deconcrete

Global is the power of economy, and so are spreading the protests against its tyranny. The Funambulist posted today about the protest camp settled in Downtown Manhattan. In the same line with the protests of the 15-M movement of Spanish indignados, a new micro-society has recently begun at New York’s Zucotti Park. Being a private plot handed over to public use makes it easier to camp on, when compared to the troublesome evictions experienced in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol by the authorities (as long as the owner of the plot do not change his mind). Lambert denounces the incredible general silence of the media towards this grassroots movement that is growing bigger and bigger.

Like in Madrid, Occupy Wall Street protest camp has also renamed its site to Liberty Square, and its structure and usage of public space as a popular parliament reminds me to the Spanish ones: assemblies, commissions, support, actions… Current representative democracy can no longer be accepted as the least bad option for political systems. Global citizens seem to feel less and less identified with official leaders and they are claiming for more participation in politics and a change that is quite unexpected to come from within the establishment.

The Funambulist links to a very recommendable article by Gaston Gordillo [CriticalLegalThinking], featuring the resonance expansion of contemporary protests against corrupted systems of governance. As Gordillo refers to, The Revolution Will Not be Televised [Gill-Scott Heron, 1970s].

[all images> Occupy Wall Street via The Funambulist]

When appropriation of public space happens, it happens at two levels. Protesters reclaim a physical site, but at the same time they appropriate a symbol of political identity. The outbreak of rioting or violence always shows civil unrest amongst certain groups of population. London has a long history experiencing them, dating back to the Peasants’ Revolt (1381), the Gin Riots (1743) or Bloody Sunday (1887). As featured yesterday in socks-studio & il post, here is a visual chronology of London’s history throughout its rioting in public space since 1915: communist marches, clashes between leftist and extreme right, disadvantaged neighbourhoods, racially motivated protests, against cuts or increased government taxes; anarchists, environmentalists, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist…

*1915: Destruction of a German shop by Londoners, Poplar High St.

*1936: Brit bobbies destroy a communist-built barricade near Mark Lane, opening the street to Oswald Mosley fascist supporters. Communist parade in the East End.

*September 1958: Racial turmoils, Notting Hill.

*March 1968: Pacific demonstration against war in Vietnam, Grosvenor Sq. (US Embassy).

*November 1970: Bobbies free Houghton Street from barricades built by London School of Economics students. They protested against traffic noise.

*September 1976: Notting Hill blacks vs. white turmoil.

*August 1979: Bobbies during racial turmoil in Notting Hill

*April 1981: Brixton turmoil.

*October 1985: Tottenham clashes arrests

*March 1990: Trafalgar Square’s protests against Poll Tax introduced by Margaret Thatcher.

*April 1993: Anti-nazi protests in front of BNP’s headquarter in Welling, South-East.

*April 1997: Environmental and anti-globalisation protests in front of Downing Street.

*November 1999: Aftermath of a parade against privatization of the railway system and against WTO, Euston Station.

*April 2009: Police hit by an egg during an anarchist, anti-capitalist and environmentalist protest the day before the G20 in London.

*November 2010: Students turmoils against increase in education taxes, London center.

*March 2011: Bobbies in front of a barricade in Jermyn St. after a parade against Governmental cuts.

The emblematic Central Madrid has turned into a vibrating site of proactive politics again.

2 August 2011, a few minutes before sunrise. It was the second day in the national holiday period for the masses and the city was almost empty. Everyone wants to scape the scorching summer temperatures, but some 15M “indignant” protesters remained still camped. They had marched from all over the country to bring their voice to the capital city. After 2,5 months of pacifist protests since the movement began, riot policemen decided to take action. They evicted the grass-roots information booth and the few tents from the protest camp with premeditation and nocturnality.

This Governmental shift has boosted the general outrage of a movement that was getting ready to hibernate for the summer; it has resurged now instead of September. For the past three days, policemen were told to block Plaza del Sol, emblematic public space for the demonstrators, and where the 15 May movement for real democracy was born. If the whole public square was turned into a massive protest camp since May, now it is an over-controlled empty void, a sort of Bastille-fortress. The same policemen that used to prevent anyone from camping outside the square are now preventing anyone from entering. No civil person has been allowed in the square: the absurdity of controlling a political symbol. The subway nodal station has even already been closed down for a total of 24 hours; trains do not stop at Sol.

