Fabian's Living Room, a new space to meet and cook food together
Contemporary cities face unprecedented pressure to rethink the ways they operate, especially those that have a large percentage of the Soviet-style building stock lacking public amenities that would draw community members together. Fabian’s Living Room, a new sculptural outdoor space located in one of the sleeping districts of Vilnius creates a new welcoming and sustainable social context for neighbourhood meetings around the public grills and other urban furniture made out of reused stone.
Local
Lithuania
Vilnius
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-08-05
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Monika Last name: Lipsic Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: NGO "VSI Bendri reikalai" focusing on critical art curatorial work, educational activities, and support of emerging artists. Nationality: Lithuania Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Pamėnkalnio g. 3-16A Town: Vilnius Postal code: LT-01116 Country: Lithuania Direct Tel:+370 672 26757 E-mail:lipsic.monika@gmail.com
First name: Juste Last name: Kostikovaite Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Juste Kostikovaite is a curator, manager and project coordinator of contemporary art. She works with locality, communities, sustainable art and design practices. Nationality: Lithuania Function: Art curator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Kuosu g. 9-77 Town: Vilnius Postal code: LT-10311 Country: Lithuania Direct Tel:+370 665 89686 E-mail:kostikovaite@gmail.com
First name: Daumantas Last name: Kucas Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Daumantas Kucas is a member of Sculpture and Stained Glass Centre in Vilnius. Nationality: Lithuania Function: Sculptor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Malonioji g. 5 Town: Vilnius Postal code: LT-08122 Country: Lithuania Direct Tel:+370 615 66723 E-mail:skulptore@inbox.lt Website:https://www.sivc.lt/
First name: Bert Last name: Jacobs Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Bert Jacobs is a multi-disciplinary artist working in the field of installation art, sculptures, drawings, prints, multiples, and editions. Nationality: Belgium Function: Artist Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Spaarzaamheidstraat 80 Town: Oostende Postal code: 8400 Country: Belgium Direct Tel:+32 485 31 49 85 E-mail:mailbertjacobs@gmail.com Website:https://www.jacobsbert.be/
Fabijoniskes is one of the most densely populated districts in the Lithuanian capital. However, major cultural activities are all concentrated in the centre of Vilnius, and architecturally and spatially uniform sleeping districts are places where most families reside. These residents have no active communal or cultural spaces and present issues of social segregation and the lack of safety, occurring between the elderly and the young, the Lithuanian and immigrant communities, and the permanent and the temporary residents of these neighbourhoods. A new outdoor space, Fabian’s Living Room, suggests alternative means to gather around the fire and food-making culture -the daily components linked to well-being and care.
After observing and analysing various issues and needs, Fabian’s Living Room project team noticed how neglected the public spaces were. The hard surfaces and parking areas started to dominate the space, and the lack of maintenance and attention to leisure and play areas now mostly serve illegal activities. The free-standing urban microrayon typology does not help either in increasing livability, leaving most of the public in-between spaces undefined, with no clear ownership, identity, or distinct quality to it.
Not long ago, before the urban expansion of Vilnius in the late 80s, Fabijoniskes district was still a village composed of clusters of individual houses, agricultural and wild lands. This was a huge inspiration for us when claiming an abandoned asphalt area and conceiving a new public space typology - an outdoor living room. It was important for us to make the space design inclusive from the very start, therefore, we organised workshops with neighbours and local authorities before, during, and after the project. Together, we have not only replaced an abandoned asphalt area with garden swathes and placed uniquely crafted stone furniture pieces shaping a zone for public grilling and leisure but started a focal point for collective communication.
community building
sustainability
garden
cooking
outdoors
After our team spotted a disused sporting lot near the residential houses on Stanevicius street in Fabijoniskes, we learned that it was never used and that there are no plans for the City to repurpose it. Several discussions with the local authorities and the inhabitants led to choosing this location to make it environmentally and community friendly for everybody. The context of the pandemic shed new light on the project since qualitative outdoor spaces became key to our physical and mental well-being.
