What is Guerrilla Gardening?

Some months ago, I´ve seen a front lawn with an intensive plantation, that included vegetables, in Dana Point. I like this intention of planting everywhere in the neighborhoods, though it´s not always so ¨pacific´..... Let us see what Guerrilla Gardening is:

¨PURPOSE:To introduce more greenery and gardening into the urban environment.

OVERVIEW:First coined by Liz Christy and her Green Guerrilla group in 1973, guerilla gardening is now an international movement. Although there are many per-mutations, guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening on public or private land without permission. Typically,the sites chosen are vacant or underutilized properties in urban areas. The direct re-purposing of the land is often intended to raise awareness for a myriad of social and environmental issues, including sustainable food systems, improving neighborhood aesthetics, and the power of short-term, collaborative local action.When applied to contested land, guerilla gardeners of-ten take action under the cover of night, where veg-etables may be sowed, or flower gardens planted and cared for without incurring great risk. Guerilla gardening is an exellent tactic for instantly im-prove an urban neighborhood. Often times, gardens are cared for years after they were first created illegally. In-deed, the first garden started in vacant New York City lot by the Green Guerilla’s became so loved that it is now maintained by volunteers and the New York City Parks Department. This is how tactical urbanism is in-tended to work.¨

From ¨Tactical Urbanism¨, p. 11

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51354266/Tactical-Urbanism-Final

The science of architecture

¨THE Science of Architecture, followed out to its full extent, is one of the noblest of those which have reference only to the creations of human minds. It is not merely a science of the rule and compass, it does not consist only in the observation of just rule, or of fair proportion : it is, or ought to be, a science of feeling more than of rule, a ministry to the mind, more than to the eye. If we consider how much less the beauty and majesty of a building depend upon its pleasing certain prejudices of the eye, than upon its rousing certain trains of meditation in the mind, it will show in a moment how many intricate questions of feeling are involved in the raising of an edifice; it will convince us of the truth of a proposition, which might at first have appeared startling, that no man can be an architect, who is not a metaphysician.¨

REFERENCE:

The Poetry Of Architecture Cottage, Villa,Etc (1881). By John Ruskin under the name of ¨Kata Phusin¨. P.1

Read the book:

http://www.archive.org/details/poetryofarchitec005277mbp

What is Tactical Urbanism?

A better block

Here I invite you to read the book at scribd.com ¨Tactical Urbanism¨, by MIKE LYDON, DAN BARTMAN, RONALD WOUDSTRA, AURASH KHAWARZAD

¨Improving the livability of our towns and cities commonly starts at the street, block, or building scale. While larger scale efforts do have their place, incremental, small-scale improvements are increasingly seen as a wayto stage more substantial investments. This approach allows a host of local actors to test new concepts before making substantial political and financial commitments.Sometimes sanctioned, sometimes not, these actions are commonly referred to as “guerilla urbanism,” “pop-up urbanism,” “city repair,” or “D.I.Y. urbanism.” For the moment, we like “Tactical Urbanism,” (...)

Parking day

Pavement to plazas

In short, tactical urbanism interventions create alaboratory for experimentation. Case studies from across North America reveal the benefit of taking an incremental approach to the process of city building. To be sure, long term change often starts with the process of trying something small. Upon implementation, results may be observed and measured in real-time. And when done inexpensively, and with flexibility, adjustments maybe made before moving forward.¨

Pop-up cafes

Keep on reading:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51354266/Tactical-Urbanism-Final

20 Must-see cathedrals

St Basil´s cathedral. From http://www.moscow.info/

Sharing from Web Design Schools Guide:

¨Just as the splendor of the natural world is often overlooked, so too is the beauty and magnificence of our manmade world neglected. Everyday we pass through our lives without ever really noticing or taking in the beauty of the world around us: with eight-hour work weeks and ever growing schedules, there is always something to distract us from the beautiful intricacies of the expansive cityscapes we call home. The creativity and inspiration that goes into some of the most beautiful buildings in the world is, to say the least, astounding. Architects spend years planning and designing the impressive buildings that make up our immediate world. Whether you are a seasoned architect drafting and blueprinting your own building designs or an aspiring architect just entering design school, anyone can appreciate the outstanding and awe-inspiring architecture of the following 10 cathedrals found throughout the world.¨

http://www.webdesignschoolsguide.com/library/20-must-see-cathedrals-for-architecture-buffs.html

