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December 09, 2008
City Eco Lab: view from the balcony - and from the net
An overview of the City Eco Lab site on its second Saturday. It was snowing in St Etienne but the place was packed. (80,000 people came to the biennial two years ago but many more seem to be expected this time).
If you scroll down from this story, there are another 18 posts on specific projects.
Some of Kristi's pix are here, Dori Gislason has put an album here, and Allan Chochinov - Mr Core77 - has blogged the bienniale here. Marcia Caines has now posted an excellent review here at the Cluster website. Brice Pelleschi from exyzt has posted some fab City Eco Lab images at Flickr. And here are some more from Juha Huuskonen and a collection from "your bartender"also at flickr.
Allan Chochinov has also posted a mini-movie. of me explaining the project as a whole. I look like something the dog just sicked up - but it was just after the opening. So be kind, listen to the words and visualize the pre-wrecked person I used to be.
Here below is the installation on urban permaculture by Mathieu Benoit Gonin:
here explaining it to visitors
Below is the urban fish-farming prototype of Hugo Bont and Olivier Peyricot; (I'm not sure the cutest baby in the shed knew the fish were to be eaten):
and here is the "Tools for Exchange" stand inside the Tool Shed created by Bethany Koby and Ellie Thornhill.
The containers describe a wide variety of tools and organisational platforms for cooperation and sharing resources.
The popular ones after a week seem to be community-supported agriculture, energy descent action planning (as used by Transition Towns), local economy trading schemes, alternative trade networks, and land- sharing platforms. Visitors add their own recommendations for tools by writing on the blank lables of other containers.
And in the Explorers Club (above) food producers and citizens discuss ways to enhance the AMAP system of community supported agriculture.
Next to the Explorers Club, in the Map Room (Salle des Cartes), Big Picture proposals from The Why factory are mixed up with maps of ecosystems and biodiversity in the Rhone Alps region.
Posted by John Thackara at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2008
City Eco Lab: productive urban gardens
One of the inspiring discoveries we made in putting City Eco Lab together was l’Ilot d’Amaranthes,a five-year-long project in which St Etienne designer Emanuel Louisgrand, in partnership with Galerie Roger Tator, has created productive gardens on abandoned sites in different parts of Lyon.
Given the range of malfunctioning global systems we have to deal with, attempting to design global replacements top-down simply wont work. Instead, we have to "grow" their replacement from small experiments, or seeds, that have the potential to multiply and be scaled up. Solutions will come through intense and diverse experimentation in doing things in a lighter and more sustainable way.
When I speak about experimentation, I don't mean research in a laboratory, or debate in an academy. I mean experiments in the real world with the participation and co-ownership of citizens. Such experiments, when rooted in reality, generate the feedback and rapid learning that's needed in terms of perpetually iterative design.
L’Ilot d’Amaranthes is a perfect model of the kind of activity that we need to see in every city and town. What shines out from the project is that each intervention is unique to that place and that time. This is a sustainable way of thinking: Understanding what makes each place unique, and then defining tools and infrastructures that can be adapted to it.
Roger Tator Gallery have published a new book about l’Ilot d’Amaranthes and the work of Emanuel Louisgrand. I know this because I contributed a short text and have a copy sitting next to me as I write - but I can't quite find it yet on the Roger Tator site. But do hassle them for a copy - it's beautifully done.
Posted by John Thackara at 07:15 PM | Comments (1)
City Eco Lab: the art of food proximity
"Let's keep food around us" says Debra Solomon of her presentation at City Eco Lab: Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking. It's is a working example of how a community can optimize its food flow using design. "New (food) products are not the answer" says Solomon; "new platforms, new actors, new configurations are".
There are a lot more of Debra's pix here.
Posted by John Thackara at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2008
City Eco Lab: The river runs through us
If perpetual, resource-intensive growth is no longer a viable model for the development of a city-region, what alternatives are available?
In City Eco Lab, we explored the idea that St Etienne's river, le Furan, and the natural systems of the broader region, might be a fruitful basis for re-imagining the city.
It was in this spirit that City Eco Lab's scenographers - Gaelle Gabillet, and Exyzt - put water and earth in the centre of the space. Man-made stuff was arrayed around the edges.
We then ran workshops with a variety of individuals and groups who were involved in different ways with the history and the future of the river. From these encounters emerged a map (below) of projects and opportunities.
