increasing disorder in a dining table by diller scofidio [source: 375gr] Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till in relation to the strawbale house and quilted office project [correction by: swarch]
break the ice
ice suburb in helsinki by Kevin Chu describes a nomad community over the ice thick layer covering Finnland Gulf. The variable condition of the winter ice leads to an unpredictable architecture in an endless transformation. Ice is therefore understood as a quick and efficient material to combine different mobile autonomous components. During the warm season, since the ice layer is fragile and unstable, the community settles in a compact way; in colder periods, when ice is more stable, the settlement tends to a disperse fragmentation. During the intermediate estates, the whole ensemble reacts and evolves towards the new physical environment.
[source: 375gr]
trashing the neoliberal city
“The projects in this publication raise fundamental questions about our right to the city and the possible uses of culture in the struggle for community self-determination: How do we want to interact with our neighbors? What kinds of reforms do we want from the state and what kinds of collective infrastructures should we be building ourselves instead? What kinds of spaces encourage resistance, free movement and the well being of the whole population?”
essays on Right to the city, Protest experiments & Social reorganization.
[autonomous political practices in Chicago from 2000-2005, edited by Daniel Tucker & Emily Forman]
info from learningsite & areachicago
rooftop squatting
“There is no elevator. We walk up the eight flights of stairs, hesitating on the last one, looking at each other, out of breath: we have no right to be here.
The roof is a maze of corridors, narrow passageways between huts built of sheet metal, wood, brick and plastics [...] We look down at the building from a higher one across the street. The roof is huge, like a village. There must be thirty or forty households on it. From the outside there is no way of knowing what is inside. [...]
Self-built settlements on the roofs of high-rise buildings have been an integral part of Hong Kong’s history for over half a century. Rooftop structures range from basic shelters for the disadvantaged to intricate multi-storey constructions equipped with the amenities of modern life. Rufina Wu (Canada) and Stefan Canham (Germany) utilize the tools of an architect and the tools of a photographer to document rooftop communities on five buildings located in older districts in the Kowloon Peninsula, slated for redevelopment by the Urban Renewal Authority of Hong Kong. Text records of the residents’ stories, measured drawings of each distinct rooftop structure, and high-resolution images of the domestic interiors of more than twenty households offer an unprecedented insight into the everyday life on Hong Kong’s rooftops.”
[Portraits from above>Hong Kong's informal rooftop communities by Rufina Wu & Stefan Canham]
barefoot in the park
[night dancing in Shanghai's Xujiahui Park]
Far beyond closing parks at night in a safety paranoia, some Asian cities are used to have their citizens gather around late in the evening or early in the morning for dancing. Either for the sake of gymnastics, for social meeting, or flirting, the result is a surprisingly interactive use of open spaces.
The most two common versions are dancing with a partner, who might change with the next song, or the choreography group following a fit Madonna/MichaelJackson-like leader’s movements. Sometimes the music is brought by any of the dancers himself, other times by any informal organizer.
Reported cases so far> Shanghai’s XuJiaHui Park, Hanoi’s Lenin Park, HoChiMinh City’s Gia Dinh Park, Phnom Penh’s Hun Sen Park, and Kuala Lumpur’s Subang Jaya.
[couple-dancing at Lenin Park, Hanoi, Vietnam] Picture by AllTheDumbThings
[group-dancing at Subang Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]
learning from tacky tourism
More than 30 years after Venturi and Scott Brown admired Las Vegas as a self-made city based on gambling, Southeast Asia seems to be winning positions nowadays as a world-wide Mecca for cheap tourism.
After suffering countless massacres, wars, battles, colonizations and protectorates of every kind, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are decided to reinvent themselves to attract tourism at any cost for their urban redevelopment. The vast offer of extravagant activities appeal youngsters from all over the world, under the promise of living exotic experiences. As a result, lost towns are increasingly becoming reference points in the map of cheap entertainment for the masses, which is making informal local economies grow, as well as towns themselves.
