Deturned City Design: - tools for experiential urban living

This article presents concepts of architecture and urban scenography in relation to experiential urban living. The aim is to evaluate the phenomenon of architectural performance and to look at the artistic methods and tools that are involved in large art installations in urban environments today.
It draws lines back to the artistic and architectural avant-garde in the 1960s, where the Situationist Movement criticized the absence of atmosphere in modernistic architecture and suburban cities. Along this line they promoted mapping tools and artistic ‘construction of situations’ s that could evoke a more comprehensive way of experiencing city life. The intentions and methods of the Situationist Movement are compared to present art installations and temporary architecture in public spaces.
The article put special emphasis on temporary architecture, which may provide a special freedom to construct spatial situations that promote an experimental life. Through symbols, ornaments and decorations it is possible create recognizable urban sceneries in which people can be involved in aesthetically and bodily challenging situations. The article analyze the methods and the architectural tools in this kind of ‘constructed situations’ which mirror and reflect the present poverty of our urban environment and give way for other experiences in public spaces. It advocates for development of ‘relate architecture’ in permanent architecture as well in temporal urban installations and the conclusion is, that this kind of architectural design may contribute to reflection and provide new demands to the performance of our urban environments in general.