(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Give a Minute is an online platform that encourages urban residents to respond to questions posed by featured city leaders.
The platform is shaped as a virtual brainstorm session and ideas are visualized using Post-it notes in different colors (apparently, there is no explanation as to what the colors represent). To enable viral interaction, ideas can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
All ideas are reviewed by community leaders from the private and public sector and the best ones receive a personal response.
Give a Minute launched in Chicago in November, followed by Memphis. It will soon come to New York and San Jose. The platform is privately supported but it is not really clear how it is administered and how cities are being selected - or if the platform is open sourced for any city to employ and develop.
Don't miss the great video-intro on Vimeo.
NB. Interestingly, the navigation of the website is based on Google Maps (but without showing any maps).
Related: Idea Map: What Citizens Want + Dear Copenhagen + I Wish This Was + City of Hamtramck Master Plan + Verbeter de buurt
• www.giveaminute.info via GOOD
The municipality of Copenhagen has a created an online platform, which allows citizens to share their visions for the city.
At the website, users can submit ideas in different categories and add them to a visual 'Idea Map',
A new urban plan for Copenhagen's inner city will be developed in the autumn of 2011, and 'Idea Map' is one of many elements put forward by the Municipality to generate input and democratize the political process.
Related: while collaborative ideation is a really good thing, it could be interesting to see the concept developed with a little more direction and urgency in line with the OpenIDEO community. See also Dear Copenhagen + I Wish This Was
• www.indrebylokaludvalg.kk.dk (in Danish)
Posted by Sebastian on Dec 23, 2010
One of the problems with prisons is that criminals tend to get more criminal inside of them. A new Danish state-prison will try to change that by creating a better environment for inmates as well as the personnel.
The closed prison is designed as a low urban structure with lots of green areas. The structure is centered around leisure and working facilities connected via streets and a central square.
The aim - and hope - is that the architecture and its emphasis on variation, nature and light will help contribute to the resocialization of the individual.
The prison is designed by C. F. Møller Architects.
Posted by Sebastian on Oct 19, 2010
Architects love to make up new catchy words - and strange looking utopia.
Econic Design (ecology + icon) is architecture that adapt to environmental change and mimic the forms of the natural world.
At TED Atlanta, Matthias Hollwich of the firm HWKN gave some examples of Econic Design and how he believes cities and buildings will be build in the future.
• TED presentation + A future scenario
If you live in Chicago you may be able to get yourself a Frank Gehry building for free. Or more precisely, a copy of Frank Gehry's Venice Beach House (pictured).
Behind the gift is an architect/artist called Nick and in exchange for the building, you need to document your experience with the structure, periodically recording how it has effected your life.
The purpose of the project is to question the benefits of contemporary 'starchitecture' and its effects on the human condition. If interested, you can contact Nick via Craigslist.
Posted by Sebastian on Mar 23, 2010
Bucky Bar is a spontaneous and temporary public building made entirely of umbrellas.
Visitors were asked to show up with an umbrella at an outdoor location on a Friday night in Rotterdam, NL. With the help of a team of architects, the umbrellas were then used to build a fully equipped bar, complete with DJ and drinks.
300 people turned up at the event, and just as it began, the beautiful building ended its life spontaneously when the Police showed up at 2:00 AM.
Bucky Bar is a project by the DUS Architects and the Studio for Unsolicited Architecture, produced to coincide with the opening of the Architecture of Consequence exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).
Posted by Sebastian on Mar 22, 2010
For the annual art event IHME in Helsinki, British sculptor Antony Gormley created the project 'Clay and the Collective Body' in which he brought together 1300 local inhabitants to work with a 4x4x4m clay cube.
The giant piece of clay was placed in a hangar-sized tent, and in the course of 10 days the clay was gradually transformed to thousands of small sculptures.
• read more at Flash Art
Posted by Sebastian on Aug 22, 2009
Copenhagen International Wood Festival is a competition in which 15 teams were selected to build unusual sculptural constructions using the same kind of wood.
The competition is over and the constructions are currently exhibitted in a park in central Copenhagen.
Team 12 (Meyer & co) was awarded the first price for their cocoon-like structure while team 11 (pictured) seemed to get the children's award.
The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal is currently running the excellent looking exhibition Actions: What You Can Do With the City.
The exhibition documents and presents 99 actions - or 'urban interventions' - that instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world.
Common activities such as walking, playing, recycling, and gardening are pushed beyond their usual definition by international architects, artists, and collectives featured in the exhibition.
Two of my favorite actions included in the exhibition are (P)LOT by Michael Rakowitz and Football Field by Maider López (see images). The exhibition also includes the brilliant Camera Surveillance Players and the excellent PARK(ing) project by Rebar.
If you can't make it to Montreal, you can view the 99 actions on the exhibition website. The site also contains a user-generated section which makes it possible for anyone to submit their own actions. The most popular ones will be featured in the physical exhibition later on.
Moving Forest is a park on wheels. The park is made of trees in shopping carts that allow the public to rearrange their own little park.
The forest is created by Dutch architect firm NL architects in response to the lack of green nature in contemporary urban environments - which in the case of the Netherlands, more or less amounts to whole country.
Moving Forest was recently installed at the Experimenta Design event in Amsterdam.
• More images of the intruiging project is available here.
Contact: Sebastian Campion