was the idea of open-sourcing the process. In its early years, ReBar was not only a practice, but I would say a movement. As a movement, it was interested in putting people back in control of public space. There was certainly an interest in interaction. It was almost a form of activism – activism that didn’t work through protest in the traditional sense but instead, through a series of projects and installations, generated activation directly from the people. So there was a mission to empower people, enabling them to change the space they live in, with the clear intention of doing this outside the regulatory system. We were not working « from within » but « from outside » the system and its rules – without breaking the rules, though. ReBar was not in opposition; it wasn’t interested in opposing the authorities. It was rather looking for those niches, those empty spaces, and then working « within » them. It was a very specific political attitude at the time, and that defined the practice.

GT: Well, I guess there is a slow shift worldwide – different speeds, starting from different points in different places. From a lack of participation to the participatory process. Some places are doing it more, others less; it happens faster in some places and slower in others. Some places are starting from institutions that are very weak, while in some places, like Copenhagen, it is relatively good. And there is also something to be unpacked about the Scandinavian model – because the Scandinavian model is certainly successful and provides assets to the public, but I wouldn’t really define it as participatory. It is more about good governance than participation.

GT: That’s true – people here are already on board. Institutions here are so functional that, without this « participation », things are moving in the direction people want them to.

GT: So, to sum up the previous question: Yes, different places across the globe are moving toward the participatory process, even Scandinavia… But I don’t think this has become a radical process in the last few years. It is a very small tide going in this direction, and it will eventually make things better.

I come from a European tradition that believes in the possibility of using public institutions to achieve the public good. I’m a bit of a dreamer, but I believe we can make our institutions work for us, and I don’t want to think that things are so bad that institutions are working against us. If that were the case, it would be the biggest failure for us. In a democratic system, who else but us creates the institutions? So, if we created our enemy, then we must have failed terribly. I like to think things are different.

Look at Copenhagen – it proves things can be different. I’m very open to the positive side of institutional work. On the other hand, I get much more radical when it comes to the role of private business and developers. Let’s just say that I think public institutions play a fundamental role in mitigating the forces of city-making driven by private capital. So, if you ask me where I place myself on the map of actors within the city, I would say I place myself in helping public governance make smart decisions on how to regulate public investments that are driving urban change.

It’s a bit elaborate and convoluted, but let me rephrase myself. We are architects, and we work with diagrams… So, the diagram would be this: Let’s face it – in a democratic society, the strongest agent for urban change is private capital. I believe that institutions must be dignified, even glorified, in their fundamental role of defending the public from the risk of uncontrolled urban change. Once they’ve been dignified and glorified, their role is to regulate the use of private capital, guiding it in the direction of making cities for people – where citizens are included and listened to. This is where I stand, as Ghigo di Tommaso, not as ReBar or Gehl. We’re all different, so we all have different shades of agreement about the role of private capital in city-making. But I think many would be fairly close to my point.

And this is why I think it is very dangerous to play the game of confrontation with institutions. Because if institutions are attacked by citizens, then eventually, private capital, which is the strongest player in this game, will take complete control. I think the only way out of the tragedy of urban problems – which can be found not only in cities like Detroit, but also in places like San Francisco, which is now facing a gigantic problem of inequality – is to realign public institutions (which were created by the public) and the people to work functionally together, finding a way to do what is supposed to be done.

GT: Yes, it can be hard, but I think we are on the right track, and things are changing. And among my folks from the NGOs and the grassroots movement, I would rather be the tough friend who reminds them that the risk of not creating these alliances with institutions is losing the game anyway.

GT: Yes. And don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that the grassroots movement cannot achieve incredible things. What I’m saying is that it’s time to try to fix the institutions we’ve created in order to make the cities we want. And to become a bit more Scandinavian, right? Where institutions seem to work for people, not against them.

GT: I think there are different ways to involve people. And I think neither Rebar nor Gehl are champions of participatory design in its traditional sense. But they are still using very interesting methods to involve people. And I don’t think there is a better or worse method. I think all those methods need to work in synergy.

GT: I think of the traditional model as, for example, the one that is taught at UC Berkeley, where I teach – it shows how to run community meetings and consultations. That’s one model, which I would call the traditional one, and it is very important. However, it is something we do not do. Both Rebar and Gehl have their own methods and are champions and pioneers of two different models for involving people in the process. Rebar has been interested in two things. One is making things that can be transformed, adapted, and reconfigured by the people on site – you don’t want to design the bench because you don’t know how people want to sit, and, on top of that, people find benches rather boring. You want to create something in the public space that people can move, bend, open, close, bring to the shade, or bring to the sun.

GT: Yes. And in the meantime, when people are customizing and user-generating the space, they will probably end up starting a conversation that now seems to be missing in public spaces. The second thing Rebar pioneered is open-source design. Something like this: we are not going to design the square; we will design the platform online where everybody will be able to design their micro-square. So it’s about open-sourcing – it’s open to the public. This is Rebar.

Gehl has another way to involve people, which is to make people vote with their feet. It’s like making people decide how the space should be just by observing where people naturally, spontaneously go and where they don’t. Where they walk a lot, and where they don’t. If they walk fast because they want to get out of there, or walk slowly because they like that place. So by observing all these details, we know what people really like to do.

For decades, we have used traffic engineers to calculate everything to make traffic more efficient and then design cities based on principles dictated by the function of the automobile. Gehl is trying to do the same, but this time the input doesn’t come from cars; it comes from people, citizens. We observe the way people use public spaces, and then we transform this knowledge into principles and recommendations for the people who have to make decisions about these spaces. We are not bringing these people, the citizens, into the room to discuss; instead, we are rationally trying to understand if these people are sitting for 2, 5, 10, or 30 minutes on a bench, and that tells us something about how they feel about the space.

GT: The advantages of experimentation are numerous. On the one hand, traditional design has suffered from a lack of interaction. So the process of city-making is extremely slow in the traditional way – it starts with the design itself and then goes through all the detailing, funding, and implementation. And by the time you finish your project, in the best-case scenario, the project doesn’t work as well as it would have at the beginning because the circumstances have changed. In the worst-case scenario, the project was flawed from the beginning, and it takes 20 years to realize it. On top of that, the circumstances have changed, so it just can’t get worse. So, there is value in experimenting with a series of low-cost, small interventions. That’s one value of experimentation – using it as a tool to iterate the process, taking small steps as stepping stones that lead you in the right direction, rather than one big jump in the wrong one. Experimenting is very often also playful and brings life to the city…

GT: I would say that we are. I think it’s true that we found some magic in temporary projects… But the truth is that not everyone finds this magic in the same way. As much as we might be less excited by the permanent design, if we are, there are people who are probably more excited about the permanent than we are. Maybe we should come back to the question of what kind of players, what kind of actors we are. I think that our DNA as design activists makes us find magic in things that people don’t find magic in. We have to accept that. And as a designer, I have to accept that I’m not only designing for my people, my folks, my crew, but also for many others, who are very different from me. So, I wouldn’t be too critical of the granite stone on Broadway, because someone might think that the paint we put on the street just looked awful, and that New York deserves dignified granite pavement. The radical difference is that before the temporary project, there was no pavement; there was just asphalt for cars. Then there was paint, and now there is granite – and it doesn’t really matter if you prefer paint or granite, what matters is that there is now a place for people to walk.

GT: Yes, experimentation and temporality allow for a serious political process to happen, in small steps, both directly and indirectly. And I think there is a lot of politics that go through the temporary project that allows permanence to change.