Do-it-yourself city is an experimental educational platform for citizens to develop and implement projects for the development of public spaces. The lab format was designed by the Strelka Institute under the guidance of Orchestra studio partner Ekaterina Goldberg and first implemented in Omsk in 2015. The following year, the laboratory was also launched in Khanty-Mansiysk. In 2019, our studio was fully responsible for its concept and curation. The result of this laboratory season was the creation of a garden on Roznina Street.
Participants of the laboratory were high school students, local teenagers and young professionals. From March to September, curators from St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kazan, Moscow, Yaroslavl and Krasnodar held a series of workshops on cultural journalism, forum theater, public art, urban design, urban storytelling and other topics. In parallel with the workshop classes, the laboratory participants co-design and co-built a community garden project on a derelict area next to residential buildings on Roznina Street.
The concept of the garden is based on the philosophy of the Khanty and Mansi peoples: life in harmony with the nature of the north. The work went in several stages: from the field study of the territory and the first experiments to the co-construction stage and the preparation of a performance for the public opening of the garden.
Garden 61°69° is a place where residents of neighboring houses and other citizens, adults and children, can enjoy the beauty of northern nature and learn to take care of the world around them, communicate and play, come up with joint projects and hold events.
The garden is planted with trees and shrubs typical of Yugra, such as turf and juniper. Signs specially designed for the garden tell some information about each type of plants used in the garden.
Караванная ул., 1, 191011
Санкт-Петербург
31 rue de Varenne 75007,
Paris