Mapping Controversies, City Reparo | Introducing Urban Controversies

The “Hands-on Famagusta” project’s ad-hoc technology for urban controversies is a web-platform consisting of three pools of designerly knowledge about controversial questions in regards to the role of the city’s commons during post conflict urban reconstruction, (Actors and Agendas, Other Cities, Urban Design Projects). The web-platform operation is supported by a series of board games that transform the controversial questions into playful negotiations and re-alliances amongst the game players.

Mapping Architectural Controversies (MAC) is an interactive website dedicated to students and researchers working on controversies surrounding design projects, buildings, master plans, and urban and development issues. Documenting and visualizing recent controversies in architecture, it also aims to address a broader audience interested in the design of cities, spatial networks and built environments as well as planners, representatives of city government, NGOs and citizens. Originally based on the EU-funded project MACOSPOL, Mapping Architectural Controversies draws on a variety of documental sources and visual methods to explore the multifarious connections of architecture and society. Mapping Controversies comprises a research method, a teaching philosophy and a way to approach public debates. The platform serves as a database on controversies related to a variety of topics from Science, Technology, Innovation, Design and Urban Planning, provides tutorial guidance to the Mapping Controversies teaching and learning methods and their relevance to architectural studies, and showcases some initiatives in enhancing the public understanding of controversies.
Why Controversies? Nowadays, we are confronted more and more with uncertain architectural knowledge concerning the latest innovations in engineering and building construction together with the changing demands of clients and communities. This causes us to become embroiled in various controversies surrounding architecture and urban design, which reshuffle the multifarious connections between architecture and society.

City Reparo is a multidisciplinary consultancy working with the social, public and private sectors on city transformations in the built environment. It is a social enterprise comprising a range of practitioners from architectural, urban design, planning and social science backgrounds. A primary focus of City Reparo is urban structure and, more particularly, how the form and layout of cities affect the everyday experience and life chances of local communities. In the context of contested urban space, City Reparo advances the Jane Jacobs notion that the city should be everyone’s neighborhood.