*Sex in Bangkok, Thailand> multi-billion dollar sex industry running massage parlors, where everything can happen inside: money-boys, lady-boys, go-gos,… “Unlike brothels or strip clubs, Ping Pong Shows do not lure clients through promises of sexual arousal, but promises of sexual perversion — if not sexual torture. They offer freak shows where women’s bodies are reduced to grotesque objects exploited for tourists’ entertainment.”
more> untold stories pullitzer center bbc news
*Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos> “I survived” is the printed motto on the popular tank-tops, one can show off after his experience. It consists of hiring a floating doughnut on the local river and just let oneself flow downstream stopping at any of the dozens of the bamboo cocktail bars, which have lately flourished along both banks. (several people have already died whilst tubing in last years)
*Tailors in Hoi An, Vietnam> a world-heritage fishermen village turned into a huge instant tailors market. Each and every store along its ancient streets houses a tailor-made business, either for coats, dresses, suits or sneakers, promising a finished result in even 12 hours, just in time before the tourist departs from this stressful location again. Imitation and Original, who is first? Nike shoes already launched the Do-It-Yourself official design in their website.
*Home-stays in Minorities villages> when the first travelers reached these mountainous landscapes of Northern Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, the hundreds of different ethnic minorities were a rarely precious piece of originally preserved culture. Nowadays tourists want also to be travelers and home-stays are offered everywhere at a high price. Intimacy can be bought and sold, and no one seems to care, whenever money is handed in.
[Dzao Minorities, Northern Vietnam]
[Miao Minorities, South Yunnan]
*Cooking courses> after having perverted local restaurants into a variety of international dishes advertised everywhere in these Tourism Meccas, they also reinvent back now their own locality. Learning how to cook local food is sometimes the only way left to scape to fried eggs with bacon…
*The Backpackers alley> is the latest trend in ghettos. Almost every destination in Southeast Asia has developed a street with cheap guesthouses (double price as anywhere else in the city) one after the other, surrounded by all-you-can-eat canteens, and fake opium street dealers at night.
I wonder how relevant is the role of Lonely-Planetarism in all these perversions of local spots; as long as travel-guide Bibles keep on recommending activities, travelers’ spontaneous decisions become very limited.
On the other side, however, local informal economies are boosting in a short-term perspective; their future sustainability is what still remains uncertain for urban life.
half the bag
Optimizing a plastic bag. Cambodians like and need drinking everywhere; glasses-to-go either on foot or by motorbike with a device, which saves the half of the standard bag. Any extra properties for cooling?
plastic half bag found in Phnom Penh
my tailor is rich
Far beyond street sellers all over developing countries, Vietnamese (as well as Chinese and other Asian citizens do) come up with new locations for their daily businesses. Survival and invention lead to freely occupy open public spaces in different forms of temporary activities.
*Hairdresser kit> a removable chair and a mirror (which may hang from a wall or a tree). when there is no client, the coiffeur waits sitting on the same chair, or even has an additional plastic stool.
*Tailor kit> a sun protector and a sewing-machine with tiny wheels. when it gets dark, electricity for a bulb may be taken by connecting to a street lamp.
propaganda for identity
political propaganda samples of Vietnamese streets.
with a naif and charming style graphics, the Government keeps on trying to transmit ideas for a collective identity. would it mean a progressive loss of a socialist concept of a nation nowadays, that needs to be expressed anyhow to the people? hard times for it, above all, when US$ notes are too common on everyday pockets…
jumping happens
1970s was a time of expanding consciousness and arranging urban space. Prototypes for new ideas for living were created, influenced by new building materials, and proposals for redesigning people’s living space.
