The non-profit organization of volunteers, Architecture for Humanity is teaming up with PechaKucha, an event for designers to show and discuss their work, to unite 277 cities around the world currently offering this event for one cause. Global PechaKucha Day for Haiti will broadcast a 24-hour wave of presentations on February 20th that will be dedicated to the rebuilding of Haiti.

The event will all be streamed online for everyone in the world to watch in real time and captured on the website and tagged with the idea that these ideas and people could be a great resource for future relief efforts as well as this one. This sounds like it’s going to be an incredible event. The video above features the offical announcement from PechaKucha night founders Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo and Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity. More information from the website:

Already presentations are being prepared – some are intended to offer hope and encouragement through stories of past disaster relief projects, while others offer simple inspiration by showing the power of great creative thinking. Some amazing people have stepped up to the challenge so prepared to be surprised

All of the 2,000 presentations generated from the one-day event – what could be the world’s biggest single day globally distributed conference – will be posted online at PechaKucha Presentation. All presentations will have a donate button to raise money.

All proceeds will go to Architecture for Humanity for rebuilding Haiti. AFH operates globally, and was instrumental in getting projects built after the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Katrina. The design costs for the new buildings in Haiti have been already covered so all donations will go to tangible built projects.

The beauty of the simple 20×20 format is the presentations are so easy to make and voice, so each month AFH will make updates in the 20×20 format which will be posted on line and shown at all the PechaKucha Night around the world in the coming month to show how the PechaKucha Fund is being used and to help keep the interest level high through until completion.

Santas take to the streets for the annual SantaCon in towns across the US and overseas in this lovely month of December. Santas have been seen riding bikes, boarding trains, eating and drinking in city pubs and gathering in public parks. Here’s a few street scenes from the event that took place over the weekend in Portland, including the initial gathering point at downtown’s newest urban park, Director Park.

Happy Holidays all!

images via ohhh_yeah808

Description from Yale University, “For one week in May 2008, leading architects, professors, and students from Yale University, organized by the Yale Urban Design Workshop in conjunction with Friends of the Earth Middle East, traveled to the Jordan-Israel border. On the site of the ruined Rotenberg Hydroelectric Station of the Palestine Electric Company, they collaborated with Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian architects on the design the first Peace Park in the Middle East. Two Yale undergraduate filmmakers followed the story with a camera, in an attempt to capture this significant moment and share this unique story with others.”

On September 8th, 2007, the City of Kent in Washington state celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Earthworks Park designed by Herbert Bayer. This celebration coincided with the one-day art installation, Chromatic Levee by Brice Maryman, as part of 4Culture’s Site-Specific program, that year the program was titled “Art Unearthed”. Brice explains it best in his own words on the City of Kent’s website documenting the piece:

The notion that design should be incorporated into the everyday—that aesthetics and humanity should be a consistent portion of our experience—is about as foreign to contemporary culture as are hand-cranked sewing machines. In an era where an almost surgical efficiency rules, we are quick to circumscribe times, objects, thoughts and beliefs into boxes. They define our commutes, our children, and our cities. It’s cleaner that way, we think; with so many neat compartments, it’s easy to know when something is out of place.

Given the stereotypes, you would think that an Austrian, who worked for the Container Corporation of America, would appreciate this ordered efficiency. But Herbert Bayer rebuffed this channelization of thought; above all else, he was a humanist of the highest order and embraced the overlaps, inconsistencies and the floodplains of thought that make the human experience richer. Of all of his Bauhaus brethren, it was Bayer who carried the ideals of integrated design the furthest. Whether wielding this power through typography or product design or exhibitions, Bayer’s raison d’etre seems to have been to dissect the boxes that were being formed all around him—to move away from the mechanical—which he saw as a tool, not an end—and to allow for the sediment of humanity to accumulate in order to see what might take root.

I wonder then, what Bayer would have thought about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina? The boxes that held people in at the edge of the Mississippi Delta were so starkly apparent after August 29, 2005. The Black Box. The Poverty Box. The Boxed Culvert of the Mississippi River, draining an increasingly urbanized America. The Box of White Consciousness. The Box of the Superdome. The Box of Apathy. The Box of Underfunded Education. Each was laid bare, scattered about for all to see when the waters receeded.

With his perpetual hope for the human species, Mr. Bayer might have sought to find ways to used those banged up cubes as the raw material for a new start. He would have believed that the inviolable shared culture of the swamps and bayous of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi could coalesce around a new infrastructure that honored economic, social and environmental considerations as a system, rather than as discrete boxes, without relationship to each other.

