Prinzessinnengarten

Urban agriculture can mean a lot for a city population. Not only can it provide local food, but it can also create a social landscape in a city.

And Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin does exactly that. Since 2009, a collective called "Nomadic Green" rents a 6000 sqm plot at the Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. The site has been a wasteland for about 50 years, but with relatively small means it has been transformed in an idyllic urban garden. Not only do locals maintain the garden themselves - thus creating a stronger sense of community in a relatively socially weak area of the city - but it also produces local (healthy and organic) food. Even more so: at Prinzessinnengarten, they strive towards a larger biodiversity. They try to cultivate rare species of plants.



Since the site is only rented, it cannot be a permanent garden. So most of the vegetables are planted in old crates from bakeries, or in large bags. In case the rent is ended (for whatever reason), most of the Prinzessinnengarten could be easily transported to another site. Other than that, by doing so, one doesn't depend on the local soil, since it might not be in the best condition after being wasteland for such a long period of time.



But besides the plants, the food and the greens, the community aspect of the project is quite important. It gives the locals a place to work on food production together, it is a place to educate kids about food, a place to eat together, a place to hang out in a green spot amidst all the concrete and a place that ties extremely different people together. And the idea seems so simple (albeit difficult to actually do, I assume).

Prinzessinnengarten is launched as a pilot project by Nomadic Green, so let's hope that there are many more projects to follow. By them, but also by people that are inspired by their acts.

Linked Hybrid

Many works of modern architecture in China's big cities seem to be solitary, free standing objects, that don't react on their urban surroundings all that much. Instead of adding to this culture of isolated islands, Steven Holl came up with these linked towers in Bejing, in a project that isaptly called "Linked Hybrid". In this project, it is attempted to create a more coherent social space. Not only is the program injected with functions that inhabitants of the complex could use for their daily life (such as hairdressers, laundromats and the likes), but the eight towers (which are considered as a "city within a city" are also linked at the 21st floor,by a spatial ring of skybridges. In these skybridges there's a lot of cafés and other services to create a second public plaza level. The routing at this level is not just one of quick and straight connections, but slight ramps, jumps, corners and cuts in the routes make for an interesting suspense of movement and place: the perspective of the building changes with every move.

There's a lot of criticism possible about the project (it creates a isolated capsule for the inhabitants, the relation to the public ground floor is one of negation etcetera), but what I really like about this project is that it looks exactly like a student project that would regularly be dismissed at the final crit with the words "nah, in reality this would never even be considered to be built." But Steven Holl and the developer Modern Group made it happen.

NYC Waterfalls

I cannot be bothered too much with everything that is being said in the press release of this upcoming project of artistOlafur Eliasson in New York City. The project is called the NYC Waterfalls, and it is just that: the introduction of massive waterfalls in the I don't care too much about "the awareness for water" and all that other stuff that this project should allegedly evoke. But the thing is: it looks damn sexy. And other than that, it's a nice icon for the revitalisation of the waterfront. But above all: it looks so damn sexy, that I couldn't care less about the intentions and ideas behind it...

The water horse

Just leave it to the japanese to come up with a impressive visual advertisement. In this case, it's an outdoor advertisement for a the Japanese release of the movie: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep. Thanks to a sizeable water screen and a light projection on the water, it actually looks as if the mysterious monster of Loch Ness got stuck in a medium-sized Tokyo-based fountain. Don't forget some synchronised fountains for a nice splashing effect. Just imagine being drunk and heading home, stumbling into this thing...

traffic light tree

Imagine this: just when you think that you'll manage to survive London traffic, you drive towards the Heron Quays roundabout. Instead of having to tackle one set of traffic lights, you are adressed to by a mere 75 of them. Just when you start to feel a bit scared, you realize it's a piece of art.

Traffic Light Tree was designed by the Parisian artist Pierre Vivant. When one of the three trees on the site was dying because of pollution by passing cars in 1998, he designed this set of traffic lights, mimicking a tree. But it's not just that, it's also a reflection of all the continuous rhythm of financial and commercial activities.

I found this one thanks to Citynoise.

Werkschwimmbad

Recently, I already wrote about the Zollverein in the German Ruhrgebiet. There is one part of the complex that I want to give a little bit extra attention to: the "werkschwimmbad" (loosely translated as work-swimmingpool). It was designed by Daniel Milohnic and Dirk Paschke (members of the artists collective Phantombüro, and can be read as a collage-like answer to all the questions the site raises - like the reformation of a industrial area into a recreational area.

Other than that: it just looks really surreal, making it quite a spectacular little pool.

Stadtlounge St. Gallen

In early 2005, construction workers finished work on the building on the Schreinerstrasse 6 in the Swiss town of St. Gallen. With this, the end of the building for the Raiffeisen-group was finished. What was left was an attractive re-design of the public space of the area. To get the best solution for the area, a competition was held. The goal was simple: to create a urban coherent area. To cut a long story short: the competition was won by the artists Pipilotti Rist and Carlos Martinez with a radical proposal, called Stadtlounge (city lounge).

To unify all the different segments of the rather clustered public space, they came up with a carpet that covers the area. With this, the area is formed like a living room, with various different themes, all dealing with interaction and meeting people in different ways - there are cafes, business-lounges, relax-lounges etcetera. And the designers took the concept to its extreme: the lights are designed just as lamps in a living room (instead of being street furniture), and all normal street-elements are "swept under the carpet"...

