Christiaan Weiler is the found-ing architect of Cab42 Archi-tecture: Strategy andDesign in 1997 in Rotter-dam, The Netherlands. Hehas worked on different pro-jects in architecture and

urbanism, public or private,new or renovation, exterior or

interior. In 2003 he moved to Parisand he re-created his office in 2009 when

moving to Bordeaux. The leading motives of his work are tech-nical and programmatic innovation for sustainability require-ments, preferably with low-tech bioclimatic energy solutions. Hehas developed personal convictions and methods, through designresearch and teaching, in institutes such as the Delft Universityof Technology, various european architecture schools during afour year research project on coastal development, and l’EcoleNational Supérieur d’Architecture de Bordeaux. Two grantsform the Dutch Foundation for the Arts, Design and Archi-tecture were the starting point for a research focus on mobili-ty and communication and their influence on the rationaleof sustainability in architecture and planning. Central tohis point of view are ‘sustainability’, ‘adaptability’ and‘identity’, and their value within a systemic perpective onarchitecture and planning. Since 2013 he is an activemember of the ‘Darwiniens’ Association of Enterprises inthe Darwin-Ecosystem, and specifically of the Commiteeof Territorial Co-operation.

P R E F A C E

HIS ARTICLE IS AN ATTEMPT TO ASSESS THE

potential of hybrid third places and therecent phenomenon of coworking clus-ters, as agents of societal resiliencethrough spatial and geographical con-

textualisation. At least four centuries of historyhave brought us to the critical moment inwhich we find ourselves today. The workings ofthat cultural evolution must be questioned inorder to bend its trajectory towards an ecologi-cally and economically stable future. As an archi-tect I am a generalist and a designer, orchestrat-ing motives to underpin a desired result. Thisdesign thinking1, a prospective and iterative cycleof questioning and answering, has found it’s wayto management, and for a good reason – it’s pro-active and open ended.

O U T O F C O N T R O L

C H R I S T C H U R C H 2 0 0 1

I rediscovered the subject of urban regenera-tion thanks to a podcast called The Urbanistand their article on civil urban initiatives inChristchurch after the earthquakes of 2010 and2011. In the rubble of the disaster, many peopleset up activities, often on a voluntary basis, totry to get the public moral back up. I wasstruck by the combination of disaster and hope– the 200 year old city center was shattered, yetthe urban initiatives were a rare display of peo-ple with a hands-on attitude for giving shape totheir lives. Some very innovative activities cameout of these civil initiatives, such as Gapfiller2 – acultural broker for temporarily vacant sites.When we compare the off-spin of this natural cat-astrophe to that of the global economical crisis, itcame to my mind that maybe such a sudden shockwas to be preferred over the slow-motion explosionof our faltering society. The collective challenge ofpost disaster reconstruction flattens out traditionalhierarchies and cuts through administrative inertia.

A R C H I T E C T U R E I S N O T V I A B L E ,U R B A N I S M I S N O T E F F E C T I V E

History shows a long process of progress, but at thismoment, when so many fundamental principles areshowing signs of fatigue, we should look for a commonmechanism at the root of it. We must try to under-stand the symptoms, and look for the causes. It is supposed that in 2050 66% of the world populationwill live in urban areas3. Special attention is required tosecure good living conditions for these new citizens.However, architecture is in a tight spot, and as a publicdiscipline, the industry is currently lying in ruins4. SinceGehry’s Bilbao intervention, star-architects have slowlygained in fame, but lost touch with their end-users. Theother 99% has ever less influence in construction. In TheNetherlands, 60% of the profession has disappeared sincethe 2007 financial crisis5. The french government workson a legal reforms that should stimulate economic pro-ductivity, and as part of the package they intendend tosimplify regulations. For example, farmers will beallowed to erect hangars up to 800m2 without consult-ing an architect. It seems that architectural services