Counterproductive as it has proved, blocking public space from people to express their ideas has only strengthened them. Even the policemen trade union (SUP) have publicly considered today Sol’s blockade as a political mistake. Madrid Central has turned from a consumption and commerce hub into a space for debate and consensus. Several surrounding squares (not sieged by police forces yet) like Jacinto Benavente, Mayor, Callao, Cibeles, Pontejos, Atocha have been spontaneously taken over to celebrate bottom-up meetings. Critical issues are being discussed, proposed and questioned: financial crisis, citizen participation, politicians’ corruption and abuse of power… The politics of public space are more active than ever and back to the very origins of Greek agoras: open places of assembly. In Valencia, Tenerife or Madrid, squares that have housed these protests are now commonly referred to as the 15M Square. Even main streets like Madrid’s Gran Vía have been turned into people’s parliaments after stopping car traffic at night. There is an urgent need for real debate; power structures need to listen.

Only 10 days left for the Pope’s bombastic visit to Madrid and the global Catholic Youth Encounter (JMJ). They are to be largely funded by the Government of our secular country in one of the worst moments for national economy. Madrid authorities start to take action in order to show global pilgrims that there is no trouble among its citizens, but tension is heavily felt everywhere. During the Papal visit, the same streets that now function as sites for political expression and debate will house hundreds of temporary confession booths, where Catholic pilgrims will be able to confess their sins in every language.

Meanwhile, 15M “indignados” claim that this square is not the Pope’s (“esta plaza, no es del Papa”). Yesterday, riot policemen started to brutally attack for the first time, beating pacific protesters: 20 injured. Today there will be gatherings and demonstrations claiming again for Real Democracy NOW in most Spanish cities around 7 pm.

[images> August protests in Madrid by Carlos Rosillo (Mayor, Preciados, Alcalá & Cibeles), Alberto Martín (Gran Vía), Samuel Sánchez (Preciados, injured & Jacinto Benavente), Kiko Huesca (Parliament), Dani Pozo (Preciados), Emilio Naranjo (Sol), Uly Martín (Sol)]

A person shouts and everyone pulls from the strings at once. The 2 m² fabrics lying on the pavement, which function as selling display for the illegally copied DVDs on sale, turn into smart tools for immediate runaway without leaving the merchandise behind. Two seconds later, no trace of the street market remains, but the astonishment in pedestrians’ eyes.

The most exciting informal stalls in Madrid or Barcelona for spatial practice are however the toughest drama for nowadays-human existence, as González Iñárritu beautifully depicted in his last movie. Thus, their instability allows instantaneous flexibility to jurisdiction. Informal markets understood as politically contested spaces is the approach that Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck use in their on-line Atlas titled Other Markets:

“Other Markets investigates their role in a continuous process of political ordering that draws on the power to decide on the exception to the normalised condition and its application to the transformation of national identities and sovereignties. At the heart of this restructuring are deterritorialised ethnic forms that have come to replace state government technology. These shifts have prompted the demand for new forms of governance that respond better to contemporary ‘regimes of living’ – the ongoing fragmentation of cultures and subjects and the multitude of spatially dispersed informal affiliations.“

Among the study cases compiled in their atlas, Soranart Sinuraibhan studies Rom Hoob Market, 72km away from Bangkok, Thailand. This everyday architectural invention is a direct translation of flows of people along the railway tracks. In a congested urban territory, buffer zones are reclaimed to meet the most basic needs of interchange. The hazardous condition of the site seems to be obviated by means of very low baskets that can remain by the tracks and avoid train wheels damage. There is simply no need to move them. For bigger items, sellers have come up with self-built stalls on wheels.

The train whistles and everyone gets ready to save their goods.

“By examining the exercise and development of citizenship arrangements in and around informal market places, Other Markets traces the current shift from a ‘citizenship of borders and confines’ to diverse forms of ‘latitudinal citizenship’ associated with the exertion of lateral influence across social and political domains.”

