City Lab

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1.3 DEFINITIONS

City Lab

City Labs are recent phenomena. The term City Labs describes the context to ecology and how designers can engage in experimenting with alternative perspectives within the fluid boundaries of their profession in a trans-disciplinary setting. City Labs use ‘the City’ as a ‘canvas of reality’ to which they can connect their vision.

Marijke Bovens (she is a journalist and researcher specialist in the field of architecture and culture) conducted research within the framework of Creative Industries Fund NL[1] about City Labs. She described City Labs as learning networks that experiment cooperatively with various complex (urban) issues. Within the investigation, she found a wide variety of City Labs, but all labs had as commonalities to be hybrid; City Labs have a wide variety of professions, connecting both experts and non-experts. They also have a pragmatic nature; City Labs have a problem-solving mentality, however the Laborants (people working in the Lab) are aware of the complexity and never claim to have THE solution. They are run by independent professionals, and City Labs function as a learning network. This functions both online and in the real world. (Bovens, 2017)

[1] Creative Industries Fund NL is the biggest Dutch cultural fund for architecture, design, and digital culture, as well as every imaginable crossover. The Fund supports exceptional and innovative projects and activities by designers, makers, and cultural institutions in the creative industries. (http://stimuleringsfonds.nl/en/the_fund/organization/about_the_fund/, accessed Aug. 2016)

 

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