72 Hour Urban Action is the world’s first real-time architecture festival. It is also a political experiment, a kind of bureaucratic hack aiming to transform the city through grassroots and hands-on urbanism. Founded in 2010 at the Bat Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, 72HUA editions have taken place in Bat Yam, Stuttgart, Terni, Roskilde, Witten, Istanbul, Birżebbuġa, and Jena. The bilingual ARCH+ special edition Die Gefühletaktik | The Love Tactic reflects on past 72HUA projects and explores its central themes. The German-language half also includes a detailed examination of the festival’s most recent iteration in Jena. Meanwhile, the English part of the book expands the discourse on critical spatial practice with thematic contributions by Liza Fior, Fabienne Hoelzel, Elke Krasny, Oli Mould, and Sumayya Vally.
The past decade of 72HUA has been witness to citizen movements around the world rising up against cultures of subordination, division, and exploitation. Against this backdrop, this publication also serves as a handbook illuminating concepts and practices of playful, collaborative, and participatory design of public space.