[1> street DVD seller Spain via emdw007][2> Train approaching Rom Hoob Market, Soranart Sinuraibhan]

Learning from concocting informal uses of the formal city, legal loopholes, speculative visions and appropriations of public space, Berlin-based Ilka and Andreas Ruby launched Urban Transformation in 2008. Their cookbook for real action aims ideal cooperation and alliances between urban authorities and citizens towards a more socially sustainable future. As they point out: <the term “urban” […] represents a cosmos of extremely varied notions determined by geographical, cultural, and individual preferences. If we want to get a grip on what is “urban” today, we have to capture it in all its disguises, gradations, and transformations occurring simultaneously on a global scale.> The edition was initiated and extended after the Holcim Foundation Forum for sustainable construction held in Shanghai in 2007.

“Transformation” is emphasized here as estate in-between unfinished realities: visualising urban failures and their implementation. In this ever-changing panorama, we are guided through a world of possibilities that deal with the role of consumption in configuring our current cities, and its perversion by means of witty tactics. The spatial and legal transformations compiled in the book are structured in 6 chapters of in-between contexts: Between ecology & economy, global & local, public & private, sanctioned & shadow order, permanent & transitory, standard & appropriation.  These confronted dualities determine a zone imaginaire with an incredibly high potential for spatial practices.

The right to urban mobility is one of the main challenges described. A wide-range series of thinkers, pioneers and visionaries, narrate the adventures and misfortunes of almost every megalopolis in its struggle with overpopulation; however, even if Urban Transformation does not try to cover city by city in a methodical analysis, it unveils an astonishing X-ray of the urban fractures that every society shares. Some of the highlights of  this “urbanism on the move” are RV practitioners in Arizona (Simpson), 21^st century Mongolian nomads (Lippe), homeless men’s temporal houses in Seoul (Cho), refugees’ spatial negotiations in their temporary camps (Herz), trans-border flows (Cruz), the impact of gondola lift transportation systems in the slums of Caracas (U-TT) or even cycling initiatives in Quito and Bogotá (Ganchala).

Another relevant issue questioning conventional modes of urban planning is the invented typologies resulting from speculation and politics that are superseding past modes of real-estate housing. This new sort of hyper-real estates, where popular imagination and eager for fast profits make unexpected urban hybrids appear, include: Serbian turbo typologies (Jovanović Weiss), super-dense urban villages in Shenzhen (Du), Caribbean floating cities (Zapata & Supersudaca), model showroom houses with fake windows in Korea (Shin), restricted International Aid walled cities in Kabul for foreigners (Karakat & Hannurkar) or Singapore’s schizophrenic social mix (Zhang & Tan).

Urban Transformation also provides a series of informal spatial appropriations of the public realm such as the fantasy world Underneath a Highway in Guangzhou (Gutierrez & Portefaix). Furthermore, it also compiles projects that have enhanced users’ participation and supported civil disobedience in otherwise over-controlled environments: United Bottle (Hebel & Stollmann) and Elemental (Iacobelli & Aravena) are good examples. As Philippe Cabanne states in his essay, <The democratically constituted state, according to Habermas […], cannot be infallible. Neither can it demand from its citizens an unconditional obedience and remain, at the same time, open to development.>

Urban Transformation. Edited by Ilka & Andreas Ruby, Ruby Press, Berlin 2008 (pp. 400, s.i.p.)

[1> Family Home in UlaanBaatar_Mongolia_Florian Lippe][2> Ciclopaseo in Quito_Cycling Citizenship in the City_Ximena Ganchala][3> How To Buy an Apartment in Korea_Haewon Shin][4> Underneath the Highway_Gutierrez & Portefaix]

“How does street vending fit in the contemporary city?” is the opening question of Kenny Cupers’ research about informal stalls throughout Los Angeles: Street Vending as Everyday Urbanism [2005]. With his statement, he supports this practice as an implemented way of urban dynamics; not to be forbidden, but highly enhanced. When formal facilities do not arrive in time, Pop-up vendors have almost the magic capacity of instantly meeting (eating, drinking, shopping…) needs of that site. They detect everyday social demands and provide a solution, which at the same time allows them to earn a living more easily in the megacity struggle.