C H R I S T I A A N W E I L E R

T H E R E T U R N O F R E A L S P A C ECO-AUTHORING SPACE PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

T

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are considered to be an expensive barrier for econom-ic development. Just when cities most need it, archi-tecture is on its knees, out of breath.Urban planning is a complicated affair. It is the spatialplanning scale that has no boundaries. However, it is lim-ited by administrative borders. Adjacent communitiesthat don’t have a coher-ent territorial policy,will see investment takeplace where they didn’tforesee it. As a resulturban sprawl is every-where, and it is rarelythe result of intentionalplanning. People willfind the loopholes inthe rules and use themto their profit. There isan impressive exampleof such a spontaneousinvestment, where nowyou can find theKowloon Walled City6

park in Hong Kong. Inan overlap of jurisdic-tion a pass-the-mon-key-attitude of gover-nance resulted in ablock of improvisedhabitats. The monolithwas connected to elec-tricity, there was sewage,and the mail was dis-tributed. It was fullyfunctional, but a clearrisk to public health.

C H A N G E

C H A N G E S I T S E L F

An urban project that does thorough analysis ofa project brief and an existing situation, shouldbe able to conceive, quantify and plan construc-tion. But even with a thoughtful master-plan,the time-scale is often out of phase with demog-raphy. The planning of 700.000m2 office spaceand 8.000 dwellings at Amsterdam Zuid-as inthe beginning of 20007, was based on a detailedprognoses. But ten years later many buildingsneed to be refitted from office to housing. InModderfontein, a district of Johannesburg, USD70M will be invested for 12Mm2 of constructionbetween 2015 and 2030. Will their solution still begood by the time they finish’ When you quantifyan urban question today, you can be pretty surethat the question will have changed by the time

work is done. Traditionally demography, economyand urbanism are closely related, but in these timesof accelerated demographic and economic muta-tions, urbanism just can’t keep up. In Rem Kool-haas’ article The Generic City8, and through hiswork on the city of Lagos9, he shows “Planning

makes no differencewhatsoever.” It isapparent reality in thecity of Detroit wherethe car-industry firstleft the city center,then moved to Asia,with 300.000 peopleleaving the city as aconsequence10. It isapparent reality inSeseña Spain, where13.500 dwellings wereplanned, 5.000 werebuilt and only 2.500are inhabited11.

O U T O F C O N T R O L

As was suggested inKevin Kelly’s bookwith the same name ,it’s Out of Control12.Similar manifestationsto those described inthe context of urban-ism, can be seen inother parts of society.Joris Luyendijk13, ainvestigative journal-ist, exposed a bankingculture cut off fromthe real world, where

accountability was no longer a factor. A famous quotesays that bank financing is like “[…] playing Russianroulette with someone else’s head”. The algorithmicautomation of banking makes that “[…] the behavior ofthe market undergoes a fundamental and abrupt transi-tion to another world [...] It’s out of control, it’s goingplaces we never intended or imagined. A United Nationsofficial draws up a brief for us: “We must embrace sus-tainability and tackle […] global warming, risinginequalities, social unrest and violence and a fragment-ing world order, with low trust in governments andbusiness […]”14. And all that time we were so confi-dent that we had the right solutions. We adopted theurbanist ideals of CIAM’s Athens Charter15 in 1943. Webuilt the projects16 to clear out the slums in the Sev-enties. They’re stages of a slow-motion explosion. It’s

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FIGURE 1 ~ Interior street, Kowloon, 1990.G. Godard - Architonic.com.

too slow to show, so we’re not waking up the waythey did in Christchurch.

T H E S C O P E O F T H E P R O B L E M

How can it be that we repeatedly presume to have theright solution, but never get what we expect ’ Howironic to be the victim of the complexity of our ownmaking. What’s happening outside our focus ’ In 1982 the company Autodesk released the first desk-top-computer compatible version of Autocad. Thiscomputer aided design tool made it possible to havedynamic contents on a hard drive, and print only whatwas necessary at a given moment. This drawing noveltychanged drawing ateliers in cad-modeling studios.Modifications were easy. We can see in contemporaryarchitecture a increase in creativity, starting with theCAD-revolution. Herzog and De Meuron’s exhibitionand catalog Natural History17 in 2002, is a beautifulshowcase. Since the mutations in plans were so easy,changing the brief was supposedly easy too. The toolhad a collateral effect that was not anticipated, at leastnot by the draftsmen. An example in mobility engineering shows a similarintention-vs.-impact-discrepancy. Everyday millionsof people are stuck in traffic jams. How many pro-ductive hours could be added to a local economy ifthere were no traffic jams’ The solution of addinglanes should alleviate the problem. But widerhighways allow for people to live further fromtheir destination, at lesser cost, without changingtheir daily two hours traffic jam. Their level ofcomfort is increased, at home, but the trafficproblem is not solved.It’s remarkable that so much effort has beenmade, with true shared conviction, to improveour life conditions, and find ourselves ultimate-ly confronted with the limits of our capacities.Could there be a cultural attractor18 that canexplain this recurrent insufficiency?

