linking America

^ Map by Bill Rankin, 2005, 2006.

 

After discovering RadicalCartography online archive through StudioMagazine, I felt really anxious by looking at this map on the urban mass transit systems in North America. There are no borders, no seashore, no mountains. It’s all about connections. Or rather missed connections, since one cannot avoid wondering why discontinuous lines do not touch each other and allow people commute from Ciudad de México straight to Ottawa. Or from San Diego to LA. As Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel state, radical cartography defines the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively promote social change. The extension of the rhizomes of every city reveals on one hand hidden connections to the hinterland, but the other, the unserviced gaps between those urban regions that are excluded from the network.

Geographical distances are clearly replaced by duration of commuting journeys. And space is superseded by time.

 

 

Published on January 17, 2012 23:28.
Filed under: nomads

Drafting Defeat: 10th Century Roadmaps, 21st Century Disasters

^ [images & text by Slavs and Tatars. Drafting Defeat: 10th Century Roadmaps, 21st Century Disasters, 2007.

Maps of The Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Syria, The Persian Gulf, The Caspian Sea and Iraq by Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn Muhammad Al-Farsi al-Istakhri aka Abu’l Qasim Ubaid’Allah Ibn Khordadbeh aka Al Farsi aka Istakhri.]

 

< We have always had an aesthetic weakness for the merciless and brutal banality of bureaucracy. Little did we know that such a weakness would extend to the bureaucrats themselves. The following are reproductions of 10th-century maps by Al-Istakhri (aka Ibn Khordadbeh or Al Farsi) found in a 1933 Soviet edition of Nasser Khosrow’s Safarnameh, or Book of Travels. Both Istakhri and Khosrow were Persian bureaucrats whose legacy was a paper trail of the very antithesis of administration: a regime of curiosity that attempted to describe and map out the Middle East as a coherent geographic and cultural region. Khosrow, an 11th-century Persian poet and philosopher, had led an uneventful life as a tax collector in present day Turkemenistan when one night, in his sleep, a voice told him to leave behind his life of worldly pleasures. Khosrow dropped his avowed weakness for the medieval Merlot and began immediately to plan a seven-year trip through the Caucases and the Caspian to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. Khosrow was, to some extent, the millenary Muslim equivalent of a 21st-century born-again Christian. Except where the former asked questions, the latter offers only solutions. Where the former travelled extensively, the other is unlikely to have a passport.

 

Academia, the publisher of Safarnameh, was itself an unorthodox outfit in the Soviet landscape of the early 20th century with a reputation for smart, unexpected titles on relatively limited runs. These maps were drafted during a period when Islamic geography rekindled an interest in Roman and Greek scholarship abandoned by the Christian West. Early draftsmen including Istakhri contributed to An Atlas of Islam, with a visible bias for the Farsi-speaking peoples in the Middle East, where a boundless taste for geometric shapes and symmetry belongs today more to the world of fantasy than fact. Later cartographers such as Al-Idrisi went on to craft intricate maps on improbably luxurious materials (e.g. a 400-pound tablet of silver) with even more improbable names (such as The Gardens of Humanity and the Amusement of the Soul) that would serve for centuries to follow. When Christopher Columbus studied these maps, before setting out to sea, we wonder: did it occur to him that his future would be no less unpredictable than our past? >

Published on January 12, 2012 18:10.
Filed under: nomads

starlings say the winter is here

With hungry predators hovering nearby, the little birds must converge, flocking together, in an attempt to confuse the sparrowhawks, buzzards and peregrine falcons. [...] Each starling tracks seven other birds – irrespective of distance – which produces the group’s aerial ballet.

[all images> "Murmurations" of starlings at Gretna, Anglo-Scottish border_November 2011 via dailymail]

Published on November 5, 2011 17:30.
Filed under: dérive, nomads

self-sufficiency calculator

How to visualize Neo-Agrosophy and the hypothetical reterritorialization of a field when living off-grid:

< FieldMachine 1.0 [developed by FieldClub] is an interactive webtool which you can use to design your own self-sufficiency ‘unit’ based on what you would like to eat in a Britain without imports, and what kind of fuel you would like to burn for heating and cooking. The FieldMachine 1.0 allows the individual to plan and achieve recommended daily levels of essential nutrients. As your chosen options are entered, the FieldMachine 1.0 determines how much land is needed to produce each chosen food/fuel item, and also how many other humans could live in Britain if everyone did the same.

Step 1: Use the sliders in the Daily Food Values table below to achieve a daily balanced diet (Blue = too little,Red = too much, Green = balanced).
Step 2: Choose your strawbale house size and renewable fuel type.

Tips:

Daily Kcals will be affected the most by high carbohydrate foods such as Wheat, Potato, and Butter.

Daily Proteins – by Meat, Egg, Beans and Nuts. Daily fats – by Cheese, Butter and Nuts.

