deconcrete

RGB (128, 24, 24) is also known as Falu Red, a traditional pigment out of silicates iron oxides from Falu Copper Mines. A recycling strategy that used to tinge every single timber construction across Sweden with the same tone. Black pine wood turns into black constructions amidst a Japanese forest. Brown mud extracted directly from the ground sculpts high-rise monoliths in Yemen. Pink gypsum coats dwellings from decay. Soil houses the site. Yellow river reeds build straw huts by the same river where they grew; houses are born out of plants. Green prairies extend over Scandinavian roofs covered with high-isolation wild turf. Sun radiation deflects from a white façade back to the street. Indigo blue keeps mosquitoes away. Sleeping underneath flowers. Architecture mirrors heat.

[1> BLUE Jodhpur, India via indiamarks][2> WHITE Casares, Spain][3> BROWN Shibam, Yemen via vitalcrazy][4> RED Åsgatan, Sweden via fotosedan][5> YELLOW Aussenkehr, Namibia via wilkinsonsworld][6> BLACK Tsumago, Japan via airliners][7> PINK Taleghan, Iran by MohammadEmdadi][8> GREEN Norway by Jessica Rose]

Not only Rotterdam enjoys recycling cargo containers for affordable housing. In Hainan island, China, a factory has also reused them for their workers’ dormitory. But instead of using fancy eclectic finishings, actual dwellers do welcome the factory owner’s initiative of giving them a traditional touch of the Anhui Province style: courtyard, veranda and front walls.

Features teleported from the original Ming Dinasty white wooden villas dating at least 500 years old. Like in the most pure Roman Empire style, these ancient dwellings also had all their chambers looking onto the courtyard and its pond. The richer the family, the more amount of patios. But most surprising were their low-tech systems. Apart from the smart way of natural ventilation through underground channels (open in summer and closed in winter), my favourite are the fire protection devices. They consist of one cubic metre of sand, stored above every door threshold; whenever any flames would start destroying the wood, the sand falls down and avoids the fire spreading from one room to the next one.

Unfortunately, still too much high-tech for low-cost contemporary housing.

[images 1-4> cargo containers adapted as Anhui traditional style housing via chinahush] [images5-6> Anhui Province traditional Red Village by deconcrete2010]

1 million plants & 15 kg of weed. Worth 600,000 euro in the black market. Everything ready in a home that local police agents have discovered today in an apartment in Barcelona. Self-made ventilation, heating, cooling and lighting systems, out of everyday products. A whole artificial environment, allowing a jungle to grow 24/365 inside four walls. This home-made laboratory was used for germination, elaboration, storage and distribution of the crop.

[source&image> marijuana home plantation via elpais]

Instead of a sign, this bike-shop in German Altlandsberg has decided to hang 120 bicycles from its façade. In the most refined Venturi’s Vegas style, I cannot wait to see also their washing-machine store building, their Bakery or even the Town Hall with 15 town councillors exhibited on the front wall!

[image> bike shop in Altlandsberg via spaceinvading]

Cities sometimes need to provide space, which is more intimate than an office and more public than one’s home. Santiago de Chile has its peculiar magic formula in Cafés with legs (literally cafés con piernas). Resulting from an hegemonic masculinity in society, these widely accepted cafés still struggle with male and female roles, reaffirming traditional modes of being “man” and being “woman”.

Basically they consist of a café, where refined coffee is served at a higher price than average, by waitresses with naked legs or light clothes/underwear. Clients (mostly men) sit along its bar on stools during their midday break from office work. From the street, a smoked glass turns the prohibited into invisible, while once inside, mirror glasses make the permitted fully visible.

But eroticism aside, the incredible success of such meeting places relies on the waitresses giving psychological support to their customers, a kind of female advisor on personal lives. The fact that waitresses are more naked than dressed, provides an atmosphere of intimacy to talk about one’s deepest feelings.

In a time where women have achieved enough self-sufficiency in Chile, it seems that there is still a necessity for outdated roles of women’s servility, that is not to be found at home. As Devanir da Concha Silva pointed out [magazine for experimental anthropology 5,2005], these places are anchored to former “natural” spaces for men and women, reflecting how [hetero] sexual human beings enjoy everyday urbanity. But does urbanity really need the illusion of being a “real man” to feel more masculine?

Meanwhile, Cafés with Legs will remain between a modernised past and an obsolete modernity…

thanks paulo!

[images1,2> café with legs Caribe via serious eats] [image3>café with legs interior by marcelo montecino] [image4>café with legs Haiti via davidlansing]

[Image> from Suoi Tien Cultural Theme Park, Saigon, Vietnam]

The Buddha version of Disneyland in Vietnam is one of the 5 Asian theme parks selected by CNN in an article featuring entertainment bizarreness. Together with the erotic Love Land Theme Park in South Korea (Chonqing, China currently planning another one), Bruce Lee Theme Park in HongKong, and Hello Kitty and Namco Video games in Tokyo.

Entertainment industry may have exceedingly evolved with time; however, its landscaping and marketing seem invariable all over the world, all over the decades. I wonder whether tastes have really then changed.

Comparing the representation of Saigon’s paraphernalia with the recent world largest Skatepark in Shanghai, it seems that it could be the same place, if one forgets some Pantone palettes and a couple of Zaha Hadid graphic touches.

[Image> SuoiTien Cultural Theme Park Saigon, Vietnam vs. SMP Skatepark shanghai, China]

Zoos are also timeless. Despite a lot of efforts from ecologists to find a balance between displaying animals to public mass and caging, most reproduced environments still show fantasy worlds with similar features of surreality, in their graphical representations.

[Image> Zooplan of Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1859 from FRonline]

[Image> Zoomap of Himeji, Japan 2003 from alexquinn]

[Image> Row Houses at the rooftop of a 10-story shopping mall in Jakarta, from hellomister]

Hard to distinguish at google-maps satellite view, roofs reinvent themselves towards mixed-use buildings. A symbiosis, which camouflage communities, such as the one in the picture above. Aiming the most efficient land use, real estate developers come up with new follies à la Cedric Price, by overlaying diverse functions one above the other.

“In cities like Istanbul, Jakarta or SaoPaulo, [...] because of the absence of public infrastructure, communities develop their own self-contained cities, the rich in the form of luxurious enclaves, the poor by occupying land and building gececondos, kampongs or favelas.” [Kees Christiaanse for Open City-IABR 2010]

The formal version of the informal rooftop squat communities documented in HongKong by Rufina Wu (described in an earlier post).