Although it does not originate from a mechanism of participation, in neither its design nor execution, it yet does articulates bottom up processes through different channels. On the one hand, the clearest case, it has the community garden that raises a network of citizen care in a collaborative way; on the other hand, in a more indirect way, the citizen are invited to appropriate the space and to propose different programs of activities to be happening in it.
The construction is very simple, designed under the parameters of replicability, low cost, and recovery of materials to give them a second lives. This device is made up of a scaffolding structure, in the style of a circular turret, 7 meters heigh and with two upper floors. Each floor measures 6 meters in diameter and consist of wooden slabs and a perimetrical stairway, which gives access to each of the plants. The perimeter is covered with jersey barriers, plastic barriers of road signs that are placed vertically. These elements generate permeable planes that operate as a lattice, qualifying the space and giving that singular character to the facade. All these elements have a temporary useful life and will be used in there conventional way again after, either as construction material or urban furniture.
The furniture generated for the intervention (flower pots, benches, and stands) will have a second life within a local collective. In any case all the devices are made as creative commons, open and freely distributed, and there are assembly manuals that allow you to replicate and reproduce them by any interested citizen. By propping up a basic idea that exists in the archive, which is to generate open source architectures.
The infrastructure of the TAZ enables different activities to generate an appropriable public space that provides the capacities for assemblies, projections, concerts, summer movies, etc. The garden is a space that enables collaborative construction of a setting, the archive is designed to generate a place of exchange, and the assembly is the meeting space. This, together with basic infrastructures such as water and electricity, poses an unusual potential to use public space to develop content and activities.
The Casino (a cultural centre) and TXP have implemented some initial activities as triggers, in order to open a range of possibilities and lines of work. Community garden workshops, projections, collaborative construction workshops, and concerts have been held, exploring different lines of work and intervention potentials, although we are interested in citizen ownership that is generated through more spontaneous uses and responds to the needs and interests of local communities in the city of Luxembourg.
To instal the TAZ in the territory pose institutional challenges, either because of permissions or because of the management model as a hybrid public space. This issues, despite being invisible and happening unnoticed, is very important as it opens new channels of citizen negotiation, and enables new horizons beyond the probable. To determine how this space is used, its opening hours, what activities can be proposed, etc., are the challenges posed by such a device, which requires new protocols and defines an alternative model of citizen co-management.
It is very common that excessive regulation of public space restrict almost all activities in it. In most cases the process of getting a license for an activity follows a bureaucratic process that spaces like the TAZ are able to hack. This place is a hybrid space that makes it possible to carry out and schedule activities outside the norm that regulate the habitual use of public spaces.
This is why an interesting space is formed, when a place is generated in the city that generates possibilities of citizen appropriation, overcoming the administrative limitations. A space that proposes programmatic alternatives that overcome the regulated institutional agenda, and that enables a spontaneous programming that responds to concrete needs and interests implying new codes and new logics.