The fuel type you choose can radically affect the area of timber required (for example Native Broadleaf Woodland yields at 3 tonnes per hectare, whereas Short Rotation Coppice Red Alder yields at 15 tonnes per hectare).
The equations in this calculator use data from the USDA, the CIA, the World Health Organisation, Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (UK gov), and the Organic Farm Management Handbook – (Organic Farming Research Unit, Institute of Rural Studies, University of Wales).
The ‘Population Discriminator’ calculation uses the current usable agricultural land (including woodland) in the UK (22,205,000Ha – DEFRA), and the current UK population (60,600,000 – CIA). >

[TRY DEMO to calculate your sef-sufficiency unit]

 

Published on October 17, 2011 19:34.
Filed under: mutant, nomads

Travellers

Dale Farm is a territory of contradiction, where a legal border divides a community. Two adjoining sites, 30-min-train away from London, used to be scrapyards that were turned into living quarters. The first estate was self-established as a nomad settlement for Irish Travellers and Gypsy and Roma families some sixty years ago (45 plots). The other one is an extension that dates back to 2000 and is composed of 52 plots. The former is authorised, but the latter is not. These ethnic minorities purchased both sites and legally own them. Prefab-houses and caravans are scattered along the lanes. However, after many applications, the most recent one still lacks any building permission, whereas the neighbouring one was built in a formal way in past decades.

Consequently, conservative-run Basildon District Council decided to carry out the demolition of the second settlement, the largest eviction in UK history, with a total cost of £18 million for the clearance and without providing any other site for the resident families. Today, the Court should have decided the final fate for the settlement. Activists had already started a protest camp inside (“Camp Constant”), and built several barricades across the inner lanes of this community together with the residents by applying the wittiest military resistance tactics. But the verdict has been postponed till Monday, so dwellers are returning some of the caravans that were brought to the legal site in case of eviction back to the illegal one.

Irish Travellers minority used to share with gypsies a nomad lifestyle. Today what remains is still their seasonal working schedule. Activists have referred to the eviction as “ethnic cleansing”. But personally, I do not think it is a matter of cultural identities, but aporophobia and fear to the unstable. The contemporary spatial habits of Irish Travellers are just a direct result of social exclusion. Their cultural identity is very much influenced by the fact of being “out of established society”. That’s what joins them and makes them configure a strongly tied community. Unfortunately, it is the society that they cannot belong to what eventually gives meaning to their identity.

Dale Farm is located in the middle of the countryside, about 10 km away from the nearest village. One can only wonder why it is so important for authorities to evict the settlers living in that remote site lacking building permission.

Why did the Council even provide the needy families on-site with tax benefits if their dwellings were not legal?

If their mere existence makes villagers feel so uncomfortable, why not directly promote the eviction of both sites?

Why has their application for allowance to build on the site they legally own been constantly denied?

Authorities argument that the illegal site lies on a green belt land, but at the same time, there used to be a scrapyard in the same area only 10 years ago.

The only way for us to reach Dale Farm from the nearby railway station was by taxi. And maybe the only explanation to these questions, as absurd as coherent, was revealed to us in a conversation with the extremely prejudiced driver, who took us to the nearest crossroads to the site from the station (he refused to drop us off at the very entrance):

You will understand it when you grow older.

 

 

 

[1-8>Dale Farm Protests by deconcrete2011][9> Dale Farm_aerial view via bbc]

Published on September 23, 2011 19:17.
Filed under: forensic destruction, nomads, protest & critical space

berlin trash connection

Pfand is a magic and highly used German word for deposit; it functions as a sort of informal contract between two parties or even a contemporary form of barter. Usually involving small valuables, it is largely used for returnable bottles. In Germany there are three official prices for empties:

*Standard beer bottles: 0,08 € / unit

*Other glass bottles and special ones: 0,15 € / unit

*Aluminium cans and most hard plastic bottles: 0,25 € / unit

Supermarket machines scan returned empties and one gets the value of the goods back.

Pfandgeben.de is a non-profit platform to bring people together. It puts empties’ holders (Pfandbesitzern) and collectors (Pfandsammlern) simply in contact. By means of a website, it is possible to search a list of available collectors in one’s neighbourhood, call or text to their cell phone numbers, so that they pick up the empties for free. Depending on the amount of bottles that one needs to get rid of, different names appear to be willing to pick them up: under 20 bottles, around 20, around 30, around 40 or more than 40. Jonas Kakoschke, assisted by Corinna Northe and Mareike Geiling, started the initiative within his communication design studies at HTW in Berlin. However, the list of service providers is growing out of town; the network is expanding already to other German cities like Augsburg, Essen or Cologne. The website provides also the possibility to enter new phone numbers from potential collectors, as well as accept donations of old cell phones and SIM cards for collectors even lacking this basic infrastructure.

The returnable bottles system has basically an ecological and energetic aspiration to reduce pollution and human waste. But the bottom-up network launched by Kakoschke implements it with a social plus: a mutual benefit for both holder and collector in form of a Win-Win typical situation. The empties’ holder does not need to take them back to the supermarket and the nomad collector becomes extra earnings for the job, without wandering around the streets for so long.

Trash collection is regarded as something natural and logic in developing countries, making informal networks recycle as many materials as formal systems provided by Governments. But it makes even more sense that this phenomenon takes place in the developed consumption world. Communication development and Internet politics build a parallel virtual city of negotiations, which can facilitate the exchange of super specific products and services.

 

Published on July 17, 2011 09:37.
Filed under: invisible cities, nomads

The Maghreb Connection

The Mediterranean Sea is not a sea; it is Southern Europe’s border wall.

The Maghreb is literally any territory west from Egypt; Cairo functioned as the georeference for a Greenwich-like system in the Arab world.

