IL UOMO

Dictatorship of Sensitivity

2007-10-18T04:03:00.001-07:00

C-Laboratory: Cover of the free newspaper "Il Uomo".

Marco Casagrande
- See the video

Writer architects

2007-10-18T04:02:00.001-07:00

In
the
future
architecture
will
be
designed
by
writers.

- Yoshio Kato, Professor, Tamkang University.

Professor Yoshio Kato with architecture students from Tamkang Univeristy during the CityZen Garden -workshop in Zhuwei of Taipei Taiwan.

LINKS:

FUTURE PAVILLION

CITYZEN GARDEN

Antti's message

2007-10-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

Roan,

I would like to forward you Antti’s message concerning our garden. He pretty much underlines the Eternal elements and I believe this is good to share with you and you should understand.

Marco

STOP!

I like the swings. Pendelum. Time. Sinus -> circle. Too much linear movement in the garden and too little swinging.

Vegetation and water is not part of the message. Why should one do anything if one cannot say something (art…). We are living times where bullshit and NOT NECESSARY decoration should not be needed. The sharp edge of a message is the essential part of things. Besides this one should remember the location of the exhibitions space. Courage is part of the picture. Open the eyes. Mankind seems to be in a hurry. Still again, wee do not necessarily have to give up the gift of life. I hope so. (correct me by all means if I am wrong)…

NUMBER THREE

Of course there might be even a better way to get the elements highlighted. But swing. Man as part of time and as a prisoner. This is important. No?

I DO THINK you are on a right track. As I hope to be too. One must grab to the fragments of real reality though the shit tries to blur the screen.

Real reality is and tolerates observing in time and space.

I carry the thinking with me. So more will become…

antti@clab.fi

CityZen Garden

2007-10-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

CASAGRANDE LABORATORY in Danshui, Taiwan, 2006. Glass Zen Garden and back-packs ready for Venice Biennale.

The Zen garden is at least a visual platform of environmental meditation linking the human nature as part of nature and furthermore to more cosmic entities.

On one hand one can see the Zen garden as a reflection of the surrounding environment scaling down the mountains into its stones or the movement of the ocean into the racking pattern of the gravel. Meditation can build connections and dynamics between the elements of the Zen garden and its surrounding nature. Meditation can also reveal tensions, balances and directions between the Zen garden elements themselves and help the viewer to erase the realities around the garden letting the mind travel in this highly controlled environment.
George passing by the glass Zen Garden. The solid glass rock is an industrial mistake and accidentally formed in a sheet-glass owen during years of extreme preassure and heat conditions.

The paradox of the Zen garden is in its highly controlled nature as a platform of accident. It may be that the form of the garden ha remained the same some 500 years having the every element articulated into their exact position – the racking of the sand or gravel, the pattern of the growing or merely being of the tree, the color of the moss around the stone…nothing has changed but still one has to admit that the slightest breeze of the wind might turn one piece of sand or fall down a leaf from the tree and the same gardening work has to be started again. This ultimate human control celebrates the superiority of the smallest of the environmental changes.

Marco Casagrande: CityZen Garden, Zhuwei, Taipei 2006.

We try to control cities with millions of people. And we easily forget the nature. We are capable of creating surroundings where human nature is no longer part of nature.

Garden is a window of eternity.

URBAN COMPOST

If a Zen garden is trying to build up a harmony between the natural elements, the human nature and the universe the city does not seem to have the time. And the time is in essence. To justify its being the modern city has created the artificial time and invented stress. After stressing for time and money death has become a defeat – a bankruptcy.

CityZen Garden, detail. Marco Casagrande, 2006.

City must be a compost.

In nature death is the beginning of a new life. When a tree is growing, it is tender and pliant, but when it is dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness and being. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies he is hard and insensitive. Because what has hardened will never win. Stalker.
Nikita Wu. In the future architecture will be done by writers (Yoshio Kato, 2006).

Thinking of the Zen garden and thinking of the city. A new Zen garden for the city, the CityZen Garden of post-urban meditation. The city of slowness, the urbanism of acupuncture, the new urban nomad - in a compost, as a garden.

When an architect is a gardener he is a constructor. If he is not a gardener he can be a destructor. There is a danger.

Ice Speedway

2007-10-18T02:59:00.002-07:00

Clean Country Living

driver: Oski camera: Artta team: Ikirouta (Permafrost), Inkoo, Finland

Technical bases:
500cc
60 hp
fuel: metanol
lubricate: straight through (driving 8 laps, then more oil)
gears: 2
breaks: no
gear switch on the right side (cannot be on the left side...when tilting the foot don't fit between the bike and ice...)
0-80 km/h, approx. 1,5 seconds
max speed according to the tuning 130 -140 km/h
track: 400 m oval / driving direction counter clock wise (in a race one drives 4 laps)
spikes: 28 mm
bike is so to say "stiff rear". this you will understand....

to start A) take the weight to the front B) gas OPEN C) slip in the clutch (if in any stage happens any mistake of "mercy" the outcome is usually bad)

Glass Garden

2007-10-18T02:48:00.002-07:00

YUO-YUAN
Glass garden for Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion 2006

General view of the glass garden in the Venice Prison.

