This is our alternative. We need to be smarter on the ground. This is architecture’s responsibility.
Arquitectura sin Encargo | Unsolicited Architecture « arkinet
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Architecture of Consequence: Dutch Designs on the Future
“Sustainable food production, alternative sources of energy, the need for social cohesion in a healthy environment – these are a few of the essential issues of our time that rub shoulders in environmental planning and architectural design. That forms a tremendous potential for social renewal.
In this book twenty-five Dutch design practices with outspoken opinions present their views on an agenda for the future of the world we live in. The result is a sample of the creative capacity of designers and a call to design a better world.”
Recetas Urbanas (Urban Prescriptions)
PUBLIC DOMAIN OCCUPATION WITH SKIPS
” Santiago Cirugeda’s Recetas Urbanas (Urban Prescriptions). Cirugeda hacks the legal code. Because his home town would not authorize him to build a playground, Santiago Cirugeda obtained a dumpster permit and installed a playground that looked like a dumpster. He also built and occupied a rooftop crane that passersby believed was there only to move building materials. There used to be a video on you tube where the architect used Playmobil toys to demonstrate how to build a temporary flat in your rooftop. The solutions Cirugeda proposes are cheap, fast, accessible to everyone and the key ingredient is to find out the gaps in administrative structure and official procedures, to intervene where the law falls short.” - WMMNA
BUILDING YOURSELF AN URBAN RESERVE
“The work of urban activist Santiago Cirugeda invariably deals with the conflict between individuals’ spatial interests and the rules defined by society to control them. Each of his urban installations give form to a human desire that in order to fulfil itself needs to negotiate a set of legal constraints. Instead of opposing these constraints explicitly, Cirugeda carefully studies them in order to harness their potential. Between the lines of the legal code he sniffs out unforeseen residual possibilities of action and grants them (il)legal asylum in his architectural interventions in public space. In order to add a balcony to his apartment (which was not permitted), he vandalized the facade of his building with graffiti. To clean a façade, one is entitled to erect scaffolding for a period of three months – during which time he appropriated the scaffolding as his balcony. In another project he applied for a permit to install a construction waste container in order to make a play area for children in the street. Once he had the permit, he closed the container with a platform and then mounted a seesaw on the platform. In yet another project he realized a (forbidden) apartment roof-top addition by making the shape and material of the illegal habitat such that it would be invisible to the administration officers who regularly surveyed the roof-scapes from helicopters. In Cirugeda’s urban interventions the very instruments of control intended to streamline every-day life in the name of the law uncanningly mutate into tools which help to overcome these restrictions and open up spaces for potential action.” - from the article Reprogramming Architecture by Ilka & Andreas Ruby - Volume #2 -Doing (Almost) Nothing - 2005
EMPTY LOTS OCCUPATION WITH CLOSET STRATEGY
Resources:
Recetas Urbanas website (English and Spanish)
A lecture (video) by Santiago Cirugeda (in Spanish) at The Influencers (2008) festival
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mijN470 – Artgineering, 2006
The weekend before opening the new N470 highway to traffic, Artgineering organised the biggest street party in Holland. Everyone who lived in the area served by the N470 had the opportunity to occupy it for the weekend. People were free to do what they wanted on ‘their’ road: beach volleyball, BBQ, or a candlelit dinner.
mijN470 interprets roads as natural public space and as an integral part of our environment.
Ecluse Saint-Lazare revitalisation study, Brussels. Artgineering
“Three specific participative interventions and a ‘signal-object’ were added to the process of analysis and diagnosis of the physical data: an export report of the survey of needs and expectations: based on a walk and the first impressions of the sociologist and on 10 portraits of inhabitants; a call for ideas among citizens and associations; and a stall to show the proposal and allow the planners to discuss directly with the inhabitants.
The presence of the caravan (‘signal-object’) can concretely sensitise people to the District contract and the participation process. It moves through the district area outlining the perimeter and marking the meeting locations.”
FREEarchitecture by Artgineering, 1999.
“At the dawn of the 21st century capitalism seems to remain the dominant social order. As a consequence cities suffer decreasing collective investments, municipalities are financially exhausted: a playground, a subway station or public toilets are no longer affordable. Architects and urban planners are paralysed by the shift of financial power from the municipalities to corporate enterprises and remain unable to get on well with this development.
What if we would change the rules of this game? If the city would learn to benefit from these economic processes? If untamed capitalism enables light socialism? If advertising could establish a symbiotic relation with the city? Could the cities become self-financed? Can the third millennium bring the economic autonomy of public space?
FREEarchitecture offers the possibility of a more symbiotic relation of architecture and advertising. A projection layer is added to the existing façade of a building. This layer is programmable in sections related to the apartments behind it. The tenants do not receive money, but shares in collective services and investments: swimming pools, kindergartens, root terrace or a public gym.”
