Some interesting renderings and thinking through drawing on Aders’ site. Worth spending some time with … it got me thinking about how to represent border-type stuff.
And of course, the subject matter of his work itself is great — urban farming in small Brazilian neighbourhoods.
Big text made out of matches plugged into the walls. Really like the effect, aside from this gallery installation making me feel something I’m walking into 2001.
Claire Fontaine at Helena Papadopoulos (Contemporary Art Daily).
We met earlier this week for the last time before the new year. We had a really busy year, but there’s even more ahead in 2011. We spent the evening trying to plan for a number of upcoming projects, including our recently funded How to Forget the Border Completely, and a project for CAFKA, and another proposal for a project next fall.
Ripper’s Valley is visible from the Riverfront bike path, which happens to be how I first became interested in it. As an avid cyclist, I very frequently ride down this section of the Riverfront path and quite often see a bustling community of families, a diverse range of cultures, a balanced number of mothers and fathers, grandparents, babysitters and children using the play equipment and nearby benches during the day.
However, within feet of this area is a dead-zone. The entrance to the railway cut is dark, looming, and segregated from the Riverfront Park. In my experience, children venturing toward the entrance are most often called back by their parents and reprimanded to stay within the direct area of the play equipment.
Soon enough we’ll be getting into the thick of winter and Sergio Lopez-Pineiro–an assistant professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo–is not going to let the snowfall go to waste this year. He is planning a large scale project in Buffalo’s Front Park which involves plowing snow into 15 giant mounds, forming a pattern of oversized polka dots.
At 42 feet wide and 7 feet tall, these mounds will dramatically alter the landscape of the park and its nearby waterfront. The title “Olmsted’s Blank Snow” refers to the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Front Park with his partner Calvert Vaux. I have included more mock-up photographs below.
Continue reading “Sergio Lopez-Pineiro’s “Olmsted’s Blank Snow” Project”
This project, appropriately called “I Wish This Was“, was created by New Orleans designer Candy Chang. Candy actually did her B.F.A. at the University of Michigan and created a design firm and record label called Red Antenna. The project you see above is quite a simple, but powerful, little proposition. She created a vinyl sticker design based on the famed “My Name Is…” badge with the intention that people would fill them out and stick them to anything in the city. Apparently her idea has caught the attention of quite a few concerned citizens; there is a Flickr album full of examples. I’ve included a few below. This reminds me of something that Windsor’s graphic designers could do as a sort of weekend public design project.
By some estimates (including the CBC), there were 100 people on the walk we took on Tuesday night, in the rain, throughout downtown Windsor.
The attendance alone was inspiring, but what really made the experience so incredible for me was the energy that everyone brought. When we stopped and took a moment to briefly talk about the potential of the Downtown Transit terminal, or the Canderel Building’s huge space, or the properties for lease on Ouellette, the old bingo hall, the House, the city’s storefronts on Pelissier, we got excited together. Things started to feel remotely possible.
It’s that sense of possibility that’s so important right now for our city.
At today’s Artscape Placemaking Workshop at the AGW, we heard some really amazing stories about the work at Artscape has done, the work of Bert and crew at AS220 in Providence, things that started as truly small ideas and have since become cultural movements. It’s all possible, we just need to find the time to walk around a bit more often together.
Then, we need to start getting into some space. And, we should be in a space next to one another, or at least down the block from one another, so we can see one another more often, and we can go for walks and imagine more new things. And then, one day, we’ll look back and say, “remember that walk we took with 90-something other people on that really cold and rainy night…”
Sound good?
P.S. If anyone has any photos or video from the walk, I’d love to see them!