A S H O R T H I S T O R Y O F C U L T U R A L

E V O L U T I O N

It is interesting to consider european history,and see an evolution outside the supposedobjectives. Copernicus, da Vinci and Galilei,among others, liberated public opinion frompower structures through science. Their pursuitof reason was continued by Bacon, Spinoza,Voltaire, and Newton, et al. Their theorieshelped to write the Declaration of Independencefor the United States (1776), and to overthrow therule of Louis XVI in France (1789). Meanwhile theycolonized vast overseas territories.

E X P E R I M E N T A L E N G I N E E R I N G

Many theories were tested by experimentation, andmany techniques were developed to obtain observ-able proof. Scientific endeavor was a great client ofexperimental engineering. The steam enginebecame economically feasible only in the 18thcentury, after years of experiments. It unleashedthe beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Withthe power of steam engines, industrial processeslike milling were no longer dependent of topo-graphical elements such as rivers.

T E C H N O L O G I C A L I N N O V A T I O N S

In the beginning of the 20th century distilledpetrol for internal combustion engines, acceler-ated the commercial production of personalvehicles. Automobiles gave people the freedomto move about comfortably. The commercialsuccess of cars preceded the innovation of mass-production, as developed in the productionplant of the Ford automobile company in 1914.Two world wars accelerated the optimization ofproduction techniques, and spread them acrossthe western world. Later, stuck in transit, peoplewere said to be losing touch with a sense of place19.

M A N A G E M E N T A N D D E S I G N

When Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) took ascientific look at production techniques, the evolu-tion changed spheres – process optimization was theobjective. Economy, once territorial and then onlymaterial became immaterial – economical manage-ment saw the light. The separation of tasks was thekey to the success: management and design were sepa-rated from production. It has been suggested that Tay-lorist management was a determining factor for theUnited States to win the second world war for Europe.

I N D U S T R Y , P E O P L E A N D T H E A R T S

In the world of the arts other revolutions were takingplace. The living conditions of citizens were improvedby the transformation of Paris by Georges-EugèneHaussmann (1853-1870). The celebrated aesthetic resultwas mostly obtained by improving sanitary and securi-ty conditions. Children who were born in dark andunhealthy apartments, became adults in a city withrunning water, electricity and wide avenues with cars.In the same period the modern arts developed rapidly,freeing artistic expression from academic rules. PietMondriaan’s evolution of his Apple Tree works, showshow the arts were looking for ‘liberation’ – abstrac-tion – maximum effect with minimal gesture. Wesee works that pursue light, clarity, simplicity, andarchitecture develops towards similar goals. The

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comparison between the Mondriaan’s Apple Treeand Van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion is striking.Mondriaan had contacts with dutch industrialsand urbanists such as Kees van Eesteren20. Whenafter the war society and cities had to be recon-structed, all the elements for a convincing pro-ject were available. Modern housing architec-ture picked up Frederick Taylor’s separation oftasks, and organized it in spatial compositionsof avant-garde arts. It was studied anddeployed at an urban scale, with the Mod-ernist promise of personal hygiene and com-fort for everyone. It was very efficient.

G L O B A L V A L U E C H A I N

In this prosperous society economical growthcame to the agenda of economical manage-ment. Michael Porter (1947-), drew up ascheme called The Value Chain21 in 1985. In thisscheme means and ends are organized to con-stitute a business unit. Now everybody couldunderstand the separated tasks of business. Itwas the blueprint for outsourcing business com-ponents to low-wage countries, to optimizeprocesses, and to increase profits. But the dis-tance to the outsourced business-units requiredremote control.

