URBAN AGRICULTURE HIGH SCHOOL IN NEW YORK!!!

Today a new school is born and important change is rolling forward towards our alternative legacy!!!!

from http://farmtogethernow.org/2010/09/30/urban-ag-high-school/
September 30, 2010

We just got this press release about an exciting development in education out in New York:

Just Food and Partners Announce Launch of Farm School NYC:

The New York City School of Urban Agriculture

Just Food and an alliance of local horticultural and food justice organizations are pleased to announce the official launch of Farm School NYC: The New York City School of Urban Agriculture.  The school will offer a unique, community-based certificate program with enrollment beginning in January 2011.  The mission of the school is to provide comprehensive professional training in urban agriculture, while spurring positive local action on issues of food access and social, economic and racial justice.

Community gardens and urban farms throughout the city will serve as outdoor classrooms, and their neighborhoods and gardeners as inspiration for a vibrant, fair local food system that nourishes bodies and minds.  Training programs will be accessible to adults of all educational backgrounds and income levels.  In particular, Farm School NYC targets New York City residents unable to access traditional agricultural education and for whom skills in urban food production can contribute to reduced hunger and diet-related diseases that disproportionately affect low-income city residents.

“For the first time, New Yorkers and city dwellers from all over will have access to agricultural training that directly relates to the unique setting of urban agriculture,” says Karen Washington, a nationally-recognized urban farming pioneer from the Bronx, and a member of the school’s Executive Board. “We grow it so we know it, and we’ve shown that city farming can make a huge difference in the health and nutrition of low-income urban communities.”

Farm School NYC will offer instruction in sustainable agriculture, entrepreneurship and food systems management.  “Our goal for the school is to build and share knowledge within our communities and improve local access to healthy food throughout the city,” said Jacquie Berger, Executive Director of Just Food. “By bringing urban farming skills to a much broader population, Farm School NYC will magnify the impact of urban agriculture on community health in New York City and beyond.”

Learn More:  Visit Farm School NYC’s website: www.justfood.org/farmschoolnyc

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Molly Culver & Eric Thomann

Interim Co-Directors

Farm School NYC, Just Food

212-645-9880×224

farmschoolnyc@justfood.org

www.justfood.org/farmschoolnyc

PAST AND EXITING NEW PUBLICATIONS FROM TINAG

http://www.criticalcities.net/

Also check out TINAG´s page at : http://www.thisisnotagateway.net/
Upcoming festival 22nd - 24th October in London!

"Alongside the general open call the festival will include activities from across the globe that interrogate and propose new futures for ‘The Corporation’- otherwise known as Financial Districts / The City / Central Business District’s / Downtowns.
Despite their uniqueness ‘Financial Districts’ are erroneously understudied. This may in part be due to a perception that they are banal, sanitised non-places, perhaps even benign. It is likely that the difficulty in accessing and penetrating the real or illusory boundaries around these sites, might also contribute to a gap in knowledge.
A contemporary interrogation of these spaces, by a spectrum of disciplines and approaches, is vital as the current crisis of capitalism can be traced throughout these ‘financial service centres’. Since the decline of European communism twenty years ago these unique spaces have been rapidly built across the globe with noteworthy similarity. Recently in centres such as London, discussions about how these spaces may be re-understood and re-used, have begun – no doubt accelerated by predictions that financial and business services are expected to rapidly decline.
Desired, celebrated, ignored, distrusted or transformed into sites of protest – what can we learn about the most avant-garde spaces of modern capitalism? What does this mean for the future of how we might conceive of cities and our lives within them? Do these spaces allow us a clear view into how we may live our lives in the 21^st century?... "

DELHI NULLAHS: THE FRACTAL METROPOLITAN LAYER

www.delhinullahs.org

'The fractal metropolitan layer' is an endeavor in progress by Morphogenesis, that aims to reveal the hidden opportunity that lies within our organically evolved cities by establishing a green and sustainable network as an alternative source of engagement with the city for the common man. The initiative aims to reclaim the derelict, the forgotten, the recyclable, and the toxic by involving all stakeholders, thereby collapsing the boundaries of decades of non-systemic thinking which have generated unsustainable urban growth. The contiguous, sewage-laden nullahs, the greens, the alleyways and the river are viewed as the arteries of a city that can be linked to create an environmental network which integrates livability issues of air, water, sewerage, heritage and walkability. These ecological potentials and vestigial organs of planning can be modulated, transformed, and spatial strategies devised to optimize the ecological, social, cultural, and economic dynamic that can be created through them.

