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CHALLENGE
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Description

Nighttime is a time and place for “the one and the many”, for self-determination, for transgression and liberation from rational, social, and economic constraints. Defined in endless ways by artists, writers, film directors, as a “time of social transactions, as a realm of play, as ‘the time of nobody’ which is free for one’s own personal development... Compared to the daytime, the night offers a time for trying to be someone the daytime may not let you be”1 and where “there's danger but also freedom. The sleepless wander about: artists, murderers, gamblers. The taverns, fryshacks, and cafes stay open. Those who make their living at night say hello, get to know each other. People indulge their vices. The light of day accuses, the dark of night absolves. Out come the transformed, men dressed as women, because nature bids them to and no one harasses them. At night no one ask for explanations. Out come the crippled, the blind, the lame, who in the daylight are rejected. It’s a pocket pulled inside out, night in the city… At night the city is a civil space”2.

Most people’s personal experiences include such romantic atmospheres of the city after dark, while in the evolving globalized economy the separation between day and night cycles has become more complex and is increasingly shaped by dynamics that surpass architectural and urban thinking.

In recent decades, nighttime has become more important to daily life, and the transition between day and night has become more ambiguous and varied. According to surveys on the use of time in major cities, we tend to sleep less. Daily life is more fragmented and spills over into the night hours, when progressively more activities are performed, such as personal care, leisure, paid and/unpaid work, and domestic labour. Many social rhythms are disrupted as the boundary between day and night blends them together.

The result is a city after dark with a diverse spectrum of flourishing social and economic activities unfolding from 10pm to 6am. 27% of the United States’, 19% of the UK’s, 18% of China’s and 12% of Canada’s working population operate on some kind of night shift, and producing the emerging territory of the nighttime economy (NTE), an important contributor to each country’s overall GDP. When the attractiveness of the city lies in the complementarity of nocturnal with diurnal life, it culminates in the aspiration to be a “24-hour city,” which characterizes the identities of such places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Bangkok.

Recent NTE practices include the "Manifesto of Night,” proposed by a group of Brazilian artists with private/public stakeholders in the Noite Paulista in 2014, the formation of the multidisciplinary field of “night studies” (Straw, 2016), or the establishment of the Night Time Commission in 2017 by the Mayor of London to promote the city’s night economy. Captured by urban maps and events that promote diverse human uses such as white nights, night markets, night runs, stargazing, night associations, as well as projects that operate in the social sector, such as the transformation of the elevated Minhocão highway in São Paulo, where 78.000 vehicles transit in the daytime, to a public space at night—in a part of the city that does not have many others. Or in Japan where the long-running “yakan chugaku” junior high schools are opened until late to provide education to the victims of postwar poverty, and nowadays used by foreign students to supplement their education.

There is also a long history of architectural explorations of the temporal character of urban uses and their activation at the nighttime. Archigram’s Instant City from 1968 proposed a balloon floating around the UK. The structure proposed a movable city made of projectors, screens, and media events; visual stimulations to reactivate sleepy towns with a spike of metropolitan vivacity, for a limited time. OMA’s iconic diagram of the Yokohama masterplan from 1991 produced a spatiotemporal approach to the city and its 24h aspirations. The maximum exploitation of the existing infrastructure is achieved by a 24h peak of interwoven activities with a minimal spatial definition.

Although the nighttime has greater importance in our daily life, and we remain fascinated with it, it is still frequently absent from architecture, urbanism or planning discussions, most often framed through functional/aesthetic design concepts of lighting and surveillance, or mainly considered for the design of leisure activities. The result is a city where the aspiration to 24h activity contributes to a reductively economic drive; a reshaping of our urban domain by homogenisation, standardisation, and exclusion.

