FLOLO

LAGI Competition 2012: NYC Powered by Art

2012-01-19T23:29:00.002+01:00

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is hosting its's bi-annual design competition again in 2012 calling for a landscape art piece deeply embedded in it's genius lokus, which is stimulating people's imagination and is able to produce renewable energy.
The site for the 2012 LAGI competition is Freshkills Park at Staten Island, NYC which offers an amazing site for inspirational design ideas as the competition website describes:
"The expansiveness of the design site at Freshkills Park presents the opportunity to power the equivalent of thousands of homes with the artwork. The stunning beauty of the reclaimed landscape and the dramatic backdrop of the Manhattan skyline will provide an opportune setting from which to be inspired, and it offers the perfect environment for a showcase example of the immense potential of aesthetically interesting renewable energy installations for sustainable urban planning."

To support networked and international design teams LAGI also hosts a social networking site, the town square, which connects individuals and teams of designers, scientists, consultants etc to form teams competing in the 2012 LAGI competition.

So all factors, wonderful site, exciting brief as well as supportive work environment are set to produce interesting proposals for the 2012 LAGI competition. The jury, also staffed with prominent designers like Bjarke Ingels or James Corner will for sure have a great time choosing the best proposals. I am curious to see how entries differ this time from the results of the 2010 LAGI competition which was located in a very different site, Dubai UAE.

Pissed-Off Christmas Tree

2012-01-17T23:53:00.001+01:00

This year's wastemas investigation has been rather limited but I nevertheless kept my selective perception for discarded Christmas trees. This one was a nice observation reflecting the often brutal fate of Christmas trees after they have enriched our homey celebrations.
It is interesting to see that others are also concerned with discarded Christmas trees, such as Brooklyn based artist Michael Neff with his installation of hanging orphaned Christmas trees under the BQE.

@ Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-29T07:18:00.004+01:00

"Though the pirates are extinct, all of our international trade balancing and money ratings, as well as all economic accounting, in both the capitalistic and communistic countries, hold strictly to the rules, value systems, terminology, and concepts established by those Great Pirates. Powerful though many successors to the Great Pirates’ fragmented dominions may be, no one government, religion, or enterprise now holds the world’s physical or metaphysical initiatives."
R. Buckminster Fuller 'Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth' (1969) chapter 3. Comprehensively Commanded Automation (online at: Buckminster Fuller Institute)

Aquaponics Finland

2011-10-01T20:11:00.001+01:00

Just found a beautiful presentation on the web about an aquaponics project in Helsinki, Finland.

Aquaponics@low2no camp

View more presentations from Demos Helsinki

'Rasen am Ring' in Vienna

2011-09-27T01:29:00.000+01:00

This year's 'Rasen am Ring' in Vienna took place for the fifth time and was an impressive demonstration of how civil society, represented by 15 non-governmental organizations and associations, is able to transform public space in a wonderful and inspiring way. (I am using the word 'wonderful' on purpose to describe this transformation, as the degree of wonder on bypasser's faces was really extraordinary in the moment you observed them being confronted with what happened on the ring road!).
The platform 'autofreie Stadt' (car-free city) managed to find together and develop the momentum to push through this official 'demonstration' (yes, it is legally a demonstration!) of how a city could look like if cars would be taken less seriously. This year there has been also a little politics-media-police frenzy as police firstly didnt permit the demonstration at a desired location but then after some back and forth allowed it again at the location where 'Rasen am Ring' happened the previous years. I guess after this year's success it is time to see it as an annual event simply pushing it through again and again.

I was curious about how Vienna's ring road can transform from a street into a 'Rasen' (lawn) so I visited the event on the earlier side to witness the 'implementation phase'. By the way for the non-German-speaking readers: the German phrase 'Rasen am Ring' has a nice double meaning, as the German homophone 'Rasen' doesn't simply mean 'lawn' but also 'to speed'.So 'Rasen am Ring' can be read as 'Lawn on the ring road', but as well as 'Speeding on the ring road', which, of course, is a nice hint to what is usually happening in this space.
A day like this brings back ideas such as closing down car traffic on Vienna's ring road for cars and developing a huge boulevard in the city, a thought maybe as impossible to imagine as it was - previous to 1974 - hard to imagine to shut down traffic on Vienna's Kärtner Strasse, which is nowadays a prime pedestrian shopping street.
Anyway. Arriving early at 'Rasen am Ring' was wonderful as one could observe various reps of civil society organizations putting this thing together. They were helped by a bunch of school kids who obviously extremely enjoyed getting themselves muddy by carrying heavy rolls of lawn turf into location, unrolling it in teamwork and then stroking the greens into position.

After the volunteers had successfully laid out the greens, the soft organic layer, which was responsibly separated from the asphalt by a layer of plastics, was quickly taken over by a nicely diverse mix of people. One great observation was people passing by the event inside of the tramway which still passed the crowd left and right. Some of them just simply didnt believe their eyes, some gave a thumbs-up and some simply laughed.

During the day the event developed nicely and attracted a multitude of people.Also the Viennese version of ape man paid a visit with his grapevine rod (thank you for this man!) and a pluralistic society could be imagined by observing the soli-bar a few meters in front of the MOET-champagne-bar.

Next to a serious lobby for walking in urban environments there has been a strong presence of bicycle-related initiatives of Vienna. Below you see how a (for sure red) bike-box could look like in Vienna. The bicycle workshop of WUK was present showing how a mobile workshop could look like and some of the crazy bikes of Radlsalon provoked people to become

'Rasen am Ring' simply is an event which puts life into a city and creates situations of thinking about alternative scenarios and use of (public) space. In this sense I wish for it again and again and for more such initiatives in Vienna and in many cities across the globe!

'[un]restricted access' competition coming up

2011-09-13T16:43:00.005+01:00

There is an interesting competition coming up which is hosted by Architecture for Humanity and which deals with a topic promising a very interesting complexity of the design challenge and anticipated beautiful narratives.

The competition [un]restricted access will be focusing on decommissioned military sites to be re-imagined, re-developed and re-purposed by the means of design and community guidance. There is only little information online at this point, but I suggest to the humanitarian-oriented designer to stay up to date via the website of Architecture for Humanity and await the announcement of the competition brief in October.

Meanwhile some quote from the preliminary competition brief at ONA:
" Few places on earth are void of defense infrastructure. Military bases have been identified in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide. Even Antarctica is home to at least three military installations. Built in the service of public protection, when these spaces become inactive and no longer serve their intended use, how can they be re-enlisted for civilian purposes?
This year marks a milestone: In the United States alone more than 235 military sites are scheduled for closure or realignment. The U.S. military is under orders to downsize 5% of its entire infrastructure on or before September 15, 2011 in accordance with the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) ruling. The ruling will force the relocation of more than 125,000 military personnel and their families.
Base closures have a huge adverse affect on the surrounding community. In addition to complex environmental remediation, civilians must address the consequences of unemployment and disinvestment. According to the final report submitted to the President of the United States, BRAC estimates that 12 million square feet of leased space will be vacated resulting in the loss of an estimated 18,000 civilian jobs in this round of closures alone. Interestingly, many of these same sites are for sale.
Decommissioned military sites have tremendous potential if impediments to access can be overcome. This open, international competition will invite designers to identify an inactive military installation in or near their community and develop a design concept and plan for it’s remediation and re-use. "

I am curious about the proceedings of the competition and about which sites will be put forward and their associated design challenges and approaches. In a broader context this competition is a small but inspiring step of how a post-militarized society could be organized. One first question coming up to a designer's mind nowadays is: Who pays for the cleanup in such cases? And: Who is interested to invest in former military sites?
The competition will also bring some opportunity for designers to engage in some serious brownfield romantics during their site visits. Here some images of military brownfield sites as an appetizer.

Taichikawa air force base, Japan. Image source and copyright: Michael John Grist.

Decommissioned air force base in Fuchu, Japan. Image source and copyright: Michael John Grist.

Decommissioned TITAN 1 missile silo in Denver, Colorado. Landscape view with unimaginable amount of hidden underground space. Image source and copyright: Steven Duncan @ undercity

Decommissioned TITAN 1 missile silo in Denver, Colorado. Antennae room with purposeless(?!) infrastructure. Image source and copyright: Steven Duncan @ undercity

But not all sites may be as decomposed as the ones above. Lets suppose that the US military would have to decomission places such as Fort Bliss, TX or Fort Hood - entire cities in themselves - because of (lets imagine) changes in US expenditure. What to do in such a case with: the site, the people and their livelihoods, attached secondary industries?

Residential barracks at Fort Bliss, Texas. Image source and copyright: Nash inc.

Freshly built airstrip with attached infrastructure, North Fort Hood, TX. Image source: blackanthem copyright: Spc. Carl Havlik, 166th Aviation Brigade, Division West, Public Affairs.

One last question remains. If there are so many sites decommissioned and investments for military spending not being cut in any considerable way: Where do the military sites go then? This is worth thinking about when it comes to environmental and social impacts of construction of military bases, but will not be a topic of the '[un]restricted access' competition.

SLUM Lab Magazine: 'Last Round Ecology'

2011-09-05T01:31:00.004+01:00

This week I met with Denise Hoffman Brandt and Alfredo Brillembourg to discuss concepts of ecology in design as well as necessity, relevance and content of the first issue of the newly published 'SLUM Lab magazine'.

Designers may become boxer-like fit to sustain their word-changing agendas.

Initially I contacted Alfredo Brillembourg because of the work he is doing under the umbrella of 'Urban Think Tank' (UTT) which he founded in 1993 and now runs with Hubert Klumpner as co-director. UTT seeks to "deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists"[source]. The praxis which UTT exercises may be described in a nutshell as 'socially oriented architecture' [source] where architects (designers) function as agents of change to create catalytic interventions in urban areas (which are often underprivileged) across the globe making it possible that people can 'create a greater sense of responsibility to a stronger community'.[source]

One UTT project which exemplifies their catalytic approach and which has been widely recognized is the Metro Cable in Caracas which functions as transportation infrastructure which integrates community-relevant functions, thereby solving the problem that the city's underprivileged communities at the hilly fringe of the city have less access to the public transportation network.

Urban Thin Tank - Metro Cable, Caracas. [image courtesy of UTT]

For our meeting in NYC Alfredo Brillembourg teamed up with Denise Hoffmann-Brandt, with whom he collaborates for editing the SLUM Lab magazine. Hoffmann-Brandt works in 'ecological urban landscape design' and directs the graduate landscape architecture program at the City College New York, Spitzer School of Architecture. As a fellow at the Van-Alen Institute, Hoffman-Brandt investigated the potential of urban carbon sinks for New York City in the project CITY-SINK.

So our group entered a productive conversation which was boosted by loud music and some coffee at Cafe Habana in the East Village. The following statements are marked according to the initials of Denise Hoffmann-Brandt (DHB), Alfredo Brillembourg (AB) and Florian Lorenz (FL).

ECOLOGY

FL: "I actually wanted to ask you guys how you employ the concept of ecology as ‘ecology’ is nowadays a very ubiquitous term. What does it mean for you when you use it? Because some people use it merely as a filler or as a beautification remark."

DHB: "It has become a very generic term, like sustainability. And in that sense it has lost its significant meaning which has to do with the system of relationships that sustain an organism with its environment. And so, if you think about ecological design, what you are really talking about is how you design systems of relationships which are active and time based, and that’s different from designing things. It’s a completely different approach to the process."

AB: "And you have to remember that the systems you are designing for are human beings."

DHB: "The organisms you are designing for tend to be weighted towards human beings. But the system is what you would call urbanism. But I actually see it as a bigger system and that’s why I talk about biosphere, because I think that we need to start to understand design not just as human centric. Maybe it’s time we get past all of that and start to see that we can’t sustain even human-social relationships if we don’t design for other species and design for the network. Ultimately we need to be designing within the biosphere system, not for one of its organisms."

SOCIAL ECOLOGY

FL: "That brings me actually to the next question. I am more and more interested in the concept of a social ecology. Because for me the social ecology is what is basically creating the artifacts we are living in and this whole anthroposphere we are related to. So I would suppose that a social ecology is a term you find useful."

AB: "All of the species we are talking about, all of them have a kind of social ecology, ants, bees, animals, all kinds, human beings. I guess what I would be more interested to tell you is how that all fits in with our world. Which is, where, what part of the forest is more fertile with organism? Do you know what part of the forest that is? It’s not deep in the forest, it’s on the edge."

DHB: "You are talking about the ecotone where you have a zone of transition between different ecological communities which stimulates diversity. Think of a forest as a macro system: living soils interrelated with growing and decomposing biomass; these are complex systems and conceptualizing social ecology fits into that idea of complexity. Social ecologies affect urban-ecological systems, as well as biosphere-ecological systems. Environmental relationships in ecosystems are impacted by social, cultural and particularly economic phenomena. So the question is: Are we designing to sustain human beings as a species or are we designing to sustain an economic system which we interpret as being necessary to support us, but which is actually undermining a lot of the other relationships that we require to persist?"

FRACTAL SIMPLICITY IN DESIGN

AB: "And about design I would want to say that it is actually those complex systems [which] should be tackled in very simple ways. In other words, design should be simple within that complexity. So, the simple and the complex. So it is Murray Gell-Mann, a Santa Fe researcher, [who] talked about the simple and the complex. So there is simplicity in that complexity. Or, a repeated element."

FL: "Like a fractal simplicity?"

AB: "A fractal, that’s right. So all you have to do to design well, I think, is to really understand the parameters of the issue."

DHB: "I call it 'finding the design logic' and, 'establishing the real criteria for design', which embraces complex conditions, but which actually has to come back to being fairly straight-forward criteria for performance."

AB: "And once you understand that criteria, the project comes out naturally. It’s a tweaking of that criteria. So the real project - that’s why research has become such an important thing – [is]; if you attack the design project from a research-analysis base intensely."

DHB: "That’s the only way you can establish criteria."

AB: "So it’s not a form-based, but it’s a process-based [approach]."

In conversation at Café Habana: Alfredo Brillembourg, Denise Hofmann-Brandt and Florian Lorenz. An open conversation implies that the interviewer can become the interviewed and vice-versa.

