Cross-plotted: Detroit to Windsor Exhibition Opens November 9th
Cross-plotted: Detroit to Windsor is an exhibition by a group of Master of Architecture students at the University of Michigan. The group is formulated around a research practice that investigates the unfolding circumstances of the city through full-scale-work: making is used as a means to reveal, critique, and alter the realities of our urban settings. [...]
Skills For Good(s) With Rod Strickland
Last night at 411 Pelissier, the first instalment of Skills for Good(s) began with one of our favourite skill-filled friends, Rod Strickland. This series of skill share sessions will be hosted by Lucy and I every other Tuesday out of Civic Space. Our hopes are that it opens up the floor for discussion on an array of skills [...]
Pop-Up Possibilities: Sketches
Tom Provost came by a couple weeks ago with an idea for a new collaboration. We’ve work with Tom before on How to Forget the Border Completely — in particular the proposals for 1,000 Pedestrian Walkways and the Windsor-Detroit Portals. In short, the new project is to take the form of a triangular sign, something [...]
How to Forget the Border Completely, continued: 707PX
Following up on our How to Forget the Border Completely project from last year, collaborator Tom Provost continues to work on ideas around pedestrian border crossings (which you can read all about in the HFBC book!) Photos and text by Tom Provost In the summer of 2011, I was in dialogue with Broken City Lab [...]
Wellington Ave, Windsor, Ontario
Above, a wall between two houses covered in vinyl siding. Danielle and I were on our way downtown the other day and we took Wellington after I forgot to turn where I normally do at Partington. There were architectural and infrastructural weirdness that actually had us stop, turn around, and then pull over to take these [...]
Defiance: Disobedient Design Panel Discussion
Next week, I’ll be heading over to Detroit to join a panel discussion hosted by rogueHAA entitled, Defiance: Obedient Design. They’ve been doing a lot of great programming over the last year or so, and here’s some more information: As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third [...]
Blasbichler’s Twenty-One
Architect Armin Blasbichler recently presented 21 of his architecture students at the University of Innsbruck with an interesting and secretive assignment. His students had been assigned to “pick a bank in the city, study it, identify its Achilles’ heel and plan a bank robbery.” I’ll include the assignment statement below because it is incredible. “The task: [...]
Pablo Valbuena’s Quadratura
Quadratura is a new site-specific light installation by Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena. He projected a perspective grid between two rows of columns and onto the wall behind them, thus creating the illusion of an infinite pathway. Pablo reminds us that “Quadratura was the technique used in the baroque to extended architecture through trompe l’oeil and [...]
Power House Walking Tour: Understanding the Incremental
On Saturday, Eric, Danielle, and her sister, Jessica, and I headed over to the Power House neighbourhood walk in Detroit. I’d been hoping to finally see this project in person, as it’s been a little over two years since I first wrote about it here. I’d missed their residency at the DIA (saw the installation, [...]
Errante by Hector Zamora
Gorgeous ‘making of’ short for Hector Zamora‘s Errante — a large-scale urban hanging garden. The rest of his work is well worth some exploration too. via The Pop-Up City
![We spent a couple hours on Monday exploring some specific sites around the city to start planning some upcoming projects. Getting out and documenting and talking about these places really helped to solidify how important it is for some creative intervention/interaction with the city and how excited we are to do it. The clear view [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Welcome-to-Windsor-sign-on-Dougall-just-off-the-401-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Sept 29, 2008")
![I’ve been meaning to take a look at this location for a potential projection project that we’re looking into for Harvesting the F.A.M. The wall is dark brick, but we need to work out the logistics of projecting onto such a surface anyways for another project we’re working towards. What exactly we’ll be projecting is [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/FAMFEST09-sm-150x150.jpg "Projection Site for Another Project?")
