Tag archives: Lab Notes I
Posted to Lab Notes I on March 8th, 2012 by David van der Leer
With research by Johanna Vandemoortele
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Retrofitting Urban Life
Public bus transportation as part of the exhibition and then it became a city, Shenzhen, China, 2011
Urbanization has increased rapidly since the middle of the twentieth century, and the number of new planned towns and neighborhoods has risen steeply in locations both expected and unexpected, from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to remote locations in Africa and South America. Many of the new-town-turned-cities are currently undergoing rapid change: we see decline or growth, but somehow the ideal city we were made to believe in throughout the last century has almost always turned out to be far from ideal in reality.
This makes me think of a 1999 lecture by the Brit Paul Barker titled “Non-Plan Revisited,” which I recently reread in the Journal of Design History. For years Barker was the editor of the progressive British magazine New Society, working with Cedric Price and Peter Hall, among others. In this particular talk, he looks back at their 1969 “Non-Plan” issue, which spoke up against the strategies of modernist urban planning. He recounts how no one had been “clever enough to know in advance, how cities will grow,” simply because: “You cannot tell which innovation will germinate and multiply a thousand-fold (like the mobile phone). Nor can we tell how people will decide to organize their lives, or how tastes in patterns of living will develop.” Continue reading…
Posted to Lab Notes I on March 7th, 2012 by Christine McLaren
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Retrofitting Urban Life
A few weeks ago, I thought I had a pretty brilliant idea.
Reflecting on the theme Retrofitting Urban Life, I was trying to think of who would have the most unique perspective on how our cities could be retrofitted into repair.
The list of professionals and academics who immediately came to mind was long, but I wasn’t interested in an expert opinion. No, I wanted to hear from someone who would speak from gut instinct and everyday experience.
The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I imagined how wildly diverse the plans for an ideally retrofitted city would look if designed by a bus driver versus a teacher, a shopkeeper versus an artist, or, I don’t know . . . a hot dog vendor?
So we put out the call. Through Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail, we asked our followers to tell us: What is one thing you’d change about your city to make your job easier?
The responses would reveal, I predicted, how difficult it is to find one-size-fits-all solutions to city making—they would offer a new, fresh perspective on how individual the urban experience is. How clever! Continue reading…
Posted to Lab Notes I on March 5th, 2012 by Jon Cotner
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Retrofitting Urban Life
"21st-century cities need artists who practice innovative, offbeat social science. The alternative is to perpetuate problems that traditional methods neither see nor touch."
WochenKlausur, a Vienna-based art collective, designs social interventions. Since 1993 it has staged more than 30 interventions involving 50-plus artists. Each project arises from a particular community’s needs at a particular moment in time. Embodying the Lab’s do-it-yourself spirit, WochenKlausur empowers people to build better lives for themselves.
The group’s name stands for “weeks of closure”—which evokes, as they say, “the concentrated atmosphere of a closed working-session.” When WochenKlausur receives invitations from cultural institutions, they’ll convert galleries (or whatever space they’re given) into an office where the projects get planned. WochenKlausur doesn’t manipulate canvases, stones, or paints. They believe “art” is irreducible to “mastery of craftsmanship.” It’s a flexible concept. Continue reading…