After this exchange about (ecological) design theory, we focused the conversation about the first issue of the 'Slumlab Magazine' which Denise Hoffman-Brandt and Alfredo Brillembourg are editing together with Herbert Klumpner.

SLUMLAB MAGAZINE

FL: "So what is your SLUM Lab magazine about?"

AB: "Our SLUM Lab magazine - edited together with Denise and Hubert, my partner - is a magazine that we call ‘Last Round Ecology”. Last round because we are coming to the end, to the end of a cycle in which, if we do not start to change the mindset of how we think about the natural systems, and how design fits into those cycles, we are going to be in real trouble. As we can already see from the change in climate, form the droughts, from the pollution, from the devastation, from the infrastructural failures, etc."

DHB: "So the issue brings together people who’ve developed projects or whose design position takes a sort of confrontational approach to design in terms of ecological systems, whether its social ecologies, as you were talking about, or environmental systems. And we wanted to bring together a lot of projects that all were framed within this kind of systemic discourse. And we also - in seeing it as an ecological system in itself - wanted to build relationships, so the issue crosses institutional boundaries. People from ETH Zurich, City College, Columbia and other institutions and then we also cross disciplinary boundaries between urban design, architecture and landscape architecture. But in general the idea is: interpreting the social and environmental moment right now as sort of last round effort to start to design for future environmental systems and cities, then: How would you start to frame that design process? And that’s what the issue of SLUM Lab is about."

RELEVANT DESIGN FOR THE ANTHROPOSCENE

AB: "And if you don’t start to think about the planet as a whole, as pone urbanized planet, were really in a problem. You can’t look at it in sectorized, specialized, individualized parcels. You must start to think about the relationships between things. And in fact that’s why university is failing. It is failing to really teach anything useful to students because they are either learning very specialized programs, or Maya, or a design current, or a design fad."

DHB: "Even, just learning tactics for design without actually developing a kind of strategic base that would enable them to use these tactics in a meaningful way."

FROM TACTICS TO STRATEGY

AB: "So, more long term strategy! Tactics - short term - gets you by. You can get a job with a good talent in Maya, or a good program talent, but you need to understand what you are doing here. So the basic question is: Do departments at universities of architecture really understand the more long term reason why they are educating? And, where their research should go? So I ask you a question: Probably one of the most relevant new - in the last 20 years, post war - interesting ecological developments has been Curitiba, by Jaime Lerner as architect major, governor. As a city, Curitiba. What he did with waste, with transport, with water, is fantastic. And now, let me ask you a question: So many universities publishing so many books a year, so many intellectuals of architecture. We have more space in magazines, but we don’t really know what we are doing. Because there is not one book out there that tells you the story about Curitiba. So why is that?"

FL: "I guess because of the, how do you say, that unwillingness of systems to change. The friction they have against change."

BEYOND STAR DESIGNERS AND CAPITAL MARKETS

AB: "Well, we are just promoting star designers. We can’t get away from it. We are selling our star designers to get students, foreign students, to come to our universities."

DHB: "Well if we didn’t have star designers you wouldn’t have architecture that was capable of participating in capital markets."

AB: "Actually, I don’t want them to participate in capital markets anymore. Because the truth is, can you imagine? [T]hey’ve recognized that they can build more shopping malls in China. And the shopping malls are not going to the major cities anymore like Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. They’re going to all the villages that are between 500 000 and a million inhabitants. So they see a potential for 30, 40, 50 villages to receive shopping malls now. That’s scary. So who’s behind the real change of urban form? Capital markets!"

DHB: "Capital markets. And so, architecture, design, landscape, urbanism - people who care about urbanism - must participate in capital markets. But they have to find a mechanism that will change the discourse of that participation from being subservient and supporting the market to actually taking control of what the market’s mission is. To remind society that that the market was devised as a structural apparatus to sustain society and culture, not to take it over, not to have society and culture put in position to sustain it."

FREE, INTELLECTUAL REVELATION

AB: "So with the Tahrir, the Arab spring, the Arab spring phenomena, very important for us, for the discourse is the change of mindset. Because people now have recognized that there is a power structure of [...] small groups of people in each field; architecture, banking, philosophy, they control basically the discourse and in that way the course of the way the world moves, right. That’s the one percent. And the general mass, the 99 percent, really have now say."

FL: "So how do you counteract this? It’s also a publishing problem. How do you change the discourse? What’s your approach with the slumlab magazine in this sense?"

DHB: "It’s free"

AB: "Exactly, it’s free, like the internet. It does require you to do much to create a real impact, right? So quit magazines, newspapers. Community, NGO, community design organizations can do a lot."

PRODUCTIVE DISCOURSE

DHB: "But let’s also face it. It has a lot to do with creating a kind of social milieu that is explosive and and grows and that’s where a magazine or something like that [comes in]. We need to rely on hype as much as the bankers need to rely on hype. And the question is: How to manage the process so that what stays foregrounded is a discourse where we are not going to always agree. You and I don’t agree on everything! But that we are continually talking and raising issues it needs to be dealt with. It’s not about coming from a kind of modernist position of rejecting the past, or whether we disagree with the current late capital system or not, it’s about figuring out how we can move forward with what we’ve got in a meaningful way. And part of that is actually being of the moment and creating a meaningful milieu of discourse."

AB: "We don’t have to create too much. We are actually preaching to the choir. The whole new generation is out there, is already in tune to it. They are already completely uninterested in the Zahas and Rem, occasionally, but certainly the Eisenmans, right? So, it’s really out there. It’s no big phenomena, it’s really happening: People want change."

So That sets he stage for the upcoming SLUM Lab magazine and the first issue 'Last Round Ecology'. I am looking forward to read (for free!!) the essays organized around themes such as Critical Mapping, Territorial Ecologies, Informality and Open Source, written by people such as: Lydia Kallipoliti, Catherine Seavitt, Georgeen Theodore, Deborah Gans, Pamela Puchalski, Nina Rappaport, Kenneth Frampton, Anne Guiney and Michael Sorkin and many more.

The question of freedom raised during our conversation brought another echo up in my mind: Who decides who is contributing what to the magazine? So in one sense the SLUM Lab magazine is (still) a classical magazine where there exists an information-bottleneck in the hands of the editors. I suppose in the context of the SLUM Lab magazine this bottleneck can be accepted as the outreach and aims of the magazine appear as very important and geared towards positive change.

There will be a magazine-launch party in New York on September the 16th at Van Alen Institute. RSVP if you want to enter a social milieu which aims at bringing design into a new era of higher environmental and social relevance.

Urban Agriculture at the Brookly Grange Rooftop Farm

2011-08-20T18:07:00.000+01:00

Metrostudio Associates Shenzhen

2011-08-07T23:16:00.004+01:00

While staying in Shenzhen, China I had the chance to visit the office of Metrostudio Associates, a design studio engaged with architecture, urban design, landscape, interior and industrial design. Initially founded in Salerno, Italy, the firm has opened a branch in Shenzhen in late 2009.

Landscaped detail next to the entrance of the Metrostudio office.

During my visit I was talking to Metrostudio principal Antonio Inglese about the firm's design process, philosophy, expansion into the Chinese market and current projects in China. Inglese describes Metrostudio as "a collective of ideas between European, specifically Italian designers, and Chinese designers, the number is not important, as everybody can come into the office, have a look, share a thought, give a sketch, take a drink, have a laugh...whatever. In fact my main goal [...] was to create an open office; it would have been nice to set it up outside into a plaza, having meeting with clients on a bench under a tree, but due to weather reasons, I had to give a roof to this design plaza."

The Metrostudio portfolio in bar code style on the office walls.

Salerno Sport and Landscape Park, Salerno, Italy. Metrostudio with Auböck&Karasz. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Toledo River Park, Toledo, Spain. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Wuhan University Campus Plan,Wuhan, China. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

For Metrostudio the design process in reciprocal exchange with Chinese clients is very different to their routine in Europe. In Europe the studio is mainly concerned with urban design, landscape design, landscape master plans but as well interiors and restoration; while their Chinese projects are mostly of larger scale, dealing with landscape master plans, urban design and large scale strategic planning. While Inglese notices a European contemporary design process which is engaged with developing ideas by removal and destruction, the Chinese context often makes it necessary for the designer to add programs and functions into the projects. Interestingly, Chinese clients appear as very keen on understanding the process of the designer and therefore demand sketches and a thorough research-based design presentation. Case studies is what counts in China to be able to underline design ideas and successfully communicate them to clients.

Layered ideas and design evolution drawn by hand on tracing paper.

Impressive watercolor images are produced in-house at Metrostudio.

The history of Metrostudio Shenzhen began when Inglese cooperated in 2006 with the Shenzhen design studio L+A on an urban design competition for the 'Baoan Central District Waterfront Park'. The design came in first and the client insisted on building the proposal which won the competition. This made it necessary for Inglese to spend more time in Shenzhen working on the further design of the project which is now executed in phase I and II.

Baoan Central District Waterfront Park. Metrostudio and L+A. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Subsequently Metrostudio joined up with Chinese partners in autumn 2009 to form a new branch in Shenzhen. For this stage both sides of the venture were vital: (I) A European counterpart bringing foreign ideas and expertise, and (II) A Chinese counterpart bringing Chinese design expertise, cultural understanding and networking skills.
After a first phase of primarily competition entries and a large number of introductory meetings with potential clients the office has been steadily growing in a Shenzhen-like speed to about 40 in 2011. This pace of growth - from 3 people to 40 people within 18 months - is sometimes still scary for Inglese, but a very interesting and a rewarding challenge. Nowadays Metrostudio Shenzhen is managed by its three principals focusing differently on marketing, management and design, being supported by an own in-house financial department for accounting.

One wall in the Metrostudio office features images of Metrostudio associates in both Europe and China

Multi-media landscape work: tracing paper, watercolors and keyboard.

Metrostudio's emphasis on landscape as a medium to process urban design proposals and large masterplans grew naturally with the nature of the commissions which the studio was working on. For the different projects they seek to develop a unique approach in terms of formal language, accompanied by a solid, research-based background and additional expertise by outside experts.

Here I want to present some insight into three current projects by Metrostudio which show the scope and quality of their work in China.

BaoAn Centre District, Shenzhen, China (Design Development Phase)

The aim of the BaoAn central district plan design was to give the right urban design vision for the nest stage of the development of BaoAn port area into the third and latest CBD in Shenzhen.

The proposal by Metrostudio Associates employs a strategy which multiplies the concept of a genius loci to different 'genii locorum' which give identity and diversity to a new part of Shenzhen.

One central element of Metrostudio's proposal is a huge platform almost one sq km in size which offers the nesting of hundreds of different under-spaces in various scales ranging from large scale to human scale.

Dongying City Wetland Park, Dongying, China (Concept Planning Phase)

The wetland park will emcompass an area of 3000+ hectares which Metrostudio proposed to structure into conservation area, central area, wetland and green belt. Different levels of intervention, functions and ecosystem types were devised to program these areas. Core of the proposal is a scientific and cultural use of the wetland allowing people to access the wetland and learn about the value of the ecosystem. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Land use map of Dongwing wetland area showing the park area (white outline). (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Pixelated mapping of opportunities and threats for the Dongying wetland area. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Longkou Mtinan West Coast Artificial Archipelago and Land Territory, Longkou, China (Competition entry 2nd prize)

The competition called for a design of six new artificial islands which were developed by Metrostudio along three axis: water axis, green axis and stone axis. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

The proposed strategy was to create a modern Venice-like environment where high-quality living next and on the water would be possible. Additionally tourist attractions and landmarks should provide a unique identity for the development. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Landscape as medium for urban design development. Sectional perspective showing the interconnectedness of urban fabric, green fabric and waterways. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

New types of urban life such as water-markets would find place according to the proposal. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

The proposal included a renewable energy system and green transport system developed by the Spanish company savenergy. (image courtesy of Metrostudio)

Closing this blogpost, I want to thank the team of Metrostudio and Antonio Inglese for their time and warm welcome at their Shenzhen studio and wish them all the best for their work in China and Europe!

Design Ecologies for Landscape Ecological Urbanism

2011-08-07T22:49:00.006+01:00

This is a re-post of a text which I recently wrote for the summer 2011 issue of the newsletter of EFLA - The European Federation of Landscape Architects.

Hubei village and adjacent high rise developments. Shenzhen, China 2011 (image by M.Marsh)

Conceptualizing new design ecologies for landscape ecological urbanism

"In this century, mankind’s biggest challenges like resource constraint, climate change, or global demographic shifts will be encountered in the urban realm. Over the last decade, concepts such as landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, or, landscape ecological urbanism emerged in an attempt to negotiate the complexity of contemporary (mega)cities. Such approaches are currently the most advanced concepts for designing urban environments which are able to accommodate human life increasingly constrained by environmental pressures.

Nevertheless, in contemporary landscape practice and teaching, we still frequently witness a disconnect between goals like social justice, environmental credibility and cultural meaning of projects, while all of them appear equally important for designers in urbanism [1]. This note provides some inspirational theoretical input for landscape urbanism practice and summarizes an article which will be published in the first issue of the EFLA online journal later this year.

As designers in urbanism we may understand our practice as a guiding of urbanism; in which we equally observe, mitigate and create the processes constituting our urban environments. To juggle urbane aims such as environmental concerns, social justice and cultural vibrancy, one may anticipate putting the human subject in the center - but not in a traditionally humanist way by optimizing systems solely for human needs - rather creating landscapes of a networked human ecology, where a reciprocal responsibility between mankind and supporting ecosystem is possible and sought.

Recent theoretical discourse was to some extent focused on metrics of how to measure a sustainable urban development [2]. A simple benchmark worth exploring for landscape practice is the adoption of ecological debt and ecological credit where ecological impacts of (built) interventions in the landscape are assessed and compared to the state before the project. But are landscape ecological projects automatically socially just and culturally meaningful? I would answer no, but the integration of ecological narratives extended with an engaged human subject would provide an opportunity to create diverse, lively and meaningful urban landscapes featuring vibrant social ecologies.