From a social perspective there are many risks. In fact, although the night is recognised for its acceptance of strangers and as a breakout from the dictatorship of reason and social constraints, it also creates mechanisms of social exclusion and spatial injustice, and can exacerbate segregation and intolerance. This is experienced especially by the most fragile part of society: the precarious workers of the NTE and gig economy, the homeless, and minority groups. New research on workers in US cities shows that racial disparities are even more acute during the night (because minorities are more likely to work night shifts). Or in Melbourne where the absence of homeless people from spaces they often appropriated has been mapped during the annual “White Night” festival.

In light of these conditions, this year Charrette will rethink night as a site for projects, with potential for urban exploration and social experimentation. How can new ways of approaching the design of night trigger social changes? How far can we intervene in the existing urban fabric using a time-based strategy?

To respond to this urgency, you will play between freedom and constraints.

The 25th CCA Interuniversity Charrette challenges young designers to identify a generic space, in Montreal or in your own city. You will begin by selecting an existing site that is underused at nighttime and can be activated for social benefit - every city has plenty of spaces that live mainly during the day. The choice of site will be the context and scenario of your project.

In selecting the site, it is important to consider also the following two criteria:

Taking into consideration the existing diurnal character of the site and public space around, you will define a spatiotemporal design (a design that includes both spatial elements and related program of 24h use) that can infill the ordinary urban fabric of your city with new ideas. This will require a deep rethinking of the city’s needs from a programmatic and social perspective.

Your design will propose a complementary spectrum of activity for the nighttime, to sustain constant use over 24 hours. It will become equally important to understand how your project can be install and deinstalled in a flexible way, so that the initial space can return to its normal use during the day.

You should explore the notion of 25h city as a temporal and cyclical space of life. The 25th hour represents on one hand the increase in possibility when day and night are considered equal instead of opposed, on the other a complementary spectrum of activities and design interventions related to social inclusion and acceptance.

You should focus on new strategies for urban coexistence and harmony, new ways of rethinking problems that seem unsolvable, and on design in space and time for social resilience and tolerance. In a world that tends to homogenisation and injustice, your creativity can trigger new opportunities for discovery.

Document should be presented on a single PDF document containing two A2 boards, horizontal format (single file, maximum size 10MB):

Panel 1: Spatiotemporal diagram explaining your project narrative over 24 hours, through visuals and/or text.

Panel 2: Nighttime view illustrating how the project is deployed on the chosen site.

1Liempt IV, Aalst IV, Schwanen T. Introduction: Geographies of the urban night. Urban Studies. 2014;52(3):407–21.

2Luca ED, Moore M. The day before happiness: a novel. Other Press; 2011.



Further Reading

24 City reviewed by Kin Tsui

24 Hour cities: Where urban planners take the night-time economy seriously

2050+, Riders Not Heroes, 2020

American segregation, mapped at day and night

Archigram, The Walking City, Living Pod and the Instant City, about 1970

Borasi G and Zardini M (2008) Actions: What You Can Do With the City. Centre Canadien d’Architecture, SUN.

Branzi A (2006) Weak and diffuse modernity: the world of projects at the beginning of the 21st century. Skira.

CoLaboratório, Manifesto da Noite / Night Manifesto, 2014

Crary J (2014) 24/7: late capitalism and the ends of sleep. Verso.

Fiori 24h

Hulme A (2017) Importing the night market: urban regeneration and the Asian food aesthetic in London. Food, Culture & Society 21(1): 42–54.

(In)visible city revisited

Japan's night schools offer hope of a second chance for many

'Night walks are a great tonic for urban stress': your stories of the nocturnal city

OMA, Yokohama Masterplan, 1991

Schlor J (2016) Nights in the Big City Paris, Berlin, London, 1840-1930. Reaktion Books.

Sukhumvit’s day/night transformations

Taming 'the worm': how the Minhocão is São Paulo's soul

Toyo Ito, Pao: Dwellings For the Tokyo Nomad Woman, 1985 and 1989

Yeo S-J and Heng CK (2013) An (Extra)ordinary Night Out: Urban Informality, Social Sustainability and the Night-time Economy. Urban Studies 51(4): 712–726.

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