“By investigating the public perceptions, discourse and political institutions that illegalize, regulate and enforce street vendors in Los Angeles, the project sheds light on the particular urbanism that street vending generates. Street vending is a pervasive element of the everyday urban landscape of Los Angeles. [...] (I)t involves an even greater variety of different actors, with divergent backgrounds and personal motivations; and it can take place using a variety of “infrastructures” – from back pockets, baskets, and bags, to carts, cars, and trucks. In Los Angeles, despite the city’s general prohibition on street vending, the practice has been growing conspicuously over the last few decades, encouraged by the Latin-American immigration since the 1980s. This situation has led a particular group of people to occupy the main stage of the public debate: recent Latino immigrants, some of which are undocumented and for whom vending is a crucial economic activity. These vendors mainly sell fresh vegetables, homemade foods and soda drinks from movable carts, and tend to be situated in particular areas in the city, like downtown, East LA, and East Hollywood. Focusing on this group, the project research has demonstrated how vendors’ mobility allows them to participate in urban life – as migrants, laborers and citizens – and how its contested meanings legitimize prohibition and shape attempts to legalize vending. It has shown ultimately how street vending constitutes a spatial politics in which mobility forms the main source of agency, contestation and site of intervention for governance.”

[all images> by Kenny Cupers]

In his metropolitan adaptation of Robinson Crusoe Concrete Island, Ballard relocated the Pacific Ocean to London urban periphery. Waters turned into elevated roads and the jungle island into an asphalt roundabout; a crashed Jaguar replaced the crashed plane. And the main character started his survival in that triangular wasteland of contemporary urban development.

Following this Ballardian conception of self-appropriated ruins, the exhibition CONCRETE ISLANDS focuses on twisted architectural icons, which have fallen into processes of inhabitation, dereliction and destruction. Featuring the work of 5 artists confronting themselves with the post-glamorous phase of different landmarks, we will be almost teleported to Crusoe’s world of utopian and dystopian fiction. In words of curator Elias Redstone, The influence of architects to control space and determine its social structures alters over time. The artists each provoke an emotional response from the architecture as they find it now, adding their own narrative and interpretation, and exposing new relationships between the architecture, society and nature. As the title Concrete Islands suggests, what we find is architecture that exists in some form of isolation – whether that is geographical, social or ideological.

Andreas Angelidakis often introduces fiction and fantasy into his work to reveal truths about architecture. […] Over time it has felt the effects of Athens’ extensive urbanization and deteriorating economy. Angelidakis takes a leap off imagination, suggesting that the accumulation of plants and soil in this garden-housing overtakes the architecture and Chara wants to become a mountain and leave the city altogether. Angelidakis suggests that ruins are just buildings on their way to becoming nature.

Iwan Baan’s images show real life taking place in these two invented cities [Chandigarh and Brasília] that have adapted to everyday social rituals and basic needs. […] In Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Assembly in Chandigarh two men are viewed bathing and dressing themselves through the perforated concrete façade. Whether they live or work in the building is ambiguous, but here they have found a space suitable to conduct their morning routine.

Frédéric Chaubin has been searching for and photographing atypical examples of architecture dating from the late Soviet era. […] The buildings express the dreams of architects that were educated within a strict Soviet system yet, perhaps as a paradox, managed to achieve immense creative freedom in their work. […] His deliberate enhancement of the dramatic dimension to these buildings pays homage to the imagination of those non-conformist architects and underscores the fictional dimension of history.

Le Val-Fourré was built in the 1960s in the Parisian banlieue of Mantes-la-Jolie as a large scale, optimistic project to meet the increased demand for homes in the city. Densely populated, under resourced and poorly integrated with public transport, the residential project has become a place of escalating frustrations and civil unrest since the 1990s. […] (mounir fatmi)  focuses on an individual apartment as it is torn down by a bulldozer. The men demolishing the building are as absent from view as its former residents, leaving the social implications of such an act to the imagination. As the architecture is slowly destroyed, nature is revealed.

‘Gan Eden’, a film by Niklas Goldbach, also inverts the relationship between architecture and nature. It was filmed in 2005 in the remains of the Dutch pavilion designed by MVRDV for the World Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. The pavilion was intended as a multi-level park but was left to decay when the Expo closed. Goldbach’s film sees two men cruising in the decaying pavilion as an act of re-appropriation. […] Overcome by nature, the pavilion became the park it had always aspired to be.