In the worldwide urban laboratory there is huge demand and need for new concepts to be integrated into the design of urbanism. Here, designers in urbanism can engage themselves by providing research outcomes and tools previously developed, or, by applying conclusions in adaptive approaches on the ground or in landscape education. To understand one’s own work taking place with such a background can provide a vitally inspirational impulse to define one’s design and research ecology within the broader context of a globalized practice of landscape ecological urbanism"

[1] To make a provocative point about disciplinary boundaries, I will in this article refer to the disciplines of landscape architecture, landscape planning, urban planning, urban design, architecture - all of which are engaged with urbanism – simply as designers in urbanism.

[2] The question why we mainly measure development of (urban) environments shall be discussed elsewhere. It is questionable if the concept of ‘development’ is in the long run compatible with the normative goal of ‘sustainability’.

Spatial Planning in Alpine Areas. The Case of Annaberg.

2011-08-04T16:59:00.001+01:00

Recently I was teaching for the Center of Regional Planning and Regional Development (TU Wien) in a seminar 'Spatial Planning in the Alps' which we held in Annaberg, Lower Austria. Annaberg is an ideal location to develop and eventually test strategies of how a small, shrinking municipality in an alpine area can in future juggle challenges such as (amongst others):

maintaining sustainable land use (and the cultural landscape),
competing on the international tourism market,
facing climatic changes as a (lower-alpine) community which invested in winter tourism,
creating job opportunities within the region, and,
dealing with a negative demographic development of the community.

Constructing a region around Annaberg. Ötscherland as regional sketch (S. Zech).

Map showing the central area of the municipality and the different lodgings which students resided in.

Within the seminar the students developed a first image of the issues by creating exemplary roles for different actors on site (politicians, tourists, farmers, pilgrims, teachers, etc). These hypothesis and visions were then challenged and tested on site during a two days stay which included a participatory 'ideas evening' during which people from the community and students discussed what is at stake in Annaberg. We now published the resulting works of the students in a documentation which will be available for the people in Annaberg. We want to thank all people who participated in the event in Annaberg and the very supportive members of the municipality, all of which contributed a lot to the results of the seminar.

In future the Center of Regional Planning and Regional Development may deepen the work on Annaberg in collaboration with the municipality.

Below you find some impressions of the extensive walk we undertook to understand land-use, municipality structure and geography of Annaberg.

Nuclear China

2011-08-01T16:40:00.000+01:00

The recent disaster in Fukushima, Japan has demonstrated that atomic power is a form of energy supply coming with high risks attached which cannot be fully controlled. Now China is starting into on a nuclear future and my recent visit made me aware of the scale of the operation. To quote some numbers:
"Mainland China has 14 nuclear power reactors in operation, more than 25 under construction, and more about to start construction soon.

Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give more than a ten-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 80 GWe by 2020, 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050.

China is rapidly becoming self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle." [source]

Urban nuclear energy in Beijing, China. Beijing' s CBD is the conglomerate of darker buildings in the right rear.

With China becoming a nuclear nation there is growing concern of how safe the industry may be. The recent train accident in Wenzhou province has sparked a fierce controversy and some connect the mistakes made within the railway administration to possible flaws in the nuclear power sector.

"China is embarking on the world's biggest and fastest expansion of nuclear power. The world must pray the industry will somehow prove immune to the curse of corner cutting, secrecy and corruption – or the potential consequences are chilling." [source]
If future events could be wished for like christmas presents, there are two things to write on a wish list:
That China's leaders know the responsibility and risks attached to nuclear power and take the industry serious enough.
That China's expansion of green energy will be more successful and faster that the expansion of nuclear power.

International Invitational Exhibition on OCT-Loft Concept Design

2011-07-30T20:13:00.097+01:00

Within the company URBANUS, we recently developed an urban design project dealing with upgrading industrial building stock to be used as a densly productive area for creative industrial production. The project was featured in the exhibition 'Re-Start' in Shenzhen's OCT-Loft cultural district in July and August 2011. Here I want to provide some background info about the project and images from the opening showing the different urban design proposals.

View over OCT-Loft area to be upgraded. (click to enlarge)

OCT (Overseas Chinese Town) was founded in 1985 in Shenzhen and until 1994 OCT industrial enterprises had developed into a corporation with 55 companies under its umbrella. In this regard OCT shows the speed of growth of industry in Shenzhen (and China in general) and that these industries are now increasingly shifting from secondary industrial production to tertiary, service based economies.

As curator Li Sha is explaining the context of the exhibition:
"Since 2004, OCT started to upgrade the remaining East Industrial Zone to the Creative Cultural Park (named OCT-Loft). The upgrade of the Eastern Industrial Zone in Overseas Chinese Town to the Creative Culture park (OCT-Loft) shows it only took 26 years to complete the transformation of a European industrial city that was projected to take 100 years. [...]
In recent decades, with the transformation and decline of large industrial systems in Europe and in the US, the protection and regeneration of earlier industrial heritage became a trend. The industry was upgraded as the region became increasingly more well known; however, the site is protected both by a respect for the natural surroundings and by archaeological practices, one that places extreme respect on the context and space. [...]

'Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord' (Latz&Partner, 1990-1999). Industrial heritage carefully re-purposed with respectful archaeological approach. (Image source: wikipedia)

Upgrading of these areas will undoubtedly protect the industrial architectural heritage, and enrich the city's creative cultural space, but they have several issues: the area is difficult to adapt to the rapidly changing urban space; the aim for future development is unclear, and it could easily be transformed into a high-end fashion area; the area may have difficulty meeting the demand for new space in the region.

Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany. (image source and credit: Claus Moser @ Flickr)

Culturpark Westergafabriek. An old gasworks site refurbished to allow urban cultural events and host creative industrial entrepreneurs. (image by PLANETART @ Flickr]

Culturpark Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. The old 'gashouder' (gas storage tank) used for an exhibition. (image by Bas Boerman @ Flickr)

Culturpark Westergafabriek. The same gas storage tank as above used for a rave event. (image by Gia Vasilevska @ Flickr)

In fact, in Europe, another mode co-exists with the aforementioned strategy, that is the active protection mode. This mode also pays attention to the industrial architectural heritage and regional studies, but it is more concerned about the contemporary significance of the architectural and regional improvement. [...]
The exhibition invited Bernard Tschumi Architects (New York / Paris), Dominique Perrault Architecture (Paris), MVRDV (Rotterdam), Urbanus - Architecture and Design (Shenzhen /Beijing) and Sou Fujimoto Architects (Tokyo) to offer thoughts on the OCT-Loft conceptual plan and the renovation of B10 into the OCT Contemporary Art Museum, exploring the strategy for the active protection of the industrial building."

It is fair to say here that this 'respect mentioned by Li Sha is not always a given in Europe. It is not uncommon that private as well as public investors just dont acknowledge or can imagine the heritage value of industrial buildings dating back a few decades. The problem in such a case is: you loose a type of architectural heritage, a unique form of space, which would be able to host an array of diverse events, being it cultural or representational. Such rough industrial heritage spaces may also provoke creative re-actions in these spaces which are impossible to create in sleek museum-like environments.There is something to architectural form which was created for another purpose in the past. So the really creative and culturally valuable act is actually a (sometimes temporary) re-purposing of industrial architectural heritage.
After this more theoretical and contextual introduction please have a look at some images of the contributions:

Bernard Tschumi Architects

Domique Perrault Architecture

MVRDV

URBANUS

Sou Fujimoto Architects

Bicycle Kitchens in Shenzhen

2011-07-22T17:00:00.000+01:00

Talk: New York's Pedal Power and Beijing's Bicycles

2011-07-22T05:05:00.004+01:00

This Thursday, Smarter Than Car is hosting a lecture in Beijing, where Shannon, Liman and me will present some of our current research about bicycle culture in Beijing and New York. This event is a preview to an upcoming talk which STC will give at ‘UIA2011 Tokyo – The World Congress of Architecture’ later this year.

See the flyer for details (click to enlarge)

Water in Hong Kong

2011-07-13T21:00:00.002+01:00

Passing by the drainage system of Hong Kong island, I am starting to think about water issues in Hong Kong (HK), a city highly dependent on water supply from outside. One third of Hong Kong's surface is developed as water catchment area which is not enough to meet high water demand, even despite average annual rainfall in HK amounts to about 2400 mm. Therefore Hong Kong imports about 70 % of its water needed for industry and private use.
There are systems in place which help to reduce water dependency, such as a seawater toilet flushing system and several desalination plants. From a landscape perspective it is interesting that in Hong Kong even ocean bays (or arms) have in the past been fenced off from seawater and are now used as freshwater reservoirs. When it comes to water large scale landscape interventions have always been possible.
From a design (research) perspective it would be interesting which up-to-date (green) infrastructure measures could be inserted into the landscape of Hong Kong to harvest rainfall and mist and to which extent they would help to alleviate outside water dependency.

Hong Kong Street Art

2011-07-12T17:03:00.002+01:00

Guangzhou Bicycle Culture

2011-06-27T19:00:00.008+01:00

I was amazed about the bicycle culture in Guangzhou, Gunagdong, China. When moving through the city, one gradient becomes apparent soon: the occurence of bicycles and their use in providing everyday amenities (mobility, transport and other services) is inversely correlated to the motorization of the urban fabric. Cars rule the streetlife more and more in China but the speed of takeover is not the same everywhere. In Shenzhen for example, cars are the only force on the road (as pedestrian you better watch out and run!). However there seems to be a different understanding persisting in the streets of Guangzhou, where people are walking in the middle of the street in the evening and sidewalks are occupied by street vendors and bicycle servicemen.

Also when visiting the older parts of town it is interesting to see how cars penetrate the streets which havent been designed for cars, and are thus finding their limits in small, narrow old streets where only pedestrians and bicycles can access. Within such neighbourhoods existing on the scale of a mini-blocka type of urban life unfolds suddenly to the visitor, a very urban and humanely loud and busy streetlife which is (to my experience) unknown to Europe and more and more diminished in China as well. Spontaneous street markets on tricycles, groups of women chatting in the street, kids and grandmas walking puppies in the road and grandpas hanging out in their chairs on the street. Such qualities I believe are worth extracting from life in the old urban fabric and can be brought into the design of small subunits of urban developments.

I am aware but wont discuss here the fact that such urban life is also tied to a certain income level and related issues of social disparity in modern China. For sure this is a cumulative effect of socio-economic factors and very difficult to address, but social upgrade of low-income classes is not prevented by the use of bicycles and the life in the old urban fabric. It may on the other hand be a viable strategy for urban development to develop unique urban qualities such as community life and streetlife - which are to a greater extent found within a dense and non-motorly mobilized urban fabric on a human scale - for the benefit of the residents.

Operating Shenzhen Bicycles

2011-06-15T08:11:00.000+01:00

While staying here in Shenzhen there is the great opportunity to further the research of 'Smarter Than Car' about fading urban bicycle culture in China. The growing collection of portraits and snaps of bicycle livelihoods will allow us to describe the situation in Shenzhen and compare it to the research we previously did in Beijing.
A huge difference in Shenzhen to cities such as Beijing is that the local government stopped to build bicycle lanes about 20 years ago. This is definitely something you perceive within the streetscape, as well as the general absence of bicycle parking in the CBD area and shopping districts. Supposedly the bicycle doesnt fit well with the model of hyper growth in modern Shenzhen.

Summer School: Energy Landscapes 3.0

2011-06-11T15:54:00.004+01:00

If you are free during the last week of July and engaged with the more and more regarded topic of energy landscapes, you may apply for a nice summer school with high profile advisors (and totally reasonable cost).
Bauhaus Dessau is organising a summer workshop Energy Landscapes 3.0, which aims to "analyse potential network geographies and concepts and their impacts on settlement structures in Europe. We will thereby explicitly refer to a chronicle of utopian thought on a large scale – visionary ideas for new Energy Landscapes promulgated decades ago by Sörgel in 1928 with Atlantropa and Richard Buckminster Fuller with his World Game in 1972."
An interesting detail from the synopsis of the summer school is that contemporary large scale fossil infrastructures should be redesigned in a 'smart' way. If we want to continue to use a comparable amount of energy (on a global scale) as we use today, we will have to innovate on a large spatial scale to complement a a dispersed renewable energy system of small power producing units. As stated earlier, it is important that designers engage in this discourse so that these new types of infrastructures can be welcomed by society and their additional values (as open spaces) appreciated. in this vein, the summer school has a great outreach of attracting participants from a wide range of disciplinary fields.
The summer school Energy Landscapes 3.0 will be an opportunity to work with leading people within the landscape architecture profession and academia. For more information you may refer to the webpage of the summer school.
I am looking forward to the outcomes of the workshop and would appreciate if resulting designs and approaches are published online or in print.

Ride for Your Rights!

2011-05-27T10:43:00.000+01:00

There is an interesting bicycle-related event organized for European students which has been organized by the International Erasmus Student Exchange Network and Campus Europae.

'Ride for Your Rights! - It's Time to (Ex)Change Your Life' is a collective bicycle ride through countries of central and eastern Europe will take place this summer between July and September. The aim of the project is to raise awareness and support for student mobility of students in non-EC countries in central and eastern Europe. Departure is on the 3rd of July in Novi Sad, Serbia and the trek will reach its goal on September 15th in St.Petersburg.

The organizers describe the aim of the ride like: " We will cycle from the Balkans to Russia to raise awareness of the existing problems for student mobility. It must become possible for each and everyone of us to become a part of a mobile generation of young Europeans."

If you are interested in participating, check the itinerary of the ride and meet up with others to converse and raise awareness while you are riding your bicycle. Alternatively you may check the ride's blog or youtube channel for impressions.

Reaching a Critical Mass in Vienna

2011-05-22T16:42:00.009+01:00

Participating in a critical mass (CM) ride can seriously change the image you have about your own city. This May's Critical Mass was eventually the biggest ever held in Vienna and brought up some interesting aspects about Vienna and how cycling in Vienna can become more popular. This post is a mix of thoughts on a CM ride and images by krumpelwumpel which I was allowed to post here (THX!).