![Part of our research for How to Forget the Border Completely is going to come from a lot of video. We’re not sure how many interviews we’ll do or exactly where we’ll be shooting, but we wanted to be prepared. I’ve had a Canon T2i for over a year now and it’s a very solid [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_8438-150x150.jpg "Tools in Forgetting the Border")
![Laura Paolini of Bell Payphone Labs arrived yesterday with a mission to bust open her payphones. We found all the tools and help we needed out on the street. Otherwise, business as usual down on Pelissier, with one week left to go! The Department of Unusual Certainties have been re-arranging their workspace. These boys are [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_8367-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 21: Busting Open Payphones")
![Not that we don’t already have our hands full, but seeing as it’s nearly March, we’re starting to look ahead to summer time activities. These activities might be somewhat related to this ongoing conversation we’ve been having on the blog. We’ll be posting more information soon, but for now, just know that if you’ve been [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/srsi-screenshot-poster-150x150.jpg "New Project Soon (Keep Your July Open)")
![The day before our launch. Rosina paints with Kiki. The table of letters, ever-changing as each layer dries. The letters that remain to be painted as of this afternoon. Josh and Kevin’s project for the day… Sara and Rosina headed out to do a bunch of short installs and photograph them. The single-use camera Hiba [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wpid18548-IMG_0126-2-150x150.jpg "12-06-20 4:39:10 PM")
![I wrote a plugin by hacking together some ideas based on the Notify on Comment plugin. Essentially, I was looking for a plugin whereby someone mentioned or tagged in a comment (using the familiar @username syntax from Twitter) would be notified. They wouldn’t have had to have made the post being commented on, nor would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-Shot-2012-01-22-at-1.17.49-PM-150x150.png "WordPress Plugin (notifying users tagged in comments)")
![On Friday night we played with some new things that Rosina brought over — retroreflective glass beads to be exact. We also made it through another three letters doing papier maché! And, we selected a colour for the letters, again thanks to Rosina doing some recon on paint chips. So, we now have two bags [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/IMG_3821-150x150.jpg "Retroreflective Glass Beads Have Arrived, Weeks of Work Ahead!")
![Around the maps, we’re beginning to imagine two cities collapsing into one. As part of How to Forget the Border Completely, we’re doing and planning all sorts of things — border portals, border etiquette classes, new maps, new tourism guides, interviews, stories, and imaginary architecture. Michelle and our dear friend, Lee Rodney, spoke about HFBC [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_8729-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: Feb 18, 2011 (Maps & Portals)")
![There’s a lot to say about the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice 2, though I’m not really sure where to start. You should start by visiting the Creative Time Summit site and watching the presentations for yourself, then you should read the excellent recap essay by Gregory Sholette and the somewhat brief, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/IMG_3702-150x150.jpg "Creative Time Summit: Some Reflection with 4 Days of Distance")
![Once again, we gathered at Lebel for another fun Friday full of brainstorming and map making. This particular Friday we met with Mel, a jewelry designer with his BFA from Yugoslavia, to discuss the best design for the CAFKA letters. We are currently deciding whether it would be best to stick with our original plan [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/IMG_2379-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: March 11, 2011 (Maps & Letters)")
![We’re looking for an ad-hoc volunteer studio assistant to help us do some or all of the following: -Visual and archival research -Building and making things -Silk screening -Scanning and archiving -Basic print and/or web design -Materials research -General office assistance -Installation assistance In return for your one or two day a week time commitment, we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wpid20169-IMG_1486-150x150.jpg "Help Wanted: Ad-hoc volunteer studio assistant")
![HOMEWORK: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is four-day residency, two-day conference, and collaboratively-written publication aimed at generating conversation around the following: alternative infrastructures, radical collaboration, social practice, art implicated in social change, neighbourhood-level activities, city-wide imaginations, site-specific curiosities, tactical resistance, new models for art education and research. Facilitated by Broken City Lab, HOMEWORK calls on artists, scholars, writers, thinkers, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/register1-150x150.jpg "Attending Homework is Free!")
![We spent Friday night in Hamilton at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series (organized by once-Windsorite, Andrew Lochhead). In a little less than two hours, we led a workshop and explosion of creativity with some amazingly great 13-year-olds. We made banners, two really great banners that will be [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5675-150x150.jpg "Making Banners at the Labour Lounge")
![We had an incredible turnout for Sing to the Streets. The response was overwhelming, and despite the cold, we managed to get a great overview of some of the folkloric history of Windsor and Detroit and learn some Francophone folks songs along the way. The Save the City project is really giving us a lot of insight into [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_8029-150x150.jpg "We Sang to the Streets!")
![We met twice on Thursday, and those meetings were after Michelle and I headed over to SB Contemporary Art to finally check out “On Your Mark” (a great exhibition featuring work by many of our friends) and talk about how we could partner in some way on Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices. Back [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_9710-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: May 5, 2011 (Big Books & Small Letters)")
![Continuing with the magnetic planters research, the wild flower seeds have begun to sprout and the development of the planter itself continues. Its strength has held up pretty well, but there are some issues with the wheat paste. So still some work to do, but there’s lots of documentation of the progress so far. This [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_2207-150x150.jpg "First Planter Almost Ready for Field Test")
![We’ve been talking about picking up on some of the ideas we put together for the OPEN panel discussion from earlier in the month, and it seemed like posters were a natural fit. Given the text statements that we made to address the an idea of economies and creative practice that served as the backdrop [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/wpid20573-IMG_1771-150x150.jpg "Fail to Meet Expectations: Vinyl on Paint Posters")