A simple mission: “to generate design opportunities that will improve living standards for all” by providing an open-source platform through which ANYone can view, post, share, and adapt sustainable, humanitarian-based, scalable solutions. The idea that designs and all associated documents can and should be shared within the decidedly proprietary architectural industry is truly innovative, and could very well aid in the reshaping of the entire architectural profession into a more socially-focused and responsible vocation. Architecture for humanity; Cameron Sinclair on TED talks//aito
To transform temporary available and under-used spaces
A renewed approach to architecture and urban planning cannot be initiated solely by centralised structures and governmental bodies. Doina Petrescu highlights the importance of ‘other spaces’, the temporary appropriation and use of leftover spaces and urban interstices, spaces of relative freedom, where rules and codes can still be redefined.
“Reclaim the streets” is a worldwide phenomenon, where people take over the streets and set up a party. Yesterday in Helsinki, Punk took over. The organization was excellent; one second - people fill the street, two seconds - traffic is stopped and anarchist black flags put up, and a red blanket constructed to hinder cars from passing. Three seconds - the tent is up. Four seconds - the instruments are orderly put up and the spontaneous stage is ready. Five seconds - a small aggregat is carried in to give power to the loudspeakers. Next the bar is up and punk music fills the neighbourhood. //aito
Artist Joshua Allen Harris´ plastic bag polar bear
Polar bears, polar bears. Those ubiquitous symbols of climate change. Cute and cuddly, ethereal and majestic, they’re popping up everywhere - including atop subway grates on the streets of New York City. Artist Joshua Allen Harris has created quite an online buzz with his puppy-like inflatable plastic bag polar bear: it inflates and deflates with the passing of subterranean subway trains, springing to life and then fading away in a vital commentary on global warming.
Regardless of whether you are an urban, suburban, or rural dweller, there is inevitably a patch of neglected turf in your neighborhood that might need a bit of TLC and greening. If you see hidden gardening potential between sidewalk cracks when others see decay and abandon, well then, you might be a budding guerrilla gardener and not even know it! The guerrila gardening phenomenon is currently sweeping the globe as folks are finding innovative ways to come together for the optimization of neglected land and paved surface area. It’s a turf war for some, or a poetic gesture for others, but either way, citizens are rolling up there sleeves to create gardens in the most unlikely spaces and places.
The term ‘guerrilla gardening‘ might scare off some, but the practice has a long history of both radical and community-building tactics. Liz Christy and the Green Guerrillas transformed an abandoned lot in NYC’s Bowery during the 1970’s and as the BBC recently reported, guerrilla gardeners are ’sowing the seeds of resistance’ in South London. Many ‘resistance gardeners’ consider themselves to be vandals of sorts but with plants or seeds as weapons, often operating covertly at night in empty lots or on public property that otherwise remains unkept or barren.
The Guerilla Gardening website has a friendly though subversive sort of tone, as it has gone from tracking the activities of “illicit cultivation around London” to being a “growing arsenal for anyone who is interested in waging war against the neglect of public space.” It’s troop digs are warm and inviting and ultimately about reclamation, beautification, and even growing food in public spaces (a political act in and of itself as we re-educate ourselves about viable land use). The lighter side of the guerilla gardening campaign would probably be community gardens or grassroots gardening, which also brings folks together (during daylight hours) for neighborhood improvement and local food security. Whether as collective green graffiti or as an attempt to reclaim the neighborhood and make improvements for all, guerrilla gardening is a form of eco-activism that is catching on despite its controversial methods.
Eco-minded street artist Edina Tokodi is putting a new spin on green guerilla tactics in the trendy art enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tokodi’s site-specific moss installations of prancing animal figures and camouflage outgrowths are the talk of a local urban neighborhood typically accustomed to gallery hype and commercial real estate take-overs. Unlike the market-driven art featured in sterile, white box galleries, the work of Tokodi is meant to be touched, felt, and in turn touch you in the playful ways that her animated installations call to mind a more familiar, environmentally friendly state in the barren patches of urban existence.
Tokodi believes strongly that the reactions of passersby (or the lack of any reaction at all) is really an indicator of a deeper malaise that we need to pay attention to and reseed with “mentally healthy garden states” and direct interactive engagement.
The artist states:
“I think that our distance from nature is already a cliché. City dwellers often have no relationship with animals or greenery. As a public artist I feel a sense of duty to draw attention to deficiencies in our everyday life. As a cultivator of eco-urban sensitivity, I usually go back to the sites to visit my “plants” or “moss”, sometimes to repair them a bit, but nothing more generally as they tend to get enough water from the air, condensation, and rain - especially in certain seasons. I also like to let them live by themselves. From the moment I put them on the street they start to have their own life. For me, the reaction of life on the street is also very important. I am curious about how people receive them, if they just leave them alone, or if they want to, take care of them or dismantle them. This is what makes my work similar to graffiti, although I am searching for a deeper social meaning and a dialogue with memories of the animals and gardens of my past in a small town in Central Europe. I believe that if everyone had a garden of their own to cultivate, we would have a much more balanced relation to our territories. Of course, a garden can be many things.”