The Morphogenesis Delhi Nullahs installation live at the India Habitat Centre

The installation aims to create awareness by engaging people, to speculate on what is and what can be, by bridging the gap between the reality of our cities as perceived from the outside, and the virtual image of what Delhi potentially is. The tree has been used as a metaphor and a fractal insert into the fabric of the city; representative of our symbiotic relationship with Nature, and its omnipresence in Delhi.

PLACE & SPACE - from visual thesaurus

IMAGES FROM la CHAPELLE : COMMUNITY PARK PROJECT IN PARIS

See also my paris experience blog-post from city as biotope

 "....the everyday park between the rail-lines of Gare de l´Est and Rue d´Aubervilliers, Jardins d´Eole that almost lost the 12 year long fight for its right to exist to the plans for extention of a storage hall. Now it is a beautiful addition in peoples life in this aera; people working out, playing, talking, growing vegetables and fruits in the parcel-garden, having coffe and crèpe and talking, and the children experience to see how a sunflower grow, or how a turnip they planted taste when it is finished (school project)."

rue d´Aubervilliers - Jardins d´Éole

Permeable surfaces, natural seeding straws and surface water management

Parcel gardens

Garden produce

MORE IMAGES FROM aaa PROJECT IN PARIS / Le 56 : Eco-interstice

Photos from aaa´s Urban gardening project in Paris : Le 56 / Eco-interstice

"This project explores the possibilities of an urban interstice to be transformed into a collectively self-managed space. Initiated in 2006 in St. Blaise area, in the East of Paris, the project engaged a partnership between local government structures, local organisations, inhabitants of the area and a professional association which run training programmes in eco-construction. The management of the project gives space and time to construction, the construction site becoming itself a social and cultural act.

Parallely with the construction of the physical space, different social and cultural networks and relationships between the users and the actors involved are emerging. The project has an important take on the notion of proximity and active borders. Neighborhood walls transform the boundaries of the site into interactive devices, which rather than separating, multiply exchange and connections. Another strong take is on the ecological aspect: energetic autonomy, recycling, minimal ecological footprint, a compost laboratory."
http://56stblaise.wordpress.com/

Entrance with small office on top.

The neighborhood garden

And sales of harvested products every Wednesday and Saturday

EcoBox by aaa

From the same TIMELINE from design act

EcoBox

by Atelier d’architecture autogérée
(FR) 2001
Self-managed eeo-urban network

The EcoBox is the initial project within a series of self-managed projects in the La Chapelle area of northern Paris which encourages residents to gain access to and critically transform misused or underused spaces. These projects actively involved municipal stakeholders to emphasize a flexible use of space and aim to preserve urban 'biodiversity' by encouraging the co-existence of a wide range of life-styles and living practices. Atelier d'architecture autogeree (aaa) began this process by establishing a temporary garden constructed out of recycled materials. The garden, EcoBox, has progressively extended into a platform for urban criticism and creativity, which is curated by the aaa members, residents and external collaborators and which catalyses activities at a local and trans-Iocallevel. EcoBox's principles of self-management have been furthered developed in the project Le 56/ Eco-Interstice by aaa. –NL

Image

EcoBox_1.jpg

Click image or title to play

Video: Interview 1/10 PreviousNext

Context and Beginning

LINKS
http://www.urbantactics.org/

Atelier d'architecture autogérée (aaa) was founded in 2001 as an inter- and extra- disciplinary network with a multiplicity of viewpoints : architects, artists, students, researchers, politicians, unemployed, activists, retired, inhabitants, and all concerned users. Members of aaa involved in EcoBox were: Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu, Denis Favret, Giovanni Piovene, and Giada Mangiameli, in collaboration with Borderphonics, Bordercartographe, artists, activists, students, and inhabitants of the La Chapelle area. aaa projects are embedded in their local contexts, reactivate everyday practices and initiate translocal platforms for cultural production. Other projects include: Le 56 / Eco-interstice (2005-2008), Mobile Geographies of Skills (2004-2005), and Cuisine Urbaine (2003-2004).

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!

IDENTITY, SENSATION AND DIVERSITY IN THE STREETS

Investigating concepts, shapes, programs and attributes of the streetscape....
What makes one block or street more interesting than others?
With inspiration from f.ex the BORNEO project in Amsterdam (WEST8), and other street views and experiences, I am searching for some qualities, attributes, intrinsic values etc that gives character to a neighborhood.
This is qualities that one can sense when first experiencing a street or neighborhood, the visual impulses and aesthetics. But living in and being a user of a place connects experiences of other dimensions to the feeling of a place and the care (or lack of care) you feel for it, in the perspective of investing time and energy to it, making it your own.