It was important for us to make the space design inclusive from the very start, therefore, we organised brainstorming sessions with neighbours and local authorities before, during, and after the project. This created a focal point for collective communication, which gave our project a new dimension of addressing the commons. The Fabian’s Living Room not only boasts a garden now, but welcomes everyone to use a beautiful stone table, stone benches, several chaise-longues, and two public grills for larger gatherings.
According to statistics from recently published research papers, communities that feel atomised and do not engage with their neighbours or wider societies, feel much less happy, and, as a result - are more lonely and less healthy. In that sense, our project has created a sustainable foreground and precedent of connection for neighbours, through common discussions and common picnicking and concert activities.
Seeking sustainable solutions during the construction phase was key to the project. Apart from replacing hard surfaces with greenery that adds a new layer to local biodiversity, new elements were designed from long-lasting material, stone, found in the quarries in the proximity of Vilnius. We have also tried to reduce the amount of transportation when transferring materials from different locations to the project site. Installing self-sufficient lighting systems run by solar power sets an example of using sustainable resources in the city.
We aimed at creating an exceptionally sustainable (both environmentally and socially) design and art project based on the following design principles:
- Place-based design (orientation, walking routes, visual links, proportions, wind direction, etc.);
- Materiality builds up on the local identity of the place - the landscape shaped by melting icebergs that retained many rocks in the landscape, and more recent architectural detail from the building facades;
-Specimens of rock pieces collected over time to explore the diversity of textures, materialities, colours that change in different weather conditions and depending on the use of space;
-An exhibition of sculptor’s - stone mason’s craftwork and delicacies, for the stone composition in space, in terms of diverse finishings and structural design solutions;
- Choosing rocks for the project that would not need many hard modifications and, thus, exploring their natural shapes and aesthetical traces from the excavation works, creating sustainable designs with no waste;
- Arranging the area concerning the sun orientation and precipitation, applying this knowledge to choosing site-specific stones by their colour, shape, size, and weight;
- Creating a functional sculpture park, finding the right marriage between structural, aesthetic, and functional properties;
- Igniting pride for the neighbourhood with a unique landmark that contradicts the neglected face of the neighbourhood, highlights its character, and draws more attention to its current issues; forming the identity of the neighbourhood;
- Arranging a spatial configuration that allows intimacy but, at the same time, a closer visual contact with other users of this leisure area, potentially leading to new spontaneous social encounters;
- Invest in the design of newly planted areas with a special focus on increasing biodiversity and adding varieties of edible plants, and, hence, stimulate common care of the place through collective gardening activities.
Fabian’s Living Room has incorporated inclusion and collaboration in multiple ways, as key objectives of the project, but also as a method of the work process:
- The funding of the project arrived from the Vilnius Municipality initiative called “Kuriu Vilniu” (eng. “I create Vilnius”) which in itself focused on creating more diverse artistic approaches to urban commons while supporting citizen-driven participatory processes.
- The public space project aimed to address the needs of the local community that were discussed at various stages of the project.
- The design of a new public space intended to react to the need for collective spaces and now offers a place for meetings centred around sculpture, food cooking culture, and collective garden care.
- The use of co-creative processes lies at the core of the project’s main idea and objectives. Its meaning, value, and design were discussed with locals before drafting the project, during the legal permit phase, and during the construction of the space. The inhabitants were also involved in some building works and got engaged in taking care of the space.
- To reach out to the local community, we organised new cultural activities on site that enabled encounters between different social, cultural, and age groups and gathered active community members into a stronger network. The live music and storytelling performances opened up to learning about foreign and local cultures.
- To set an example of a successful bottom-up initiative that could be reconfigured and reinvented in other parts of the neighbourhood, thus suggesting new empowering ways of being included in the urban design and city planning processes.
