PETE DUNGEY - POTHOLE GARDENS

This needs to be shared simply for the beauty of it!
www.petedungey.com

ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION AND FASCINATION OVER GROWING THINGS

Its spring, almost summer, and its time for planting. All kinds of vegetables. Its growing like crazy in my kitchen window and out in the garden. And soon in a road side at Wergeland!

But also the chaos of information is growing so I am working on ways to structure and linking it, so it will (hopefully) make sense in the end (6th of august is the deadline).

This is the words from my tutor (Vibeke);
"Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. a structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities, and ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. jeg tenkte meg en slags reversering av denne prosessen: ways of bringing the principles of the structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities to develop physical/architectural nodes (kiosks) that display, gather, generate info and social encounters around local sustainable living informasjonen du sitter på og har samlet på bloggen din er ikke tomt materiale! det du kan gjøre er å komme opp med en måte å skape en fysisk struktur som synliggjør materialet og formidler møter og aktiviteter lokalt 1:1 skisse er en veldig god måte å få lokal interesse for prosjektet ditt, ikke bare prat/info men real action that's power! (folk sier ofte om konseptuell kunst: 'i could have done that' - hvorpå svaret følger: yes, but you didn't - that's the difference! so go out and DO IT!
beste hilsen v"

Trying to get an overview of information while I get my hands dirty...
Tell you all about it soon, in the meantime you can enjoy the growing process!

THE BLUE ROAD

A link worth checking out is from Dutch artist Henk Hofstra who painted roadways vibrant blue to
symbolize hidden watercourses in the 2007 piece entitled 'The Blue Road'.

INTERVIEW WITH M. CASAGRANDE ON URBAN ACUPUNTURE

Urban Acupuncture is an urban environmentalism theory of Finnish architect, Professor Marco Casagrande which combines urban design with traditional Chinese medical theory of acupuncture. Casagrande views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called 3rd Generation City (post industrial city). Casagrande has developed the theory in the Tamkang University of Taiwan.

Laurits Elkjær / The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - School of Architecture in Copenhagen interviewing Marco Casagrande.

I am currently working on a large paper dealing with urban acupuncture. I understand that urban acupuncture is a strategy You have developed and would in this context ask You a few questions. If You have the opportunity to answer these, I will be both happy and grateful.

How do you as an architect define urban acupuncture?
Urban Acupuncture is cross-over architectural manipulation of the collective sensuous intellect within a city. City is viewed as a complex sensitive energy-organism, a living environment. Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with this nature.

How do you use urban acupuncture to create architecture?
First you have to determine the sensitive flows of the built human environment. Based on those you have to determine the acupuncture points. The last is to determine what is the needle: architecture. The key to understand this is to be presents. To be truly present one has to give up, one has to be weak. To be present is the key of all art.

What are the benefits of using urban acupuncture?
Weakness and flexibility. Communicative action with the collective mind. Environmental sensitivity. Every grass growing through the concrete or asphalt pavement of an industrial city is urban acupuncture.

What requirements should an area meet if Urban acupuncture is to be used as a strategy?
Urban Acupuncture can be applied as networks to deal with a whole city or it can be used puctually in close quaters. If a city is undergoing some sort of an active process or transformation, UA is a good strategy to tune the direction. Acupuncture is good for hardness and industrial insensitivity. Hardness and strenght are death's companions. What has become hard will never survive. Urban Accupuncture can suggest the Dictatorship of Sensitivity.

What is your experience with the use of urban acupuncture? In what context? What were/are the expectations and what was the outcome?
A good case is the transformation process of the Treasure Hill settlement from an illegal urban farming community into a model example of ecologically sustainable urban living in Taipei. See: http://www.e-architect.co.uk/taiwan/treasure_hill_taipei.htm

The process locally was Urban Acupuncture tunning the direction of the collective Qi from destruction into construction and afterwards the whole legalized settlement acting as an acupuncture needle for the modern Taipei. I have been referring this process to the turning over of a compost - something that is considered to be the smelly and repulsive corner of the city suddenly becomes the most fertile top-soil and source of life.

Link: UA

See also; Projet insolite en bambou

And I strongly recommend reading this interview of MC,
teasers to keep you interested; "flesh is more", "in grandmothers we trust"...

FLESH IS MORE

Marco Casagrande inrerview by Jirawit Yamkleeb for ART4D, Thailand.


Marco Casagrande has been working with both Sami Riintala and prof. Chi which both is connected to BAS. Sami was our teacher under the shelter course in 2005, and in autumn 2007 I did a course with Chi on micro urbanism (www.microurbanism.net). (see the MICRO URBANISM BOOK" under other works on the left column of this page).

see also if you like;
Chamber of the Post-Urbanist

em Interior por Marco Casagrande

Andy Goldsworthy-Rivers and Tides

A G makes beautiful sculptures in nature that capture time, space and light in a way that totally moves me.. Search for more or get the movie Rivers and Tides.