Haus-Rucker-Co proposed Giant Billiard, an inflatable interactive device for people to provoke entertainment, and invite them to jump and play together, and be actors of a scene. However, the sterile, the minimal surroundings of the gallery threatened to drain the vitality from the work, transforming the projects into sculptures, static objects not to be touched. When confronted with the museum space, the artists chose to add an additional set of contextual objects comprised of furniture from their own apartments. They transported bed rooms and living rooms (televisions included) to the museum and moved into the commandeered gallery space for the duration of the show.
Above, Giant billiard relaunched in 2007 within a sterile background without additional dirtiness.
Moebel Olfe launched in February 2009 at the Modulor Haus in Berlin a memorable happening, open to spontaneous decisions, with another giant inflatable device as main character and diverse surprises, turning a vast office derelict space into a vivid playground for grown-ups. Party-tecture as part of an enjoy-and-reuse interaction with an empty space.
furtherfield blog inflatable enclosures Steven Lauritano at Pidgin
pharaonic paella
After dramatic flooding, one river’s course crossing a city was to be altered.
In 1986 the city of Valencia, Spain, succeeds in turning the empty bed of the river Turia into a beautifully empty garden, instead of a highway. However, it experienced again one collapse, when the centre-left Mayor decided that terrific tyrannosauric buildings should invade it. Not enough with this megalomaniac plan, now is turn for the centre-right to destroy a protected village, which interferes the official plans between the city and the beach.
El Cabanyal, whose origins date back to the 12th century, is a clear example of the New Towns of the Spanish Enlightenment of the 18th century. Built under hygienic principles of orientation and ventilation, this fishermen village was placed next to the harbour in the outskirts of the main city.
Rediscovered at the turn of the 19th century by the bourgeoisie, it resulted in a beautiful mix of enlightened blocks with fine art deco summer-houses among fishermen playing domino in the street. The perfect site for the birth of the most traditional eating spots for paella in Valencia.
Today, and against the central Government desire of protecting El Cabanyal, 1651 dwellings threaten demolition by the jaws of the real estate developers. current dwellers and supporters keep on fighting…
source graphic: el pais source pictures: salvem el cabanyal
parasite HVAC
paraSITE proposes the appropriation of the exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture as a means for providing temporary shelter for homeless people. A project by Michael Rakowitz. (1998-…)
Custom built inflatable shelters designed for homeless people that attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure. Built and distributed to over 30 homeless people in Boston and Cambridge, MA and New York City.
This project does not present itself as a solution. It is not a proposal for affordable housing. Its point of departure is to present a symbolic strategy of survival for homeless existence within the city, amplifying the problematic relationship between those who have homes and those who do not have homes.
In his book, City of Quartz, Mike Davis describes a similar war on homelessness in Los Angeles. He lists a series of these hindrances throughout the city.
“One of the most common, but mind-numbing, of these deterrents is the Rapid Transit District’s new barrelshaped bus bench that offers a minimal surface for uncomfortable sitting, while making sleeping utterly impossible. Such bumproof benches are being widely introduced on the periphery of Skid Row. Another invention, worthy of the Grand Guignol, is the aggressive deployment of outdoor sprinklers. Several years ago the city opened a ‘Skid Row Park’ along lower Fifth Street, on a corner of Hell. To ensure that the park was not used for sleeping – that is to say, to guarantee that it was mainly utilized for drug dealing and prostitution – the city installed an elaborate overhead sprinkler system programmed to drench unsuspecting sleepers at random during the night. The system was immediately copied by some local businessmen in order to drive the homeless away from adjacent public sidewalks. Meanwhile restaurants and markets have responded to the homeless by building ornate enclosures to protect their refuse. Although no one in Los Angeles has yet proposed adding cyanide to the garbage, as happened in Phoenix a few years back, one popular seafood restaurant has spent $12,000 to build the ultimate bag-lady-proof trash cage: made of three-quarter inch steel rod with alloy locks and vicious outturned spikes to safeguard priceless moldering fishheads and stale french fries.”