R E A L - T I M E

Modern history saw many varieties of communicationtechniques, such as morse code, radio transmission,telephone, facsimile, and television. Telephone contactover long distances was common in 1985. But transmit-ting complex processes was difficult. Computing tech-nology was the essential accelerator of global industrialmanagement. This technology became a commercialsuccess with the personal computer of IBM in 1981. Whencomputing and telecommunication crossed paths, anadditional service broke through: the internet and email.With a telephone connection and software, intensetelecommunication was affordable. In 15 years timeonline communication took over practically all tele-com-municated information22. Real-time was the new reality –the economy was no longer limited by spatial constraints.The new global economy meant more markets, moresales, more production, more industry, more income,more consumption, more traffic, but also more resourcedepletion, more pollution.

A S P A C E L E S S C O M M O N S P H E R E

With internet, much of the physical preconditionsof economy and urbanity have been dematerialized.We share and trade in a spaceless common sphere.The effect of internet on architecture was a regular

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FIGURE 2 ~ Corner of Michigan and Griswold, Detroit, circa 1920. Author unknown.

subjects of debate in the Ninties. Today the effectseems to be limited to photo journalistic homoge-nization of popular design style. But the internet isthe ultimate tool of economic deterritorialization.Much of the economy is now independent fromspace and geography.

R E A L S P A C E

The previous paragraphs are an attempt to describe asystemic cultural evolution and the forces and markersthat bent history in its known curves. Understandingthe interactions should help find the necessary initia-tives to bend the current course away from dystopia.We’ve learned systemic and transversal thinking. Weacknowledge that intention and impact do not alwaysalign. We’ve gained a deeper understanding of plan-ning. Will it grant us control of the situation to solvethe problems? It could also be the contrary. We’ve stud-ied the hydrologic cycle since 3.000 years. Nonetheless,we still can’t forecast the weather with reasonable pre-cision beyond 5 days. Would we have sufficient insightnow to presume to know how to shape a betterfuture? Could understanding meteorology help?Several years ago at the beginning of the crisis, Iwondered what would be the natural equivalent ofcredit. Money is basically a means to simplify theexchange of things. These things are essentiallyfood, shelter and affection, and tools to get them.Money is energy, business is metabolism. So then,credit means to have more energy to spend, thanis actually available in the body. There’s an analo-gy with high level athletes, who perform biologi-cal tasks of the highest efficiency. The limit oftheir performance is the lactate threshold, whenmore waste (i.e., lactic acid) accumulates in theblood stream than can be evacuated. Athletestrain their skills and their organism. They canimprove their technique and their breathing,loose weight, gain strength, heighten theirfatigue-resistance, or do EPO as we saw inrecent scandals. A sprinter can give everythingand then rest, a endurance runner needs tomaster his metabolism over a longer period.But what do we do if we never stop running?Could this analogy help to understand wherecredit is taking us?

T H R E E P R I N C I P L E S

At the basis of the coming argument lie threeprinciples: Dawkins’ idea of ‘memes’ explainingcultural evolution – Dennett’s varieties of Dar-winian ‘fitness’, indicating that elaborate naturalselection is a collective process, and McCann’s (etla.) work on biodiversity group resilience.

C U L T U R A L P H E N O M E N O N

Richard Dawkins23, an English evolutionary biolo-gist, argues that the extended phenotype impactsof a gene can change the environment. With theEurasian and the North American beaver asexample, we see two genetic varieties with varia-tion in their extended phenotype, i.e. theirdams and lodges. This allows to understandhow genetic evolution is not limited to thegenetic code of the body, but also interacts andmodifies the biotope24. In his book The SelfishGene he introduces the term ‘meme’ as thebehavioral equivalent of ‘gene’. It is a unit ofculture which is ‘hosted’ in the minds of indi-viduals, and which can reproduce itself. Whena meme is well adapted to its technotope25 thecorresponding concept proliferates. The princi-ple of memes lets us apply natural selection tocultural phenomenon. An internet video-clip isgood example – when people like it, it can goviral. You can trace paths of cultural replicationin the form of a genealogy. Darwin’s Tree of Lifeand etymology and sports shoe design can all beunderstood in geneaology. Is this tree-of-X-charta true visualization of how things evolve? It seemsfair to say that there is a striking similarity to nat-ural and cultural evolution.