SESC Pompeia - Lina Bo Bardi

In the mid seventies, an old factory for oil drums in Sao Paulo was not in use anymore. The plan was to convert it to a recreational centre. Lina Bo Bardi decided to keep most of the complex the way it was, to preserve the characteristics of the site. About half of the requested program could be placed in the existing structure. Here, her approach was that of freely placing objects in the space, in order not to disturb spatial qualities too much. For instance, a structure of very thin concrete divides the main hall in a library, exposition space and a collective living room (with fireplace and river running through). A smally allyway between different parts of the factory is turned into a lobby by use of a transparent roofing ß giving the complex a feeling of being inside outside and vice versa.

For the other half of the programme, that couldn't be placed in the existing structures, Bo Bardi erected two towers. In the biggest of the two towers (a rather plump looking one), four sporting halls are placed on top of eachother, with a swimming pool underneath. The smaller tower consists of changing rooms, cafetaria and smaller gymnasiums. The two towers are connected with various skybridges, making the two heavy concrete structures a bit more airy looking.

It is said that the centre is one of the most successful public places in the city. Continually, there are people from the area on the site, whether they are there with a specific goal or not. All kinds of people, from all kinds of social classes are mixed in the centre.

Moscow Lido

It was the year 1931 in the Soviet Union. Somewhere in Moscow, there was a beautiful cathedral. The cathedral was built in 1883, and called 'Cathedral of Christ the Saviour'. Well, as strict as communists could be back then, the party line (led by Stalin) didn't quite approve of the symbolism of the Cathedral. Instead, they wanted a big statement about the prosperity of the Soviet state. The idea was pretty simple: it should be a high-rise tower, higher than the empire state building. On top, a huge statue of Lenin was proposed. All in all, the project was supposed to be the tallest building in the world at that time - with such a likely name as 'The Palast of the Soviet'. And where the cathedral was already quite big, this building would simply be huge...



And so they started constructing. For such a big construction, a big foundation was needed. So tons and tons of concrete were poured. After that, the building process was terminated abruptly. The reason still remains unclear. It is said that it could have been because of the outbreak of the second world war, which sounds logical in itself. However, there are quite some people who claim that there was a different reason: the climate in Moscow. Apparently, some clever guy figured out that, with the way Moscow gets foggy, Lenin would be covered in clouds from the waist up for about 280 days a year. Many solutions were invented for this, but all to no avail...

Slowly, the years pass until the year 1958 is reached. It was no more or less official: the project to build the highest building in the world has failed. The central square in Moscow, where once the cathedral stood, now lay deserted with vast concrete foundations - which were starting to rot. Nobody knew exactly what to do with the site...

Until a group of people came up with a idea. The concrete foundations were ideal to be filled with water. So instead making the tallest building, the Soviets decided to make the world's largest outdoor swimming pool - the Moscow Lido. And it was huge. In total, 13.500 square metres of water surface to be exact (which was kept at a constant 27 degrees centigrade). There were about 2000 changing facilities, and as far as statistics like these can be trusted: in an average year (1967), about 2.5 million people visited the pool.

Fast forward to the present. If you go looking for the Moscow Lido, it's nowhere to be found. Instead, you can find a cathedral, called 'Cathedral of Christ the Saviour' on the exact same spot. When the water of the pool started to ruin the paintings of the Pushkin museum across the street (which happened to coincide with the end of the Soviet era), the pool was closed. In a wave of romantic historicism, the cathedral was rebuilt on the site in 1996 - exactly the way it looked around 1900...

More about the Moscow Lido can be read in the following books:

Werner Huber - Hauptstadt Moskau (Zürich 1988)
Fabian Dietrich - Reference book of aquatic buildings, establishment and facilities (München, 1970)

i-See

The Institute of Applied Autonomy was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Our mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists. This is, in their own words, their mission statement. This has lead to quite some fascinating projects.

i-See is one of them: it's a web-based application that makes it possible to find a route on which one encounters the least CCTV-cameras (the so-called "path of least surveillance"). Why, you might ask? Well, CCTV in public space isn't only a nice and cozy tool to help people feel safer (that it doesn't do all that much to actually reduce crime is another issue), but there's a number cases of misuse of the system of on-camera control. Without going too much into details: In the UK, some years ago, Barrie Goulding released "Caught in the Act" a video compilation of "juicy bits" from street video surveillance systems. Featuring intimate contacts ­ including one scene of a couple having sex in an elevator ­ this video sensationalized footage of ordinary people engaged in (mostly) legal but nonetheless private acts.
But it's more than just that: have you ever considered the odds of being singled out on camera? And have you considered the rise of these odds if you are of some sort of racial minority? Or if you are an attractive young woman?

Well, thank god for i-See, I'd say: there's a way to get around all of this. Or at least: as much as possible. The ongoing proliferation of CCTV-camera's will pretty soon reach a point where almost every inch of public realm in the western world is monitored - whatever the reason might be.

Sewer art

For over a year, SAO and Delafuent have been transforming sewer pits into pieces of street art in Sao Paulo. I don't have too much information about it, I just like the way it transforms rather plain and simple objects into something creative...