The Sahara Desert was traditionally perceived as a vast sea; the Maghreb was referred to as an island surrounded by Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara “waters”.

Tuareg former free territories belong to five different countries today.

Western Sahrawi are deprived from their nomadic life in the desert by a 2,000 km long artificial wall of sand, dug out from their very same desert.

Ancient nomad trans-Sahara trade tracks are the new highways for work migrants.

Tangier-Med is a key mega-port for global mobility of goods. It lies just opposite Bel Younech informal camp, where migrants wait for a chance to cross over to the global consumption dream.

How much I love my family is measured according to how much money I send them.

Migrant boats have to be built clandestinely in the desert and brought to the coast at the moment of launching them into the sea.

A prison in Italy is better than freedom at home.

Chinese migrants struggling to survive in Cairo have taken over the role of traditional door-to-door female vendors, the Dallala.

The poorest and driest region in Almeria, Southern Spain, has been turned into one of the most fertile and wealthiest, thanks to the labour of irregular Maghreb migrants.

Doctors and engineers are bricklayers and fruit pickers.

The Maghreb Connection is a compilation of essays and research projects that assemble everyday reality in this part of Northern Africa. Edited by Ursula Biemann and Brian Holmes, The Maghreb Connection charts counter-geography through various contributions, apart from their own: Armin Linke, Yto Barrada and Hala Elkoussey among others. As the editors define the term: counter-geography is where the subversive, informal and irregular practices of space take place, the ones that happen despite state forces and supranational regulations.

The desert acts as a sort of waiting room for millions of desperate souls awaiting the chance to be crossed over the border to an idealized world. This post-colonial migration movement relies upon an extensive network of alliances to reach their final goal. Ali Bensaâd outlines also the fact of being unconditionally mobile people. This is the common feature to all this floating population in African coasts, who wants to venture into the other side: The individuals with the most resources in terms of opennesss to the outside are the most susceptible to becoming mobile. They are entrepreneurs in a way, in our era where the “entrepreneur” is promoted as the social ideal-type. Every migrant leaves everything behind: belongings, family and life.

European sealed borders delimit an area of free mobility after Schengen Agreement; but at the same time, they enhance the desire to start a real exodus and be inside them.  Either if it is the Strait of Gibraltar, Canary Islands’ or Lampedusa’s waters, a never-ending flow of irregular boats keep on trying to touch European ground. The Maghreb works as the departure point to bridge the gap between two continents. Florian Schneider points out that (i)n the nineteenth century, people had no problems crossing borders, while goods and products were taxed. Now it is the opposite: goods and money are supposed to flow freely, while people face more and more obstacles.

The Maghreb Connection throws a light into the kind of ambitions that move humans to start such a journey to Europe, as well as the mechanisms and strategies that make it feasible. We usually only hear in the media of the ones who are caught in their attempt and those who perish. However, the successful are already victorious somewhere at the other side of the Maghreb, where another hard journey begins for them.

[1,2,3> Biemann, U. / Holmes, B. (eds.): The Maghreb Connection – Movements of Life Across North Africa. Actar 2006]

[4> Informal Migrant Camp Bel Younech, Morocco_Eduardo del Campo 2009] [5> La Canoa by El Roto]

 

 

 

 

 

Published on July 4, 2011 18:21.
Filed under: BOOKS/news, nomads

flying White House

Last week diverse media have been announcing ultimate aircraft prototypes for the future; from fully see-through fuselage, making contemplation of sunset, clouds and storms feasible, to hypersonic speeds covering Paris-Tokyo in 2,5 hours. This made me wonder how the Air Force One, the flying White House, looks like. How to modify a standard aircraft into one of the main centres of itinerant global power? The Boeing 747, used since 1990, has three decks; the upper level reserved for pilots, crew and communication centre; the main deck for the mobile headquarters, Presidential quarters, security and press; the lowest for equipment cargo. However, the most striking feature concerning the interior spatial organisation is that it could literally be a mansion in solid ground. Conventional codes of comfort are directly transposed into the air: cushions, handcrafted furniture by master carpenters, thick carpets, office blinds, living-room lamps, leather sofas, oak tables… Almost 1:1 scale reproductions of items that could perfectly be on earth. The flying Oval Office is nonetheless prepared to stay up in the air indefinitely. Its in-flight refuelling system, allows the aeroplane avoid touching ground in case of emergency.

Although every Air Force One flight is classified as a military operation and handled as such, it does not differ from a social meeting at the earthly White House. The furbishing is closely linked to every mandate, making the President always feel at home. When Ronald Reagan’s body was flown inside the Air Force One to Washington, the front of the aircraft was changed exactly the way it was when he was President. Original crew jackets, chairs, books and even candies replaced the present ones to make widow Nancy Reagan feel at home during the flight.

Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers and important leaders unveil their way of understanding politics and representing the country through their personal aircraft. In the graphic below Poor Country, Wealthy Aircraft (2008), some of the most prominent jets are related to the GDP per capita of the country. Citizens’ taxes support their leader’s plane.

Being detached satellites from the mother ship, embassies dining halls are also carefully conceived to present and represent a country to its guests; presidential aircrafts go a step further in the same line by being both temporary homes and ephemeral offices.

