Voting opens today on the proposals for the ReRail Riga competition, organised by the creative competition platform Tandeems and the artistic research network Baltic Lines, which proposes alternative uses for the Rail Baltica infrastructure in Riga. This is just one of the initiatives carried out by Tandeems, which invites people to express their creativity and share their ideas to build a better environment around them. One of the founders of the platform, architect Kārlis Jaunromāns, shares how to keep track of urban development.
«Google Street View not only lets you travel around the world, it also lets you travel back in time. The first images available in Latvia date back to 2011, and new VR photos are added every year. Street View lets you explore how new places are created, how materials age, how the function and appearance of buildings and places change, or how nature takes over forgotten corners of the city and graffiti covers the walls.
I also use Google Earth satellite imagery, where you can use the same feature to see, for example, how pedestrians in Riga redefine the paths of parks in winter, or how cities in the Middle East are built in a matter of months.»
Kārlis Jaunromāns is an architect whose practice focuses on sustainable thinking and creativity. He has studied at the University of Dundee in Scotland and the University of Oslo in Norway. Kārlis has been actively involved in the development of Freeriga’s projects Lastādija and Viskaļi and has co-authored the pop-up square City Pocket, as well as the interior of the Riga circular economy space Sadarbnīca.
In 2022, together with programmer Kaspars Eglītis, Kārlis founded the creative competition platform Tandeems, which organises digital events and competitions dedicated to urban environment, design, recycling, art, and innovation. The platform aims to cultivate a transparent, digital, and competitive design process, meaningfully involving creative professionals and enthusiasts, different user groups, the wider public, and experts.
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