D A R W I N I A N C R E A T U R E S

When we accept natural selection as a frame forunderstanding cultural evolution, it is interesting toknow the differentiation made by Daniel Dennett,in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea26. He introduces5 types of creatures that have an evolved capacity togenerate-and-test for their survival. The first is theDarwinian creature who simply passes or fails the test,and is a ‘victim’ of natural selection. Skinnerian crea-tures improve their chances with memorized training.Popperian creatures can for pre-evaluate multi-scenariooptions. Gregorian creatures can question their ownpre-evaluation hypothesis. Finally, scientific creaturescan communicate their questioning and create an exte-rior environment for co-authoring their hypotheses –it’s a collective risk assessment.

H I S T O R Y C O N T R A D I C T S I T

Let’s take the principle of natural scientific* fitness (sien-tific according to Dennett’s definition) and test it on cul-tural evolution. Collective risk assessment improves thesustainability of the individual and the group. If naturalselection can manage itself towards sustainability, thancultural selection should manage itself towards sustain-ability. Unfortunately, history contradicts it. As long aspeople have similar risk assessment capacities, andthey are collectively confronted to comparable risks,

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it can work. But when the group is made up of a mixof all 5 types of creatures, and they share their riskassessment in varied situations, where does that lead?Those who master the scientific* perspective have adominant advantage of mastering the process - somewin, some loose.

D I V E R S I T Y – S T A B I L I T Y

The Diversity-Stability principle can explain commu-nity resilience. Kevin Shear McCann27 et al., explorehow diversity improves resilience in an ecosystem,through food-web inter-dependencies. A food-web isthe complex variety of a food-chain. They argue thatthe stability of an ecosystem increases with the diversityof it’s members, because a multitude of weak food-linksdelivers more food alternatives. Similarly risks, such asdisease, are better absorbed by many different species28.Few strong species links are more fragile. The biotopeis a fundamental factor as it is the geographically fixedfood supplier of a given ecosystem

A T I G H T N E T W O R K

If we shortly go back to the comparison where econ-omy = money exchange = energy exchange = metab-olism, and we recall the short history of culturalevolution, we can come to the following observa-tion :1 ~ Natural ecosystems gain resilience, when acommunity of species includes more varieties,that are all adapted to their habitat, and that con-stitute a tight network of food inter-dependencyand risk distribution. 2 ~ Cultural systems have developed a globaleconomy, with only a few strong economiclinks organized in specialized tasks, homogeniz-ing economies according to their optimal con-ditions, concentrating profit and reducing riskfor a specific group. The two evolutions are heading in oppositedirections. According to the analogy betweennatural evolution and cultural resilience, ourcultural system is on the wrong track. We canfind suggestions of how to pursue culturalresilience:3 ~ Cultural systems can gain resilience, whenthe members are diversified, when all areadapted to their habitat, and they constitute atight network of business exchange and risk dis-tribution.

S O C I A L E C O N O M Y

Let us go back to bending cultural history towardsthe UN’s task list.

At the height of globalization, internet allows foraugmented remote control, and is an unmissabletool for the global economy. But outside ourfocus, something else emerged. The internetdeveloped a social function. When Facebookopened it’s pages to the world in 2004, it climbedfrom an impressive 1 million users initially, to 1billion in 10 years. To put the numbers intocontext, it comes down to 1.4 % of 1 billionpeople’s waking time, in a single identifiableconnected space, not being geographical. It’san opportunity for people to check if they’recrazy, or if there is maybe someone, some-where, who shares the same crazy ideas as theydo. The reactions from online communities toyour input, give a social feedback. It feeds theHierarchy of Needs29 – online feedback canimprove your self esteem and status. This senseof belonging was once attached to a spatialcommunity, but is now produced by a timelineon a computer screen.

