Civic City is an institute for critical research in design, founded on the 5 march 2011 in Zürich by Ruedi Baur, Vera Baur and Imke Plinta, following up the institute Design2context which was finally closed after 7 years from the ZHdK in december 2011. Civic City works as an independant association and is assembling a network of professionals of the highest expertise: designers, architects, sociol
ogues, politologues, geographers, urban planners, etc. The network is meant to be a platform of exchange of knowledge of expertise and to elaborate commun solutions. Civic City organises courses as for example the CAS Civic Design at the Haute école d'art et de design – Geneva (HEAD), and is developping researches and projects in different domains connected with the city and works on publications. The city of today is confronted with a lot of problems and there are often no solutions ready or the solutions are not satifying or not really answering on the real problematic of the lack of civism. Violence, xenophobia, vandalism or abuse: all effects of a unsatisfied social together where it is expected that a designer who is working in the neighbourhood can find easily a solution. Civic City is opening the discussion focused on the design of objects not just as isolated object repeated identicly a million of times but focused on the design in the context, "in situ" created by the social reality in the neighbourhood. There are a lot of new problematics emerging - the relation between design and the evolution of a contemporary urban space, in context of its social, ecological and politic aspects. Design to remain modest can animate the discusssion and treat the equal to the equal with those who are planning the city. Measuring the neighbourhood, timeframes, dematerialisation, we are coming up with other questions as the urban planner. And thats the interesting point. Extract interview with Ruedi Baur in "Le Temps" Geneva, july 2011.