A series of architectural videos at Worldarchitecture.org

Philip Johnson´s video will be released April 27th. Image from duchessfare.blogspot

Good news from World Architecture.org:

You are all invited to devote 20 minutes to architecture each week through our new online video series we will be serving. Owing to the membership profile of WAC we volunteered into the field of architectural education. As a part of our education mission, starting from 6 April 2011 and to be released in a weekly sequence, we will be offering a series of architectural films on our web site. The overarching theme of these films is "Patronage of Architecture". These films have been arranged in 20 minute sections and will have 12 episodes (plus introduction). The series will show the very inspiring examples of contemporary architecture from different countries and they endeavor to convey the various organizational forms of leadership in contemporary architecture.

http://www.worldarchitecture.org/files/

Hotel Lutetia: from the nazis to the jewish

The Hôtel Lutetia’s Art Deco facade. Photo by Olivier Amsellem

¨In occupied Paris, the Lutetia, draped in swastikas, was among the most notorious redoubts for Nazi officers, and last August it was purchased by a group led by the Jewish real estate mogul Alfred Akirov, an Israeli of Iraqi extraction. The $185 million sale was immediately hailed as a way of redeeming the hotel’s Nazi past.

Conceived by the directors of the neighboring Bon Marché department store, the Lutetia opened in 1910 as a rest stop for out-of-town shoppers. Its undulating stone facade was one of the first examples of the lavish eclecticism later known as Art Deco. From its inception, the hotel has been a frumpily elegant repository of Left Bank anecdotes and intrigues, the kinds you could spend a lifetime reading about while swishing espresso soot around the bottom of your cafe cup.

Dining room in Hotel Lutetia. Photo by Olivier Amsellem

Camp victims under the hotel´s chandeliers, 1945. Getty Images

When Oskar Reile, the Prussian spy catcher, first arrived at the hotel, in June of 1940, a German colonel greeted him with a glass of Champagne. (It probably was a mediocre one, since the staff had managed to secret away the best bottles behind a wall in the hotel’s cellar.) Reile was attached to the Abwehr, the German intelligence outfit with a headquarters in the Lutetia, which paid bonuses to informants for every Resistance member whom they betrayed. Interrogations would take place inside the hotel, in a room with a window that looked out onto the notorious Cherche-Midi prison, where torture victims reportedly were placed in tubs of water that were gradually brought to a boil.

Immediately after the war, the Lutetia was transformed into a “welcome center” for returning victims of the concentration camps. It was a horrible nexus of dashed hopes, with bulletin boards filled with faces of the missing and ghostlike camp victims wandering around in striped pajamas. The “Suite Française” author Irène Némirovsky’s two daughters went there in search of their parents. The older girl, Denise, ran desperately after a woman she mistook for her mother. She did not know that Némirovsky had died at Auschwitz three years earlier.

Alfred Akirov knows about all this history, but he does not seem particularly moved by it nor is he proud or boastful that a former Nazi hotel is now under Jewish ownership.¨

Reference:

excerpts from the article by Stephen Heyman for the New York Times

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/hostel-takeover/?ref=style

Call for articles for The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA)

The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) publishes bi-annually, peer reviewed articles on the urban design and planning, architecture and landscape architecture of the historic Islamic world, encompassing the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, but also the more recent geographies of Islam in its global dimensions. The main emphasis is on the detailed analysis of the practical, historical and theoretical aspects of architecture, with a focus on both design and its reception. The journal also aims to encourage dialogue and discussion between practitioners and scholars. Articles that bridge the academic-practitioner divide are highly encouraged.

While the main focus is on architecture, papers in other disciplines that explore architecture in the context of art, history, archeology, anthropology, culture, spirituality, religion and economics and so forth are also welcome. The journal is specifically interested in contemporary architecture and urban design in relation to social and cultural history, geography, politics, aesthetics, technology and conservation. Spanning across cultures and disciplines, IJIA seeks to analyze and explain issues related to the built environment throughout

the regions covered. The audience of this journal includes both practitioners and scholars. The journal will be published both online and in print. The first issue will be published January 2012.