This is the third time for us to participate in the Venice Biennale. The previous ones have been in the special exhibition of the year 2000 and representing Denmark in the year 2004 (CREW*31). Every time we have brought in Venice a garden. The "60 Minute Man" / 2000 was an oak garden in an abandoned barge on top of composted human waste and "Post Industrial Fleet" / 2004 a bigger strategy of recycling industrial ships and urban waste in forms of floating gardens.

When the modern man loses his connection to the nature he will die.

The Yuo-Yuan glass garden in the Taiwanese Pavilion is a spatial meditation platform for post urban rehabilitation. The outcome is a mixture of Taiwanese and Finnish interpretations of being present in the circular movement in different levels and nothingness. Basically it is a rock garden with a swing. It is also just a cultivated junkyard - all the material is recycled to form a temporary collage of meeting of material streams trusting that also the city must be a compost.

Sketch, Marco Casagrande.

The base layer of the garden is out of crushed glass and the walkways and the swing out of recycled wood. The glass rocks are fantastic accidental side products of glass industry - like pearls in mussels. The flat glass ovens are kept hot for 12 years for glass fabrication after which they will be cooled down for maintenance. Sometimes it happens that during these 12 years the glass plasma inside the oven starts to form a stone or a rock under quite extreme heat and pressure conditions. The clear glass rock is an accident - no man can make this.

The swing is something tht you see in almost every house in Finland. The family can sit together there and this is where you take a nap in the summers. Teh slow rocking rhythm, floating, human body as part of circular movement is what we all carry in our genetic memory. It is good to sit in the swing and look at the dark forest.

City must be a compost.

Traktorfan

2007-10-18T02:48:00.001-07:00

SEE: The Description of the World

Red Square and Black Square

2007-10-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

Steel suprematistic gate for Chen family in Danshui, Taiwan 2005. Homage Kasimir Malevitch.

My Movies

2007-10-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

UL UOMO TOP 10 MOVIES
17.5.2006

1. Stalker / Tarkovski

2. Metropolis / Lang

3. Apocalypse Now! / Coppola

4. Karlson På Taket / Hellborn

5. Ivan the Terrible / Eisenstein

6. Fata Morgana / Herzog

7. Dersu Uzala / Kurozawa

8. Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari / Wiene

9. M / Lang

10. Man Without Past / Kaurismäki

My Movies

The best and most inspiring architect for me is Andrei Tarkovski. Some others stand in line too obviously commanded by the eternity like Eisenstein, Kubrick, Bergman and Coppola in "Apocalypse Now!". Of course architecture is in connection with eternity too, but the questions seem to be disappointingly small. Movie can talk about righ and wrong, the choices man makes. No architect says anymore: "Light is the oldest daughter of God", and just a few die on the construction site. Where is the construction site of eternity? It should be up always, but mainly only from the movies I can sense this. I guess the same way like all the great movies are made with no commercial ambitions the architecture must follow. We must just build.

The Mist

2007-10-18T02:34:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on top of this mountain - the highes peak on a ridge actually. All of a sudden a mist starts appearing and getting thicker. It ends up so that only my upper torso is above the mist level and I see all the world disappearing under this white layer of cloud - a white, alive table and everything stops. The war stops, the tanks can't aim, because of the mist. I sit quietly a while there, then get my kit together and walk down into the mist.

Marco Casagrande

City Horoscopes

2007-10-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

Aries
HONG KONG
You will face a difficult decision but the direction is right.

Taurus
WASHINGTON
You think many kinds of things. Be aware of the hidden truth.

Gemini
ISTANBUL
The good things are about to come if you open your eyes over the shadows.

Cancer
LONDON
Many things have been done many times and there is no freshness anymore. Be aware of making quick decisions.

Leo
CAIRO
You want to clean away one misunderstanding but you must take initiative.

Virgo
KALKUTTA
You know one thing better than any other. Enjoy that.

Libra
SHANGHAI
You can do things right. Don't let anyone question that.

Scorpio
NEW YORK
Many things have started cooking. They will end up good.

Sagittarius
BARCELONA
You seek for closeness and you will get it but with pain.

Capricorn
CAPE TOWN
You dream a lot. You should walk that way.

Aquarius
SYDNEY
You see a thing that you don's want to see. Approach it calmly.

Pisces
SAO PAOLO
In life is many feelings. Don't start forgetting these.

Oliver Salminen, futurist, C-LAB

Editorial Team

2007-10-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

Casagrande Laboratory for IL UOMO:

Marco Casagrande, architect, principal, Finland
Nikita Wu, writer, Taiwan
Frank Chen, design assistant, Taiwan
Wei-Chen Weng, design assistant, Taiwan
Shao-Shien Chang, design assistant, Taiwan
Antti Antinoja, partner, Finland
Oliver Salminen, futurist, Finland
Christian Edlinger, architect, Germany
Martin Ross, industrial artist, Alaska
Nathalie Pozzi, architect, Italy

Contributions:
Sakura Iso, artits, Japan
Eri Asano, designer, Japan
Tommy Plummer, biologist, UK
August Kunnapu, artist/architect, Estonia
Vilen Kunnapu, architect, Estonia
Hsieh Ying Chun, architect, Taiwan
Roan Chin-Yueh, architect, Taiwan

The IL UOMO is produced in Taipei, Taiwan for Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006.

