Monthly Archives: February 2008
a few weeks ago we grouped together with Doina’s studio 2 group to work with Mattias Heyden from Berlin in a 2 day workshop analysing the relationships between different groups and communities of people that would be involved in our projects. We first quickly presented our schemes in 3 (ish) minutes to everyone then had to draw a diagram that showed the ‘invisible relationships’ that are existing and others that may need to be established and also where us as architects would be best positioned. we then exchanged drawings and commented on someone elses to help add comments and new ideas to the initial diagrams. These were then returned and we built a model to express what we had encapsualted in the drawing.
I was reading in the Havard Guide to Shopping about various groups that campaign for us to be ‘Ecologically Correct’ and they gave an example of the Ruckus Society that wil train other groups of people how to be effective activists and get thier message accross. They teach climbing and rope work skills to hang banners, also how to make weather ballons into a floating sign and how to pretend to hang yourself from something.
These groups use terms like Eco-Activism and Antimarketing and even Eco-Terrosim which the group Earth First could be associated with by their actions to blow up ski resorts that infringe on conservation areas.
We recently wrote our initial briefs for our projects. Mine was responding to earlier research into self initiated publications and self organised societies and groups that operate in our cities to subvert the industries and operations that they speak out against. It will be based in Park Hill.
BRIEF
Sheffield’s main paper mill, situated north of the city centre near Oughtibridge and run by Georgia Pacific LTD, has recently closed one its production department. This meant a third of the personelle (over 100 people) were made redundant and left only the recently modernised conversion side of the mill running. The paper that will now source the mill for the conversion side is provided from other sites in the region. This creates the question: what will happed to the recycling system in central Sheffield, where will the paper be taken for de-inking and re-use?
I have decided to create a infrastructure that will be beneficial for both my created organisation and the residents of the region. My client is an organisation based on the existence of Go- ‘a fanzine for Sheffield’ and also the socialist papers and unity we experienced in Nowa Huta. The accommodation will provide facilities to store collected paper which will then be recycled and milled to make new printable paper. The process will continue by supplying a printing area so publish and disseminate ideas and agendas into the public areas. These will be posted by a team that target financially strategic billboards and poster spots to replace the corporate advertising with information and blank space to alter the consumer’s experience of ‘public’ space.
Systems of more ephemeral broadcast will also be used like projection and FM analogue radio which will soon be commercially obsolete due to the conversion to digital. The projections will be a comment on our isolated existence in the consumer world where licence offenders that download copywrited material like music and films only seem to experience them on their own or in small numbers. Long gone are the days of theatre and mass social gatherings. Today festivals are commercialised and branded to the extent that walls strong enough for prisons are built around sites for a 5 day period. Guerrilla cinemas will allow the now seemingly decriminalised, or at least un-policable act of downloading to be shared by the ‘public’ together.
The siting for this scenario will be in the old industrial live/work structures that were designed for the in den pent tradesmen at the turn of the century and thus a very domestic scale to appropriate for a very industrial activity. The possibility of a nomadic splinter of this organisation that will rove the county and Europe could also be considered.
This is work from a while ago but hasn’t been posted until now. After christmas we were asked to come up with a design and build a table that would solidify our ideas of PC and interpendence and also further our specific conceptual ideas for our projects. I had been focusing on the mediated world and that led to the investigation of where advertising space was located and how it is manged and ultimately the whole process of how and what gets shown to us on these sites.
I designed a table that would take the paper from sites and re-use it for a table of discussions and ideas where the surface is not precious to the extent that you can take it away with you if you have drawn on it as it can easily be replaced. Here are two drawings that explain the idea. The second sheet was work done with Pete Jennings for the School Bar competition which was based on the table idea.
