The probable site, where, on May 24 1738, John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed. This experience of grace was the beginning of Methodism.

Tom Holert in Civic City Cahier 3

'A certain kind of critique and struggle can be waged from within'. The usual rebuttal of design (and urban design in particular) to accusations of being either merely the department of cultural production that turns useful things into desired commodities or a top-down masterplanning imposition of value-making schemes also tends to freeze the critique in predictable anti-capitalist stances without seeking ways of negotiating differing, deviating visions of urban and cultural production pursued within the practice itself.

extract by Jesko Frezer in Civic City Cahier 1

So what would it mean to not design? Could it be a task for designers not to design? Could it be design itself? There are many ways to say no, and even a 'no' could be a problematic 'yes'. Swiss design and urban theorist Lucius Burckhardt shows this complexity when he describes design as Invisible. By naming the hidden and invisible dimension of design - its institutional and organisational components beyond the objects and surfaces, in which the designer constantly participates - he points to the affirma­tive character of not designing. 'By dividing the world according to objects, and letting the invisible play a role as a boundary condition, the world is being designed, too: Not changing the institutions, while the world of technical objects develops at the same time, is indeed also a way of designing.' Burckhardt points more to the (limitations of the) brief - to the things and structures that are meant to design - than to the client or the consumer. To radically rethink the brief - how the design task is named, struc­tured and limited - is another important field of critical design practices. If we consider design as a socially rele­vant practice, the brief itself is also designed, and therefore has to be rejected or redesigned.

Stories from my street #7. Visitor rubbish

The first residents’ association meeting of my new estate was like live theatre in the round. The topic to raise the greatest passions concerned a small open space, which happens to be outside my flat. There is a lawn with trees and a long concrete bench along a public walkway through the estate. Sunny weather over the last few days attracted lunchtime office workers and a few picnicking sunbathers on the weekend. I felt the delights of spring sunshine enter the estate through the presence of these people, even while I may have been indoors. The small lawn in the courtyard is not a particularly well known or obvious place to go in the area, which has saved it from being overly crowded on these sunny days.

The meeting was attended by housing officers from the council. As people responsible for the management and maintenance of housing estates, there were demands to address the issue of rubbish associated with the good weather visitors. The bins appeared not to be able to handle the amount of the rubbish produced by visitors. Rubbish was strewn across the area.

Connecting the City (published BD 11/02/2011)

Last week, London played host to two lectures by one of the recent pioneers of critically engaged urban practice. The first took place at the Architectural Association, where Damon Rich crafted an intellectual and searching narrative drawing on the work of the Centre for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), which he founded some 10 years ago, and his current role as urban design officer in the City of Newark, New Jersey.

Rich traced the work of CUP with young people and community groups exploring and understanding the processes of urban change. Effortlessly swerving between historical episodes of racial politics and community campaigns in the states, and 1970s art movements of institutional critique including artists such as Hans Haacke, he focused on recent exhibitions and programmes on the role of finance on the built environment.