Setting out from Schwarzenbergplatz along Belvedere. Image by krumpelwumpel.

Critical mass rides are taking place all over the world in about 300 cities with the aim of claiming more space and respect for the bicycle within urban traffic. It is interesting to see that Vienna's CM seems to steadily grow over the last years which it should as bicycle culture in Vienna has and should flourish further. And, as you experience as a cyclist in this city every day yourself, there has to be more space dedicated to bicycles if there should be more people using the bike.

In this process the CM rides are a great happening and a powerful strategy which demonstrates a lively and diverse bicycle culture of Vienna and which can show that the city may develop unexpected qualities if we reduce the emphasis on motorized transport. It is also a demonstration of how cyclists are able to organize themselves in a collective which (re)claims the streets in a respectful way. I was stunned by the easy and nice way in which the police accompanied the ride. There seems to be a good understanding between the CM and the police which is not a given in other cities.

Critical mass entering Wien Favoriten. Great way of showing off bicycle culture! Image by krumpelwumpel.

In Vienna, CM rides are traditionally started at Schwarzenbergplatz, right next to the, in summertime wonderfully cooling, fountain of the Russian Victory monument. This CM set out in a spontaneous way towards the 'Gürtel' (outer ringroad in Vienna) and then entered Wien Favoriten. This was a nice thing to happen as daily bicycling in Vienna is more frequent among more educated and wealthy fractions of the population. In this sense - with the aim of winning more people for using the bike - the lively CM crowd was for sure a nice demonstration about individuality, health and fun which you can (only) get from riding a bicycle.

Radroute 988385 - powered by Bikemap

Critical mass successfully conquered the roundabout at Schonbrunn castle. This was instantly celebrated. Image by krumpelwumpel.

As spring finally had hit Vienna, May's CM was dedicated to team up with Vienna's guerrilla gardening scene. The ride was scheduled to stop at the community garden at Längenfeldgasse where people met up in a nice atmosphere to have a drink and talk after the CM.

May's CM flyer. Critical mass meets guerilla gardening. Flyer via CM Austria.

Bike becoming a habitat. Image by krumpelwumpel.

"One exhaust less!". The environmentalist reasoning is still common over here. Image by krumpelwumpel.

One really stunning experience about riding in a big CM crowd is how the cityscape changes if only bicycles are using the streets. Suddenly it became quiet the residents must have been thinking. Along the most busy roads people suddenly look out of their windows, usually closed to avoid noise from congested or busy roads. With a CM ride passing by there is suddenly at most the noise of a few bells. For you as a rider it is a unique experience to let yourself fall behind to ride among the cars again which follow the CM ride in a grumpy overpowered manner. Among the cars and trucks again, the city becomes the usual noisy busy with traffic environment which we are so used to. Pedaling into the CM ride again one can experience what a city and its streetlife could look like if we reduced the emphasis for the car a little.
Residents which we passed during the ride were stunned by this as well. In almost every house people looked down from their windows or even came to the street to look at the cycling frenzy. It is a perfect moment for distributing flyers to explain the aims and justification for the CM ride.

CM is a good opportunity to see how diverse a city's bicycle culture is. Also in terms of bicycle hardware. Image by krumpelwumpel.

Finally arrived at the community garden in Längenfeldgasse. Image by krumpelwumpel.

Activities to reclaim a previously neglected and unused space within Vienna's urban fabric. Community garden Längenfeldgasse. Image by krumpelwumpel.

Sing up at the facebook page of Critical Mass Vienna to know more about monthly rides and get notified!

Linkliste "Lernen von Fahrradkulturen in Peking und New York"

2011-05-18T14:12:00.047+01:00

BEIJING

http://www.stcbj.com/
"Smarter Than Car (STC) was set up as a platform for promoting cycling, the bicycle life and preserving Beijing’s unique cycling culture."

NEW YORK CITY

http://www.nyc.gov/bikes
NYC - Department of Transportation's bicycle program with several initiatives.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bike/home.shtml
"The goal of the Department of City Planning, New York City Department of Transportation, and the Department of Parks and Recreation Bicycle Network Development program is to reduce congestion by promoting cycling in New York City."

http://www.youtube.com/user/nycdot
youtube-channel of NYC - Department of Transportation

http://www.streetfilms.org/bike-lanes-in-the-big-apple/
Short movie describing the development of bicycle infrastructure in NYC.

http://www.bikenewyork.org/
"Bike New York is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to promote and encourage bicycling and bicycle safety through education, public events, and collaboration with community and government organizations."

http://www.ridethecity.com/
Bicycling directions for (as well) New York City.

http://www.transalt.org/
"Our mission is to reclaim New York City's streets from the automobile, and to advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit as the best transportation alternatives."

http://bikingrules.org/
"Biking Rules is a new 'Street Code' for NYC cyclists, following the simple principle that our responsibility to others on the street increases in relation to our potential to cause harm."

www.bikemonthnyc.org
"Each year the Department of Transportation and Transportation Alternatives team up to bring you Bike Month NYC, a city wide campaign to promote the joys of cycling in New York City."

http://rollingcarbon.org/
Rollingcarbon.org calculates the carbon impact of various New York City commutes.

http://www.crashstat.org/
"For the first time, all New Yorkers had a way to see pedestrian and cyclist crashes in every neighborhood, enabling them to back up their first-hand experience of dangerous streets with comprehensive hard data."

http://www.recycleabicycle.org/

Recycle-a-bicycle is a community-based bike shop and non-profit organization that provides educational/job training programs and encourages environmental stewardship and everyday bicycle use.

http://rightofway.org/

"Right Of Way is a group of activists dedicated to asserting the rights of car-free street users -- including pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters -- and fighting back against car domination."

http://www.nycbikepolo.com/

"Bike Polo has been played in New York since 2003. Now, our home court is The Pit at Chrystie & Broome Streets."

http://nybma.com/news/

"The NYBMA is a worker’s alliance of the messenger, by the messenger, and for the messenger. Our mission is to unite, represent and advocate for the bike couriers of New York City."

http://www.fixed.gr/
"Home is where the harbl is."

http://www.iparkedinabikelane.org/
"I Parked In A Bike Lane.org is a humble movement aimed at raising driver awareness towards the problems associated with blocking bike lanes."

http://www.bikeblognyc.com/

"I write about mutant bikes, messenger events, bicycle technology and the vast realm of bicycle culture."

http://www.brooklynbybike.com/

"Brooklyn by Bike was born out of a love for traveling around the city by bicycle. Others think we are crazy but we have a passion for our wheels like nothing else."

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/

"While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment."

http://brooklynspoke.wordpress.com/

"I’m a father, husband, writer, TV producer, comedian, and city cyclist. Just another voice in the ongoing discussion about city biking."

http://www.bikecult.com/

"The Bike Cult resource, a work in progress, includes listings of bike and cycling groups, velodromes, world and olympic champions, along with excerpts and updates from the book."

http://newamsterdamize.com/

"We are dedicated to NYC’s Slow Biking Culture, guaranteed 100% Lycra-Free ! Relax. Enjoy your city."

http://www.astoriabike.com/

"About Bikes and Biking in New York City. Bike, Damnit! Bike!"

http://www.bikehacks.com/

"BikeHacks.com comes to you from both coasts of the USA. We write BikeHacks 'cause we love bikes. We dig up all kinds of cool, interesting and useful stuff, from the funky to the functional."

http://www.dykesonbikecycles.com/

"We formed in spring ’06 to promote the integration and visibility of the existing community of queer bike riders."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bicyclesonly/
"the purpose of almost all my photos is to inspire New Yorkers to make everyday trips by bicycle"

http://www.streetsblog.org/
"Streetsblog is a daily news source, online community and political mobilizer for the Livable Streets movement."

http://www.streetfilms.org/
"Streetfilms produces short films that show how smart transportation design and policy can result in better places to live, work and play."

INTERNATIONAL

http://thecityfix.com/
TheCityFix.com is an online resource for sustainable transport news, advocacy and “best practice” solutions from around the world.

http://www.copenhagenize.com/
"Each and every day roughly 500,000 citizens choose the bicycle in Greater Copenhagen. This blog highlights who they are, why they do and how it was made possible."

http://amsterdamize.com/
"I’m just an Amsterdam native who won’t take his city and its cycling extravaganza for granted anymore, thinking these posts might be clues for others, inspiration perhaps, if you will."

'Warchild' Streetart Project in Bushwick

2011-05-05T10:43:00.025+01:00

"A child's silhouette is shaped out of war toys owned and played by the artists during their childhood. The earth's continents are made up of a toy battlefield.
Society is programming war into its youngest. Children are involved and suffer from numerous armed conflicts all over the world. War, a playful game or deadly reality? Some kids play in safety with war toys, while others, in less fortunate situations, may be taught to become child-soldiers or fall victim to the brutal face of war.
Instead of playing with war toys, children should be supported in becoming more tolerant to proliferate peace and understanding within a global society. In Mahatma Ghandi's words: “If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children”.
See also: meinwe

Learning from Bicycle Cultures in Beijing and New York

2011-04-15T20:16:00.017+01:00

I will be giving a talk in Vienna as kind of cultural-learning event to inspire Vienna's efforts in raising bicycle ridership in the city and to support the creative use of pedal-powered vehicles by urban planners, designers and policy makers. The talk will feature Smarter Than Car's research on bicycle culture in Beijing, China and some recent efforts to understand New York's bicycle supporting strategies and specific culture.
The talk and a subsequent discussion will take place on May 18th 6:30 PM at 'Wiener Planungswerkstatt', 1010 Wien, Friedrich-Schmidt-Platz 9.

Poster (click to enlarge)

Outline (German):
Die Unterstützung von Lebensentwürfen die intensive Fahrradnutzung integrieren, kann einen wertvollen Beitrag für lebenswerte und kulturell diverse Stadtlandschaften leisten. Der Vortrag präsentiert Beispiele aus Peking und New York als kreativen Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung der Wiener Fahrradkultur. In Peking untersucht Smarter Than Car Lebensstile und ökonomische Strategien verbunden mit dem Fahrrad, spezifische Fahrrad-Infrastrukturen und die hohe Diversität der Fahrradnutzung. Ein Blick nach New York zeigt eine stark auf Gemeinwesen aufbauende Fahrradkultur, die in jüngster Vergangenheit von progressiven Strategien der Stadtverwaltung unterstützt wird. Der Vergleich von Fahrradkulturen sowie Gesetzgebungen soll die Diskussion über die Positionierung der Wiener Fahrradkultur ermöglichen.

Scaping the Connecticut River

2011-04-10T06:30:00.033+01:00

Last week I got the chance to participate in the 2011 riverscaping learning lab which was held in Springfield, MA and dealt with potentials of understanding the landscape along the Connecticut river between Springfield and Turner Falls as one entity, one region. Thereby regional dynamics may be fostered to develop strategies for the unique landscape along this stretch of the Connecticut river.

For a first impression I post some panorama images (click to enlarge!) and shots from the bus tour we did to understand the landscape along the Connecticut river.

Springfield. Beautiful and wide waterfront with problems of accessibility and reputation.

Holyoke. Amazing industrial building stock where a computing center will invest because of green energy potentials.

Holyoke. Partly refurbished waterfronts and vast empty building stock.

Hadley. Issues of accessibility to the mostly privatized waterfront.

Turners Falls. Great industrial structure with uncertain future.

This autumn there will be a 'design laboratory' following to develop 'interpretative installations' for specific sites along the Connecticut river in Springfield, Holyoke, Hadley and Turners Falls to allow 'understanding the River as a catalyst for change and growth, and to create connections between communities, ecosystems, and economies along the River.' Follow the developments on the riverscaping homepage to know about the competition.

Creating Agri-cultural Food Systems

2011-04-07T01:12:00.054+01:00

The production of food has over the last years received increasing attention by designers and (landscape) architects. Riding the green wave, designers apply agricultural narratives and concepts in an almost redundant manner, producing proposals of various quality, depth and applicability. One can only start to question: Why is this important? What is the benefit from such undertakings?and; How can we successfully do this?

Frank Lloyd Wright 'Broadacre City - Plan for a Living City' (1934-35) (image source archined)

A useful introduction into thinking about how to merry urban life and agricultural production is the concept of 'Agrarian urbanism' as fore-thought in projects by people like Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright or Andrea Branzi. Today, conditions and assumptions for urbanism are somewhat different than in the mid 20th century and even changed since the nineties of the last century, with shrinking cities needing to be in-filled rather than expanded and cities growing so quickly that a certain density prevents urbanism to reflect on itself. Nevertheless, the thought of an urban model accommodating agricultural production may be re-visited today under more ecological premises, respecting the landscape palimpsest while providing a certain density of urban form to satisfy infrastructural efficacy and human cultural needs.
Looking forward, there is pressing need to further an urban model which is tributing the disappearance of the city-nature dichotomy and which manages to organize a globally networked society in times of resource constraint, climate change and growing need to safeguard food quality, security and access. So the stakes are high in creating the form for the totally urbanising world in the 21st century. In this sense it is great to see more and more grassroots interest in urban farming on one side and intellectual, creative minds on the design side which are engaged in creating (urban) environments integrating sustainable food systems.

'City Farming Project' by Bohn and Vijoen Architects proposing a functioning localized food system for Middleborough, England. (image via David Barrie)

'Farmadelphia', a project by Front Studio proposes agrarian urbanism as infill strategy for urban voids. (image source and credit Front Studio)

This week an event at Harvard's GSD aimed at setting the context for contemporary agrarian urbanism. The seminar titled 'Food Systems: Their Deep Impact on Us, the Environment and Urban Structures' was organized by landscape architects Herbert Dreiseitl and Bettina Wanschura and aimed at introducing the concept of food systems (= processes and infrastructure necessary to feed a population) to designers, to enable them to understand their role in re-shaping the current state of the (global) food system.

Global map of nations sized according to agricultural water use per capita (including water for livestock and crop production) (source and copyright: worldmapper).