On a lesser scale, these are the same questions and themes that surround the future of the Earthworks. Mill Creek, a modest unassuming stream within the Puget Sound basin, would not give anyone pause if not for two quite consequential human choices. One happened largely before Mr. Bayer’s time, the other largely afterward.

When Kent was established, Mill Creek was a reliable power source for the booming logging industry, driving the whip saws that would rip timber to boards. In time, those boards formed the raw material for building the town around the mill. Decades later, the mill was gone, but the town remained, resting on the floodplain of the Green River Valley with the nozzle of Mill Creek aimed directly at what was now downtown Kent.

Gradually, the land that had been denuded by the lumbermen regained its forest, and the torrent of Mill Creek was slowed by the naturally regulated flow provided by the rich duff and canopies of the native forest. For a time, the walls between nature and culture were weakened and both were serving the same purpose–as it had been for 10,000 years before Euro-American settlers came.

But the siting of Kent, like the siting of New Orleans, already placed it in a precarious situation, hemmed in by natural systems that were beneficent for much of the year, but that could turn ruinous during a long rain. The careful planning and understanding of upstream impacts on the waters of the streams and rivers of the Kent Valley should have been of paramount import, but it was not. Like everywhere else in America, sprawl took root with little thought about how the dedritics of development would affect the hydology of the place. So Mill Creek flooded, salmon drowned, and downtown Kent sat waterlogged in the winter. Indeed, it was into this sad position in our history that Bayer entered the scene.

Bayer’s intention, again, was to obscure the traditional boxes by creating something previously unknown: a hybrid ecology where the boundaries between nature, art, landscape and infrastructure blurred into a coherent whole–separate from and greater than its parts. He states, “a dam in the ordinary sense constitutes a radical interference with the natural configuration of the land. My intent was, therefore, to give the dams a natural appearance conforming to the landscape (surroundings) and to become integral parts of the landscape being created.”

Breaking down barriers and establishing new frames was part of the intention of Chromatic Levee as well. Hovering between the ideas of art and infrastructure, social and economic identities, inertia and entropy, nature and art, the natural and the artificial, performance and sculpture, history and the present, I sought to portray a continuum of place—a richly layered stratigraphy, both lithic and dynamic, yet extricably borne of its endemic geography. Most directly, the piece is an homage to Bayer’s color explorations, which find their resonance in the colors of the Chromatic Levee. Reflected in the waters of Mill Creek, Chromatic Levee attempts to meld art, nature and infrastructure to remind us of a future we have only to articulate to achieve.

Afterword

On the other hand, like the Earthworks themselves, it was not solely the eidetic, but also Bayer’s humanistic ideal, that needed to be attended to. In achieving this, Catherine Eith’s assistance could not have been more welcome or timely. As I moved through the process of sorting out the materials and methods of construction, she suggested purchasing a particular, high-quality fabric. This modest investment would prevent us from sending this material to the landfill; instead, we could send these items to the Gulf Coast. We fashioned the sandbag modules here, used them once for the installation, then shipped them to our friends in the Gulf Coast. By the time you are reading this, the victims of Hurricane Katrina who lost so much are now sleeping under quilts and blankets made from the sympathetic reverberations found in Kent and King County, Washington.

images via Brice Maryman

Didn’t your mother tell you not to play in the street? Well, from October 29th to November 1st, three locations in the UK; Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough will be breaking the rules and taking over streets for some accessible and enlightening fun in the evenings after 5:30pm.

Media artists KMA will use projected light and thermal-imaging technology that, according to to the Great Street Games website, will “create jaw-dropping interactive arenas in which the physical movements of players determine the outcome of the games.” But not only are the games linked to the interactivity of the users, but they will be linked between the three cities as well through the real-time games.

KMA has created some other interesting, interactives works including the kinetic light installation titled “Waves” from February of this year. From KMA: “Projected into the street with no visible infrastructure in sight, it uses the heat of passers-by to allow them to interact with a projected environment that simulates physical interactions whilst encouraging playful interactions. Waves was commissioned by DanceDigital as part of their launch as the leading agency for dance and technology in the UK.”

images via KMA

“Waves uses the mathematics of electromagnetism, gravity and Newtonian physics to visualise simulated environments, in which the audience become key elements: a magnet in a field of iron filings, a disturbance in a viscous fluid, a foreign force in an ordered world of microscopic particles. By exploring how their own bodies interact with this space, the forces they bring to this simulated world will also begin to affect the movement of other participants, and a collective visual and physical exploration is created in an unexpected environment.”