Concrete Islands Exhibition – Analix Forever. Paris, 9-17 April 2011

[1> Andreas Angelidakis, Troll, 2011][2>Iwan Baan, Morning Routine, Le Corbusier, Palace of the Assembly, Chandigarh, 2010][3> Frédéric Chaubin, CCCP Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed via iso50][4> Mounir Fatmi, Architecture Now! États des Lieux#1, 2010-2011, videostill][5>Niklas Goldbach, Gan Eden, 2006, videostill]

Astronaut (Rémi GAILLARD)

Simply by a change of perspective, the same context can be understood in many different ways. Humour and fun can twist space, and turn it into something else. A golf course can also be read as the Moon surface, by the fact of introducing a random astronaut on the lawn. Then, a golf player does not hit the flag inside a hole with the ball anymore, because the flag is not a golf flag, but the US flag on the Moon; there is a sudden shift in the mental perspective of the viewer.

When alien elements are introduced in a conventional setting, it is our imagination which teleports the whole hybrid to another dimension, far away from the ordinary context. A public elevator can be understood as a private cabin. Your balcony can also be the Pope’s one. It is only a matter of language and standard visual codes.

Rémi Gaillard has been fostering these re-interpretations of public space already for 10 years in his actions between flash mob and “urban terrorism“. His motto: C’est en faisant n’importe quoi, qu’on devient n’importe qui (it is by doing whatever that one becomes whoever).

Pac Man (Rémi GAILLARD)

thanks, álvaro!

Berlin and on-line based soso Magazine has just released an interview about one of my favourite phenomena: sexual attraction to urban objects, featuring the love story between Erika Eiffel (aka. Mrs. Berliner Mauer) and the Berlin Wall: A radical extreme of literally appropriating public space.

[Interview conducted by Jennifer Hofmann; photographs by Anastasia Loginova]:

“Erika’s objectum sexual – the sexual orientation of individuals engaged in romantic relationships with objects. Meaning, like your friend Benny can love boys, and your friend Andrea can love girls, your friend Alex can love his broomstick, or floorboard, or loudspeaker. Erika’s partner, her soul mate and love of her life, is the Berlin Wall. Now, this is not an easy object to love. It’s chipped, it’s graffiti-smeared, it’s crooked and it’s disappearing. It tore the city of Berlin – and the world – in two, ripped apart families, cost countless lives and helped define decades of a very chilly war.

[...]

Coming out publicly was kind of a disaster. There were certain pieces of media that really misrepresented what OS is about. The coverage was highly sexualized. Now people think that all OS people have no regard for decency, that we’re all severely traumatized or that they have to worry about us humping their garden fence or something. They kept comparing our sexuality to human sexuality. Yes, I may be intimate with my object, but not in the same way you might be. I mean, hello, a wall and a woman? The mechanics are not the same. What’s intimate for me is not necessarily intimate for you. It’s most likely completely innocuous to other people.

[...]

it is easier to love a beautiful object like the Eiffel Tower and take less criticism, but I don’t care what other people think. This is not about what’s beautiful. It’s about what’s beautiful inside of my heart. The Wall is the one I love. I am Frau Berliner Mauer.”

thanks, Anastasia!

Satellite dishes are like religious altars. They orientate towards a sacred site, like Catholic ancient churches face Jerusalem or Muslim Mosques look at Mecca. Satellite dishes adorate a far away culture from nostalgia, between a sense of belonging and a feeling of progressive distancing.

In Berlin 1970s Pallasseum building, this worship was turned inwards. By customising dwellers’ satellite dishes, Daniel Knipping achieved a hard negotiation process to make receivers play the role of transmitters (Von Innen Nach Außen, 2008-2010). He persuaded neighbours in this building to choose a very personal image to represent them in public display. Apart from turning the white dot façade into a colourful canvas, pedestrians can peep into personal lives and even guess family status, migration background or even a largely dreamt holiday resort of the owner living behind the satellite dish.

