City of Echoes

Imagine a city made up of different voices! No, really, think about it!

A living lab where every story counts, with university training giving us the tools that shape the environment around us.

If you couldn't picture it, no worries, City of Echoes has drawn it for you‼️

From San Giustino, Italy, the project is based on experimenting with an educational strategy based on learning directly from the citizens. They ask questions, listen to their stories and help imagine their future living spaces. 

The proposal is part of the 30 finalists of the 2021 New European Bauhaus rising star prizes under the category of "Interdisciplinary education models."

City of Echoes is a living lab for architecture and urban design. There, their creators adopt a horizontal approach and imagine inclusive, beautiful, and sustainable cities through a holistic, bottom-up approach.

In a series of virtual meetings, the creators encourage individuals worldwide to express what beauty, inclusion, and sustainability meant to them and their communities, with one condition: keeping the city's name secret.

With this approach, the project opens up the dialogue while removing first inherent biases and conceptions from the professionals' side.

City of Echoes wishes to engage residents and raise basic urgent questions about the role of cities, design, architecture, and everything else that surrounds them.

After listening to the participant's stories and viewpoints, the architects and urban designers draw their cities. They later exhibit and discuss the results.

The experiment challenges old perceptions through dialogues and imaginary exercises.

The exposed layers assist architects and designers in learning from the individuals who could potentially use their future building creations.

User engagement sparks the creators' ingenuity and inventiveness. Thus, the results influence and ensure architectural and design projects have a holistic and diversified perspective across their life cycle.

City of Echoes is about how architecture and urban design should embrace sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusivity from the start, putting users first.

📸 European Union