 

[1> Air Force One Floor Plan 2009 via How Stuff Works][2-4> Interiors of Obama's Air Force One by Pete Souza][5>Poor Country, Wealthy Aircraft by Rafa Salas/La Vanguardia, 2008] [6> Russian Air Force One interiors via home-designing]

Published on June 21, 2011 12:47.
Filed under: nomads

Spanish revolution camp

Today is the fifth day at what some have started to call the 15M_Sun Republic. In Madrid’s very central Plaza del Sol, demonstrators for a true democracy are camped out. They express general disgust and weariness with the current crisis that has led to 21% of unemployment and extremely precarious jobs. Never before had Spanish democracy (since dictator Franco’s death in 1975) experienced such a grass-roots movement, without being affiliated to any political party and coming from different ideologies. The general miserable condition is what has joined the people together and facebook and twitter have simply done the rest. Hundreds of thousands have gone out to the street in Madrid, but also in Barcelona, Granada, Seville, Valencia, almost every Spanish city and even some demonstrations at Spanish embassies and consulates in several foreign cities, such as Berlin, London, Dublin, Montpellier, Mexico…

But not only is it about being outraged at the decadent economic situation. Another reason for such a pacific fury is the very long list of politicians charged with corruption – to be found in every party’s list – that repeat as candidates for the regional elections on Sunday 22nd May. The first protest camp was banned two days ago, which made a second edition reemerge with even more energy and popular support. Yesterday, the Electoral Board banned the camp again, since it would not respect the official last day without propaganda before the election. The spokesmen of the movement have accepted the decision from an official position. However, they assume that citizens will probably express their discontent on the street anyway after this governmental counterproductive decision. The civic movement does not consider their protest as propaganda for a certain party, but quite on the contrary, they rather question the whole established system.

The Plaza itself has been turned into an incredibly well-organised political expression site, almost like an informal revolutionary parliament. At Madrid’s Acampadasol, eleven commissions have been set up; six of which have a fix spot in the plaza as shown in the map below: Action, Communication, Food, Legal Support, Infrastructure/Logistics and Information. The other five move their location according to the circumstances: Cleaning, Internal Coordination, Media, University and Neighbourhoods. The epicentre is based around the sculpture of King Carlos III (aka. “the best mayor of Madrid”) with fabrics and plastics hanging from his horse legs and tied up to the nearby lampposts for rain and sun shelter. Protesters sleep on cardboard surfaces and blankets have been brought by spontaneous supporters. Mobile chemical toilets have been donated by a private company and neighbours bring extra food to the crowd. Every piece of wall serves for public expression: large advertising scaffoldings wrapping emblematic buildings have been appropriated as a display platform for complaints, dreams and wishes. Meanwhile, assemblies, talks and discussions are continuously held among the assistants to think of collaborative proposals for the future.

The people no more believes in any of their politicians.

democracia real ya

toma la calle

toma la plaza

spanish revolution

acampada bcn

…

[1>Spanish Revolution Camp via elpais][2>Diagram of Madrid's protest camp by Heber Longás via elpais][3>protesters at dawn via elpais][4>collective expression by Andrés Jaque][5>Madrid's Puerta del Sol protests by BroccoLee][6>Madrid's Puerta del Sol protests by Pablo Talamanca][7>collective expression via ][8>Barcelona Protest Camp by albertmartnez]

 

Published on May 20, 2011 10:53.
Filed under: nomads, participation, post-crisis, protest & critical space

floating hospitals

“Every 8 minutes somewhere in the world a woman dies needless as a result of illegal, unsafe abortion. In response to this violation of womens human rights and medical need, Women on Waves sails to countries where abortion is illegal. This is done at the invitation of local women’s organizations. With the use of a ship, early medical abortions can be provided safely, professionally and legally. Women on Waves aims to prevent unsafe abortions and empower women to exercise their human rights to physical and mental autonomy, by combining free healthcare services and sexual education with advocacy. Women on Waves is a non-profit organization.”

As featured in Did Someone Say Participate? (M. Miessen / S. Basar, MIT Press 2006), Women on Waves is a floating hospital profiting from legal loopholes of International Waters (aka. Free Seas): “Committed to facilitating the forbidden, Women on Waves bases many of its actions in the grey areas of the law [...]; it drives the group to be adaptive and opportunistic – like a hermit crab – to seek out and exploit new areas of ambiguity and potential freedom that appear and disappear as globalization undergoes its spasmodic development [...] In Poland we could not say that we did abortions publicly. But we could say that we are not allowed to say that we did abortions.”

Nomad hospitals have the power of transcending both international boundaries and national jurisdictions. International Waters can be a future territory to explore implemented modes of more participative politics. As Dr. Rebecca Gomperts states: “Women on Waves is not about abortion, it is about respect for people’s individual choices and self-determination.”

Floating hospitals are a sort of temporary settlements that avoid dealing with an ashore site of conflict. Instead, they take advantage of  water as a means for action almost before being forbidden. In this framework of instant moves, not only can they play around with loopholes, but also with emergency contexts. In addition, nomad hospitals can solve the challenge of improving health in countries at war, surrounded by a lack of local infrastructure. Other volunteering initiatives, such as Catholic-based Mercy Ships, provide health care for the poor with their floating hospitals.