Thanks to the Fabian’s Living Room project, citizens will benefit from:
- Reduced urban heat waves in the summer thanks to minimised hard surfaces and added new diverse planting that positively impacts local biodiversity;
- Rejuvenated and enriched common spaces amidst the physically decayed post-soviet sleeping districts. The project sets an example of transforming abandoned land into a new typology of public space for larger gatherings outdoors thus also improving access to more diverse leisure activities;
- Improved health and well-being by using a new outdoor and socialising space;
- A boost in local pride, attachment, and ownership of public spaces while joining the local vibrant community;
- New means to find dialogue with local communities and local authorities.
There was a significant list of participants who followed the creation of Fabian’s Living Room:
- On a European level, we had artistic partners from Belgium, among them the co-creator of the project Bert Jacobs and various performing music artists. This gave the project a wider approach with the perspective of creating alike solutions in other contexts.
- On a regional scale, we collaborated with the municipality of Vilnius which funded the project and supported us in communication and guidance of all legal permits. We have also created ties with the Vilnius University botanical gardens during the creation and realisation of planted gardens, with the perspective to create educational activities on-site in the future.
- The local stakeholders remain the most important for realising the project. These were the Council of Fabijoniskiu micro-district, residents, and local businesses such as crafts brewery “Kuro aparatura”, grill tool set makers “Smoke Dudes”, Art Gallery Weekend organisers - the Lithuanian Association of the Interdisciplinary Artists, and the City Guide’s Guild and organisation “Sostines lobiai” (eng. “Treasures of the Capital”). It helped to strengthen the network between the local authorities, residents, and local businesses.
Over the years of design, negotiation, and construction of Fabian’s Living Room, various disciplines gave ground to the design of the project. Inspired and funded by “Kuriu Vilniu” project ran by the Vilnius municipality that tackled innovation in the urban governance and regeneration of public spaces through artistic initiatives, our project blends the competencies in the public and contemporary art field, urban design, landscape architecture, and a wider field of performative arts. It also tests new participatory processes aimed at empowering local communities to participate in creating their environment.
The project kicked off when a contemporary art curator teamed up with a landscape architect to analyse the issues and potentials of the Fabijoniskes micro-district. With their specialisation in public art, design, and architecture projects and their penchant for experimentation, they have invited an artist to join their team and work together in developing an innovative public art project. After coming up with the initial concept of a new public space, the team has involved a professional stone mason and sculptor, who has extensive experience in working with outdoor artworks. In all the stages of the project development, the representatives of the local associations, unions, and residents of the Fabijoniskes micro-district were involved. This allowed us not only to gain site-specific knowledge, and find ways to discuss but also evoked a new sense of community feeling. The project was supported and guided by the representatives of the local authorities throughout. There was an even wider spectrum of competencies involved in the physical implementation of the project, such as engineering, botany, graphic design, and project and site management. Cultural activities played an important role in reaching out to the public. At the events we organised, we invited professionals from the music field, food culture, art associations, City Guide Guild, and many others.
Fabian’s Living Room promotes nature in cities by approaching underused neglected spaces in the urban environment. The reduction of hard surfaces helps to mitigate the risks of climate change and increase biodiversity.
Our initiative develops new competencies among several stakeholders, for example, forming negotiating and goal-setting competencies among residents. Through our project and interactions with our team, they witnessed and learned how to better express their needs, how to follow the possibilities concerning sustainability actions supported by the municipality, and how to communicate both among themselves and with the local authorities.
Our project also develops new habits by offering a new sculptural outdoor space for local gatherings, thus, reducing the need to use cars and drive to natural resorts to have a picnic in the open space. In this way, it saves the inhabitants’ need for a car, time used for driving, and CO2 emission.
Another stakeholder that our project impacts are the municipality itself. By using an approach of good design and co-creation processes, we are educating the local authorities on how to sustainably use their resources to improve the livelihood of the neglected urban territories. This type of tactical, yet human-centric project in the sleeping districts can, in turn, help with social cohesion, rejuvenation of the public space, and regeneration of the forgotten areas of the cities.