more on HUGHES/SADLER> NON-PLAN: essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism
flies in a mountain or a mountain flying
reality= representation
appropriation of a mountain through sculpted rice terraces in Guilin, china Vs. generic topographic isolines
Front Design lamp by fly, designed by translating the movements of a fly around a bulk Vs. walter marchetti’s observation of a fly over a window from 8 am till 7 pm one day in March 1967
narrowing down
crisis in some countries let others flourish, by being re-colonised as new tourist spots, cheaper than already damaged Mallorcas and Teneriffas. in order to commemorate 1,000 years of existence, Hanoi has decided that its overcrowded tube dwellings need to be aerated. lots of narrow eclectic mini-high-rise buildings are to be demolished, since tourism arrives all of a sudden, and the city tries its best to assume it.
medieval times started these structures, French art-deco embellished, socialists fragmented, and vegetation beautifully eroded them. trying to readjust to the time being, each of these organisms has mutated, far beyond any regulation, by adding, removing, cantilevering or covering processes.
paradoxically, some of the home countries of the re-colonizers seem to force a reinterpretation of the “Narrow” in their cities, to recover a lost medieval ambiance. amongst them, berlin’s official plans for some blocks in the city centre, which copy a pastiche townhouse style of narrow properties.
street ends
when looking at the map of the city of Hanoi, the most attractive places to visit appear at first glance. every street leads to somewhere, which is not shown in the graphic information. where do actually alleys end up? streets are drawn with open ends leading to fantastic worlds of chaos, neither to be described nor updated; urging to derive…
Meanwhile, retailers from these alleys build their own limit to openness, by adding protrusions to each building. heavy rains let it easier to shop, once the countless pavement-umbrellas are spread out of the fassade. a continuous dynamic ceiling appears and disappears depending on the clouds above.
eskimos tactile maps
eskimos have a narrow link to their territory. Apart from their songs and legends, they use the wooden carved maps in the picture to embody and represent Landscape. The Greenland coastline may be even felt by gliding the finger along these subtle objects in their dark winter days.
source: tightgrid
dear lily
Dear Lily,
When I first saw you, the “romantic Italian and dignified French style” of your place captivated me. Actually, I became a bit confused, since I sometimes had the impression of being somewhere else, neither teleported to a harmonious Toscana village, nor to a delicate villa in the Normandy. The “elegance and subtleness of your Mediterranean architecture” drove me rather to some other anonymous city: Zhenzhou, Hefei, Deqing or Haining, to some other similar compound also produced by Greentown, one of the top 10 Real Estate Groups in China[1].
How can the standard Chinese megacity turn out to be even more mega-standard? The strategic tool for these developers is the Model: a magic formula combining housing and public image, repeated all over the country. Common features reiterate, whether Hopson, Shimao, Evergrande, Vanke or Coli are the assemblers. Lily apartments have numerous twins: the Rivieras, Oasis, Splendors, Rosegardens… These homogeneous complexes differ only on diverse niche products, which have been carefully detected. What can we learn from the supply-demand market of housing, regarding dwellers’ needs in current urban China?
After analysing the G-10 of the Chinese contemporary Real scene, four strategies are to be highlighted:
First, as far as Geopolitics is concerned, Hopson prefers to focus in the 3 Chinese metropolitan areas (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou). Meanwhile, Evergrande ventures himself to set up residential units in 22 second-tier cities, following the official “Going West” policy: Chongqing, Xian, Kunming, Chengdu… These new unknown urban centres are quickly becoming decisive for national economics, relieving oversaturated Shanghai. Diplomacy also plays an important role for the Hong Kong-based Coli. In order to “grace China” for letting them operate in Mainland, they are philanthropy masters.
Second, “the creators of perfect lifestyles” stand for marketing a public image. Every Western allure is subject to be duplicated, in form of French neo-Royalty or a Mediterranean patio, branding “art, elegance and culture” for the sake of luxury. Consequently, their Architecture and public space develop together with their bombastic slogans; Shimao’s theme park gardens blossom in every decent Chinese compound, making olive trees, Louis XVI mazes, and Hawaii coconuts distort the perception of place – unused gardens simply pretending to be.