White Nights festivals are all-night parties that take place between the end of summer and beginning of autumn. Traditionally, White Nights take place in cities near the Arctic Circle during the summer solstice where there are several days without darkness and many bright cities would hold events around the clock in celebration. Other cities have been inspired by the spirit of a round-the-clock festival such as Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris and Montreal to name a few and now there is even an entire European circuit of festivals. While the cities in Europe don’t experience a true white night, the spirit of the festival is alive and the idea of bringing out residents and visitors alike to explore the art, music and theater within the car-free city centers under the glow of the moonlight is enchanting.

In Madrid, one of the larger festival desinations, La Noche En Blanco 2009 itself was even split up into its own circuits; the Music Circuit, the Visual Arts Circuit, the Performing Arts Circuit and the Film Circuit. This makes for an overwhelming amount of events to entertain the public all the way through the night until 6am.

With lots of interesting events, I wanted to point out “Verde” by the fabulous Luzinterruptus. This was one of two installations that ran all night, this one including 1,000 street lamp posts covered by green living room shades that ran all through the center of Madrid. The soft green lighting transformed the atmosphere into a comfortable, warm and homey space.

The massive transformation from the typical vehicular buzz of the major city center streets to the intimate pedestrian ways encouraged people to stroll and enjoy the surrounding art and music. This installation just goes to show how lighting can make a dramatic difference in any space.

images via luzinterruptus

Last Friday the 18th was the annual PARK(ing) Day event where people from all corners of the globe take over parking spaces and turn them into temporary public parks for the day. This is an especially fun event because it’s not limited to designers, but includes anyone who’s willing to take the day off from work and put together a park to hang out in including local businesses, magazines, food vendors, community groups, artists, musicians, etc. It’s a great way to bring the community together in public spaces to interact, engage and play.

This year I had the opportunity to get together with two friends and fellow landscape architects, Brett Milligan and Jason King, to have a little fun up in Seattle while supporting some fabulous urban void activation headed up by Keith Harris on the People’s Parking Lot in Capitol Hill. A full list of the participating groups can be found here. Here’s just a few of the highlights…

In the middle of the whole event, the Capitol Hill Community Council and Unpaving Paradise, sponsors of the event, teamed up for a lush, tent-covered park. The park become a welcome place to relax since the site was bathed in hot sun for most of the day.

The Seattle Arts and Lectures park titled “Words Matter” featured a table of cookies, tea and inspiring books along with a board that encouraged people to paint, draw and incorporate inspiring phrases in a community art piece. One book on their table that particularly caught my attention was “Wake Up In Brightness”, a book they published that features poetry and prose from students. It was mpressive to see entries from students as young as early grade school years craft such beautiful words.

Brite Collective, an extension of JOIN, provides fun lectures and events aimed at uniting Seattleites through design and igniting inspiration to take part in their creative community. For PARK(ing) Day, Brite held an event called “Negative Space: A Biographical Field Sketch” which included a 1 hour interpretive walk to explore the identity of space, discuss cognitive mapping and sketch in a provided journal.

Hollow Earth Radio, a community-run online radio station, had a tent on-site where they were taking the urban confessions of anyone who was interested in talking. These will then appear on their website at a later date.

Flash Volunteer was there with some green space in support of their pretty cool project that helps bring events and volunteers together in an organized fashion.

This park called “Air Stream” was created by a group of designers who called themselves Signal to Noise. The intention was that the plastic rods along the edge would wave in the wind but unfortunately or fortunately, it was sunny and not at all windy that day.

Our neighboring park by the Seattle-based multidisciplinary firm SvR Design was complimentary to ours with a rec room outfitted with a couch, comfy chairs, a table full of games and a popular ping pong table.

One of our personal favorites was the sweet tunes 12 Hour Notice was pumping out from his pimped out ride. Seriously, the shopping cart was pretty cool, pictures don’t do it justice. He was there in his spot for most of the day, hardly moving. I’m not even sure he ate anything all day. When I went over to tell him how much we appreciated having him on the lot, I also found out that he was incredibly nice.