[1> Women on Waters ship approaching Spanish coast in 2008 via typicallyspanish][2>Women on Waters ship via breitbart][3>International Waters map via wikipedia]

Published on April 25, 2011 18:36.
Filed under: nomads

XLandscapes wanted


Hermit crabs live on a constant house-upgrading. They need to move into a new larger shell as their body grows bigger. In case an M-size crab finds an XL-size seashell, he does not discard it for being oversized. He waits next to it until an intermediary L-sized specimen arrives and abandons his shelter, passing it on to the M-size one. Although this social network and synchronous vacancy chain behaviour may require hours of queuing up, the gathering helps everyone to inherit a suitable house in the end.

We, as humans, also suffer from this real-estate fever, always looking for a higher quality static dwelling.

But the ones who choose a nomad lifestyle prefer simply to keep the same shelter while ameliorating only the surroundings; thanks to Recreational Vehicles, a minimal shell-shelter can be attached to a pedaling device, and moved on to an upgraded site: scouting new XL-size locations while keeping one’s XS-sized home.

[1,9>via austinontwowheels][2-4> via highmileagetrikes][5>via azfixed][6> by Kevin Cyr][7>via abenteuer-tagebuch][8> via richardscometo]

Published on March 20, 2011 20:12.
Filed under: nomads

mapping homelessness

A nomadic settlement is as complex to map as the sky can be. Clouds are constantly moving and reshaping, regrouping and vanishing; some methods like isobar curves can represent graphically lines of equal pressure. But air flows with its temperature variations, and so behave homeless people in Los Angeles. With a reported community of over 70,000 souls wandering in its streets, California’s largest metropolis leads the US ranking. In 2006-2007 Cartifact found in the Heat Map format the way to track movements and meeting points throughout the city of this Downtown community, which attracts as many as 3,000-4,000 individuals.

They visualize the information provided by the municipality every two weeks, compiling data between midnight and 4 am. This series of maps shows the density of a floating population overlaying the formal urban grid, both in a figurative and literal sense. But at the same time, they can reveal real weather: colder temperatures at certain nights makes the amount of homeless radically drop or move to more protected areas.

Meanwhile, witty shelters allow them navigate through the city to a next stop they can call Home.

[1> mapping homeless population distribution via cartifact][2-4>homeless downtown L.A. via visboo][5>homeless shelter in L.A. via you-are-here][6>via labeez][7>free Easter meal for needy and homeless people in downtown L.A. via cnnMoney]

Published on February 27, 2011 15:18.
Filed under: invisible cities, nomads

brothel caravans

Heidestraße is a strip of Berlin city opposite the main railway station. It is a high-speed artery separating a wild vacant lot awaiting next speculative big development on one side from a series of art galleries reusing warehouses on the other. But the street itself is being used as a parking place for brothels on wheels: sex between art and real estate. The Internet erotic portal BERLINintim supports the initiative of the caravan, where private model Tittenmaus Irma (40) offers her services:

“[...] you can find me from 22:00 till ? in my cosy caravan in Heidestraße in Tiergarten neighbourhood opposite house number 17 (just opposite Erika Reich-Beyer beverage market). Whenever I am inside, there is a small red umbrella hanging from the caravan. When I am free, the blinds are open and there is a light or a candle by the window [...]”

Attracted by a legal gap and the fruitful business, the resulting fact is that it is possible to see a few other parked caravans next to Irma’s all along the street, keeping a minimum privacy distance, where visitors can park their vehicles.

thanks, anastasia!

[1> by Johann Zäch][2>by deconcrete2011]

Published on February 12, 2011 18:31.
Filed under: nomads

uniform

one topic, two points of view:

UNIFORM by Deconcrete & Erandi de Silva at TheBiBlog.

[1> Zeltbahn 31 camouflage patterns via choiquehobbies]

Published on February 6, 2011 14:54.
Filed under: nomads

dakar is in america

Terrorist threat relocated the city of Dakar from West Africa to South America in 2009.

After 30 years of being the historic endpoint of the off-road automobile rally Paris-Dakar, safety rules obliged the route to move to desert land in Argentina and Chile. Seen by many detractors as a public display of post-colonialist power, it is still a beautiful way of temporary inhabiting a vacant territory. Ephemeral camp sites, evanescent sand landscape carving, provisional auditoriums for local audience, movable medical units and changeable transport nodes.

The menace made also the organization start a parallel Silk Way Rally across Russia. Their maps of the settlements where participants reside at every stage almost represent a visionary concept for future cities: small nomad communities with access to international media, supported by health infrastructure and connected to a landing track for both aeroplanes and helicopters.

[1-3> by Natascha Pisarenko via die Zeit] [4>by Natascha Pisarenko via boston big picture] [5-8>camp maps via silkway rally]

Published on January 11, 2011 11:35.
Filed under: nomads

scaled infinite

“He had brought a large map representing the sea,

Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

A map they could all understand.”

The Hunting of the Snark – An agony in 8 fits (Lewis Carroll, 1874) is an imaginary poem depicting the ship voyage of eight B-named characters (Bellman, Butcher, Baker, Banker, Bonnet-maker, Barrister, Broker, Boots, Billiard-maker) and a Beaver. To guide themselves to an island, where they should hunt a Snark, they use a blank sheet of paper as a map of the ocean they can all understand; no land, no coordinates, no marine topography.