In St Etienne, much of the river - Le Furan - was built over and hidden during its years as as an industrial and manufacturing centre of France. But thanks to wonderful research by Justine Ultsch and her colleagues at St Etienne's City Hall, we were able to present many aspects of this hidden history during City Eco Lab.
The image below, for example, is taken from a video, commissioned by the city, of sonic scanning that shows where the river flows right under the city centre.
It will not be practical to re-open all of Le Furan - but certain stretches can be brought back into plain view.
But for les Stefanois, developing the river as a tourist sdestination is less interesting than using it to support new business opportunities.
My own hobby-horse was the idea of using floodable ex-industrial land to grow crocuses (from which high value saffron is extracted) as they do in India.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)
City Eco Lab: St Etienne's Soupe de Ville (City Soup)
Architects are sometimes accused of being more at home in a world of abstraction than in the here-and-now.
Nonsense! A team from St Etienne's architecture school disproved this vile calumny with a wonderful project called Soupe de Ville (City Soup).
Having first done a beautiful job documenting sites around the city where food could potentially be grown....
...the team built a planting bed on formerly-industrial land not far from the biennial site...
When the crop was in, Soupe de Ville staged servings at various points around the city....
...in their custom-made Baravan...
...before makinge a triumphant guest appearance in City Eco Lab
There's piles more material at the Soupe de Ville site.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:25 PM | Comments (1)
City Eco Lab: de-motorisation at different scales
A key principle of City Eco Lab was to focus on live projects and enterprises rather than on good ideas in abstract.
The city's dynamic new courier company, Les Coursiers Verts (The Green Courier Company), took us at our word and relocated their office to the City Eco Lab site for the duration of the event.
A key question posed by a start-up like Les Coursiers Verts concerns scale: could their model absorb more than a tiny proportion of the flows of packages around a modern city?
And what about distance? Bike-base couriers may work in a city centre (even one with seven hills like St Etienne) - but what about longer distance traffic?
Frankly I don't know the answer - but the idea of the show was to pose the question and bring different actors together to address it.
Right next to Les Corsiers Verts, for example, the French postal service, La Poste, presented the prototype of an an electric vehicle that they will deploy nationwide.
La Poste delivers five million packages a day in the city centres of France, and they've committed themselves to do this with zero emissions by 2012.
Now, zero emissions is not the same as zero environmental impact. For example, hybrid electric vehicles contain 60% more copper (thanks to their batteries and electronics) than old-style gas guzzlers. Mining and processing copper is incredibly energy and resource intensive.
Dealing with this wider footprint of delivery services is next on the list. For City Eco Lab, we were happy to start a conversation between The Big and The Small.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: "hybrid reality story scripts" about creative communities
Traditionally, the regeneration of a city has focused on its built fabric; architects and designers propose ways to upgrade or replace the old streets like the one above in St Etienne.
In City Eco Lab, the focus was less on buildings, than on activities that would represent more sustainable ways of organising daily life.
The designer Francois Jegou asked people from St Etienne to imagine their current life using solutions that reduced their impact on the environment and also regenerated the social fabric around them.
The result was a series of 13 "story scripts" that were shown on small screens in City Eco Lab (below).
These visions are "realist and pragmatic", Jegou explains. "They show solutions that already exist in Saint-Étienne - imminent projects here, or solutions that exist elsewhere."
For Jegou, these story scripts form “hybrid realities” that are realistic enough to make us question our own lifestyles, but still sufficiently open-ended for us to be able to adapt them to our own lives.
The resulting series of images are like little photo-novels which together present several solutions and a multi-faceted vision from the citizens' point of view.
Jegou's project at City Eco Lab continues his pioneering work on social innovation and design for sustainability.
Further details are here and here.
And here you can download free Jegou's book “Collaborative Services, social innovation & design for sustainability”
Posted by John Thackara at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: neighbourhood energy dashboard
In the central space of City Eco Lab, a variety of live projects were on show that dealt with energy, water and mobility. Two key questions emerged: What variables make a neighbourhood sustainable, or not? And how do you measure them?
Magalie Restalo, a designer from St Etienne, presented the prototype of an energy and resource flows dashboard that would indicate the impacts of different kinds of interventions: feeding the quartier's citizens more from allotment gardens; increasing the flow of foods through the community-supported agriculture system AMAP; and the use of bicycle based couriers such as Les Coursiers Verts.
