The Urban Laboratory of Surabaya. The Kampung Experience

Every year, the world’s population is becoming increasingly urban, growing by 65 million people annually, which also causes certain problems. Cities have thus become the ideal testing ground for new solutions that enable the city to rise to these challenges. New ideas, new spatial concepts and unusual lifestyles are implemented in a transitional way and are integrated ‘in vivo’ for observation purposes in organised urban life.

What can we learn from this? Is it possible to distil a list of ‘best practices’? Can an innovation in an urban environment be easily exported and implemented more generally? These are the questions that europalia.indonesia will attempt to answer, based on the case of Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, in which nearly two-thirds of the population live in informal settlement (kampungs).

With:

Tri Rismaharini, mayor of Surabaya

Kenta Kishi, Architect / Professor (Urban Studies) at Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts, Akita University of Art, Japan

Johan Silas, Professor at Laboratory of Housing and Settlement, Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology, Surabaya

Kristiaan Borret, Chief architect of Brussels Region

Moderators: Jean-Philippe De Visscher & Thierry Kandjee

Curator: Mohammad Cahyo Novianto
Co-curator: Ayos Purwoaji