The mosaic above is different images from Paris and Malmø I took when visiting the cities last autumn. Both the cities have a lot of characteristics and varieties that I liked. Especially Paris has a rich variety in programs on street level that the neighbors use; bakery, coffeshop/cafés, grocery stores, laundry etc. Makes it possible for people to do their necessary things within their area... Which again make the area active...


The two pictures above shows the facades from both sides of Nygårdsgaten here in the City of Bergen, a varied street with different programs on street level and mostly apartments from first floor and above. How can one regulate an area or lead development into a varied expression like this? Is this possible? Maybe the Borneo development shows that it can? I have not seen it myself but the images seems promising...

BACK AND FORTH WITH HISTORY

A COMMON TRANSECT

A common transect has a simple expansion of the typical section cut technique. In a natural condition this slices through a number of ecosystems. The definition from the CATS site gives a quick idea of the concept of transect which borrows from the ecological concept: "A transect is a cut or path through part of the environment showing a range of different habitats. Biologists and ecologists use transects to study the many symbiotic elements that contribute to habitats where certain plants and animals thrive. Human beings also thrive in different habitats. Some people prefer urban centers and would suffer in a rural place, while others thrive in the rural or sub-urban zones. Before the automobile, American development patterns were walkable, and transects within towns and city neighborhoods revealed areas that were less urban and more urban in character. This urbanism could be analyzed as natural transects are analyzed." (from LANDSCAPE+URBANISM)

This article is very interesting so I can recomend reading it on Representing Transects

but the comments to the post is starting a good discussion to;

michelle said...

Great Post. I have always been attracted to the simplicity of the transect and its ability to convey a lot of information, albeit general, in a graphically pleasing way. Applying the transect to the urban growth boundary is a tricky, but I think doable task.

There is a bit of a disconnect between the UGB line on the map and the resulting landscape. The development takes time to catch up with planning. I was driving through Damascus the other day the the farms gave way quickly to the dense neighborhoods. Between those were the remnants of the 3-5 acre rural lots. It was all in all a spotty, hard to comprehend landscape. It would make for an interesting looking transect. What I see happening more and more is the urban growth boundary is not a circle but more of a blob with arms. It would be interesting to see what a transect looks like that starts in the UGB travels through the rural area and reenters the UGB in another arm.

Thanks for the collection of info.

Michelle, December 30, 2009 1:24 PM

ABDaigle said...

Michelle, I have been thinking about your post, because the application of the Transect to walkable urbanism intends just that - the wave-like action of urban separated by rural (although each "urban" area has its own characteristics and level of urbanism, from hamlet to village to city to regional center).
The primary point is that each "increment" of urbanism must be, at minimum, an approximate 1/4 mile" pedestrian shed" to make it truly sustainable (i.e., meaning most daily needs are within walking distance and rich with a diversity of living, working and shopping opportunities).
This assumes the largest lots are primarily on the neighborhood edge as a transition from urban to rural, adjacent preferably to rural agriculture, and that a mix of ag and preserved "wilderness" likewise separate communities.
This concept can be valid in a number of urban settings, from small town neighborhoods to highly urban areas.
While with PlaceMakers, we designed a community of eight hamlets and saved the majority of land between each one as natural landscape. (The original plan had been to fully develop in sprawl mode the entire land area.) The Waters is outside Montgomery, AL, and hamlet one is well underway. Here is a link to the Master Plan:
http://www.thewatersal.com/WatersMasterPlan.pdf
It is a good example of how one can plan complete neighborhoods, maintain a small town feel while building compactly to ensure walkability, and conserve land. There are many design tools to accomplish similar effects in more urban areas, from conservation easements to urban agriculture to regional parks and greenways.
I love Germany, where the urban edge ends abruptly and agriculture or forests take over. (Large suburban size lots are almost nonexistent there, where efficiency seems to trump other considerations and public shared space is well-designed and abundant.)

Ann Daigle, Community Design & Plan Strategy, March 3, 2010 1:08 PM

ROADS GONE WILD

No street signs. No crosswalks. No accidents. Surprise: Making driving seem more dangerous could make it safer.
(from a WIRED article Issue 12.12 - December 2004)

Hans Monderman (Engineer of Livable Streets,) is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn't done his job. "The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there's a problem with a road, they always try to add something," Monderman says. "To my mind, it's much better to remove things." .......

