Authors

Reshetnikova Tatyana S.
SOCIAL EVENTS AS A TOOL OF ENVIRONMENT ACTIVATION

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (39) September, 2012

Urban environment is eventful. Events keep happening at certain points in a city, thus enhancing the potential for activity and development in this city fragment. Social events in this context represent simple "spontaneous" social activity that has emerged over the life span of a particular place in the form of informal mixing, rallies, pastime, etc., and ‘planned’ activities, such as festivals, city holidays, political or cultural events.

A place in a city starts to develop as a result of numerous events linked to it, indicators of such development being new buildings, new functional zones, and new events. The more there are events happening there, the more intensive the renovation of the physical shell of the city is.

Organised and unorganized social events form the communicative environment of a public space, or a heterogeneous zone in a city. This zone provokes growing commercial interest, continuing to develop further. Such space is charged with commercial, social, cultural, political potential (for example, the Sennaya Square or the Nevsky Street in St.-Petersburg, or Alexander Plaz in Berlin). Time-bound social events are embodied in frozen architectural forms, or environmental events. The formula for relationship between environment and events is as follows:

Event – Activation – Environment

The activation of the environment is a result of multiple social and environmental events. Activation entails the creation of:

- a new image of the place (environmental brands);
- new functions of the place;
- a new format of communication in the community (co-workings, squatting, meetings, festivals, cultural routes, etc.);
- new ideas;
- new environment or architecture.