How could the paradigm shift towards enactive embodied cognitive science have implications for society and politics? Translating insights form enactive embodied cognitive science into ways of dealing with real-life issues is an important challenge. This paper focuses of the urgent societal issue of social cohesion, which is crucial in our increasingly segregated and polarized Western societies. We use Rietveld’s philosophical Skilled Intentionality Framework and work by the multidisciplinary studio RAAAF to extend Lambros Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory to the social domain. (...) How could a landscape of social affordances generate change in the behavioral patterns of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds? RAAAF is currently imagining and planning an ambitious intervention in the public domain that could really change existing socio-cultural practices and aims to contribute to social cohesion. An animation film it made introduces a landscape of social affordances. We will present and discuss this Trusted Strangers animation film, which is a thinking model for new public domain all over the world. Tha animation film visualizes how a well-designed landscape of social affordances could invite all sorts of interactions between people from different socio-cultural backgrounds. (shrink)

This paper illustrates how affordance-based design can contribute to solutions for the grand challenges that society faces. The design methodology of ‘strategic interventions’ is explained.

RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances] is an interdisciplinary studio that operates at the crossroads of visual art, experimental architecture and philosophy. RAAAF makes location- and context-specific artworks, an approach that derives from the respective backgrounds of the founding partners: Prix de Rome laureate Ronald Rietveld and Socrates Professor in Philosophy Erik Rietveld.

Given the contemporary complexity of cities, landscape and society, urgent social tasks call for an integral, multidisciplinary approach. Rietveld Landscape’s strategic interventions focus and use the forces of existing developments and processes. This design method creates new opportunities for landscape, architecture, the public domain, ecology, recreation and economic activity.

For the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, curator Rietveld Landscape has been invited by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) to make a statement about the potential of landscape architecture to contribute to resolving the complex challenges that our society faces today. These challenges call for innovation; for a culture centred on design skills and cooperation between scientists and creative pioneers. The installation ‘Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas’ calls upon the Dutch government to make use of the enormous potential of inspiring, (...) unoccupied buildings from the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries for innovation within the creative knowledge economy. Images of the installation can be found here: www.rietveldlandscape.nl/en/projects/439. (shrink)