Riding in his green Saab, we glide into Drachten, a 17th-century village that has grown into a bustling town of more than 40,000. We pass by the performing arts center, and suddenly, there it is: the Intersection. It's the confluence of two busy two-lane roads that handle 20,000 cars a day, plus thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians. Several years ago, Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior - traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings - and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle. The circle is remarkable for what it doesn't contain: signs or signals telling drivers how fast to go, who has the right-of-way, or how to behave. There are no lane markers or curbs separating street and sidewalk, so it's unclear exactly where the car zone ends and the pedestrian zone begins. To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous - and that's the point.

Monderman and I stand in silence by the side of the road a few minutes, watching the stream of motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians make their way through the circle, a giant concrete mixing bowl of transport. Somehow it all works. The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. "I love it!" Monderman says at last. "Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrians, and everyone looks out for each other. You can't expect traffic signs and street markings to encourage that sort of behavior. You have to build it into the design of the road.".....

In Denmark, the town of Christianfield stripped the traffic signs and signals from its major intersection and cut the number of serious or fatal accidents a year from three to zero. In England, towns in Suffolk and Wiltshire have removed lane lines from secondary roads in an effort to slow traffic - experts call it "psychological traffic calming." A dozen other towns in the UK are looking to do the same. A study of center-line removal in Wiltshire, conducted by the Transport Research Laboratory, a UK transportation consultancy, found that drivers with no center line to guide them drove more safely and had a 35 percent decrease in the number of accidents.

In the US, traffic engineers are beginning to rethink the dictum that the car is king and pedestrians are well advised to get the hell off the road. In West Palm Beach, Florida, planners have redesigned several major streets, removing traffic signals and turn lanes, narrowing the roadbed, and bringing people and cars into much closer contact. The result: slower traffic, fewer accidents, shorter trip times. "I think the future of transportation in our cities is slowing down the roads," says Ian Lockwood, the transportation manager for West Palm Beach during the project and now a transportation and design consultant. "When you try to speed things up, the system tends to fail, and then you're stuck with a design that moves traffic inefficiently and is hostile to pedestrians and human exchange.".....

CHAOS = COOPERATION

1. Remove signs: The architecture of the road - not signs and signals - dictates traffic flow.

2. Install art: The height of the fountain indicates how congested the intersection is.

3. Share the spotlight: Lights illuminate not only the roadbed, but also the pedestrian areas.

4. Do it in the road: Caf�s extend to the edge of the street, further emphasizing the idea of shared space.

5. See eye to eye: Right-of-way is negotiated by human interaction, rather than commonly ignored signs.

6. Eliminate curbs: Instead of a raised curb, sidewalks are denoted by texture and color.

read the full article here

Hans Monderman, Engineer of Livable Streets, died in 2008.

This is what Kathy Madden says about his work;

"2007 we met with Hans in the Netherlands and he told us that although his work started by analyzing why accidents occurred in some areas and why they didn't happen in others, he said that there was one essential goal of calming any intersection. This goal was simply to slow the traffic down to where there could be eye contact between the various people who are meeting each other at the intersection - on foot or in a vehicle. While we were visiting him we had the honor to go with him to several of the intersections that he had worked on and experience them first hand. It was the most remarkable experience to walk through the intersection and, as a pedestrian, have the right of way just prior to bicycles, buses, private vehicles and trucks. One bus pulled up beside us and the driver opened the window and said "Mr. Monderman - I just wanted to thank you for what you did to this street - it works so much better now". Older people were casually riding on bicycles doing their errands and everyone was doing something we had not seen in a long time - using hand signals to indicate when they were turning. The experience we had walking in these "shared" intersections was like walking in slow motion - almost like being in some sort of ballet or slow dance! We have much to thank Hans Monderman for and much to do to utilize if his ideas and experience in US citites today."

Kathy Madden
Project for Public Spaces

JANE JACOBS WALKS

Jane Jacobs was an urban thinker ahead of her time. When the great thinkers of the day were promoting freeways and auto-centric suburban development, she spotted what was being lost. To her, the best cities and neighborhoods were organic, constantly evolving communities, or networks of relationships. People knew each other and looked out for each other. Walkability was a key component in her vision of what made a city livable. One of her famous lines was that to know a city, or to know a neighbourhood, you needed to walk it.