The animation is not real-time, but it is based on reasonably hard numbers. The idea is to show citizens of the neighbourhood how much difference each of the possible changes would make.
If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I've been trying to commission dashboards for cities and regions for years now - but until the St Etienne project, they never left the drawingboard. (For Dott 07 in North East England, for example, I commissioned a project called Vital Signs which morphed into an quite different art project to the one I'd anticipated).
So I'm doubly thrilled and impressed that Restalo, who was supported in the project by EDF, has made such an effective prototype. It's an impressive piece of work as you will see from the animated version here.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2008
City Eco Lab: soft tools for sharing
The "Soft" department (above) within the City Eco Lab's Cabane a Outils (Tool Shed) presented a variety of soft tools such as software platforms, new economic models, and design research networks. The aim was to make visitors aware of the existence of such ‘soft’ tools and present a selection so that they would not be overwhelmed by what’s out there.
Designers Ellie Thornhill (above, left) and Bethany Koby (right) used a variety of physical containers to 'contain' the various soft tools. Some of these included:
- Complementary Currencies such as the Lewes Pound.
- Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
- Local Economy Trading System (LETS)
- AMAP (French community-suported agriculture (CSA)
- Spot Scout - the eBay of parking spaces (which we reckoned could also be used for rooms)
- Thing Link "Every thing has a story. We help people to link to it"
- Etsy buy and sell all things hand-made
- Co-ops
- Ecological Footprint Calculator for Schools
- Sustainable Materials Selector
Posted by John Thackara at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: open source hardware
Many of the goods and services we take for granted in our daily lives depend on global flows and networks that seem to be unraveling in today's converging crises.
Are doomed to return to a pre-industrial, pre-technological age?
If Jean-Noël Montagné (above, left - with Juha Huuskonen on the right) is around, tools and technologies will still be available - but not the proprietory, closed-system kinds we have now.
In one of the most remarkable presentations in our Explorers Club at City Eco Lab, Jean-Noël told us about the fast-emerging world of Logiciels libres, matériels libres, ressources libres - loosely translated as "free and open computing, materials and resources".
"We need to re-invent self-reliance" said Jean-Noël. The products, services and infrastructures we depend on need to be durable, and adaptable to different contexts. Their production should be based on recycling, and nurture local economies.
Jean-Noël told us about the bricophone project that is being co-develped by Craslabs and left us with a Directory of do-it-yourself (DIY) technologies and resources.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: Map Room
The focus of City Eco Lab was on live projects from the city-region - but we wanted to place these in the context of the bigger picture.
We therefore invited The Why Factory, from TU Delft in the Netherlands, to present their "Green Dreams" maps in our Salle des Cartes (Maps Room). The project was led by Pirjo Haikola, researcher and lecturer at (T?F).
The map beow, for example, shows livable and unlivable areas n 2100; it's by Pauline Marcombe and Adi Utama.
And the image below shows a proposal for a Hanging Gardens of Barcelona; it's by Magnus Svensson and Nicola Placella.
These maps focused on global and large scale urban view of sustainability. They compared strategies and their impacts on global and urban scale and looked at the big picture numbers. What is the effect of green buildings in an urban scale? How ‘green’ are cities today and how green should they be? Would it be possible to provide electricity for the whole world with renewable sources? What would an urban plan integrating renewable electricity generation be like? Is it possible to grow enough food inside the city boarders for all the inhabitants and how would that transform the city?
The Why Factory is a research group founded by Prof. Winy Maas, MVRDV, Delft School of Design and Delft University of Technology.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: dry loo solutions
Many people ask, "What has design got to do with sustainable development?".
Well, take toilets.
In the South, 40% of the global population lives without toilets. In most places, scarcity of water renders sewer systems impossible, while ad hoc human waste disposal spreads waterborne illnesses that prey upon millions, and cripple developing economies.
In the North, roughly 20% of our already profligate daily water use is to flush toilets with drinking water. City dwellers have simply got to reduce this appalling waste - but how?
Hardened eco-warriors take pride in using hand-made dry toilets like the ones in the caravan below, and it is not hard to obtain worthy but grim solutions.
But rickety utilities like these are not a solution for retrofitting millions of urban homes - especially if squeamish people like me are to be expected to use them.
