In public space we trust
Dear Sir or Madam, we’re pleased to invite you to visit esterni MUSEUM, the exhibition showcasing our staff of artists and the 2012 in progress projects. It will be open starting from January 31 till March 31 in the following address: Via Vigevano 35 in Milan.
One day on 26 September 2010 in Cincinnati (Usa), 1500 people painted 56.000 square meters of pavement.
If you’re in New York next Tuesday, don’t miss Designing meaningful public services with Margherita Pillan of Politecnico di Milano. The lecture will focus on service design projects and will tell interesting participatory solutions, belonging to very different fields and contexts and involving both citizens and public institutions.
To learn more: DESIS Lab
Bicycle Innovation Lab is the first cultural centre in Denmark for and about cycling, born with the objective of rising the awareness of the Danish cycling culture. Since its opening last November it has been organizing speeches, lectures, events, guided tours and exhibitions, focusing on the themes of bike and bicycle traffic. Moreover it has a well-stocked bicycle library, where people can borrow new experimental types of bikes and can create their own prototypes during specific workshops held by experts.
After La Latina sport center in Madrid (Spain) had been destroyed, leaving a huge vacant lot, the neighbouhood’s inhabitants started a participatory process in order to turn it into a temporary social space. Inspired by esterni’s esta es una plaza and other similar bottom-up experiences, since 2010 El campo de cebada project has been building both the area and a community by means of events and workshops.
New Book released of BASURAMA’S RUS, Residuos Urbanos Solidos. A research and action project in many cities of Latinamerica focused on waste usage and public space. Basurama visited the island of Puerto Rico in 2009 were they collaborated with many to develop RUS San Juan. See here. Pic from Miprv.
Spontaneous Interventions: design actions for the common good is the theme of the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale, occurring in Fall 2012. The American entry focuses on interventions ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning. Submit your projects by February 6!
Public Design Festival 2011 _ Photo by Guglielmo Trupia
Since 2008 over 350 disposable cameras have been left in public spaces all around the world with some instructions for the lucky finders: to pick up the camera, take some photos, pass it on and then send the camera with its precious content back. The aim is to build a memory-archive of stories, faces and landscapes.
urban regeneration, by the urban artist ZEDZ, on Corvetto bridge, in Milan, january 2012
He conceives graffiti as a three-dimensional collage in which people can move. The work gives rise to a new kind of public space to cross, very abstract and very close to architecture point. The result is interesting: passers-by and inhabitants of the neighborhood in general were attracted by this public action asking questions to the writer even before its conclusion.
The artist Kenn Andrè Stilling has designed an iron sculpture and a 47 meter long light green bench for Dan Turélls square in Vangede (Denmark).
A Room for London is an urban refuge and watchtower with the unusual shape of a boat on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, designed by David Kohn Architects in collaboration with Fiona Banner. Conceived for the Olympic year of 2012, the temporary building is, literally, a new form of accomodation.
Interesting article by the architect Gianmaria Sforza about the use of the language of color to enhance the infrastructures. (in Italian).
Construction sites are visible sign of urban changes and therefore may seize the opportunity to reflect on local identity. In 2010 the collective cochenko asked the citizens of Gare in Saint-Denis (France) a simple question: Et si le quartier était? (And if your neighbourhood looks like…?). The funny and interesting answers became an exhibition of posters, created with the technique of screen printing and hung around the metal barriers.
Der Rettungsring (The Lifesaver) is a white and red semi-floated sculpture conceived for the event Odyspree 2010 in Berlin (Germany). plastique fantastique designed this creative structure, where people could enter, walk, sit and have a rest on the water.
Which is your destination for 2012? Steve Powers aka ESPO has a very personal answer. Have a look at Train to Always, the new mural appeared in New York (USA).