On a larger scale, our project reacts to the urge for collective action in creating sustainable cities. It contributes to the exemplary cases of bottom-up initiatives at the neighbourhood level in post-Soviet sleeping districts that currently lack political and financial investment. At the same time, it does not only tackle the issues of the physical decay of housing and public infrastructure but also the social and cultural polarization so typical for these residential districts.
Fabian’s Living Room in itself could not only be considered as a new typology of public space but also an urban design tool that explores:
- Addressing urban commons in demographically and socially segregated neighbourhoods;
- Offering sustainable design solutions based on long-lasting materials and creating aesthetic value that goes beyond urban furniture design;
- Challenging the paradigm of difficult demographics and social behaviour issues that reduce safety in the urban peripheries;
- Using the design space as a bridge to put locals and municipalities around the same table, encouraging bottom-up initiatives, and mediating the debate on critical household and neighbourhood issues.
The project design was developed around the place-based design principles that focus on considering both the tangible features of the environment as local geography and the elements that are already in place shaping the identity of the neighbourhood as paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, both the processes of co-creation. Observing, documenting, and analysing how the residents move around the area, what activities they perform, and noticing how the different times of the day and season influence their behaviour was key to learning about the place.
With Fabian’s Living Room project we not only aim to create a new landmark place that enriches the aesthetic experience of the environment but also triggers social confluence. So eventually we have chosen a node where many pedestrian paths cross, seeing the potential to, if not physically, then visually link families with young kids to the elderly who appreciate observation and rest, the well established tennis community to teenagers who seek a quiet zone to meet, dog-walkers to families who reside in the nearby buildings, grilling and public picnic enthusiasts with nature-lovers, and alike.
While Fabian’s Living Room is one of the art landmarks from the extensive “Kuriu Vilniu” project initiated by the municipality of Vilnius, it is even more valuable at a smaller scale because it serves as a central community point within a small part of the neighbourhood. The neighbours in proximity and passers-by were also involved in planting and still take care of the garden areas of the project. It remains an open question of how to ensure that local citizens would take ownership of the space not only for the sake of celebrating family festivities and spending their time among friends but also would organise events that include more marginalised social groups or would contribute to the cultural life in the neighbourhood.
We believe that the following elements of our initiative could be replicated and transferred to territories of post-Soviet sleeping districts that are also concerned with the issues of public space quality decay and neglect:
- The methodology for research, planning, and design for creating applied art projects is based on collaboration between diverse professionals (landscape architecture, sculpture, arts…) in conversation with the residents and councils.
- A new typology of public outdoor facilities for meeting around food and fire for those who lack communal spaces.
- The format for social activities that aim at improving artistic knowledge, the culture of debate, building togetherness, and above all - improving tolerance.
- The plethora and specificities of the selection of the communication tools used to communicate with the residents.
- The Do’s and Don’t lessons learned from collaborative processes within densely populated micro-districts with aging populations.
- Introducing sustainable local materials from the region that require local craftsmen’s skills into urban design elements, thus empowering the local culture too.
Although of high importance on the local level, Fabian’s Living Room addresses these global challenges:
- Climate change: we are tackling the issue of urban heat islands by reducing the hard landscapes, improving biodiversity, and offering sustainable energy-light solutions.
- The social conflict: there is a lack of safety in neglected spaces that evoke antisocial behaviours, cultural frictions, and polarizarition between different ethnic groups. Our project harmonises and organises the spaces, making them safe for the community to gather.
- The decay of modernist residential neighbourhoods: while there is no real renovation or upgrade workplan since the completion of the “microrayon” area in the early 90s, besides the urgency to act on the badly-aged infrastructure and there is a lack of knowledge on the ways these districts function, age, how do people live there, we offer a sophisticated knowledge through interaction with residents and the Council - both for the Municipality and the city planners.
- The lack of access to qualitative public spaces: while no specific organisation nor community member or group feels responsible for the well-being of the common spaces in the free-standing urban settlements that lack identity, history, pride, and place (except some gardens next to the buildings at the ground level), we offer a clearly defined and uniquely designed zone for leisure and rest in proximity to residential houses.