[all images> deconcrete2011]

*Post series commissioned by Nicola Twilley (edible geography /foodprintproject / GOOD Magazine) as part of FOOD FOR THINKERS – An online festival on Food and Writing (18-23/01/2011)

The raised question about the actual role of contemporary food editing makes me think of Mary I and II, the Maries, also known as Daisies. Born in 1966 as main characters of Vera Chytilová’s film Sedmikrásky, they represent a post-Dadaist subversion of food; and food is their tool to show the excess of consumption through an extraordinary gluttony. Almighty goddesses in a Banquet of Profanities. They can see green apples from the Garden of Eden where nobody else does; they dare eat in reverse (dessert first, main course last) playing with sugar daddies to support their diet; they can use surgical scissors to cut and paste paper-printed courses; every meal is affordable for their imagination. Lick, smell, taste and swallow colourful pieces of magazines. Savouring phallus-shaped sausages, rolls, pickles and bananas…

Until they come across with a sumptuous and copious banquet for Czech Communist officials in a hidden room.  There they go our editors, altering any established order of course hierarchy, flavour mix, sitting protocol and eating manners. An explosive cocktail between food fight and a dining table catwalk. But afterwards, clean conscience makes them clear every damaged item in the most stunning naivety, resettling broken dishes together and reconstructing the lavish courses in their particular finesse.

Fighting with food – and not for food – is every spoilt adult’s dream. And it is one of the most interactive ways to reactivate space. Fruit of a local incident in 1945, one of the most celebrated tomato fights still takes place in Bunyol, Spain. For some hours, overripe vegetables turn a village into a democratic meeting space, where everyone is at the same level. No classes, no differences, no identities; simply enjoying a pacifist battle. How fascinating it is to have 99% of the existing buildings empty, because all their dwellers are painting the town red, together.

Its German version is the annual Gemüseschlacht in Berlin, a battle-for-fun between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain neighbourhoods with rotten vegetables: less waste of food, higher filthiness; another perfect excuse for Berliners inventing kaleidoscopic war costumes, psychedelic weapon accessories and unexpected chariots.

Something as simple as food can be the superb public space catalyst.  Pop-up street tea parties already took place in London to commemorate the end of both World Wars. But it is still a recurrent tool for urban monotony: reclaim the streets for popular meals. Spain’s festivities like to fight for World Guinness Records of largest Paellas ever cooked. And interaction ad-hoc devices need to be built. How to prepare a single course for 100,000 companions? Spoons are replaced by pole vaults, building scaffolding instead of a kitchen worktop, distributing individual portions with a real-size digger… Kitchen-monuments allowing everyday celebrations just happen…And the edible may even turn into a landmark: insipid public space, which is converted both into a meeting point and a mental reference all of a sudden. Countless visitors go on pilgrimage to the bizarre Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispo, California.

The absurd spontaneous fact of sticking chewing gum to a random wall is far more powerful than any over-designed commemorative obelisk.

[1,2> stills from Daisies (Chytilová, 1966) via ][3-5> Tomatina fight in Bunyol, Spain via monoloco & sobreespana][6,7>Vegetable fight in Berlin via n24][8>Mountedofficer streetparty via bbc][9> Largest paella 1992 via portablepaella][10>largest paella 2001 via Mividainsustancial][11> Kitchen Monument by Raumlabor Berlin. Photo by Rainer Schlautmann][12> Bubblegum Alley, San Luis Obispo, California via MoleEmpire]

In another post, I already talked about Chinese citizens using Ikea Stores in Shanghai and Beijing as a leisure public space. But these stores can also be used as guerrilla film-making spots. The soap opera Ikea Heights is a melodrama shot entirely in the Burbank California Store without the store knowing.

Started in 2009 by Dave Seger, Paul Bartunek, Delbert Shoopman, Spencer Strauss and Tom Kauffman, these series of 7 webisodes are shot with clear evidence of the general public passing by, or price labels hanging from every item. Actors need to be dressed while in bed, an office telephone is almost attached to the table, sets can easily change from a pillow factory to a private kitchen.

The lack of budget resorts to the everyday life, where amateur mistakes amplify the beauty of fantasy. This reminds me of a movie I enjoyed last week in a home-based itinerant film festival. The Movie (Cristina Blanco, Maria Jerez, Cuqui Jerez, Amaia Urra) was entirely shot and produced in 4 weeks in a single house; every object needs to be imagined as a symbol of preconceived reality: wardrobes become elevators, sponges turn into hamburgers, wool is used as laser rays, New York aerial view comes from a bunch of electronic circuits, and ironing griddles are landing airplanes…

Space is read according to its reader.

Maria Jerez – The Movie from Noorderzon on Vimeo.

thanks borja!