Sustainable urban waste water management moves away from the disposal-based linear system that most of us know now - flushing - to a recovery-based, closed-loop system that encourages the conservation of water and nutrient resources without compromising public health.
And these new closed-loop systems have to be retrofittable to millions of existing homes.
According to Dena Fam an Australian researcher, "the knowledge and technology already exist for this change to take place. There is a gap, however, between the current availability of innovative technology and the cultural acceptance of waterless toilets".
Fam discovered that it is important to maintain a sense of ‘normality’ for the user in the design of new toilet systems. Only a small minority of citizens will opt for sustainable toilet behaviour because it is the right thing to do.
Part of the problem is a lack of system design that makes it easy to maintain,use and manage new waterless systems optimally. "If waterless toilets are to be accepted by the user" says Fam, "the design must take into consideration not only the technical aspects of the hardware but also the introduction and management of the waterless system in order to fit the prevailing socio-cultural context".
The Dry Flush system (below), now being developed in Australia, takes these cultural issues explicitly into account.
For industrial designer Virginia Gardiner, the key is to exploit the economic potential of waste. She has develped a waterless toilet, the G/CH4 (see below) that creates an urban infrastructure in which people trade their waste for biofuel.
Gardiner explains:"many NGOs are hard at work installing composting eco-toilets for those in need - but a continual challenge is to motivate communities to look after their new toilets. By turning human waste into a high-value commodity, energy, the Gardiner CH4 offers plenty of incentive to sustain itself".
The G/CH4 is a low-cost mechanical toilet that is sold alongside a simple biodigestor unit. In the toilet, a biodegradable lining material transfers and contains excrement in a sealed container which the user empties into the biodigestor, sited at an outdoor location, in exchange for methane gas: free cooking fuel.
"We are now preparing to build the techincal rig including a full-scale biodigestor, and test it in London" says Gardiner. "We are gathering funds for this critical phase of the project. Upon its completion, field tests will begin in Lagos, Nigeria, where we have already conducted extensive market research".
My conclusion, after seeing her prototype in City Eco Lab, is that Gardiner should do some trials in London, now, and not wait to get to Lagos.
The contexts may differ, but the need for closed-loop waste systems is shared by both northern and developing cities.
For example, systems to capture rainwater, that can be retrofitted to existing houses, are taking off in a big way because an architect, Sally Dominguez, designed them to be modular, work well, and be easy to instal:
Someone needs to develop hog loos, pronto.
Posted by John Thackara at 08:45 PM | Comments (1)
December 05, 2008
City Eco Lab book list
IN THE BUBBLE: Le design pour un monde complexe
John Thackara, Revue Azimut, 2008. It's available from 12 December - perfect timing as a gift for all your francophone friends this holiday season....
THE LONG DESCENT
John Michael Greer http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4014
HUNGRY CITY
Caroline Steele.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hungry-City-Food-Shapes-Lives/dp/0701180374
PERMACULTURE: PRINCIPLES AND PATHWAYS BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY
David Holmgren. Holmgren Design Services, Victoria AU:2002.
THE TRANSITION HANDBOOK: FROM OIL DEPENDENCY TO LOCAL RESILIENCE
Rob Hopkins
THE POWER OF COMMUNITY - HOW CUBA SURVIVED PEAK OIL
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
RESOURCE CONFLICTS, SECURITY, AND GLOBAL?JUSTICE. WOLFGANG SACHS.
London Zed Books, 2007. http://www.zedbooks.net/fairfuture
HOPE, HUMAN AND WILD: TRUE STORIES OF LIVING LIGHTLY ON THE EARTH.
Bill McKibben, Milkweed Editions, 2007
STOLEN HARVEST: THE HIJACKING OF THE GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY
Vandana Shiva, South End Press, 2000
THE LOGIC OF SUFFICIENCY
Thomas Princen, MIT Press, 2005
PEGAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED
Paolo Frere, Continuum Publishing, 1993
DEPLETION AND ABUNDANCE: LIFE ON THE NEW HOME FRONT
Sharon Astyk, New Society 2008
REINVENTING COLLAPSE: THE SOVIET EXAMPLE AND AMERICAN PROSPECTS
Dmitri Orlov, New Society, 2008
PEAK EVERYTHING: WAKING UP FOR THE CENTURY OF DECLINES
Heinberg, R, New Society, 2007
IN THE BUBBLE: DESIGNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD
John Thackara, MIT Press, 2005
CONTINUOUS PRODUCTIVE URBAN LANDSCAPES
Andre Viljoen _ Katrin Bohm
SMALL CHANGE
Nabeel Hamdi
CREATIVE COMMUNITIES
ed Anna Meroni, Edizioni Poli.Design, Milan Politecnico
FIRE AND MEMORY: ON ARCHITECTURE AND ENERGY.