O N E - M A N B U S I N E S S U N I T

The economic crisis has left many people with-out a job, but not without internet access. Maybethey don’t belong to a productive community, butthey do belong to a value community. The inter-net has become an important sphere of promiseand opportunity, in a social sense but also in aneconomic sense. People make a living as freelancersor small enterprises. They are developing new mar-kets using the possibilities of online working :accounting, consulting, design, software develop-ment. A business unit consists of some basic elementsthat can be delivered by one individual: Humanresource (you); Technology (laptop, software, tele-phone and internet); Procurement (shopping); Infra-structure (accountant). Many start-ups start up inkitchens and garages, inspired by heroic stories of SteveJobs and Mark Zuckerberg. The business process iscropped into a one-man-unit equipped with the neces-sary network tools. With the dot-com collapse in 2000internet entrepreneurs lost their innocence. Now, 15years later, the opportunities are still there, and theexamples are impressive.

S T A R T U P L I F E

Even if the financial numbers of Facebook and Twitterare inspiring, independent business is tough, days arelong – and something’s missing. Real-time doesn’tseem real. Some high profile tech heroes show theirattachment to the ‘real’ world. Zack Klein co-foundedvimeo.com in 2004 when he was 22 years old. A yearlater he sold the company. In march 2009 he startedan image bank called Cabin Porn30, exhibiting 6.000

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remote and primitive habitats – a refuge? There hequotes the 1959 Boy Scout Handbook “There’s noth-ing in the world that can compare to sitting withyour best friends […] watching the flickering flamesand having a wonderful time […]”. In 2011 he found-ed diy.org, a children’s workshop with an online shar-ing platform. Also Steve Jobs showed he had a limit towhat he could accept in online time, when he told TheNew York Times his kids had limited iPad liberties31.

S H A R I N G E C O N O M Y

Trying hard to make a living, every sale counts. Thesharing economy is the (obvious) emergence of wellequipped individuals putting their assets to value.There’s a simple principle that separates service formownership and cashes in on assets idle time “[…] whatyou need is the hole, not the drill […]”32. From car-pooling, to crowd-funding, to neighborhood task-shar-ing, there’s a list of possibilities for sharing assetsonline, and making a profit. On the one hand thesharing economy can be credited for letting people savemoney, time and the planet by sharing a car rather thantraveling individually. On the other hand it can be crit-icized for taking a predators attitude when networkindividuals don’t comply to the same legal conditionsas regular businesses. It’s surprising how it uses onlineubiquity for local tasks, connecting informal localsupply and demand. There is an important humanchallenge for this new economy, which is to enabletrust between the people who use it.

C O W O R K I N G E C O N O M Y

The life-work-balance is a recurrent concern forstart-up entrepreneurs making long days33. Sepa-rating work hours from home hours improvesboth lives. There is another simple logic thatdrives business individuals together, which is toshare a space and save money. With a small col-lective investment a work place can give a senseof pride. When you receive a client or a vc-investor for the first time, you’re not comfort-able at your kitchen table. Whatever the capaci-ty of your business tool, or the potential of yourmarket, ultimately you need contracts, and thatis an affair of trust. A representative space, busywith co-workers, gives an adequate backgroundto business meetings. There’s also the collateraladvantage of having potential business partnersat hand. A successful community that knowshow to communicate it’s value can attract exteri-or partners, as is the case for NUMA34 in Paris,who partnered with Orange for tech innovationprojects. The business model is not based onsquare meters but the user-experience, says Ben-jamin Dyett of The Grind in New York.

E C O N O M I C C O M M U N I T Y

There’s a quote from Dusty Reagan35: “Coworkingis not a space or a noun. It is a verb.” With the per-meable culture of individuals, and without anycompany hierarchies, the direct relations betweenthe members are simplified. Fernando Mendes,co-manager of Coworklisboa works entirely onindividual trust – there are monthly invoices, butno contracts. The relations are stimulatedthrough shared informal services, like thekitchen where relations stabilize and trust canbuild. The financial independence of the mem-bers, and the absence of hierarchy creates aunique working environment. Everybody’s atthe same level of contribution. The amount ofimplication in the collective activities is a clearindicator of community cohesion, says AlexHillmann of Indy Hall in Philadelphia. Every-body is expected to participate, accountability isreinstalled – those who don’t ‘comply’ run therisk of being ‘rejected’, but most often they justgo away. In an inspiring conference, he illustratedthe role of the community manager as a Tumm-ler36. This person cultivates the links and collabo-rations between all the members, without puttinghim or herself in the center of attention.