“A protective space for every Swiss” was since 1954 the national aim for the protection of the population. And thus 270,000 civil bunkers were built, which should protect 95% of the population against war, physical disasters and terrorist attacks. Till this day they did not need to meet their real purpose. Nevertheless, the Swiss developed unusual concepts for the use of these endless square metres of concrete. [Anders bunkern! - Sandra Siewert]

During the Cold War, a parallel reality of fear adopted a physically built form in the underground. The obsession of overprotecting citizens has left a vast architectural heritage open to their imagination. Today, as Sandra Siewert documents in her photo essay, these bunkers are used for accommodation for wanderers, building miniature railway models, fitness gyms, DIY brewery, youth clubs, retiree clubs, rehearsal rooms, or simple storage cellars.

Each of these thousands of bunkers, where people should have waited until danger was over, awaits new implemented uses.

Another type of Cold War relics struggling to vanish are West German Trichtersperren. They consisted of interconnected 4-6 metre deep shafts along roads, filled with explosives, so that mobility infrastructures could be blown up in case of a massive invasion of the country. Then, troops would be temporarily hindered in their invasion. Russian tanks never conquered West Germany, so all these holes needed to be defused and covered with asphalt again. Today, the only remaining trace is a series of repeated patches along the road, signaling the spots of virtual cones that would have pierced the landscape.

[1-6> Sandra Wert's Anders Bunkern!] [7-12> already covered Trichtersperren via cold-war]

When flight and train departures are cancelled and delayed, I always wonder how people appropriate themselves of a waiting room, when they are confined by force, despite being free.

And I come across a picture of citizens using an underground station in London as an air raid shelter living-room during the IIWW. At the same time on the German side, there was an intense development of diverse typologies of waiting spaces. The Winkel Tower was a sharp invention to house 200-500 people in one compact infrastructure during bombing menace. These vertical overground bunkers were more economical to build than the underground ones, and extremely hard for bombers to hit, due to their minimised footprint on the territory.

Interior photographs show the variable benches distribution, where strangers should sit in a circle together all of a sudden, facing each other, or sharing a tiny common room in circular rows. The necessity of optimal use of such towers led to improved forms – such as the Zombeck one below – were inner stairs were even removed from the tower and replaced by a continuous spiral ramp surface. In order to test their efficacy, living goats would be placed inside the tower to check the minimum gap needed between the benches and the exterior 2-metre-thick wall so that users would not become deaf after any explosion outside.

Either in circles, rows or small clusters, we are always required to be quiet and sit down while waiting.

[1> London tube station used as air raid shelter via wikipedia] [2,3&7>from Michael Grube via darkroastedblend] [4> from M.Niehues via geschichtsspuren] [5&6>via Avi Abrams flickr] [8>Waiting room in Beijing South Railway station by deconcrete2010]

An ephemeral city is popping-up inside Buenos Aires. The vast extension of the urban Indoamericano public park has been squatted since the last 10 days by around 13,000 people. Protesting against precarious housing conditions, migrant workers could not but start self-building their dwellings with waste or organic materials; an informal subdivision of small lots is also going on by means of ropes and poles.

Paradoxically, the name of the park recalls a union between indigenous peoples of South America. But in reality, it is mostly Peruvian, Paraguayan and Bolivian workers who need to settle down in this campsite, as their access to standard housing is more than impossible. However, Argentinian society urgently need them as a workforce. This movement of reclaiming vacant land is spreading throughout the city, leading other camps to start primitive forms of new cities inside the city.

As Constant referred in his model for New Babylon – revisited by Mark Wigley in The Hyper-Architecture of Desire – (gypsy) camps are settlements for nomads on a planetary scale. Almost an inevitable consequence of housing migrant workers in unbalanced current societies, which suffer from “aporofobia” (Spanish term for phobia to the poor) rather than from xenophobia.

12 million migrant workers once entered Manhattan via Ellis Island, but they did not need (and would not have been allowed) to camp in Central Park. Nowadays it seems that there is no other choice, concerning the relationship between wages and accessibility to formal dwellings.

[1>via blogbis] [2>via agenciaWalsh] [3>via elpais.es] [4>via comounacentinela] [5>via radiofmQ] [6>via infobae] [7>via elpais.cr]