Fernandez-Galiano, Luis. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 2000
BIOMIMICRY: INNOVATION INSPIRED BY NATURE
Janine M. Benyus, William Morrow and Company, New York.
SUSTAINABLE FASHION AND TEXTILES
Kate Fletcher, London, Earthscan, 2008
NATURAL CAPITALISM: CREATING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Paul Hawken
WORLDCHANGING: A USER'S GUIDE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Alex Steffen
LIVING IN THE CRACKS - A LOOK AT RURAL SOCIAL ENTERPRISES IN BRITAIN AND THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Johanisova, N, FEASTA and Green Books, 2005
COAL: A HUMAN HISTORY
Barbara Freese, Arrow, London, 2003
SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM
Italo Calvino, Vintage, London, 1996
SUBURBAN TRANSFORMATIONS
Paul Lukes, http://www.suburban-transformations.com/
THE NO NONSENSE GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Maggie Black, Oxford, 2007, New Internationalist
THE HAND
Frank R Wilson, New York, Vintage, 1999
LOCALISATION: A GLOBAL MANIFESTO
Earthscan Books, London
FAIR FUTURE RESOURCE CONFLICTS, SECURITY, AND GLOBAL JUSTICE
Edited by Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius
A GEOGRAPHY OF TIME: THE TEMPORAL MISADVENTURES OF A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST.
Levine, Robert. New York: Basic Books. 1997
LIQUID GOLD: THE LORE AND LOGIC OF USING URINE TO GROW PLANTS
Carol Steinfeld
The Design Biennial St Etienne Catalogue includes my 2,688 word introduction. The whole book is in French and English.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: thing-design to-do list
City Eco Lab asked: What would life in a sustainable St Etienne be like? and, in which ways can design help us get from here, to there?
The discovery, mapping and documentation of a territory’s natural, cultural, human resources is a key element in building resilience.
Designers and artists can be especially good at spotting assets in the territory - such as abandoned buildings, disused sites, or vernacular tools - that other people might not consider interesting.
Designers also have the expertise to visualise solutions that do not yet exist; this important activity creates a common objective that people can work towards.
Traditional communication design skills are always invaluable to people organising projects.
Thing design, too, remains important even in the “less stuff, more people” world we're creating now. Designers can improve the quality of experience, and equipment used, in all manner of resource-efficient services.
Interaction and experience designers can improve ‘touch points’ in everything from websites, to shared buildings.
And yes, some designers will ignore clients, contexts and users completely - and create sublime solutions out of thin air.
Putting it all on a ready-to-design plate, here are a few of the most pressing needs that emerged from City Eco lab:
- Biodiversity maps (of eco systems and natural resources)
- Energy and resource-use dashboards
- Rainwater capture and storage systems
- Natural filters and phytoremediation installations
- Waste and composting equipment
- Dry toilets
- Garden planting & planning tools
- Tool sheds
- Urban trellises
- Urban cold frames, greenhouses
- Raised planting beds
- Seed storage and labelling tools
- Shading structures
- Platforms for alternative trade networks
- Carts and baskets for de-motorised distribution services
- Labeling and product information systems
- Websites
- Food drying racks
- Mobile kitchens
- Benches and tables for communcal eating area
- Solar cookers
- Washrooms and lockers for communal gardens
- Neighbourhood-scale composting services and equipment.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: Les Stefanois and Sugoroku: only connect
The Sugoroku project, designed by Catherine Beaugrand for the Saint Etienne Biennial, took a fresh look at ways media games might connect people with neglected assets of a city - physical, social, biological.
In recent times, media artists have expored numerous ways to transform the use and experience of public space. The concepts of near and far have been redefined, and private life now emerges in communal areas. Events such as flashmobs combine partying, play, sociability, community and political activism.
Sugoroku combined play, and tool-making, with purpose: help people discover people and places that they would not otherwise connect with.