Simply compass points amidst a white infinite, scaled in miles.

Published on January 8, 2011 10:09.
Filed under: dérive, nomads

unité d’habitation

A home is not a house was an statement from 1969 by Reyner Banham, emphasizing the relevance of technology applied to dwelling forms. Part of Carmelo Rogríguez Cedillo’s on-going PhD research on Archaelogy of the Future, one of my favourite blogs, these pictures collect knowledge about distinct modes of nomad homes. An extremely appealing way of living, which has always been en vogue until today, but not as popular as in 1950-1960s.

In his futuristic architectural visions from the past, Rodríguez Cedillo focuses on Popular Science American publication featuring mobile dwellings, either fully or partly movable structures, between 1930s-1980s. He relates the prototypes from every decade to different contextual solutions. If in 1930s mobile homes were a solution for cheap housing, in the following decades they adopted the form of second dwellings for leisure picnic activities; they were followed by a general use as cheap modes for travelling, and lately in the 1990s to an envisioning hyper-technification of the object itself.

But his relevant point underlines that these popular publications were most of the times ahead of the architecture of the time. They not only introduced a revolutionary dwelling participative environment, but even encouraged readers to build their own lifepod, according to their personal tastes or needs. In 1954, a total of 1,700,000 Americans owned a mobile home.

[1> train as a dwelling from 1927 Vs. a mobile home from the 1960s via Arqueología del Futuro] [2-6> mobile homes published in Popular Science in 1941 - 1958 - 1964 - 1965 - 1971 - 1984 via Arqueología del Futuro]

Published on December 31, 2010 11:24.
Filed under: nomads, urban research

desire estates

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]

Published on December 16, 2010 11:46.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, nomads

mountain moving faith

Francis Alÿs already proved that faith can literally move mountains, in his project based on linear geological displacement. Last week the holiest moment in Mexican pilgrimage annual calendar took place. Millions of believers crawl, walk, ride or fly to Guadalupe Basilica in Mexico City to venerate its popular Virgin in those days. A massive displacement occurs, and the congregation carries thousands of images of their beloved Guadalupe with themselves along the journey to the faith-mountain.

“Six Million Pilgrims (2009) is a photographic typology of the backs of three hundred Mexican Catholic pilgrims on their journey to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City.  This yearly pilgrimage, undertaken by approximately six million people every year takes place on the anniversary of the five apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe between the 9th and 12th December 1531 [...] (T)he image of the Virgin has been of central importance in the history of Mexico. Her image was used by political leaders as a symbol of faith and freedom during the Independence movement in 1810, and again during the Revolution a century later.” [Alinka Echeverría]

By taking the images from their own homes as their most precious object, pilgrims synthesize their everyday dwelling to the minimum during their road-trip.

The Basilica itself needs to prepare for the masses. As expected from such an incredible amount of devotees, they come up with new devices to deal with them. Three airport-like moving walkways have been installed underneath the most revered image, so that pilgrims do not spend more than a few seconds, after their weeks-long journey in some cases. But they can comfort in the temporary shelters surrounding the Basilica, which offer spiritual assessment. Not only such kind of need is required among believers. The increasing demand to be buried in the adjoining cemetery have led to develop an important speculative market of “niches” (a deep recess in a wall used as a tomb). For a reasonable price, one can acquire it directly on-site, inside the travel-agency like stands.

[image1> via tóxico: cultura contemporánea] [image2> by Geraldine Vásquez] [image3> When faith moves mountains by Franis Alÿs via hammer] [image4> via googlemaps] [image5> via mexicowoods] [images 6&7> by deconcrete2007]

Published on December 14, 2010 11:44.
Filed under: nomads

fish-farming 2.0

“The world’s growing population is devouring seafood as quickly as it can be caught and has seriously depleted the world’s wild fish stocks, experts warn.”

Nutritionists keep on encouraging the countless healthy properties of adding fish to our daily diet. However, how to deal with the fact of an exhausting oceanic fauna?

“[...] Traditional fish farms typically consist of cages submerged in shallow, calm waters near shore, where they are protected from the weather and easily accessible for feeding and maintenance. But raising fish in such close quarters can contribute to the spread of disease among the animals, and wastes may foul the waters. Cages must be moved to keep the waters clean and the fish healthy. Deepwater cages offer cleaner, more freely circulating ocean water and natural food, which can yield tastier fish. But the deep-sea cages must be built to withstand the rigors of the deep ocean. And because they are harder for humans to access, “smarter,” self-sufficient cages could be key.”

Remote-control Aquapods are being built by a research team from MIT, led by Cliff Goudey, in order to farm fish inside wandering cages. Still propelled by a generator on a boat, the future of these nomad communities is thought to be their conversion to solar power engineering, as a more sustainable way of satifsfying our appetite.

[source&image 1> by Ocean Farm Technologies via National Geographic] [image2> by OceanFarmTech] [images 3&4> Aquapod via Pruned]

Published on November 1, 2010 18:53.
Filed under: nomads

trash island

Over 45 million cubic metres of debris were used in Berlin after the World War II to invent artificial hills all around the city, around which appeared diverse Volksparks. These tons of broken bricks were progressively covered with local flora within the years.

Nowadays we also have to deal with the debris of our everyday war: plastic packaging. Waste invades us. Ocean currents make floating bottles gather together in vast patches….