The importance of re-designing our food systems was emphasized by Herbert Dreiseitl who set the context in his opening remarks. Our currently heavily industrialized food system impacts the environment and society in various ways. (Industrialized) agriculture is the predominant water user and polluter, responsible for major soil erosion and salination and will in the near future run into a wall as it is heavily relying on fossil energy input. The myth of industrialized agriculture being the sole way forward for successfully nourishing the global population has recently been debunked by UN's special rapporteur on the right for food, who identified, amongst others, the support of agro-ecological farming practices and a procurement of public goods instead of (commodity) farming subsidies as viable strategies to ensure food security in developing countries while at the same time successfully counteracting climate change and addressing social justice (source).
So there is tons of work for designers to think about new types of infrastructure which support localized agro-ecological food systems around the globe. Next to mitigating climate change, reducing environmental degradation, such a shift will also increase overall population health.

Bio-dynamic land-use at the Hawthorne Valley Farm. (image via Hawthorne Valley Farm's 'Farmscape Ecology Program')

Martin Ping, the director of Hawthorne Valley Farm, gave a passionate talk introducing the concept of bio-dynamic farming as practiced on Hawthorne Valley Farm since 20 years. Ping offered a real-world introduction into the work, motivation and issues for contemporary farmers in Northern America and how a farm can be sustainable in environmental, social and economic terms. He exemplified the crooked nature of today's food system with the '65000 mile taco', an everyday food item found to embody ingredients of our globalized food system.

'The Global Tacoshed' as investigated by students guided by David Fletcher and REBAR at URBANIlab. (Image source and credit: Rebar)

In his multifaceted talk, Eric T Fleischer bridged microbiology and architecture to foremost emphasize the potentials and importance of advanced and locally adapted closed-loop composting systems which help to maintain microbial biodiversity in the soil. His excellent composting system supporting microbial diversity and thus soil health has been exemplified since years in Battery Park City, NY and was recently adapted to projects such as Brooklyn Bridge Park or the grounds of Harvard University. Fleischer's approach supports the potentials and advantages of working with nature in organically maintaining healthy soils in urban landscapes while closing wasteful material cycles in urban areas.

Simple and efficient closed loop system. The application of a system collecting organic waste and recycling it is by the way the reason for significantly lower amounts of waste generated in European cities which manage organic waste in that way. (image copyright and courtesy of the compost team)

Rachel Schneider, director of the 'Learning Center' at Hawthorne Valley Farm, showed in her talk the valuable work of educating children about food related issues. Her accounts of witnessing children who negate non-processed food or who have no clue what butter is made from underlined the necessity of re-connecting children and young adults to the source of their food, thus making them understand their own food system. Schneider emphasized the importance of education in creating the social demand for healthier food, thereby creating momentum for a future healthier food system. Rachel's work also demonstrates the potential of farms to become places for true agri-culture where education functions as vital part of social life and public outreach.

Summer camps for children are part of Hawthorne Valley Farm's educational outreach. (image source and copyright Hawthorne Valley Farm Visiting Students Program)

The talks were followed by a lively panel discussion moderated by Christian Werthmann, who guided the conversation around the main question of how to make sustainable (healthy) food systems a reality by identifying specific hurdles and creating visions for overcoming these. As was emphasized during the conversation, only about 1% of US agricultural land is currently farmed bio-dynamically, implying sustainable loops of nutrients and genetic diversity. This number is more or less stagnating over the last decades but will have to be rising sharply if we want to mainstream a healthy food system to a broader population (not only urbanites who can afford to buy exquisite produce from the farmers market).

The role of (landscape) designers in the creation of sustainable food system can be to create environments in which people understand agri-culture as something modern and appreciable. Places where people can integrate a modern life with a job as (part-time) farmer. Along with a structural re-designing process of land-use, farming systems and (maybe most importantly) policy framework, it will be crucial to re-brand agri-culture as a viable life perspective to counteract the aging of the population engaged in agriculture in Western countries. The mean age of farmers in the US is now 57 years (!), and I assume from my own experience that this number is comparable in Europe.
On a societal level, it will be important to re-evaluate and re-appreciate the role of farmers, maybe even renaming 'farmer' to a new word, which more accurately reflects the crucial importance and value of agriculture as a service for land(scape) and society. A starting point for this discussion can be to identify practices paying tribute to both halves of the word agriculture, to its fractions 'agri' (agros(gr.) = field) and 'culture'. So a practice which work with the field, the land and develops a culture for it, a culture which allows a cultivation as opposed to an exploitation.
In such context, landscape architects, and especially landscape planners, may spatially apply agri-cultural (agro-ecological) models and typologies to support the visionary development of new agri-cultural food systems. This is true for all environments, regardless their fraction of built-up land on it (I here dont want to discuss urban vs rural or city vs countryside....).
A key success strategy may be to teach sustainable agricultural practices in incubator farms to urban populations to make them understand the importance of healthy food systems. In some cases such students maybe even decide to engage with agri-culture themselves. A suburban incubator farm (maybe even on a vacant lot left behind by a retail giant) may function as a backbone for a sustainable food system with lively flows of food, seeds, knowledge and people between urban and more rural areas and vice-versa. The land-use in such places will be dense and diverse, incorporating; farming and nursing of food crops, showcasing of agri-cultural technologies and strategies, teaching of agri-cultural practices, exchange of experience, facilities for food processing, a functioning marketplace, and, being a place where the culture around agrarian practices can take happen.Designers may give form to such a vision to secure a healthy and diverse food system in the future.

'Planning, Ecology and the Emergence of Landscape'

2011-03-25T22:47:00.004+01:00

Lecture at USC | Architecture by Charles Waldheim 'On Planning, Ecology and the Emergence of Landscape' gives a good overview on landscape urbanism projects of the recent years.The lecture was (I suppose) held during the academic year 08/09.

I will collect and repost more lectures here regarding landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism.

Why We Need a Renewable Strategy

2011-03-23T21:34:00.002+01:00

The invisible atomic horror in case of an uncontrollable nuclear hazard is becoming by far too real in case of the tsunami struck nuclear power plant Fukushima in Japan. Do we have to risk such hazards to supply at most 14% of global energy demand? [source]
I was struck today by this image below, almost like from a horror movie or a bad action-film-like dream. I abstained so far to blog about this, but now cant resist to reproduce some images here which I suppose will become part of global subconscious (fearful) image about nuclear power.

Inside the Fukushima plant. Workers risking their lives becoming heroes of Japan. [image via derstandard copyright by APA]

[image source and copyright welt.de]

The recent disaster, or 'incident', produces weather forecasts which are uniquely more than material for small talk.

The global perspective on the dispersal of Caesium 137 as released from Fukushima, modeled by ZAMG (click to enlarge). [source and copyright ZAMG]

[image source dailymai.uk, copyright Reuters]

Ghost Bikes in New York

2011-03-23T19:37:00.005+01:00

Wandering in the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn and running into a bicycle locked onto a light pole is not something uncommon. The first Ghost Bike I ran into was painted white, looked quite ridable and was complemented by flowers so I was confused in the beginning about the taste of the cycle's owner, but when I found the board explaining what the bike was standing for I got goose bumps: "CYCLIST KILLED HERE ....... "

White painted bikes locked into the street as memorials in urban space to remember 'killed' cyclists were firstly put up in St.Louis Missouri in 2003 and since developed into a global meme with Ghost Bikes put up mainly in the US (New York has a very dense Ghost Bike coverage) but spreading cross the globe to lately also places like Singapore or Ecuador. See the Ghost Bike map for the locations.

I was positively surprised about how bikes are kept in New York, apparently they are only removed by property owners, hardly by officials. There were some Ghost Bikes installed in Vienna by criticalmass and created some amount of media attention about the relatively bad security situation for cyclists in Austria. Regardless of that the Ghost Bikes have been removed [source]. I will not discuss the fact that it is perfectly normal in Austria to have other kinds of memorials, coincidentally of religious nature, next to the road to commemorate people who died in accidents.

Ghost Bike in Vienna. [image credit criticalmass Austria]

Ghost Bikes can raise awareness about the serious and sometimes even deadly hurdles bikers face when moving in the city. On the Ghost Bike homepage, which was set up by New Yorkers, I managed only to read through some of the stories of the crashes in New York leaving me with the impression that cyclists in New York seem to be rather some kind of prey for car and truck drivers than supported and protected stakeholders in city traffic.
Read the story of Juan Luis Solis for example:
"Juan Solis was riding his bicycle on East Gun Hill Road near Bouck Avenue in the Baychester section of the Bronx at about 4:30 p.m. When he tried to ride around a double-parked car an east-bound truck driving at high speed smashed into him and fled." [source]

Ghost Bike culture on the street in conjunction with the webpage are (I) an important reminder and advocate for the rights of cyclicsts to safely participate in urban traffic, and, (II) a reminder for the cyclists that they have to take care while cycling through the city and maybe still enjoy less respect and consideration by other traffic participant as they should enjoy.

Wastemas in Williamsburg

2011-02-24T11:53:00.000+01:00

Thanks to W for mentioning the 'Christmas tree ÖTZIS' around the corner. 'Christmas Corpses' as passengers in Brooklyn called them the other day.

Hacking the Branding of Public Space: The Artvertiser

2011-02-13T09:08:00.000+01:00

There is a nice project currently created for hacking the visual representation of open urban space by creating means to sublime the quite intense branding in public open spaces in certain urban centers around the globe. If we consider how important and (pre)dominant billboards and commercial signs have become in defining how our cities look like and with which information our society gets feed and conditioned every day.

Art lover hunting for fresh impressions with the help of The Artvertiser. [copyright The Artvertiser via image source]

The Artvertiser, is 'a software platform for replacing billboard advertisements with art in real-time. It works by teaching computers to 'recognise' individual advertisements so they can be easily replaced with alternative content, like images and video.' [source]

Funtional diagram of The Artvertiser. [image copyright and source Julian Oliver]

The project was initiated by Julian Oliver in February 2008 and is now being developed in collaboration with Damian Stewart.
The developers refer to the artvertiser 'as a form of Augmented Reality technology' and consider it to be 'an example of Improved Reality.' [source]

See how The Artvertiser works:

Augmented Billboards 2: The Artvertiser @ Transmediale 2010 from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

The Artvertiser was released as fully working beta software and has been appearing in Berlin as part of Transmediale 2010, in Brussels for the Europe wide Media Facades Festival and in four inner-city walks during Rotterdam's Image Festival. [source]

Please see Julian Oliver's TEDx talk in which he explains more about The Artvertiser. I will buy the first batch of Artvertiser sunglasses!

Edge Design Institute in Hong Kong

2011-02-12T23:12:00.002+01:00

This is a photo documentary from a visit to 'Edge Design Institute LTD' in Hong Kong which I am happy to present with a little delay as it was submersed on my hard drives until now.

We were welcomed at the dense and homely office space of Edge Design by it's principal Gary Chang who founded Edge Design in 1994 and has since been engaged in 'innovative multidisciplinary design with the core focus on space,' producing 'original and creative solutions from the scale of urban planning, architecture, interior, exhibition, to the scale of tableware.' [quoted]

The spatial arrangement and efficiency, paired with beautiful design solutions found in the office of Edge Design, reflect specific aspects of design work produced in and for Hong Kong.
It may be mere density as main narrative of urbanism and life in Hong Kong which creates the conditions in which Edge Design is reacting with a design approach that is engaged with applying efficient spatial solutions to create functional, yet poetic architecture with minimal aesthetics.
One tool used in the office of Edge Design for sketching first drafts is simple Lego. According to Chang this allows him and his team to quickly discuss specific spatial arrangements as well as functional relationships of spaces and volumes.

Lego model of Hong Kong-like urban density.

'Treasure Box for Urban Nomads' 2007 [image courtesy of Edge Design]

'The Cascade' 2006 [image courtesy of Edge Design]

The creative output of Edge Design encompasses architecture across all scales (see images within this post), product design, public art and as well publications of innovative book designs presenting the office's work and Gary Chang's practice as design critic.

The book 'Hotel as Home' for example presents highlights of and thoughts developed during Gary Chang's constant travel activities which are relating to Chang's work as critic of design hotels. Chang apparently spends about 2/3 of his time in hotels and is remarkably knowledgeable about design hotels all around the world.

Gary Chang 'Hotel as Home'. [image courtesy of Edge Design]

Another example of Chang's publishing activity presents a very personal and innovative project in Hong Kong. The book 'My 32 m² Apartment', portrays history and transformation process of his private apartment where he grew up and still lives and which he transformed in 2007 into a highly functional and densely designed apartment. Chang's place has since been referenced in numerous magazines and on international TV where it was rightly portrayed as forward thinking and even 'green'. Just today I saw an online video of a prominent 'green' thinker who plans to transform his NYC apartment into a Chang-like place.

'Gary's Apartment' 2007 [image courtesy of Edge Design]

When Chang showed us around in his place it felt like witnessing a spatial ceremony. Chang is (if he's home) part of his flat which almost seems like his extended body as it reacts to the specific demands of the moment, being it relaxing in a hammock or having a glass of wine. Chang named the place his 'Domestic Transformer' and describes that: "not I am moving in my house, my house is moving around me."

Transformation of 'Gary's Apartment' 2007 [image courtesy of Edge Design]

Residential complex development, Beijing, China. 2009 [image courtesy of Edge Design]

'International Concept Plan Competition West Kowloon' 2001. [image courtesy by Edge Design]

Wastemas Documented by Amkei

2011-02-11T18:23:00.000+01:00

This will most probably be the last wastemas entry for this year. Thanks to my friend Amkei for the opened eyes and lens! Images from Vienna, Austria.

Opening 'Jugaad Urbanism' at AIA New York

2011-02-10T22:37:00.001+01:00

Today opened the exhibition 'Jugaad Urbanism' at the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter. The exhibition is the first of its kind in the US to elaborate on contemporary Indian urbanism and is accompanied by collateral programs such as a symposium, several panels and a family day, all happening at the AIA NY.