T H E R E T U R N O F R E A L - S P A C E

There is not a single definition of a coworkingspace. There are sector specific spaces, that haveoptimized common procurement and communica-tion. Multidisciplinary spaces are suboptimal in thatsense, but have a richer business-community. Thescale of the community determines group dynamics –a big group allows for anonymity, and a small group ismore intimate. Inevitably the space articulation is thecontinuous condition for a successful business commu-nity. There are some spatial characteristics of co-work-ing spaces, that usually have a specific mix of severalingredients. The mix determines the amount of privateand public work areas, and by that the amount of pri-vacy at the workplace. The surface is optimized bytime-sharing service spaces. The spaces are usually com-posed of leisure areas, meeting rooms, open work areas,separated work areas, and confined work areas destinedfor special tasks. A good space-layout can stimulateidea-sharing among the entrepreneurs. Leisure areasand auxiliary activities at the work location allow forminds to open up. Of the Cavendish science laborato-ry in Cambridge37, it is said said that “Most membersof the lab met freely in the canteen, which was saidto assist inter-divisional communication and collab-oration.” More Nobel prizes have been attributed tothis institute’s professors than any other laboratory.Common meeting rooms also make for people to

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meet. According to their position in the design andtheir transparence, visual contents can spill into theopen space work area. In an open space plan thework is open source by definition – there’s no placefor confidentiality in open spaces. However, chancemeetings can occur when one individual overhears thequestion of another, and dares to answer. For confi-dential work there are other types of areas. Small com-panies have small separate offices, and confidentialphone calls can be done from closed cubicles. Mixingthese types of areas, without each one being appointedto someone, enables serendipity among the co-working.The scale of the space determines the scale of the group.When the size is right and the community finds stabili-ty, trust can settle among the members, and businesspartnerships can appear. The scale being relatively smallmakes for a lesser investment, a lesser risk, and a betterreversibility38. It is pure and simple architecture, with-out the ostentatious gestures, on the right tone and des-tined to serve its user spatially for his or her job and lifequality. The richness of hybrid programming, so oftenproposed against mono-culture districts, is being re-experienced in many coworking spaces.

T H E C I T Y A S S E C O N D N A T U R E

Hybrid coworking clusters are the technotope for anew business species. They appear to have the fea-tures of a resilient ecosystem: a community of entre-preneurs with many different trades, adapted totheir habitat, in a tight distribution network ofskills, knowledge, ideas and risk. One of the weaklinks is to the building – the rent. The prices arerelatively low, reducing the risk for members tojoin. With less financial pressure the membershave more freedom to pursue their goals. Oppor-tunities can be followed with less risk – there’sno harm in failing. All the places I learned aboutduring the 2014 European Conference, werebuilding conversions. This reduces the initialinvestment, and allows for lower prices. Theadvantages of renovation lie in the usually wellconnected locations, the strong identity of his-torical sites and/or buildings, the low initialcost, the flexible programming, and the highend value39. Also it must be said that renovationsaves significantly on indirect energy costs bysaving twice on demolition, construction andmaterial transport. The hybrid programmingthat is typical of coworking spaces is not entirelynew. There is the example of the cultural centerthe Meerpaal in Dronten, a dutch new-town inthe polders. The center was built in 1967, is stillpart of the city amenities and has undergone sever-al renovations. The program consists of a theatre, acinema, an arts gallery, a library, a shop and a

tourist office. The question of scale of space andeconomy was experimented and studied byChristopher Alexander for the Campus of the Uni-versity of Oregon. The results were later capturedin his book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings,Construction (1977)40.