The name sugoroku comes from a Japanese board game. It's like snakes and ladders combined with a role-playing game. It combines elements of travel, Kabuki theatre and everyday life.
Sugoroku was very popular during the Edo period - seen now, in retrospect, as a byword of sustainable living.
In the original Sugoroku, players followed a route on the road leading from Tokyo to Kyot. On this road, 51 way stations marked renowned viewpoints, culinary specialities, craft products, and assorted rituals encountered along the way.
The e-sugoroku project in St Etienne combined walking in the city, geolocation systems, mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Players chose routes which they located on a board superimposed over a real map. This annotated overlay stimulated players with lavish commentaries on the places they visited. These were not always specifically identified places, but could be found accessed using clues.
The aim of the game was to collect virtual objects located in real places which could be found using flash tags and GPS co-ordinates. Text messages were sent to the players’ mobile telephones telling them where to find the objects.
These objects were then collected and gathered together on a website, where each person managed his or her own collection. To collect a complete set, players had to trade objects with each other. Winning meant gathering the most complete sets.
The search for virtual objects scattered around public space brought players into contact with Saint Étienne's underground network of mine galleries and various sites associated with the city's legacy of industrial and craft-based production of all kinds of objects: weapons with blades, firearms, cycles, sewing machines, mechanical parts, hardware and glassware items, luxury ribbons, etc.
There's lots more here at the Sugoroku website.
And if you mke it to Saint Etiene, be sure to have lunch the Cafe des Sports: it was our works canteen during City Eco Lab and serves steak frites to die for.
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Posted by John Thackara at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
City Eco Lab: Velo Wala
A personal treat for me at City Eco Lab was the VeloWala installation that's being put together for us specially by Quicksand and friends in India.
Across the hall the Velowala presentation about bicycle-enabled commerce in India was as fabulous as I knew it would be.
Avinash (below) and his colleagues are building a rich media archive that pieces together the ecosystem of bicycle-based commerce in India.
In City Eco Lab you hear the sounds of the various traders as well as see photographs of them.
All-in-all, there's been plenty already to make me think - and lots more to make me smile. (I do this stuff for myself, of course).
Posted by John Thackara at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2008
City Eco Lab: Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung
What's the poihnt of City Eco Lab? To understand why I believe these modest experiences to be important, take a look at today's The Automatic Earth; it reviews once again the ways that economy, energy and environment crises are converging. The jolly editors of The Automatic Earth, who describe these times as "Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung", rightly criticise politicians' use of words like "probable recession" or "slow down." Pretending that these are temporary problems disables people from preparing for the liklihood that they will be permanent.
Posted by John Thackara at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2008
From mega, to micro: What You Can Do With the City
The atmosphere at last week's Megacities conference in Delft was subdued. I don't suppose my own talk, which ploughed a similar path to the Debt, Diesel and Dämmerung narrative I mentioned yesterday, helped lighten the mood very much.
Spirits were low because it is becoming clear that mega solutions of any kind - whether or not they are desirable - will be extremely hard to sell, let alone launch, for the forseeable future. Given that our host venue, TU Delft, is Europe's degree zero for mega-solutions, glum faces were to be expected.
So it was especially cheering when, the next day, Martien de Vletter (its Dutch co-publisher) gave me the brand new catalogue of an inspiring exhibition has just opened at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Actions: What You Can Do With the City.
The show features 99 actions that have the potential to trigger positive change in contemporary cities. The seemingly common activities, that feature walking, playing, recycling, and gardening, show the potential influence personal involvement can have in shaping the city - and challenge fellow residents to participate.
The project website includes projects by a diverse group of "human motors of change". They include architects, engineers, university professors, students, children, pastors, artists, skateboarders, cyclists, root eaters, pedestrians, municipal employees.
The 99 actions touch on the production of food, and possibilities of urban agriculture; the creation of public spaces to strengthen community interactions; recycling of abandoned buildings for new purposes; the use of the urban fabric as a terrain for play such as soccer, climbing, skateboarding, or parkour; alternate uses of roads for walking, or of rail lines as park space.
Actions is curated by Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, with Lev Bratishenko, Meredith Carruthers, Daria Der Kaloustian, and Peter Sealy. The catalogue, which I warmly commend, contains case studies and short texts on most of the featured interventions.
Posted by John Thackara at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