…and humans decide to build upon them. Richie Sowa has built his second floating island by reusing 250,000 gathered plastic bottles as foundations. The Maldives have created the Thilafushi island, which grows 1 m2 a day, as more and more rubbish is damped there. Singapore recycles its waste to make Semakau island be born….

Every State lacking territory needs to grow towards the sea, either in HongKong, Bahrain or Japan. So do the Dutch, planning the touristic resort of the future out of over a 44 million pounds of plastic waste.

thanks, paulo!

^Richie Sowa’s island on plastic bottles via ecoble

^Thilafushi island of waste in the Maldives via InfraNet lab

^Semakau trash island in Singapore via InfraNet lab

^Dutch trash resort island via lotusdunnit

Published on October 2, 2010 12:20.
Filed under: mutant, nomads

moving (to) the suburbs

After Detroit’s incredibly booming population in the 1930s, the city started to shrink three decades later with street rioters and decadence of the automobile industry. Nowadays, its downtown struggles to reinvent itself and activate a vast no-man’s landscape, as eerie as apocalyptic.

The Mobile Homestead is last Mike Kelley’s public art/private architecture piece. As a consequence of such demographic trends, he grew up in a workers’ peaceful suburb of Detroit and now is building a replica of his family house in downtown. On Saturday, it will travel from there to its original location, as many Detroit citizens have done in last decades to avoid decadent and dilapidated city centre. A symbol, which visualizes an urban diaspora by means of its standard built forms.

Thought as an urban catalyst to bring some life to Detroit, the house itself is part of a long-term project, as it will function as a community space.

[Source&Image> Mike Kelley's mobile homestead via artangel & domusweb]

Published on September 21, 2010 12:13.
Filed under: nomads, post-crisis

nomad cinemas

Last week Geoff Manaugh posted at BLDGBLOG the recent relaunched project of the Vintage Mobile Cinema. In the late 1960s, English Government chartered a series of vans to show their latest technologies in rural areas. Last spring, one of the originals has been restored and now works as a 22-seat cinema on wheels again.

The same concept has just been initiated in South America by a multidisciplinar international team: CINECITA. Their tour consists of expanding the views of rural women in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia during their journey; both by screening movies and by starting on-site participative cinema workshops, a video laboratory, with rural residents. Women will be taught how to deal with a camera and tell their everyday stories, guided by the activists.

This nomad cinema is based on the belief that improved accessibility to audiovisual media will strongly increase possibilities of exchange, dialogue, and self-expression for women living in different rural areas of the Central Andean region.

Cinecita tour has almost just started and will last for several months. Currently, they are looking for the most suitable transport to be cinematized…

thanks, Garen!

[images 1-3> Cinecita's screening, available buses and Andes Tour via Cinecita] [images4,5> exterior and interior of the travelling screen by the Vintage Mobile Cinema]

Published on September 20, 2010 20:08.
Filed under: nomads

amidst the ocean

In order to make 40,000 people cross a bridge in an hour at 25 km/h, the bridge needs to be 138 m wide in case they do it by car, 38 m if by bus, 20 m if on foot and only 10 m wide if by bike. So this brief lapse of 10 minutes time could only be achieved otherwise by hyper-speed trains running at 100 km/h every 30 seconds. But the bike still beats, since it is the only means of transport resolving door-to-door connection. [source> Ivan Illich via la ciudad viva]

The Bridge Project is Do Ho Suh’s recently inaugurated show at Storefront for Art and Architecture NewYork. It consists of a two year speculative research results about how to build a fantastic bridge linking his two cities, NewYork and Seoul. His study also focuses on the sociopolitical and environmental complexity of the ocean as an strategic building site. The bridge should join his two homes into one, with a transpacific straight line, but his perfect home would actually be located just in the middle of it; within a new space of projected desires where neither economic nor structural optimization are the defining elements of design.

…would he ride his bike back home?

[all images> A perfect home: the Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh. Courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture]

Published on September 16, 2010 23:31.
Filed under: nomads, urban research

clock(wise) camp

Deserts have no reference points for orientation, and dwelling in them during a music festival can be a whole adventure. How to plan a temporary settlement for 50,000 inexperienced people on a vast sunny flat landscape?

Burning Man Festival organises the camp in a solar-based scheme. Alleys dividing blocks are distributed in concentric circles. Clock-time and degree-based coordinates orient participants and locate theme camps. Main axes occur at each half-hour spoke.

One disoriented festival-goer can look at his watch. It is 2 pm. His projected shadow on the sandy floor extends in one direction. But his tent is located in the 5:30 Alley. Now he knows where to address himself to have a rest from the soaring temperatures….

[image1> aerial view Burning Man Festival camp in Nevada's Desert via activitylounge] [images2&3> Burning Man 2005 camp map by Lisa Hoffman from HAILEY,C.: Camps - a guide to 21st century space]

Published on August 17, 2010 03:34.
Filed under: nomads

telescopes on wheels

Equipped with a motorbike and a long-distance laser, telescopes pop up in Xian at night. Chinese pedestrians can then enjoy moon, planets, eclipses and stars by means of such kind of informal hybrids for only 1 euro. 