'Jugaad Urbanism' is organized in four sections according to (urban) resources: land, water, energy and transportation and is built up from two perspectives: The 'jugaad' approach, representing urban innovations, fixes and everyday appliances reflecting the meaning of the Hindi word 'jugaad' which refers to an innovative fix, a bending of rules or a new way of using resources. And, the (architectural, urban, landscape) designer's perspective to decide to seek (design) solutions which are informed by these adaptive urban strategies.

'Jugaad urbanism' shows us positive approaches to a lively, sustainable ('green') urban development on the Indian subcontinent, which respect, learn from, and integrate urban 'jugaad' (grassroots) phenomena and mix these with well reflected architectural ingenuity. The resulting design projects manage to tackle pressing urban issues in India in an individual way without overpowering the local stakeholders and thereby lead to solutions and structures of unique beauty and adequacy.

The exhibition is a dense showcase of projects with an inspiring, project-related intelligence and an example for an architectural practice which is becoming more intensively engaged with social complexity and participatory methods. The show itself successfully manages to avoid a romantic view of the designer as savior and negates the (urban development) approach of mere improvement-oriented, quick and superficial fixes to urban issues and specific problems.
It is rather a strong sense of 'togetherness' which is celebrated in the exhibition, witnessing a reciprocal relationship between responsible designers and clients which are fully engaged by the design. It is up to the visitor to take the lesson home for his or her own practice: Why not embracing everyday experience, innovation and wisdom? Thereby producing work which is culturally more embedded, able to truly speak to the users, and, informs their daily lives towards the better.
'Jugaad Urbanism' is opened until May 21st at the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter.

Wastemas in Brooklyn

2011-02-04T22:49:00.000+01:00

Screening of 'The Gruen Effect' at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York

2011-02-04T05:07:00.001+01:00

Tonite the film 'The Gruen Effect - Victor Gruen and the Shopping Mall' by Anette Baldauf and Katharina Weingartner was shown at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York (ACFNY).
The film is a very informative and entertaining documentary, tracing the most creative and influential time of Vienna-born architect Victor Gruen's life during which he and his wife, Elsie Krummeck, developed the concept of a 'shopping town', today known as shopping center.

Still from 'The Gruen Effect' with Victor Gruen to the right. [image via derstandard]

'The Gruen Effect' is edited as montage from historical footage, animated drawings, live footage from Vienna and New York and interviews at different locations in the these two cities. Reflecting Gruen's 'renaissance' character, the film is diverse and full of (visual) humor, such as one scene using historical footage of a woman escaping some cars at a traffic light while a voice is reading a passage from Gruen's unpublished autobiography dealing with the (for Gruen) troublesome fact that cars were becoming more and more important for American society in the fifties and sixties.
The film shows some widely unknown history of the historical development of the shopping center, an architectural (and predominately economical) model which was so influential in Western societies over the last fifty years.
Gruen & Krummeck developed the concept of a shopping town/city initially as a social utopia, as a new, socially active and attractive urban center for a largely female and neglected population living in the newly built and (socially as well as culturally) deserted suburbs in the US. The first 'shopping town' designed by Gruen &Krummeck was built in California in 1945. These initial concepts of Gruen & Krummeck were designed in admiration of vibrant European city centers (Gruen loved the busy life in pre-war Vienna) and therefore included facilities like kindergartens, playground and other social amenities which were later stripped away from the shopping city layout by profit oriented investors who adapted the shopping city to become the shopping center and ultimately the mall. The rest is ((sub)urban) history and you can refer to an article by Anette Baldauf to read more about these pioneering times.

Northland Center in Detroit by 'Victor Gruen Associates'. [image via Mute]

As a fifty minute movie 'The Gruen Effect' is densely filled with information and shows the historical developments of the (humanistic) idea of the urban shopping experience leading to (material) fulfillment and numerous life-like and honest contradictions.
So Gruen's pioneering role in developed the shopping city made him a successful entrepreneur and in the States a celebrated 'starchitect'. Fter 30 years in the US he decied to leave to Vienna again and was there stripped off his title as architect (he had in fact never finished his architecture studies in Vienna) and was faced with a rapidly growing consumer culture which endangered his so much loved humane and traditional urban fabric in Vienna. The ghosts I was calling...
'The Gruen Effect' depicts as well the current decay of the idea of the singular-use shopping mall with footage shot in the closed-down and derelict 'Midtown Plaza' which was designed by Gruen in the center of Rochester to counteract suburbanization.
The film depicts as well Gruen's role in shaping the modern urban planning in Vienna. He initially wanted to green the city and close the inner city for traffic, realized was the pedestrian area in Kärntner Strasse and Graben which nowadays represents an open-air shopping center as an example of 'Scheinurbanismus' (illusive urbanism) as Alex Wall states in the movie.
In the end of 'The Gruen Effect' we are confronted by architect Alan Bruton that it is about us - the citizens - to decide if we want a city where we can either be citizens or left to be mere consumers. We decide that every day.

Panel discussion with Katharina Weingartner, Peggy and Michael Gruen, Katharina Posch, Anette Baldauf and Alan Bruton.

After the screening, a panel discussion was adding up to the movie with a conversation about the movie, Gruen's life, personality and contemporary recognition. The conversation reminded about the fact that the shopping center as (economical) model has been turned inside out, from suburban locations back into the city and is now present as predominant model for urbanism throughout the (capitalized) globe.
To see 'The Gruen Effect

If you are quick to read this: There is another screening in NYC, tomorrow Friday, 4th of February at Parsons New School of Constructed Environments, which is followed by a panel discussion as well.

Project Projects in New York City

2011-02-01T20:57:00.038+01:00

Recently I visited one office in New York, Project Projects, which is involved in processes of designing and guiding our experience and knowledge about landscape, architecture, the city and alike, thereby contributing to shape our (mental) image of real places and environments, but who as well create situations to question and enrich our understanding of the (urban) environment we live in.

Project Projects principals depicted for the series 'Project Projects Postcards', (2005). [image courtesy of Project Projects]

Project Projects is a design studio focusing on print, identity, exhibition, and interactive work with clients in art and architecture. The studio was founded in 2004 by Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels; Rob Giampetro joined as principal in 2010. Project Projects work for numerous institutions and offices, including Bernard Tschumi Architects, Field Operations, Guggenheim Museum, MOMA, Princeton Architectural Press, or, Steven Holl Architects, amongst other. Next to these client-specific projects, the studio as well initiates and produces independent curatorial and publishing projects.

Fraction of the bookshelf in the studio of Project Projects.

The conversation with Prem Krishnamurthy took place during New York City's pre-Christmas buzz, which left us just enough time to briefly touch some aspects of the work done at the studio.
Asked about aspects of craftsmanship in the studio, Krishnamurthy mentioned that handwork is very important and is something often talked about within the studio. He mentioned that it is important for Project projects that their work is coherent and exact and that a certain transparency exists during the design process which is as well reflected in the finished product. Within the diverse range of work done by Project Projects, the concept is, as intellectual backbone, equally important as handwork and a love for details. What finally proves the product's quality is it's congruent representation in the specific context.

Regarding the very diverse output of Project Projects, ranging from the design of single books to whole identities for museums or parks, there is often a very unique aesthetic signature, reflecting that for Project Projects it is more important that their design supports the specific content of the product, and does not represent a certain style stemming from the office itself. In that sense, content is used to derive a unique visual appearance and not a (pre-marketed) visual appearance used to sell the content.

Website design (2010) for North Grant Park, Chicago by landscape architects MVVA. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

It is interesting that, despite the (as well graphically) very diverse output of the studio, the design of the Project Projects webpage is very calm and reduced. What decides about the specific form of a certain product coming from the Project Projects studio?
Within the studio there exists a good degree of creative freedom with different approaches and work routines informing each other. Asked about his personal work process, and the importance of head and/or hand within this process, Prem Krishnamurthy told me that his work is characterized by a first deep intellectual engagement with the specific task, then followed by the production of initial sketches whose number is dependent on the project and which are used to outline different scenarios. In this process the mental (pre)work is very fruitful and its importance often appearing later, once the hand started to sketch.

Exhibition design for 'Fast Trash', 2010. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

For Prem Krishnamurthy it is important that all the initial ideas are well tested and live up to the studio's quality standards. Then, in the process of reflection with the client, there should be only the relevant few left, the scenarios which you are convinced about, so a satisfying decision can be reached together with the client.
This process diverges a little for the task of producing 'identities', whole representations for clients such as museums or publishers for example. In finding a new identity it can be very fruitful to openly show various ideas and even mix different ideas to create an identity the client is well represented with.

Project Projects designed identity, signage and environmental graphics for Hudson River Park Pier 62, (2010). [image courtesy of Project Projects]

Currently Project Projects is as well involved in the process of transforming one of the world's vastest landfills, the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, into the largest public park developed in New York City since more than 100 years. Together with the landscape architects Field Operations and New York City's Department of Parks & Recreation, Project Projects is designing the identity for the new park and a signage system which uses existing structures and indicates the long-term (30 years) transformation of the site.

Visually staging the appearance of Freshkills park. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

The Freshkills-slogan "re imagine" reminded me that we can differentiate aspects and meanings of landscapes according to the levels of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. I supposed that Project Projects in this case was aiming to create a different understanding for the place in the mental image of Staten Island and NYC residents. Prem Krishnamurthy replied that Fresh Kills is at this point both, a real and an imaginary place as nothing has been constructed yet, so at this point, they are working with the imaginary representation of the site.
In the case of Freshkills park, the aim of Project Projects is to use graphics and visual design to nourish people's fantasy to develop a prospect of what can happen at the Fresh Kills landfill if turned into a public park.

Re-use of existing structures in creating freshkills park. [image courtesy of project projects]

The act of placemaking and imaginary re-design of Fresh Kills started by a simple, yet clever intervention by the designers. The designers renamed the 'Fresh Kills landfill' into 'Freshkills Park' to allow people to create new associations to the place.
As Krishnamurthy states "it is about the creation of possibilities" at a site already monumental because of the sheer vastness of space and the distinct existing structures. The design for the park's identity and signage therefore followed the approach of 're-purposing' existing elements on the site. Diggers will be used to mount signs and an initial design idea proposed to use corten steel on the site for the signage.

Initial design for park signages made from solid steel found on site at freshkills park. [image courtesy of project projects]

One example for a landscape-related publication designed by Project Projects is Alan Berger's 'Drosscape - Wasting Land in Urban America', published by Princeton Architectural Press. Project Projects worked in this case with the existing graphics and a manuscript and successfully adapted initial design ideas to support readability and usability of the publication. Thereby the (book)designers helped the readers to understand certain landscape phenomena and are an important support for scholars to successfully get their word out in an aesthetic and graphically clear form.

Proof for "Drosscape - Wasting Land in Urban America' by Alan Berger, book design by Project Projects, (2006).

Project projects is as well active as independent publisher and editor. One good example for this work is the book 'Above the Pavement - The Farm!'. The book was published within the Project Projects spin-off 'Inventory Books' which is 'a platform for the synthesis of textual and visual research on transformations in urban spaces and culture. The series is edited by Adam Michaels, designed at Project Projects, published by Princeton Architectural Press' and presents rigorous content in an accessible format for a diverse public.' [source]

'Above the Pavement - The Farm' presents text, drawings and images to document the processes which led to the final form of the 'Public Farm PF1', designed and organized by WORKac and built by over 150 volunteers at PS1 in 2008. The book presents oral histories of all people involved in the process and was an interesting alternative approach (to glossy architecture publications) for Project Projects to present architectural design by making 'tactile architectural processes' available to the readers. This book is especially interesting for architects and students of architecture or landscape architecture as they can learn about 'real' processes of architectural (and landscape) construction from how the book is 'demystifying a fast-paced, complex collaborative process.' [source]

'Above the Pavement - The Farm' readable as 'maybe the biggest book of the summer' at Union Square market, 2010. [image courtesy of Inventory Books]

Collateral materials for 'The Good Life'. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

In 2006 Project project was designing identity, printed materials, website and motion graphics for the exhibition 'The Good Life: Public Spaces for Recreation'. Talking about the work on this project, Prem Krishnamurthy underlined the importance that the visual design for exhibitions unifies the reading and seeing to support the viewer's engagement with the subject. In the case of exhibition design, the studio seeks to create 'immersive exhibitions' which contain various depths of information so that people can freely engage with the exhibition on various levels and can let themselves be drawn closer and closer to the subject.

Exhibition 'The Good Life' at pier 40, Manhattan west. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

For the 2005 artist group exhibition 'The Plain of Heaven' Project Projects was responsible for designing exhibition graphics, catalog, website and collaterial materials. The exhibition took place in a building destined to be demolished at the southern terminus of the High Line. The exhibition graphics were spray-painted in stencils and the catalog contained some hidden narrative on the inside of the french-folded pages.

Location of exhibition 'The Plain of Heaven' in 2005, nowadays busy as High Line Park southern access. [image courtesy of Project projects]

Exhibition catalog of 'The Plain of Heaven'. [image courtesy of Project Projects]

Concluding the visit to Project Projects, Krishnamurthy stated that the best work they are doing is possible in situations where their own fields of interest (he mentioned architecture, landscape architecture, art and urban planning, amongst others) are represented in the content of the projects and allow the studio's team to personally engage with the subject matter and be inspired by it. I wish the team of Project Projects that they can continue to enrich and support our gathering of (visual) knowledge and continue in an inspired way to create extraordinary situations in public, virtual and printed space which in turn allow us to become inspired.

Intellectual Commons in the City

2011-01-28T03:09:00.000+01:00

Is it possible to have shared and public intellectual infrastructure in the contemporary city? How interesting and truly public can urban open space become, once we (at least in some aspects) overcome the strict barriers of property and privacy which as well restrict every day communication between people. To share books is common, but to have such 'opened libraries' accessible to the public at all times and let the community manage the library on its own, that would be a truly fresh approach to urban planning.
One may argue that letting communities manage such a new sort of 'intellectual commons' may be endangered and impossible because of vandalism or theft. Contrasting to such 'no-go' arguments I want to present you two projects which realize such 'intellectual commons' of different scale and outreach.