Edina Tokodi studied graphic art and design at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and also completed urban design course work in Milan, Italy. Her work can be seen on the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in unexpected outcroppings on a street near you.
The idea of `The Squatted Office´ touches me because of several issues; first, it continues my theme of Forbidden Places. It also comes close as to the personal experience I have on being offered (the now almost a rule) part-time work and work contracts of 3-6 months, and the problem of expensive housing costs in relation to wages. But the idea and the fact of working only part-time also describes the feeling of freedom you get from being able (albeit economically barely) to not dedicate your entire life to work controlled by somebody else, and the freedom of not being dictated by the mindless squirrel wheel.
Mind you, as this article shows, the time not working for your bread is not spent idle, this time gives one the opportunity to work and study something that really interest you without fear of not following the company agenda. One is free to concentrate on what one loves, and interests of love are seldom treated lightly. This kind of passionate work is much more productive than work done only for money.
Progressive working environments are starting to grasp the idea of “working for love” slowly. There are some books (that immediately became cult books) on the issue, for example “The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida” a book that keeps coming up on seminars time after time. One can hear the cry in the air for a solution from companies and government on what to do when educated people will not dance after the same steps employers have made them dance the past years. What will companies do, when money is not any more the primus motor of the creative class they need so badly?
`The squatted office´ is also close at heart because it brings to mind a friend of mine who as early as the 1970-80´s turned his government work place into something that I could now call a “creative nest” (…or borderline “anarchist nest”). Imagine one of those city bureaus of monotonous facades and people in cubicles (koppikonttori), and suddenly one cubicle with a grand piano in it, music, books not directly related to the work being studied, and an employee not following the 9-17 time scheme. Of course in those days in ultra-conservative small town Finland it was bound to create a lot of stir…well, in most of the Finnish governmental offices it would still do that, when even trying to get the time card coded not to call security after 20.00 is impossible. The rise of the creative class has not by far yet entered our governing institutions.
The issues brought forward by the article touch also on many flaming themes in our society. Not long ago, the press announced that manly because of high housing costs, to be able to live in Helsinki, a family needs to earn minimum 3000 euros/month. This exceeds the earnings of many. Could squatting your work place be part of a solution? If you feel at home on your work place, if you also could bring family and friends there, spend time and cook there, could it replace some of the costly space in your big home?
Employers should take a close look on the concept of work attached living (tulevaisuuden työsuhdeasunto). //aito
This just in from our friends in Bulgaria. We thought it was worth sharing here as an Eastern European counterpoint to the article about squatting one’s workplace that appeared in the first issue of Rolling Thunder.
This story starts a little before the end of my last term in the university. I’d spent four really crazy years in the students’ hostels in the well known “Students’ Town” in Sofia. The end of the term was coming and my life in the students’ hostel was about to end, too. I had to find a new place for living very fast if I wanted to stay in Sofia. I thought over a lot of options for renting, but all the rents were very expensive for me. I was working for a web page at that time. The job was pretty nice—I used to write news and concert reports, prepare photos, and do kind of a primitive book-keeping at the office. The best thing was that I had one or two free weeks every month and I was able to travel all around the country during this time, but the bad thing was that my salary was very low. It appeared that if I wanted to rent a lodging I had to find more “serious” and well-paid job. For me this was like putting a chain around myself and working the whole month only to get enough money to pay my rent and food, and hopefully to save some money to enjoy the weekends. I didn’t like this idea at all, because I didn’t want to sell my leisure time for a wage.
Then a great idea dawned on me. I thought of squatting my workplace. My boss was living abroad and he was staying in Bulgaria only for some periods of time. I had nothing to lose, so I decided to try it. The office was an attic with two rooms and an anteroom. I had little baggage in Sofia at that time, because my future was unclear and after I left the students’ hostel I was sleeping at the homes of my friends. With my backpack, I was like a snail with my home on my back. So I quietly moved in my office and hid my stuff in a cardboard box. >continue
Abandoned places leave nobody cold. They bring out sentiments of fear, nostalgia, danger, memory and possibility in us.
When I was ten-eleven, me and my friends trespassed on an abandoned dock area in our city. We found an open door, and a room inside that we made our “own”. This was our secret club house where we felt we were in control, where no adults, or ruling gangs of older kids on the streets (Palosaaren mopedijengi) could control us. We made big interior decorations; we painted the walls with old paints we found on the area, we brought carpets and furniture there, we kept a library there etc. The planning and the imagination of all that this could become made us absolutely tied to the place. The area itself was a heaven for a child with all its exciting cranes, old ship parts and warehouses. It was a thrilling time and we would work all day on this almost without any breaks and love it. In modern day entrepreneurial culture they would call this “flow”…. and head hunt me down to some well paid media company.
In the end my mother found out and made an end of it, but I still treasure this time when we were child house occupants.
The site www.forbidden-places.net has a fantastic collection of photographs from deserted hospitals, factories, underground subway stations etc in Europe that war, demographics, economy or other change have made ruins. Some of the photos are just stunning. Would be interesting to see a section from Finland. Enjoy! //aito