She died just a few years ago, in her adopted home of Toronto. To honor her, friends in Toronto began the tradition of prompting people to host walks through their neighborhoods, pointed out what they like, or what Jane might have liked. In a recent interview that discussed neighbourhoods and Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida offers some reasons why we might love our home area:

So in essence a neighborhood is not just a set of individuals, but a set of relationships. I think that’s right. And the relationships are fluid. Some are longstanding and some you can plug into and play. And the places that enable those relationships to form are the places that do better.

Every time we come back to these neighborhoods that are exciting, that are great, there’s a long history behind them.

A Jane’s Walk is a chance to learn more of the local history and relationships that made local history. The experience of learning dozens of new things about your own city, and how cities work at the ground level is amazing. This year I’ll also try the experience of hosting, and sharing some recent history of my own neighborhood.

Find one in your city, or offer to host one… Click here for Canada or global cities. In the US try this direct link. They will happen simultaneously across North America and around the world on May 1 and 2, 2010.

Written by Wendy Waters at All About Cities

CRACK GARDEN

Look at this beautiful thing!!!

CMG Landscape Architecture
Location: San Francisco, CA Area: 75m²

INTERESTING PROJECTS ON TOWER AGRICULTURE

http://nightlybuilt.org/?p=1160

La Tour Vivante

Footprint 1200 sq m / 0.3 acres, height 30 stories, 130 apartments, 8700 sq m office floors, 7000 sq m / 1.7 acres of arable land, 650sq m nursery and library, 6800sq m supermarket, 475 parking places.

One of the most notable designs is made by Paris based Atelier SOA. In La Tour Vivante, The Living Tower, houses and offices are combined with farming in a tight and integrated relationship. This results in a considerable savings in energy use.

The footprint of the tower measures 25×48m and it counts 30 storeys. The net floor space for farming is 7000 sq m or 1.7 acres, which is about 15% of the total. SOA claims that per year about 63.000 kg of tomatoes and 9300 kg of strawberries can be produced. The outer skin of the building has been kept clear of structural elements. Therefore the tower has a massive structural core of 8×30m to carry all floors. The mass of the core is used to store heat in the summer that is used in the winter.

An important feature is the ventilation principle of the building, which is based on the Canadian Well principle. It means that air is sucked into the building through shafts that run underground for a while, allowing the air to heat up in winter or to cool down in summer. When the air reaches the building it will have a stable temperature of around 15 degrees. The chimney effect sucks the air into the building, through the interconnected greenhouses, all the way to the top of the tower. This principle is the main design driver for the building.

The Canadian Well principle is based on the way termite nests are ventilated. The outer skin of the nests is made of thick ground that absorbs the heat of the sun. Before air enters the nest it runs through the damp ground to cool down. Inside the nest the air rises as it gets warmer because of the thousands of termites present, and escapes through a hole at the top.
Energy is generated by photo voltaics and wind turbines on the roof.

Centre for Urban Agriculture

Footprint 2900 sq m / 0.72 acres, height 23 stories, 318 apartments, 4050 sq m / 1 acre of arable land in greenhouses and rooftop gardens and a café for organic food.

The design by Seattle based office Mithun for the Centre for Urban Agriculture is entirely driven by self sufficiency. It is said that the grains, vegetables and chickens that the farm produces should be able to feed 450 people annually, which equals the population of the building.

The building is independent from city water and provides its own drinking water. Grey water and rain are collected via the building’s 2900 sq m / 31.000 sq ft rooftop rainwater collection area. It gets filtered and purified by the biomembrane plants in the greenhouses. The energy is generated by 3200 sq m / 34.000 sq ft of photovoltaic cells, regulated over the seasons by storage as hydrogen gas in underground tanks. This matches 100 percent of the building’s energy consumption. This balance in provision and demand for food, electricity and water means that the building is self sufficient in all its aspects.

Easy to be skeptic to this type of projects but they can broaden the perspective on "how dense how?" and "dense what?"
see: WHAT? WHY? HOW?

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

MAKING CONNECTIONS

This video from JAJA-architects blog "the paralell city" gives some expressions of the city life that I imagine could be the sensation of future urban life in Wergeland (I will have to make my own future scenario video for Wergeland now...). The possible connections of people when they move through the inner courtyards of the blocks when walking home from school, work or the grocery store. Enjoy!

The Parallel City from JAJA on Vimeo.

Fred Kent lecture-Project for Public Spaces

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces-William H Whyte