"Remidiate Ephemeral Meshworks"

Yes. Remediating ephemeral meshworks. A discoursive input created by the "Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator", a really funny and instructive tool scripted by the guys at ruderal. They claim, by the way, that the Landscape Architecture Bullshit Generator may remain their greatest contribution to the discipline. :))

In any case the tool opens a self-reflection window for the discipline which is really important. What do we want to say when writing on theory and practice? Which language do we take into the discourse and what meaning does it transport? In this sense the Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator questions everybody in the field to reconsider the lingo used in everyday work. 

LED Heaven

Imagine to send a message to someone and you want it displayed. How nice to have an entire heaven to do so.

Warchild Revisit

The child meanwhile lost it's heart, taken away by some stranger. Outline and background are still there and a whole texture can be imagined. Beautiful are the ghost-like small figurines sprayed with stencil as they appear to fade away.

Bicycle Mainstreaming

Following STC's Vienna lecture on bicycle cultural exchange between Beijing, New York and Vienna it was nice to see that some concepts were successfully introduced into public discourse.
During the talk I emphasized the importance of a process of 'bicycle mainstreaming' which could (in a nutshell) be understood as a process of supporting a broader understanding and support for the bicycle as viable means of providing urban transportation and to see the bicycle as equal participant next to people on foot or in cars.  Traveling everyday commutes on bicycles in cities like Beijing, Vienna or New York makes one conscious about the importance of the bicycle mainstreaming concept.
Today (February 4th 2012) a google search returned three results for "bicycle mainstreaming", not too many if one thinks about the usefulness of such a concept. Two of those hits are by the way related to the work of "Smarter Than Car"... :)  
To demonstrate the transition of the concept from the lecture into the broader discourse please find two images below, one of y slide in my presentation and another one from the article (in german) on the lecture's content which was published by the Austrian Federal News' website (ORF.at).
At 'Smarter Than Car we continue working that such a bicycle mainstreaming will become a more day to day process in Beijing and Vienna.

Screen shot of the article on ORF.at. Dated 2011-09-27

Slide from the lecture.Dated 2011-05-18

LAGI Competition 2012: NYC Powered by Art

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

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

"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)