One project is the winner of the 'European Prize for Public Space' in 2010. The 'Open-air Library' in Magdeburg, Germany was initiated by the residents themselves to collect and share books. The building, a pavilion with opened and sheltered spaces, was built after a participative process by construction material which was left from an abandoned building. The project was guided by Karo* and Architektur+Netzwerk.

Image via architecturetoday

In Vienna there is a project with a more focussed outreach, the 'opened book closet' (offener Bücherschrank) with currently two book closets, at Westbahnstrasse and Brunnenmarkt. In the opened book closet the community can share books at no cost. When I was there three people were about to use the closet, two searching for literature and one just busy putting the books into order. The opened book closet was initiated by Frank Gassner and is supported by Werkimpuls.

Open book closet at Westbahnstrasse, Vienna 1070.

Let's be curious and see for more such initiatives which can help to render our cities more inclusive, livable and socially just.

Opening Herwig Weiser's 'Filmworks' at . Vienna

2011-01-28T00:50:00.008+01:00

Last Saturday the first solo exhibition opened in Lisa Ruyter's lately opened art space ' . ' in Vienna. Herwig Weiser is mainly known for his sound sculptures and machines which he calls 'analog sculptural processes' such as 'Zgodlocator' , 'ZII' or 'Death Before Disko'.

Weiser's filmworks 'show a natural talent in a medium ideally suited for Herwig Weiser's interest in the relationship of sound, image and his focus on decaying technologies being returned to material origins. They also reveal a bit more about his personal motivations than what is immediately clear from his intriguing machines.' [source: press release]

Guests at the opening interested in materials describing Weiser's work. (image by David Schulder)

Super 8 projector with 'Untitled 1996/2011'.

Super 8 projector to the left with 'Untitled 1995/2011' and to the right projection 'Untitled 1999/2011'.

The exhibition features films previously shown in the context of film festivals, but as well unknown material from Weiser's vast personal archive of material filmed on super 8, 16 mm and video. The films are presented as projected images, as loops on super 8 projectors and as videos on TV screens. Moving through the exhibition, one can engage with each piece in a very private and singular way, yet the space is bound together by flickering lights of the projections and the sound created by film loops running in super 8 projectors. Please find a video by David Schulder at the bottom of this post to get an impression about the exhibition and the opening.

Installation with loops in two super 8 projectors, 'Untitled 1997 / 2011'. (image by David Schulder)

Detail of 'Franz Speck' 1998.

Detail of 'Lucid Phantom Messenger' 2011.

The exhibition spans 15 years of Weiser's work, from early projects (e.g. Franz Speck, 1998 / 2011) to a film about his latest work 'Lucid Phantom Messenger' (2011). Weiser recently started to revisit his archive of (film)works and shows loops of unchanged, unedited super8 film as well as digitally edited materials from his archive.

Weiser's films are a testimony of joyful technological experimentation and thereby seamlessly integrate into his process of creating his 'analog sculptural processes'. It is worth mentioning that many of the films in the exhibition were firstly shot in a time where digital technology (video) was overtaking analog film in popular culture. In these times, Weiser produced images which bear an almost digital aesthetic, appearing (for an observer in 2011) to be produced by algorithms rather than being super8 films altered by jogpads in a film editing studio (see for example works like 'Untitled (painting) 1998/2011').

Detail of 'Untitled (painting)' 1998/2011.

Still from 'Did you ever steal a real McCarthy?' 1997/2011. (image by David Schulder)

The moving images reveal a strong personal interest in the medium and an artistic production which is rather celebrating the process of creation itself than being concerned with the reception and presentation of the final product. The narratives and locations of the movies reveal an interest in immediate, strange and often dubious surroundings as well as a process of continuous artistic learning by doing. In some cases the films are shot in landscapes such as Germany's coal pits or construction sites and transport the transient character of environmental change.

To the left, 'Untitled 1995/2011' shot in a construction site, to the right 'Untitled 1993/2011' shot in an agricultural landscape in the Netherlands. (image by David Schulder)

The exhibition is opened until 26th of February. Visit the homepage of ' . ' to find out more about opening times and future shows. Moreover there will be soon a post about a visit to the studio and ' . ' the art space of Lisa Ruyter.

I'm Dreaming of a White Wastemas

2011-01-27T18:45:00.000+01:00

LAGI Competition 2010, Winner 'Lunar Cubit' Announced

2011-01-22T17:20:00.002+01:00

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) recently announced the winner of their 2010 LAGI design competition. According to the competition brief, the project should propose energy generating public art which is culturally valuable, approachable for people and environmentally sound. There were many very creative and forward-looking entries for the competition and the jury for sure didn't have an easy time to decide about the winner.

During the recent 2011 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, the winning project 'Lunar Cubit' was announced. The project was developed by Robert Flottemesch, Jen DeNike, Johanna Ballhaus and Adriana P. De Luca and designed to be located at an intersection on the road connecting Masdar city with Abu Dhabi airport.

Lunar Cubit by night indicating the lunar cycle [image copyright by competition team]

from the project description:
"Lunar Cubit is a site specific proposal to be constructed in Abu Dhabi just outside Masdar City, the world’s first zero carbon metropolis once completed. Combining artistic vision with sustainable design and engineering, Lunar Cubit examines the nature of time through nightly contemplation of lunar phases and daily transformation of sunlight into electricity, powering up to 250 homes. Inspired by astronomy, quantum physics and the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921, this work is open to the public, inviting a personal experience where one can literally reach out and touch a 1.74MW utility scale power plant, in the form of nine monolithic pyramids rising from the sands of Abu Dhabi.
Lunar means relating to or involving the moon and cubit is the name given to the oldest recorded units of length; employed though antiquity, the oldest cubit being the royal cubit, dating back to the Step Pyramid of Djoser circa 2,700 B.C." [source]


Lunar Cubit by day, an approachable public sculpture. [image copyright by competition team]

You can study the proposal more in-depth with the low-res competition pdfs or on the Lunar Cubit webpage.
I wish the team all the best in realizing this proposal and hope that similar projects, where art, energy generation and public space are coming together, will be more frequent in other parts of the world as well!

Environmental Health by [re]designing Nature in a Solidary Way: Natalie Jeremijenko at k/haus Vienna

2011-01-22T17:00:00.003+01:00

This is a short account of Natalie Jeremijenko's lecture: 'On engineering biodiversity, improving environmental health and wrestling Rhinocerous Beetles' which was held in conjunction with the ÖGFA series 'Solidarity - How do democratic spaces come into existence?' as part of the exhibition '[re]designing nature' at k/haus Vienna.

It was inspiring to get new ideas of how to conceptualize our urban narratives in (environmental) design. From my notes taken during the lecture...

Become an 'IMpatient' in the environmental health clinic to participate in changing what design means and in producing new collective goods. Nourish our common knowledge of how stuff is made. Get involved at the clinic's field offices floating as PET-bottle-barge on the East river or as an installation in the 'other-space' at the inside of a roundabout. Measure the sky's clearness with a wearable breathing mask indicator. Take out your environmentally pimped sensor feral robot dog to raise awareness about the state of the soil next door by performing for media outlets (let the media dogs bark for you!). Connect impatiently the local artists and community groups in financing a NOpark biofilter down the street. Resist the urban pollution fallout by installing an urban space station on your roof which will service your building's air. Visit 'Manhattan's National Wildlife Habitat' to understand urban environments in a different way, get in contact and flirt with the animals and enjoy previously invisible information at the 'amphibious architecture'. Become an 'adventurous eater' to break down existing borders in our food-webs.
(Yes,) We can (!) organize our common creative resources to become agents for environmental change, thereby overcoming a current 'crisis of agency'. We are all equally qualified to realize the transition of our material culture in a joyous, playful and sensual way.

I will write a subsequent post presenting the work of the environmental health clinic in a more in-depth way.

Wastemas Late Findings

2011-01-21T17:06:00.004+01:00

Wastemas 2011 Vienna

2011-01-09T15:37:00.005+01:00

Danube Canal Vienna

2011-01-07T15:34:00.005+01:00

'[re]designing nature' at k/haus Vienna

2010-12-22T23:42:00.016+01:00

Currently you can see an interesting exhibition at Vienna's Künstlerhaus. '[re]designing nature' presents 'Current Concepts for Shaping Nature in Art and Landscape Architecture' featuring work of contemporary landscape architects, architects and artists.

The exhibition aims to 'inspire thought about our current relationship to nature, and infuse life into the most recent debates about socially fair, ecologically sustainable, and aesthetically up-to-date environmental design.' [source].

[re]designing nature was initiated by Maria Auböck and curated by Susanne Witzgall, Florian Matzner and Iris Mede. The exhibition in k/haus has just been EXTENDED until 27th of February.

Reading table at the exhibition entrance.

There are as well some nice events scheduled alongside the exhibition:

January 21st, 7 pm: Lecture by Natalie Jeremijenko: 'On engineering biodiversity, improving environmental health and wrestling Rhinocerous Beetles' This event is organized in conjunction with the ÖGFA series 'Solidarity - How do democratic spaces come into existence?' See my short report about it.

Another event is still going to happen:

January 23rd, 3 pm: Artist talk with Regula Dettwiler, Anna Detzlhofer, Jochen Koppensteiner, Christian Phillipp Müller (asked)

Establishing the Bedford-Stuveysant community garden. Ken Smith, New York City.

A view onto 'Ashar macha / Platform of Hope', a small pocket garden integrating a library which serves as a platform for exchange between slum residents and students who work on realizing the project. Khondaker Hasibul Kadir, Dhaka Bangladesh

N55 - 'City Farming Plant Modules, Museum version', 2010.

Peter Latz: Sketches for the amphitheater Ariel Sharon within the Hiriya Landfill Transformation, 2009.

Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro - 'High Line', 2004-2011. Models of ground structure with benches, 2005.

Lois und Franziska Weinberger - 'Mobile Garden', 2003.

Observatorium - 'Into the Desert', 2010.

Reiner Maria Matsik - 'Urban Wasteland', 2010.

Balmori Associates - 'St. Louis Riverfront', 2005-2015

Vincent Callebaut - 'Physalia Amphibious Garden', 2010.

Metagardens - 'Monstruosa', 2009. Installation from EPS and Drosera sp.

Paula Hayes - 'Living Necklace', 2007

R&Sie(n) - 'Symbiosis Hood', 2009.

Natalie Jeremijenko - 'Urban Space Station, model #001', 2010

Mark Dion - '(Tooley Street Hanging Garden) Vertical Garden', 2006.

Gross.Max - 'Tooley Street Hanging Garden', 2009.

Regula Dettwiler - 'Untitled (Rüdiger)', 2010.

Seeing 'Living Concrete / Carrot City'

2010-12-10T02:31:00.069+01:00

I finally managed to visit the exhibition 'Living Concrete/Carrot City' which elaborates on design and planning works related to the topic of urban agriculture. It is still opened until the 15th of December at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, NYC.
'Living Concrete / Carrot City' stems from a dialog between the project 'Carrot City - Designing for Urban Agriculture' at Ryerson University, Toronto and the project 'Living Concrete' at Parsons', Eugene Land College.

In a collaborative, cross-institutional way the exhibition shows:
How increasing public interest in agriculture, food supply and food security influences urban design and how design can facilitate a better urban food system. 'Carrot City'
Design interventions and pedagogy that reconnect people to food production while positively influencing neighborhoods, public health and environment. 'Living Concrete'

'Living Concrete/Carrot City' aims higher than solely providing a nice exhibition and thus created a space of exchange for people and communities which are active and interested in urban agriculture.

Imageboard for food and agriculture related events in NYC to connect stakeholders.

Interactive, non-virtual board with questions and answers related to urban agriculture.

Alongside the exhibition, Parsons hosted a series of public panels to discuss different issues related to urban agriculture. Yesterday I attended the last panel of this series which focused on the role of universities in researching, supporting and employing urban agricultural practices.
The panels were luckily streamed and documented by Parsons' streaming culture project (thank you!) so we can access videos of the 'Living Concrete/Carrot City' panels online.
Additionally, the book 'Carrot City' will be published in March 2011 and provide a prominent amount of the information presented in the exhibition.

Here are some impressions from the exhibition as appetizer and documentation.

'Vacant Lot Grow Bag' by 'what if: projects ltd.'

Map of urban agriculture in Brooklyn, NY. Created by Parsons-students.

'Opportunities for a Green and Edile Middlebrough' from the 'Urban Farming Project'. Bohn and Viljoen Architects and others.

Gardens from the project 'Edible Estates' by Fritz Haeg. Top left image shows the installation of 'Lenape Edible Estate' in Manhattan.

60 Richmond street east co-operative housing in Toronto designed by Teeple architects.

Rendering of the 'Via verde' project Melrose, South Bronx, NYC.

'True Nature Foods Rooftop Victory Garden' in Chicago, IL by Urban Habitat Chicago.

If you are in NYC you still have time until 15th of December to go and visit the exhibition.

ASLA Awards 2011: Call for Entries

2010-12-07T21:34:00.003+01:00

The American Society of Landscape Architects has released their call for entries for the 2011 ASLA awards in the categories professional and student awards.

The prestigious awards are opened to professionals and students from around the world. See the web to reference winners of the 2010 ASLA professional awards and the 2010 ASLA student awards, as well as winners of previous years. This is anyway a nice resource for design ideas and successful projects. ;)

Flickerlab New York

2010-12-06T18:26:00.179+01:00

This Friday I was able to visit Flickerlab in new York City which is a media design and production company concerned with 'storytelling for people and planet'.

Still from 'A Brief History of the USA' in 'Bowling for Columbine'. [image courtesy of Flickerlab]

I was attracted by the outstanding philosophy of Flickerlab and my interest in a company working at the cutting edge of latest media technology to create environmentally and socially responsible content for digital media. During my visit I was interested in the Flickerlab working routine (under the aspect of digital craftsmanship); their current projects and future endeavors as well as motivating forces.

Flickerlab is headed by Harold Moss and Tammy Walters which set up the company in 2000 and merged with the Danish animation company Gonzoft in 2009 creating Flickerlab, LLC.
Flickerlab's services include design of interactive media, technology development, media production and content creation. Their clients encompass the BBC, Michael Moore, Hooked on Phonics, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Greenpeace, MTV, or, The United Federation of Teachers, amongst others.

