What’s the potential of 7.6 | Francesco Rossini

What’s the potential of 7,6 m2?

The existing top-down urban planning strategies have been criticized for their lack of structured implementation and their failure to engage citizens (Dobbins, 2009). In cities today, public space development projects require a flexible approach; no single strategy can address the specific needs of every community or the unique conditions of each public space.

Nowadays the need of SPACE is a challenge and usually the main concern of the city planners is to provide a determinate amount of open spaces with no attentions to create PLACES where citizens can embodied their experiences and aspirations. Place is not only a fact to be explained in the broader frame of space, but it is also a reality to be clarified and understood from the perspectives of the people who have given it meaning. (Yi-Fu Tuan, 1977)

7.6m2 is the amount of public space per person in Singapore which compared to other Asian cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul is quite generous. The concept of this temporary urban design intervention attempts to reflect on the potential of this abstract number with the aims to transform a generic open space of the city in something meaningful for the community.