Third, target customers are generally city-based consumers with high earning power. However, Vanke has found another niche product in the growing middle-class. In addition, Hopson leads the supply of custom-made services for dwellers through its on-line community (banquets, delicacy order, education…).
And finally, anticipating to future developments or decreases, every G-10 company is amassing vast land reserves as a secret weapon to shock the world. But Lily, don’t be overwhelmed about the future! It seems that star Jackie Chan launching compounds is being gradually replaced by starchitects launching Real Estate headquarters.
Looking forward to…“making your dreams come true”.
metromadrid moves
Distorted reality of the metro system in madrid, depending on the amount of users of each station. This scanning of the city leads to another mental map of what happens both above and underground.
With the gathered data of one working day from November 2006, this data-visualization was made in 2008.
opium pillow box
Ancient China was not used to lock houses doors at night. Each wife had therefore to develop an strategy to keep the family documents, seals, jewels or important belongings safe. The result was this hybrid object, to be even carried away when the family was travelling or trading.
As easy as using the strongbox as pillow overnight was the mechanism to avoid theft. Rigid pillows were quite common in Far Eastern cultures. Covered with lacquered leather, these hybrids would adapt its concave shape to the human head (unfortunately, my European cranium was too pointed to rest over one of them). The wife would have to rest over it all night long, so that she would notice any movement. I wonder whether it would also be an strategy preventing wives to spend the night elsewhere.
During the Opium addiction of the country at the turn of 19th century, these pillows were also very appreciated to potentiate phantasy daydreaming…
death in venice
Venice is both shrinking and sinking.
While every year her streets are increasingly being flooded by acqua alta, she is loosing more and more population at the same time. On November 2009, a popular mock funeral was held, in memoriam to the city’s future perspectives. Matteo Secchi, organiser of the event declared:
“We promised two years ago when we got less than 60,000 inhabitants we would plan a funeral [for] the city because we think the city [...] is not a city any more, it’s more a village,” he said.
Palazzi are nowadays a mere scenery, whose backstage is empty. The rockstars and millionaires living inside, who should be performing on the city-stage, are gone, and only come back to their homes once a year. How can a 60,000 souls’ city then deal with an average of 50,000 tourists per day?
my deepest sympathy.
source: bbcnews source picture
tactic winter day
berlin likes inventing healthy peaceful battles between neighbourhoods at their borderlines.
Not enough with the classic rotten vegetables fight by the end of the summer (Friedrichshain vs. Kreuzberg), one Sunday morning of January 2010 the new winter version with snowballs was founded by popular initiative and spread through internet. Once Friedrichshain had lost the battle to be the most attractive place to leave time ago, it seems that Neukölln tries to snatch this position to Kreuzberg.
A whole happening occured at Görlitzer Park, for delight of Michel de Certau and Henri Lefebvre. Hundreds of citizens couldn’t stop trying to hit a snowball on their friends’ face in opposing side at the rhythm of the tamtam of the spontaneous war-drummers and protected with self-made dustbin tops as shields. While dressed-up snowmen were dancing in the frontline, djs were already starting the dance(sliding)floor. Open-air meeting with loads of 2nd hand winterclothes provided for free by the people, to keep on dancing warm…
…a tactical subversion… and the park was appropriated for some hours by these winter-soldiers.
local heroes / berlin neukölln
Neukölln is a traditional working class district and former location of much of Berlins’ industrial employment. Many companies in former West Berlin times ran highly subsidized production sites here and created a high demand for workers. After the fall of the wall, subsidies, and therefore production, were eliminated. For many, this meant the loss of their existence, and was especially true for migrant workers. Today 160 different nations live in Neukölln. More and more enterprises are owned and run by migrants. Turkish and Arabic enterprise, but increasingly also African, Asian, and Eastern- European, take on an important role. The establishment of enterprise happens mostly out of necessity.