Still from animation for Repower America. [image courtesy of Flickerlab]

Still from 'The Wildlife Present: Climate Cartoons' for TV2, Denmark. [image courtesy of Flickerlab]

I was talking to Harold Moss of Flickerlab to find out more about how Flickerlab is supporting environmental and social change on several levels.
Firstly, Flickerlab is using the medium itself (ebooks, internet, film etc) to create content which is powerful enough to change perspectives in people's minds. Interesting here is the future potential of ebooks which may be an unprecedented opportunity for providing high quality education for mass audiences.
Secondly, in their own practice the company aims to be as sustainable as possible. So when it comes to production, Flickerlab is emphasizing green industry principles and 'cradle to cradle' design with their business partners. In their own office, electricity is entirely coming from New York's renewable share. Moreover, the consumption of hardware and office supplies is dedicated towards a minimal use of resources.
Thirdly, Harold Moss emphasized that it is important to act as a change agent in every aspect of what you're doing, not necessarily only during your work life.
I agree on that: We can't greenwash in our practices and still live a life like the most resource wasteful consumers. It is about working with and cultivating a new understanding.

Recycled coffee from neighboring Star***** helps the plants in the Flickerlab to grow.

During our talk I was interested in the importance of craftsmanship in the practice of Flickerlab a question which stemmed from reading Richard Sennett's 'The Craftsman'. Sennett argues that the 'abuse' of digital tools (his example is CAD as used in architectural design) can create a situation of separated hand and head in which the head is suffering in the sense that it is not any more informed by a creative and learning hand.
So how does a digital animation laboratory answer to this challenge? My visit showed that modern tools are going beyond what Sennett described in his book. There is not necessarily a divide between the hand and the head any more. The drawing pads Flickerlab associates are working on are digital drawing boards and screens at the same time. So the head and the hand are connected again. For sure the tactile sense is a different one and you can erase indefinite iterations but this enhanced interface can be seen almost as new form of paper.

Wacom pen-tablet workstation at Flickerlab. An advanced hands-on digital interface.

Still from 'St. Joseph's Hospital - Many Roads', drawn completely digital. [image courtesy of Flickerlab]

In this aspect it is as well interesting to state that Flickerlab's 'Go Real-time Animation System' employs the human hand to create animations (such as 'The Nelly Nut Show') in real time with a two-hand game controller (see images below).

An interesting aspect came up during the conversation with Harold Moss. There may be other means than drawing for establishing the creative relationship between head and hand. Inside the Flickerlab are some devices which make that possible. Toys are located on the main meeting table (image) or books used to represent the concepts for ebooks.

Building blocks for new ideas on the Flickerlab meeting table.

We were as well talking about how to maintain a good working environment (something of deep interest for a company concerned with social and environmental change) for successfully producing creative solutions(products). Seen as a workshop, the leaders of any creative work environment (working under the regime of deadlines) have to balance the 'conflict between autonomy and authority' as Richard Sennett put it in 'The Craftsman'. This role of the guiding authority may be in the case of Flickerlab represented by the creative director (Harold Moss).
For Flickerlab it is firstly important to work with people who bring in their own strong vision and talent (this is not a guide for your cover letter!). They then try to find out what is in the heads and minds of collaborators and associates to leave certain autonomy open. It was noted by Harold Moss that usually some kind of common language is developing with collaborators Flickerlab worked the most with.
So it is important to sensibly cultivate a climate in your workshop in which people feel free to author, not left alone, can be guided, include their skills and surely also credit for their work. I felt that Flickerlab a very attractive workplace as there is a very professional but fair and relaxed atmosphere.

The Flickerlab couch. A place to have a rest for cultivating creative unrest.

Inspiration for the environmentally and socially conscious practice of Flickerlab stems as well from two books.
'Cradle to Cradle Design: Remaking the Way We Make Things' by William McDonough and Michael Braungart is a book held up by Flickerlab and a frequently gifted present for business partners and friends.
'Blessed Unrest' by Paul Hawken is a book portraying the worldwide movement for social and environmental change.

Still from 'Tek Jansen' produced for 'The Colbert Report' [image courtesy of Flickerlab]

You can visit Flickerlab's you tube channel for examples of their work. Warning: Including explicitly hilarious material!

I wish the whole team of Flickerlab a very bright and interesting future and the best luck for their upcoming endeavors.

Terreform's Self-sufficient Skyscraper

2010-12-05T04:03:00.000+01:00

Recently I visited terreform, a non-profit dedicated to research into the forms and practices of just and sustainable architecture and urbanism, located in Manhattan, NYC. I wanted to find out more about a specific project, the 'self-sufficient skyscraper', which terreform presented during the 2010 Venice Biennale in the US 'workshopping' pavilion.

Terreform's contribution to the US pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2010. [image courtesy of terreform]

In relation to a 'self-sufficient skyscraper', I was interested in questions of how to achieve self-sufficiency, technological feasibility, social implications and a research-based design process integrating life-cycle concepts.

The 'Self-sufficient Skyscraper' is part of terreform's ongoing investigation 'New York City (Steady) State' about the possibility of New York city becoming entirely self-sufficient within its political boundaries. The issues concerned in the study are: food, energy, water, waste, movement, buildings, air and climate.

'New York City (steady) State' features urban prototypes for (almost) closed loop systems at different scales, such as, the districts, neighborhoods, building blocks, barges on the water or detached single family houses.

The self-sufficient skyscraper extends this investigation to the realm of high rise buildings. In a nutshell, the project can be described as a habitable and sociable vertical urban farm in the dimension of a skyscraper.

The 'Self-sufficient Skyscraper' is a re-use proposal for the Verizon building North of the Brooklyn bridge landing in Manhattan. The building is conceptualized to house 500 people and follows the approach of creating vertical neighborhood supported by an agri-cultural production system which is largely closed (in terms of water and resource cycles) and tied to on-site energy generation (solar and biomethane) and minimized energy consumption (food, building and lifestyle needs). The 'self-sufficient skyscraper' houses various urban functions to support the social life in the city. Residential uses, farming areas, commercial floors, institutional programs as well as adaptable spaces are featured to bring the self sufficient skyscraper to life.

Diagram of water and waste cycles (click to enlarge). [image courtesy of terreform]

As a habitable vertical farm, the building is a homage to Dickson Despommier, advocate of the vertical farm concept. The agricultural layout integrates aeroponics for growing of vegetables (at lower water demand), aquaponics producing proteins (tilapia sp., the 'queen' of farmed fish) and small scale chicken husbandry (open air).

Agricultural concept for the self-sufficient skyscraper and technologies used (click to enlarge). [image courtesy of terreform]

The farming area of the building is calculated based on a dietary energy intake of 2000 kcal/person/day assuming a half-vegetarian low-fat diet for the residents. This conceptual approach reflects the discussion of how to mitigate the 'developed' countries' carbon and ecological footprint by limiting dietary energy uptake to a more modest level. This would result in a reduction of the footprint of the 'developed' world, which is currently over-feeding itself and wasting huge portions of the food energy available. Such a reduction will not necessarily be a limitation in terms of quality of life, rather a healthy alternative to increasing obesity and food-related illnesses.

Diagram of energy generation and use (click to enlarge). [image courtesy of terreform]

The 'self-sufficient skyscraper' features some interesting examples of green technologies and strategies. Most of the technologies in the project are market-ready at hand and could therefore be integrated in building in the near-term future. This could happen either in a rather condensed way as a vertical, almost machine-like urban farm (as the project described here), or as extensions and benign parasites for existing urban structures. In this sense the 'self-sufficient skyscraper' is a feasibility study for high-density urban farming.

The 24 levels of the building feature three water cycles, each with a 'living machine' (biofilter) for a cluster of eight floors, to clean the water before being recycled. The system is modeled after John Todd's version of the living machine, called the 'eco-machine'.

Detail view of an 'eco-machine' designed by John Todd Ecological Design for indoor wastewater treatment. [image by John Todd Ecological Design]

Wind turbines are integrated on some floors of the building to generate a fraction of baseline energy use. Wind Turbines for small scale urban applications are market ready but their real energy generation capacity still needs to be assessed.

Vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) for urban application. [image and turbine by Urban Green Energy]

Helium balloons coated with photovoltaics are designed to power the biggest part of electrical energy for the building. The concept was suggested in 2007 by Geotectura for the 2007 re:volt competition about how to power an urban block. The approach seems intriguing and technically feasible but will have to be developed further to solve problems of wind and directional positioning.

Experimental prototype for a photovoltaic helium balloon within the 'SunHopes' project of geotectura. [image by geotectura]

Methane digesters are market-ready and widely used. Urban applications and integration of methane digesters into buildings has yet to be adopted on a larger scale. We still waste huge amounts of nutrients (and thereby energy) by uncoupled nutrient cycles leading to dangerous nutrient levels in the natural environment.

Diagram showing basic function of an anaerobic biogas digester to manage human feces (separation important!) [image by Unesco via PlanningPool]

Scheme for a methane digester integrated in an agricultural system to produce fuel gas and fertilizer. [figure by John Fry]

Aeroponic farming is widely used in commercial farming worldwide and by a community of small scale farmers interested in pushing climate and spatial limits to urban agriculture. Aeroponics can create a good income for urban farmers by producing cash crops with limited space in urban settings.

Aeroponics support root growth and nutrient uptake by plants leading to high growth rates at a lower water demand than conventional plant growing. [image by trendgrinder]

Aquaponics unifies fish cultivation with hydroponic plant growing in a symbiotic system (nutrients traded for the cleaning of water). The concept is applied in community-based gardens in the US and worldwide.

Scheme for an aquaponic system to cultivate tilapia sp. and various vegetables. [image by UVI Aquaculture Program]

Next to the above mentioned technologies and strategies, the 'self-sufficient skyscraper' as well features state of the art green building technologies such as passive ventilation and double facades to lower energy demand of the building.

Technically the self-sufficient skyscraper is less utopian as in its social and economic functioning (Do New Yorkers really want to become part-time farmers? (I tend to answer: Yes, for enough of them to potentially fill a vertical farm.) How can a vertical farm compete economically with non-stacked farming practices?).

The economic feasibility of the 'self-sufficient skyscraper' has not been assessed yet but possible starting points for such a project would be public funding as a lighthouse project or a project run by a cooperative. As stated above, urban farming of cash-crops, especially if grown organically, can bring significant revenue.

The project of terreform shows that architects and designers have an important role in re-shaping imaginary representations of our society, especially under scenarios of diminishing resilience of ecological systems and limited energy availability. The 'self-sufficient skyscraper' can therefore be an opportunity to exemplify state-of-the-art green technologies, urban farming practices and social narratives so they may be discussed and further developed. This conversation will ideally be informed by wonder and excitement to nourish a debate about patterns of our food and energy consumption which sits at the very heart of issues such as climate justice, public health or social and environmental justice.

During my research for this post I didnt find any evidence of how efficient vertical urban farms are (energy and auxiliary input versus food output) if you take into account the construction process of the farms and on-site energy inputs. I still miss a full life-cycle assessment (in terms of energy) comparing vertical farms with for example community gardens or rooftop gardens. Nevertheless the concept is intriguing, provocative and obviously very attractive for designers who want to go green. It will have to be discussed what form of urban farm is the most efficient and in which way can and will society be part of such an endeavor. This discussion should only be teasered here, I will elaborate on that in a subsequent post focusing on vertical farm projects which have been proposed for NYC.

Gravitation Water Vortex Power Plant

2010-12-01T22:49:00.006+01:00

The other day I stumbled upon a fascinating small scale hydropower plant - the 'gravitation water vortex plant' - as developed by the Austrian engineer Franz Zotloeterer, who holds the patent for the turbine technology.

The plant is transforming the mechanical energy produced inside a water vortex and has great potential for small scale installations. The maximum energy output for this technology is estimated to be about 150 kW at an efficiency of about 70% and a minimum falling height of 0,7 meters. [source]

[image: wikipedia]

The main pros of the 'gravitation water vortex plant' are:

- No regulation system necessary.

- Minor flotsam is able to pass the turbine.

- Fish can pass the plant in both directions.

- The water gets aerated leading to better microbial growth and breakdown of nutrient charge in water.

- The low falling height allows a better integration into the landscape.

[source]

[image source and copyright zotloeterer.com]

Because of the above reasons this type of hydro power can be realized in relatively flat landscapes, integrated into river restorations (with synergistic effects) or included in wastewater treatment plants.

One may as well think about planning small gravitation water vortex power plants as being integrated in urban graywater discharge sewers. There they could create electricity used in pumping rainwater during storm events.

Three types of grid integration are presented on Zotloeterer.com:

- Parallel operation mode (direct injection into public power grid)

- Surplus energy into grid (energy not used by owner of plant is injected into public power grid)

- Isolated operation mode (energy is exclusively used by plant owner and stored in other means, eg hot water etc.)

[figure source and copyright zotloeterer.com]

There are several pilot projects in place already which demonstrate the feasibility of this technology.

Obergrafendorf, Austria.

Zotloeterer Inc. installed a pilot 'gravitation water vortex power plant' in Obergrafendorf, Austria, in 2006 .

The installation cost about 60.000 € and produces about 7,5 kW.

[image source wikipedia]

See a video of operating plant and interview with Franz Zotloeterer. [in German]

Video of a close up shot of the turbine.

Schöftland, Switzerland.

The first gravitation vortex power plant in Switzerland was inaugurated in 2010. The plant produces about 15 kW at an annual production of about 90000 kWh supplying 50 households with electricity.

[image source]

See a video of the opening and an interview with the project patron Bertrand Piccard [in English] or a more detailed report about the plant in Schöftland. [in Swiss]

Ground Zero

2010-11-28T22:35:00.019+01:00

Giant, Previously Unseen Structure In Our Galaxy

2010-11-16T03:37:00.004+01:00

"The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old."

images by NASA

Niche Flushing Meadows Corona Park

2010-11-11T06:41:00.000+01:00