We continue to release new videos of reSITE Small Talks Series with new speakers! Ekim Tan, founder, game designer in Amsterdam, and Marcus Westbury, founder of the multi award winning Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia projects, are the new guests of reSITE Exclusive Interview Series this week. reSITE released 'Small Talks' series earlier this month, featuring exclusive interviews with global thought leaders and architects on architecture, culture and cities. 

reSITE hosted a prestigious event in June with the theme of 'Cities in Migration' and hosted dozens of experts and keynote speakers through its diverse conference program as well as a variety of side events for the general public – salon discussions, workshops, a bike ride, and a party. All took place alongside a 2-day international conference.

reSITE, in collaboration with Canal 180, introduces very short interviews packed with inspiration and good vibe and reSITE shares global experts’ network knowledge, ideas and stories with all city lovers and city makers.

Video by Canal 180

Ekim Tan is an urban game designer and founder of Play the City, organization based in Amsterdam and Istanbul that has for mission to introduce gaming in the field of urban planning, city making and architecture design.

In 4-min video, Ekim Tan says that "We want people to interact and learn from each other in a more creative and active way, utilizing collaboration." Play the City is a gaming method we are applying each time to a very specific tailored case. It's a tool that helps out the process running. We always say "imagine Simcity, but a Simcity played with real stakeholders and real urban challenges.

At reSITE 2016 in Prague, Ekim Tan and her team organized the biggest Play the City ever for hundreds of participants, around migration challenge for cities.

Born in Istanbul, Ekim Tan relocated to the Netherlands after having worked and studied in the United States, Syria and Egypt. She got a doctoral degree at the Delft University of Technology, titled “Negotiation and Design for the Self-organizing City: Gaming as a Method for Urban Design”. In 2008, she founded Play the City, an Amsterdam and Istanbul based city consultancy firm that helps governments and market parties effectively collaborate with stakeholders. Her City Gaming method has been applied in projects worldwide, among others, in Istanbul, Amsterdam, Tirana, Cape Town and Brussels. She regularly lectures and gives trainings about cities and games at the Technical University of Delft, Aleppo University for Arts and Sciences, Rotterdam Architecture Academy, Amsterdam Architecture Academy, Copenhagen Business School, and Middle East Technical University.

Video by Canal 180

Marcus Westbury is the founder of Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia that focus on city revitalisation through short and medium term creative use of spaces that are currently vacant, disused, or awaiting redevelopment.

Renew Newcastle aims to find artists, cultural projects and community groups to use and maintain these buildings until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped.

"My hometown, Newcastle, had about 150 to 200 empty buildings in the two main streets. Newcastle, a city of 280.000 people, used to be a steel making center. When the steel works closed, they lost 20.000 jobs.
More than 250 projects were launched over the last 8 years by Renew Newcastle and we helped 60 or 70 viable businesses and around 150 buildings."

"We tend to think that cities are made by top down approach - people with lots of money and capital, big scale development, and we have forgotten that we, citizens, collectively, can make great changes, can make places and our cities."

Marcus's background is as an urbanist, writer, media maker and festival director. He manages multiple arts events, community projects and social enterprises across Australia. He is the author of the crowd funded Amazon best selling book “Creating Cities” (Niche Press, 2015) and has been the writer and presenter of the ABC Australia TV series “Bespoke” and “Not Quite Art”. In 2016 Marcus became the inaugural CEO of the social enterprise Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd that is leading the development of the Collingwood Arts Precinct in Melbourne. Marcus advises government and businesses and speaks and writes extensively nationally and internationally about creativity, culture and place.

Top image courtesy of reSITE

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