*Somebody on Twitter just asked me if I'd ever written a definitive article on "Favela Chic." Well, with stuff like this around, I don't have to.
http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=24308
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"In which case, here's the question: what’s the operational mode of the bust? Previous economic crises have offered up examples: paper architecture, the growth of theoretical and artistic practice, in the 1970s and '80s; the lost generation, young designers leaving the architecture for virtual realms, in the '90s; and paperless architecture, the rise of formal digital experimentation, in the early '00s.
"Our current recession is inspiring its own strategies and tactics: It's increasingly a catch-all for a host of urban interventions. This is a trend that I like to describe with a mouthful of a title: Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism. With this verbaciousness, I hope to capture the tactical multiplicity and inventive thinking that have cropped up in the vacuum of more conventional commissions. (((Like a favela, but chic!)))
"These days vacant lots offer sites for urban farming, mini-golf, and dumpster pools. Trash recycles into a speculative housing prototype (see the Tiny Pallet House). Whether it’s The Living’s Amphibious Architecture or Mark Shephard's Serendipitor, the built environment speaks through mobile devices. Retail spaces hit by the recession are fodder for reinvention, as the art organization No Longer Empty transforms unleased storefronts into temporary galleries. Even the street itself is reclaimed. REBAR’s annual initiative, Park(ing) Day, urges global participants to use a pranksters wit to turn parking spaces into pocket parks, one quarter at a time.
"Driven by local and community issues and intended as polemics that question conventional practice, these projects reflect an ad hoc way of working; they are motivated more by grassroots activism than by the kind of home-ec craft projects (think pickling, Ikea-hacking and knitting) sponsored by mainstream shelter media, usually under the Do-It-Yourself rubric. (Although they do slot nicely into the imperative-heavy pages of Good and Make magazines.) They are often produced by emerging architects, artists and urbanists working outside professional boundaries but nonetheless engaging questions of the built environment and architecture culture. And the works reference edge-condition practitioners of earlier generations who also faced shifts within the profession and recessionary outlooks: Gordon Matta Clark, Archigram, Ant Farm, the early Diller + Scofidio, among others.
"A critical mass of projects was identified in late 2008 when the Canadian Centre for Architecture's director, Mirko Zardini, and curator for contemporary architecture, Giovanna Borasi, selected 99 works for Actions: What You Can Do With the City. The design concepts, research and operational tactics spotlighted in the exhibition and related catalogue drew heavily on guerrilla art. Projects such as the N55 PROTEST Rocket, a militarized take on gardening that rocket-launches “seed bombs,” which explode in empty lots releasing “Superweed” seeds; the illicit Operation: Ivy League, created by the self-proclaimed anarchitects The Space Hijackers, who installed ivy on sites around central London as a protest against corporate architecture; or Sit In, a series of public benches deployed around Toxteth, Liverpool: all these function within a reactive, if not revolutionary, framework. As Zardini says in the press release: “They reveal the existence of a world rich in inventiveness and imagination, alien to our contemporary modes of consumption. These actions propose alternative lifestyles, reinvent our daily lives, and reoccupy urban space with new uses.”
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"Still, there’s a tendency to dismiss these kinds of projects as simply whimsical — to smile at their authenticity or their expression of clever détournement, but at the same time to suppress any uncomfortable restive rumblings. But these projects hold at their heart a belief that change is possible despite economic or political obstacles, or disciplinary or institutional inertia. And the prospect for real change builds as more and more works accumulate in exhibition catalogues and digital venues. Broadcast via Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and design blogs, these new temporary or provisional projects can be read relationally to each other without explicit contextual concerns. By aggregating and focusing upon these small-scale interventions, my hope is to reveal a larger framework — a network that makes nimble use of social networking and Web 2.0 technologies to transform local episodes into global outreach. Thus The Interventionist’s Toolkit — a series that will light upon Places from time to time this winter and spring — is not necessarily about featuring projects, but about finding new ways to practice and provoke within the fields of architecture, urbanism, and design."