C I V I L U R B A N I N I T I A T I V E S

Coming back to the situations described in thefirst paragraph, where urban master-plans can’tbe to the point because of the ill-adapted timescale, there are three examples of ‘meanwhileredevelopement’ that I’ve studied first hand.For the european comparative action-researchcalled The Origin of Spaces41, for which I amconducting the research coordination, there arethree of five partners that have done a pro-grammatic conversion of a building that is situ-ated in an area for which an urban master-planis made. For the Portuguese partner, the proper-ty developer Mainside, it is the LX Factory42 inLisbon, that was redeveloped with a hybrid pro-gram of arts, business, retail, and leisure. Whenthey acquired the factory in 2004 they aimed for aglobal redevelopement in the context of urbanmaster-plan for Alcantara. But when the crisis hitPortugal they found an alternative aggregate rede-velopement strategy that makes for one of the mostvibrant parts of contemporary Lisbon. In Bilbao, itis the initiative called Zorrozaure Art Work inProgress (ZAWP43) of the association hACERIA Arteak,that works to facilitate urban culture and space regen-eration. Meanwhile, the peninsula waits for the real-ization of Zaha Hadid’s urban master-plan since 2003.The initiators of the OOS research project are membersof the association Les Darwiniens in the DarwinEcosystem in Bordeaux, France. These military ware-houses were saved from demolition by the ad hoc prop-erty developer Evolution Ltd., and redeveloped as ahybrid culture and business community. The projectprecedes the coming urbanization of Bastide-Niel underdirection of MVRDV urbanists. All three cases are orga-nized around a main activity and have complementaryprograms creating a lively atmosphere and round-the-clock activities. The case of private urban initiative is extensively studiedby Francesca Ferguson in her book ‘Make_Shift City’44.In an Uncube article, she says: “[…] the realities of aus-terity urbanism shed a completely different light upon aspatial design practice […] making do with an alterna-tive culture of self-management, of shared resourcesand of the sweat equity of unpaid, voluntary labour”.User engagement, and acts of reappropriation andempowerment, are signs of people taking initiative tocreate what they need, even when government says

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they can’t do it. The european government howeveracknowledges the need for citizen involvement45, andsays participation “[…] develops a sense of ownership,[…] improves acceptance and implementation, […]helps the development of appropriate behaviors, helpsto ensure long term sustainability by increasing resi-dents’ satisfaction,enables people to findsolutions of their own[…]”.The situation is verysimilar for housingcooperatives. In com-parison to regularhousing projects andtheir current price-quality-ratio, there’s adifferent incentivetowards projectinvolvement. There’san important gapbetween the evolutionof income and the costof housing46. Whenbuyers get organizedthey can undertake aproject themselves andget a better product, ifthey have the neces-sary skills. Inevitablythe cooperative spiritis diluted and appro-priated by regulardevelopers, proposingunfinished productsand calling them ‘cooperative’. But during adebate on housing cooperatives, with a hybridoperation as case-study, it appeared that evenregular developers are wiling to be more innova-tive, if they don’t sell to an anonymous marketbut to identified buyers. In one cooperativeinnovation called De Ceuvel47 in Amsterdamthe innovation is taken so far as to use tempo-rary cultural accommodation as a means todepollute a former harbour brownfield.

R E A L S P A C E – T H I R D P L A C E

When private urban and architectural initiativesare taken, waiting for the announced urbandevelopments that are stalling in the economiccrisis, by (re)developing (unused) property forthe sake of hybrid urban programs with a self-sustaining economical model, it would seem thata certain resilience is being demonstrated. If, aswas suggested before ‘cultural systems can gain

resilience and stability, when a community of indi-viduals is diversified, when all are adapted to theirhabitat, and they constitute a tight network ofbusiness exchange and risk distribution’, thenthese new hybrid third places48 could be a step inthe right direction.

If the UN announcesat Davos, that “Wemust embrace sus-tainability and tackle[…] global warming,rising inequalities,social unrest and vio-lence and a fragment-ing world order, withlow trust in govern-ments and business[…]”, it would seemthat the mentionedinitiatives can adressthese concerns withan intergral approach.In echo of the name‘Real-time’ that wasgiven to the newcommunity condi-tion created by onlinenetworks, I proposethe name ‘Real-space’, as opposed tovirtual space, for thiscertain type of spatialcondition. It servesfor activating oppor-tunities in the exist-

ing urban landscape, for user oriented upcycling pro-jects with financially independent programmes, devel-opped in close collaboration with the end-users. It maynot take over the world, but if it proliferates enough todemonstrate its viability, it might very well change thegame for the better. Spatial planning, be it architecture or urbanism, is thefundamental organizational task that can create theright physical conditions for a community of citizens,entrepreneurs and leaders to share their presence andbuild trust. Managing scales, distances, orientations,directions and proportions of space with care, will getpeople on the good foot.

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