18. Working With a Street

Imagine building a life size (1:1 scale) model of your urban design right there on the street to communicate and test your design ideas with local communities. This is exactly what Evelina Ozola and her Fine Young Urbanists colleague Toms Kokins did in Latvia with the tools of tactical urbanism. Evelina wants architects, urbanists and designers to be more proactive in their practice, and to engage more directly with issues concerning the spatial environment and communities in cities. "We should stand up for what we regard as valuable and vulnerable. To do this effectively, we must develop a broader skillset that includes inventive ways of communicating with governments, developers and organisations, and the general public." Evelina Ozola Evelina has been rethinking her relationships to radical urban theory through her practice. In this episode, we talk to Evelina about a Fine Young Urbanists tactical urbanism project called Mierīgi! — a project that explores the use of a life-size mock-up as a tool for testing urban design and discussing it with the public. Guest Evelina Ozola is a practicing architect and urban designer from Riga, Latvia. She has completed architecture studies at Riga Technical University and holds a master’s degree in urbanism from TU Delft in the Netherlands. She has worked at “MADE arhitekti” in Riga and “SVESMI” in Rotterdam, and is co–founder of Fine Young Urbanists, a practice that mainly operates in the field of tactical urbanism. Next to design work, Evelina frequently contributes to online and printed press on issues concerning the built environment. In 2013, she founded FOLD, an online magazine for creative industries in Latvia. Evelina’s academic work includes working as a lecturer, design studio tutor and leading workshops at RISEBA Faculty of Architecture and Design in Latvia, Umeå School of Architecture and KTF Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Since 2012, she has served as Programme Director of Riga Technical University International Summer School in Latvia. Evelina is part of the curatorial team of Together and Apart, the Latvian Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.