[images> mobile bike/telescope at night in Xian, China by deconcrete2010]

Published on July 31, 2010 16:48.
Filed under: hybrids, nomads

accordion shelter

“The Project Matrioska Home (MH) raises the building of living spaces in order for the homeless to spend the night at the streets in better conditions. This temporal solution is presented as a support to this collective. However, we do not try that these people live in carton boxes. Our objective is to give meaning and to provide visibility to the fact that is viable to improve significantly the conditions in which the homeless are nowadays. That is, it is necessary to re-stablish his/her fundamental right, as any other citizen, to have a worthy house. The solution in this case is a simple anecdote which is used as excuse, as attention calling to the society and to the public administrations to face these problems. MH escapes therefore of the stands close to the purely welfare or charitable ones. MH is nominated as a visibility and tool for the demand of the homeless rights.”

[Source&image> Matrioska Home by Todo Por la Praxis]

Published on July 21, 2010 01:24.
Filed under: nomads

suspended bivouac shelter

Bivouac shelters date back to Napoleon Wars, referring to a guard on night watch duty, inside any kind of improvised shelter.

Charlie Hailey in Camps, his guide to 21st-century space, refers to two examples of vertical camping working as single shelters: suspended tents used in long-last mountaineering and children tree hammocks for summer camps. These hybrids of hammocks and tents make “tree camping and cliff camping reorient the grounding of camp’s spaces, to harness, poetically and technically, the tensile nature of tent camping.” [HAILEY, C.: Camps. The MIT Press 2009]

[image1> Wall camp at the Arctic Circle via victoria.blogware] [image2> children tree camp in barres, France from Charlie Hailey's Camps]

Published on July 16, 2010 09:41.
Filed under: hybrids, nomads

tent apartments

Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek and Uzbekistan’s Tashkent have experienced the planning of Soviet apartment blocks during last decades. The fact that a great part of their population was still rooted in a nomad life, made bizarre transformations of concrete high-rise appear, when people  moved from the meadows to the industrial city. Nomads of central Asia and Mongolia have traditionally inhabit Yurts or Gers, a circular collapsible structure out of foldable timber lattice and felt; taking only one hour to erect them, without a single nail. However, when moved to a standard apartment, families have been reported to wall their windows and tear down all inner partitions, in order to erect their windowless nomad tent inside the whole apartment in the 5th floor.

The nomads divide the interior (of the circular floorplan) into two basic parts. The left part belongs to the man, where he stores his weapon, saddles and horse-whips. On the right side, the woman keeps the household goods such as dishes, cups and cutlery as well as her belongings like dresses and jewelry. A wall made of reed separates the cooking area from the living room…There are some ancient Chinese documents about wars with Kyrgyz Nomads. It is written that when they wanted to attack the Kyrgyz in the morning, they could not do it, because during the night the whole village just silently disappeared. [Source>mykyrgyzstan]

If Russian planning made nomad Yurts struggle, so is doing the Made in China economy. Kyrgyz people recognize that recently imported Chinese-manufactured tents are easier to assemble (20 minutes instead of 1 hour) and cheaper. However, a Chinese unit would last up to 3 seasons, while the traditional Kyrgyz one, can last several generations. Not only being used by nomads nowadays, urbanites in Bishkek or Tashkent also prefer them for family funerals, weddings or official acts, interacting with standard built environments.

[image1> yurt inside a concrete building in Ulan Baator via trueslant] [image2>yurt by Ondřej Žváček] [image3>chinese prefab yurt by david trilling via tol] [image4>erecting a mongolian ger via canada mongolia connection]

Published on July 12, 2010 04:12.
Filed under: nomads

desert borders

An Oasis makes water accessible in an extremely dry desert area. Oases also have historically been decisive tools for political, economic and military control of an area, which trading routes should depend on. But an oasis can also be created to go beyond military barriers.

The US/Mexican border has experienced over 1,000 deaths of migrants between 2000-2007 venturing themselves into the desert in a life-or-death flight to a dreamt future. [map below] In a season where Spain suffers from a similar drama of Subsaharians dying in sea waters while fleeing into Spain, ElPaís brings the example of Humane Borders volunteering association to its pages. They take care of 100 drinking water stations in Arizona to help migrants survive, once they have crossed the border.

While some extreme right radicals Minutemen have been recently reported to being patrolling the same area but with fire weapons, some other ranches agree on having free water tanks on their plots, and the organization will check the water quality and filling on weekly or even daily basis. By providing information of walking distances in the desert, as well as signaling where these water points are located, they aim to reduce the everyday tragedy of nomadic migration and imposed boundaries.

As Teddy Cruz stated in his SanDiego/Tijuana Borderwall: Urbanism of Transgression:

“The border’s transformation from light to solid is exactly opposite the trend in recent architecture, which has moved from solid to light.

Contemporary architecture is searching once more for nomadic strategies of lightness and freedom, less interested in objects of imposition and more interested in territorial strategies. It is engaging the boundaries that simultaneously delimit and blur the diverse socio-cultural geographies of contemporary life.

Maybe this suggests, once more, that the dreams of architecture are at odds with the actual socio-political and economic realities in which they exist.”

[images 1-4> volunteering and water stations via Humane Borders] [image5> Urbanism of Transgression by Teddy Cruz]

Published on June 11, 2010 03:58.
Filed under: nomads, participation