In order to get an overview of the area, we investigated all shops with regard to its ethnic economies along Karl- Marx- Straße, between Hermannplatz and Grenzallee. Most of the app. 350 enterprises have ethnic background. The job market is particularly difficult for migrant workers. „Unsatisfactory“ language skills are a big obstacle, as well as the unwillingness of professional degrees from their home countries to be acknowledged. Most of the businesses are established with private capital funds. Through these enterprises the creation of value is increasing in Neukölln. The high potential of the ethnic economies – those which can bring further changes for the Neukölln economy – are often not obvious. The project Local Heroes therefore aims to investigate special features of ethnic economies along Karl- Marx- Straße, and to show its potential. With regard to the concept of the reorganization of the Karl- Marx- Straße in Neukölln and a revitalization of the former shopping district, Local Heroes wants to preserve the existing multi- ethnicity within the development of the local site, and highlight its cultural diversity.
As a recall for the city of Berlin we organised a street performance, together with one of our Local Heroes.
Svetla Dimitrova was born in Bulgaria. She has been living in Berlin since six years, and opened her studio for bridal wear in the Karl-Marx-Straße one year ago. Svetla is a fashion designer and worked in the fashion business in her home country as well. Her dresses are self- designed and produced; her customers are welcome to bring in their own ideas. On average Svetla works 14 hours per day, seven days a week. She does not have any employees thus far. The business is going well. She already has regular customers though she has never used advertising. Her business works through “word-of-mouth”. Her customers are living mainly in Berlin, but originate from Turkey, Germany, Poland, Russia and the Balkan countries. Besides Bulgarian, Svetla speaks German and Russian fluently, and has a working knowledge of Turkish. She sees the existence of the many other bridal shops in the nearby environment as a potential. Svetla has good relations with other business owners, even friendships. With her customers she is friendly, almost familiar. And although it does not go as far as meeting privately – Svetla wants to keep the line between business and private life here – she still listens to her customers problems and supports and offers her advice. Svetla often gets invited to her customers’ weddings.
Wedding international was performed in June 2009, showing the differences of social habits in weddings configuring outfits. Polnish women like to wear short, since they have to dance all night long, Russian dresses need to glitter…
[A project with Katharina Rohde]
motel azor
or how a “dictator’Ship” looks like in the Spanish Highlands…
Surrounded by plain vegetation of the highlands, Franco’s summer yacht remains aground and abandoned. After two failed attempts of business, first as touristparty-boat and second as fetish-motel, it allows the local villagers now anything but dreaming of an imaginary sailing landscape.
1992 was acquired in a public auction for 28,000 € (far from the expected 600,000) as scrap iron from the Government by its current (apolitical professed) owner. After the first failed attempt of profit at the seaside, he insisted on paying 72,000 € to cut it into 3 pieces and resettle it 300km inner away from the water: current location at Cogollos, Burgos.
A tiny Dictator posing next to his miraculous fishing catches (whales, giant tuna fishes…) on pictures from the 1960s are the only leftovers of a time, where Franco used this recreational tool to scape from his own regime.
INFO :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Based in London and Berlin, Daniel Fernández Pascual holds a M.Arch [Madrid ETSAM]; M.Sc.Urban Design [TU Berlin]; and M.Arch [Shanghai Tongji]. He has collaborated with studios in Berlin, NewYork, Madrid, London and Shanghai; and his work has been published and awarded in international media. His postgraduate CajaMadrid Fellowship (2009-2011) focused on relational space & informal strategies of city development. Currently, he is a LaCaixa fellow and is conducting a research project on the Spanish Real Estate Crisis at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: wishes, contributions & critiques to: daniel [at] deconcrete [dot] org
DECONCRETE by daniel fernández pascual is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.