IJIA is now soliciting manuscripts in the following categories:

Design in Theory - DiT manuscripts focus on the history, theory and critical analyses of architecture, urban planning and design and landscape architecture. Essays submitted should be a minimum of 5,000 words but not more than 8,000 words. (Notes and bibliography are included in the word count).

Design in Practice - DiP manuscripts focus on the practice of architecture, planning and landscape design. It is preferential that DiP papers focus on contextual and/or conceptual issues, analysis or critique of proposals or built projects. Submissions may also include interviews or practitioner reflections or lessons learned.

Manuscripts should range from 2,000 to 3,000 words.

Book, Media and Exhibition Reviews -For those are interested in writing book/media/exhibition reviews for IJIA , please submit your CV and your areas of expertise and interest and the books/media/exhibition you wish to review to Nancy Um, the Reviews Editor (nancyum@binghamton.edu) for consideration. Unsolicited reviews will not be accepted. The length of the reviews should generally not exceed 1000 words for one book review essay and no more than 1800 words for an essay that reviews multiple books.

Seminar and Conference Reviews -Seminar and conference review papers provide an overview and analysis of seminars and conferences that focus exclusively and partially on architectural and urban development, history and theory; and on the latest research and findings in Islamic art and architecture. Seminar and Conference review manuscripts should not exceed 1000 words.

Email the editors at ijia@intellectbooks.com for any additional questions. For information and guidelines on submission please visit theIJIA website: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=204/

http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ijia

http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=204/view,page=2/

CALL FOR PAPERS: Ethics & aesthetics of architecture & the environment

July 11th-13th 2012 – Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

The subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere beauty, where the word ‘aesthetic’ is colloquially interchangeable with beauty and liking. Someone might, for instance, explain their liking the look of a particular object on the basis of its ‘aesthetics’. Interestingly, even within the specialised architecture discourse, the aesthetic is largely discussed on the basis of an object’s appearance. Yet, the aesthetic is not limited and should not be limited merely to the way things look. Any philosophically informed aesthetician, will contest this limited view, saying something along the lines of ‘the aesthetic is everything’. The aim of this conference is therefore in part to address this discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience.

In taking on the aesthetic in manner that pushes its considerations beyond the realm of mere beauty, questions of ethics often arise. Indeed Wittgenstein is quoted as saying, “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same” (1921: §6.421). Questions as to why, for instance a building’s form takes the shape it does, not only raises the more conventional aesthetic questions but also questions about what purpose or meaning the building serves beyond purely visual stimulation. Does the form for instance relate somehow to a social ideal or economic ideal? And if so, is this ideal something that its inhabitants subscribe to or are even aware of? In an effort to draw thinkers’ attention to the ethical role architecture plays as well as the ethical function architects play, the second part of this conference call addresses this often overlooked dimension of architecture.

Calling both philosophers and architects to grapple with questions regarding the ethical and aesthetic qualities of architecture, the hope is to propel the discourse beyond the limitations of a purely visual understanding of the architectural experiences. Such questions might include:

what is/ought to be pleasurable architecture and environmental experience?

how do/ought our experiences impact the aesthetics of architecture and environment?

how do/ought we appreciate architecture and environment?

how does/ought the ethical and aesthetic inform the understanding of architecture and environment?

what is/ought to be a good architect?

what is/ought to be a good architecture?

how does/ought architecture embody societal and cultural ethical codes?

Paper Abstracts should clearly address one of the highlighted themes above and be no more than 500 words.

Additionally please see the conference’s strand pages for more information about the Ethics and Aesthetics of Landscape and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Professional Practice as well as the Posters page for more information regarding poster submissions. Please see each strand’s themes and submission guidelines (same deadlines apply through out).

References:

Wittgenstein, L. (1921 ) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Abdingdon: Routledge.

Deadlines:

Abstracts: 28 October 2011

Notification of Acceptance: 06 January 2012

Full Papers: 30 March 2012

Early Registration: 30 April 2012

Organising Committee: Dr. Carolyn Fahey and Kati Blom

Advisory Board: Prof. Andrew Ballantyne, Dr. Ian Thompson, and Dr. Nathaniel Coleman

Administrative Support: Karen Livingston, Kim McCartney and Anne Fry

http://ispaconference.wordpress.com/