For instance, I like what’s happening at spatialagency.net, a database of architectural practices engaged with social and political concerns. The last few years have seen growing number of projects cataloging design and architecture for good, but I think this one has a nice historical breadth and expansive perspective of what constitutes a design practice. I’m not totally down with the “acting on behalf of-” line, but I like the emphasis on context:
Continue »]]>Spatial Agency is an ongoing research project that aims to shift the of focus of architectural discourse from one that is centred around the design (= building) and making (= technology) of buildings to one where architecture is understood as a situated and embedded praxis conscious of and working with its social, economic and political context.
In the spirit of Cedric Price the project started with the belief that a building is not necessarily the best solution to an architectural problem. Architecture, and it is easy to forget this, is about a lot more than just objects in space. The project attempts to uncover a second history of architecture, one that looks at other ways that people have operated beyond the building, working on behalf of others as spatial agents. Buildings are of course not excluded, but the project expands its reach to cover all aspects of spatial production - from publications to pedagogy, activism to enabling.
The folks at cognitivemedia took 10 minutes of David Harvey’s marxist analysis of the financial crisis and created this entertaining information visualization. Harvey’s full lecture is worth watching, too.
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Breakdown Press has just published The Peace Posters, a 32-page broadsheet newspaper which unfolds to 30 posters — and is available for free. To obtain copies for bedroom walls, workplaces, street poles, community notice boards, shopfronts and schools, email distro@breakdownpress.org with your postal address and how many copies you wish to receive. The collection also includes one of my posters.]]>
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More Public Schools: In March 2009, I wrote about The Public School a website where people propose, discuss, and coordinate free, offline classes taught by volunteers. The project has since expanded from Los Angeles to 6 more cities including New York, Paris, and San Juan. And still more coming soon! I taught a class on Mapping as Activism last month and had a great time. |
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Listener Supported: In December 2008, I wrote about Spot.us, a site for crowd-funded news where anyone can pitch and help pay a journalist to produce a local story. Last week, Public Radio Exchange announced they will pick up the software to launch StoryMarket to bring the model to public radio. |
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Guerilla Wayfinding in NYC: In March 2006, I proposed a compass rose stencil at the exits of New York City subway stations. Shortly after, stencils started appearing! A year later, City officials decided to implement a few test marks of their own, and I found out the idea had been proposed back in 1992. Now it’s 2010 and new compass stencils have popped up at downtown subway exits. |
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The Trouble with Hippos: In February 2006, I wrote about the Hippo Water Roller, a rugged, round water container designed to be transport water on tough rural roads. Last year, Alissa Walker reported on some of the obstacles the project encountered with extended use, and when trying to scale up production. |
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Public Designer: My first article for Communication Arts ran in February 2005 on citizens designing for better government. It included several examples orchestrated by Sylvia Harris. This month the AIGA published a great interview with her that’s worth checking out. Harris is a public designer if ever there was. |
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Get the E out of NYC: In 2004, I wrote about New York City’s trial collection of electronic waste for recycling. On May 29, 2010, New York State decided it’s illegal to throw away your electronic waste in the regular trash. Governor Patterson just signed a producer responsibility law requiring manufacturers to pay for collection and recycling of e-waste from consumers (including individuals, schools, municipalities, small businesses and non-profits.) |
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There are plenty of structural issues around the crisis in the Gulf, but this one was on my mind tonight. PDF version here.
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Also:
“A take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with. The food is served out of a take-out style storefront, which will rotate identities every 4 months to highlight another country.” The current iteration, Kubideh Kitchen, serves Iranian kubideh from a stylish pop-up facade. “The sandwich is packaged in a custom-designed wrapper that includes interviews with Iranians both in Pittsburgh and Iran on subjects ranging from Iranian food and poetry to the current political turmoil.”]]>
Source: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/04/military_veterans_suicide_042210w/
While there may not be so many “unknown soldiers” any more, it seems like there are more and more forgotten ones in our midst.
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A friend in DC sent this photo of great poster popping up there. The English language poster is always accompanied by a Spanish language version.
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The project was produced by AMV BBDO for an anti-violence campaign site droptheweapons.org run by London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
The video was Osocio’s 2009 Campaign of the Year.
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The PARK(ing) Day meme lands in Paris and Italy to promote the guerilla re-appropriation of public (parking) space through art and intervention.]]>And though immigration is a perennially hot-button issue, I wonder whether this latest flare-up has more to do with mid-term elections or suppressing counts (thus money and power) in non-white districts where Democrats tend to lead.
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Despite Apple’s high-profile use of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr and Ghandi in their Think Different ad campaign, I find Apple’s profiles of pro users fairly conventional.
The profile of Seamus Conlan, however, is a bit more socially engaged:
In Rwanda in 1994 covering a notoriously lethal civil war, photojournalist Seamus Conlan found himself suddenly and unexpectedly reassigned, not by a magazine or newspaper editor, but by his conscience. “I was working in Rwanda as a freelance photographer doing documentation on the lost children, a very big problem and a huge story,” says Conlan. “As I was riding in the back of a truck, photographing the orphans and collecting them at the same time, I decided to take a photo of every child as a means of tracing them.”
Conlan dropped out of photojournalism to complete his self-assigned new mission, photographing 21,000 orphans over a period of a year and a half. But because the children were known by ambiguous names such as Child of Hope or No Man Should Dishonor Me — “There were no John Smiths” — Conlan completed his tracing solution by posting the photographs on billboards sorted by place of origin. “If a child came from Kigali, the parents would go to that billboard, point to the child, give the ID number to the Red Cross and take that child home.”
Conlan’s photographic tracking method is now used by all major relief agencies.
See this 2006 piece on CNN, Camera reunites Rwandan children, families, and Seamus’s own site.
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