The only thing that got the mobile dj to sit down was the hour long performance from Toy Box Trio towards the end of the day. They brought with them a concertina, toy piano and tuba that mixed together for an interesting sound with a carnival flair. At one point they even introduced the sounds of an old fashioned typewriter.

Our park titled “4-Play” was split into quadrants of two areas of game play and two areas of vegetated seating, displaying that a park isn’t just made up of recreation or green space but instead consists of a good mix of both.

The games in the park consisted of a much longer twister game made of soft carpet and an oversized connect four game that became the highlight of the park and brought out the kid as well as the competitiveness in many people that stopped by to play a game or two.

In our green space, we had grassing seating “booths” that featured retro carpet dots covering one side for a soft surface to lean against and a poster board on the other side filled with planter pockets of bright yellow in both the national and Seattle PARK(ing) Day posters.

images (c) Lisa Town

At the end of the day an awards ceremony was held that included all parks within the Seattle metro area. Our park won the award for “Most Playful” park and we left Seattle with a prize of some park-based games from two local game shops. It was a fun event and we met lots of wonderful people and it was great to be a part of the local community for a day. Thanks to everyone on Capitol Hill that was involved and to Keith Harris for organizing the memorable event. I’m already looking forward to PARK(ing) Day 2010!

Things have been busy lately and between various trips and other things, I haven’t found much time to make good use of all the fabulous things that are accumulating on my computer. Things are definitely piling up on that front. Although, it’s nice to take some time off and sort of disconnect from the virtual world temporarily.

One thing I’m certainly looking forward to is the PARK(ing) Day event on Friday the 18th which seems to be getting more and more interesting as the day draws near. I’ll be participating with some friends in Seattle in their Central Park, a parking lot turned into a mass of mini parks along with entertainment, lectures, charettes, food and whatever else. There will even be a prize for the best park.

More upon my return regarding the event and the park I’ve been working on for the last few days and hopefully some fabulous pictures as well. And if you are in Seattle and want to come check out the event, check the People’s Parking Lot(s) blog for more info about the space and the event that will be taking place at 500 E. Pine in Capitol Hill. I hope to see you there!

This year I think Park(ing) Day is going to be very exciting as it seems that people from all around the world are getting into it even more than ever with heightened enthusiasm, online social sites about the event, more cities taking part and even trying to find ways in how they can push the boundaries of the event.

In New York City, they are adding an extra layer to the event that they are calling POP.Park which challenges the Park(ing) Day participants to make not just a park for a day but a pre-fabricated, transportable park that could be taken anywhere and used any time and would essentially be able to just pop up quickly and assume it’s duty as a temporary park space, just as easy as one my pop out a folding chair.

From the website: “POP.Park prototypes should create a relaxing, safe and visually compelling environment for people. POP.Parks must provide physical delineation from traffic and be contextual to the city street environment. Physically, POP.Parks must fold into a box (or reusable bag or tote) that one person can carry while walking or riding public transportation. When assembled, POP.Parks should be no larger than 8′x15′ – the size of a regular car parking spot. The cost of building a POP.Park must not exceed $20.00.”

So as of today, the September 18 event is only a month away so it should be a lot of fun to see what everyone creates, especially since I will be participating this year as well!

And what about the lovely poster of the overgrown car designed to promote this years Park(ing) Day event? I like it. But perhaps that’s because it reminds me of a beautiful screen printed poster I have on my wall from the 2006 album release show of one of my favorite bands, The Long Winters.

For the World Expo in Shanghai, China 2010 the theme is “Better City, Better Life” and the various country’s pavilions will be reflecting of this theme with a focus on sustainable urban environments of the future. Recently unveiled as the winners of the 6,000 square foot French Pavilion design, Jacques Ferrier Architects have created ‘The Sensual City’ featuring a building sitting in a pool of water for the illusion of floating, covered in a mesh-like skin and solar panels on the roof along with a courtyard with vegetation inspired by the traditional french gardening style but with a modern twist as the garden moves up the walls and over the roof.

The clipped style is a little rigid and maintenance instensive for my taste but definitely reminds me of the gardens I saw in many parts of France. No doubt, they like to clip everything from hedges to trees. But the shapes that move down the interior walls of the courtyard look strangely like those of Zaha Hadid’s Stone Towers. Nevertheless, it maintains an interesting look with the green shapes trailing over and down into the building. I love designs that connect horizontal and vertical planes of vegetation. This gives me some interesting ideas that doesn’t involve continuous clipping…

images via archdaily