Caveman Style

2007-10-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

P.U.R.T.:
The new answer for escapists

Post Urban Rehabilitation Therapy (P.U.R.T.) is set to change the face of escapism as the evolutionarily regressive treatment takes man back to his natural roots - caveman style!

The vast increase in regressive approaches and therapies as a means to correct recent and harmful progression is fast becoming a popular vision for the future, not just within the Philosoply Treatment industry, it has also been adopted by urban planners and town councils.

Since ins introduction, P.U.R.T. has overwhelmed its competition pushing the previously popular "Thinkabout" into the numper two slot. The popularity of the "Thinkabout" has been diminishing in recent years and the developers of P.U.R.T. have answered teh call of people disillusioned by the stresses of modern society. Much like the "Thinkabout" P.U.R.T. has its basis in the instinctive natures of society. The Philosophy Treatment industry, however, is now looking beyond oral cultures such as Aboriginal society (afterall, the name Thinkabout was derived from the Walkabout) for answers, now probing the deapths of early homo sapiens philosophy and finding answers in caveman society.

P.U.R.T. is designed to remove one from the afflictions caused by modern society, its politics, pressures, and the drive for materialistic possession and return him, for the duration of the therapy, to the environment of the cave. Here the experience is that of our ancestors - just the need for necessity. Shelter, protection, basic food and water are the pleasures. The Pressures of materialism are replaced by the pleasures of necessity.

The recently noted popularity of the treatment has caused the costs to skyrocket and, despite the expense, the result is a philosophical overhaul and a mental renaissance. The paradox is that financially and mentally it is necessary to die a little to dispose of ones central philosophies build up on the foundations of a modern society ruled by money and capitalist economic policy and adopt a philosophy of necessity rather than greed. The irony is that by relinquishing such finances, in order to pay for P.U.R.T., the healing is in itself the cost. The man behind P.U.R.T., afflicted by the stresses caused by his new found wealth, was himself receiving treatment, and was thus unavailable for comment.
Tommy Plummer for C-LAB

At Home in the City

2007-10-18T01:59:00.000-07:00

At Home in the City
Angela Nkya, Iowa State University, USA

Despite the efforts to provide affordable housing, the number of people who are homeless continues to increase. The problem has now crossed the boundaries of dense urban areas and reached small communities such as Ames. When I started to research the homelessness I was surprised to learn that some of the homeless people who live on streets have the choice of living in a shelter, but choose to live on streets instead. Homelessness as a choice of living presents the greatest challenge to the problem. How can you design or provide a home to someone who does not want it? As long as it remains a choice of living for some, we will never be able to eradicate the problem of people living on the streets. But is there anything we can do to assist those who choose to live on streets? And how can we as Architects, justify being involved or not being involved with the homeless?

To some extent I agree with what the Professor of Urban Planning Peter Marcuse says in his article, "Criticism or Cooptation - Can Architects reveal the sources of Homelessness?" where he states, "Homelessness is not a design problem. Yet to the extent it has been considered by architects, by schools of architecture, by the Architectural profession .....Indeed, it is desirable that architects should help address the present crisis of homeless....we can enlighten ourselves and others about homeless as we try to detail housing for them. We can show them that their needs are essentially ours." (i)Homelessness is at the core an economic problem. However homelessness as a choice presents new avenues for designers to rethink the idea of a house. Can we and how do we meet the housing needs of a homeless man on the street?

There are various reasons for the homeless to reject the shelter services that are being offered. Some enjoy the challenge of living by day, others do not want to live "under" someone else's "rules" or codes of behavior and expectation. Whichever the reason, shelter is one of the basic human needs and still continues to be whether one chooses to live in the house or on the streets. Those who choose to live on streets need protection from weather, security and privacy that housing can provide as much as the people who live in houses do. They already have a way of obtaining these that differs from the people who live houses. They have places such as soup kitchens where they go for food, places they go to shower, and places to sleep. Rather than having all these under one roof, the homeless obtain these from different places in the city. In essence, the homeless live in the city in the same way as one lives in a house. Their home is the city.

During my study of homelessness I had an opportunity to converse with two homeless men who chose to live in the city. The first man I met at the men's homeless shelter. He is a seasonal worker in Ames and came to the shelter to shower and do laundry but not to spend the night or eat. He willingly agreed to stay for dinner and socialize when invited, but rejected the offer to freely spend the night at the shelter. The second man, on the other hand, does not want to live in shelter because he can not have much privacy at the shelter and he does not want to be dependent on anyone. He makes his living waking up early in the morning to collect cans and use the little income he gets from that to support himself. He lived in a forested area, concealed from the public where he made a small tent and spent most of his day time reading. He had lived there since June but his home was exposed during fall and he did not live there longer after that.

One lesson that I took from studying the homeless is that the homeless patterns differ from one place to another. In Ames you are most likely to find people who work and not pan handling as you see in other places. In addition to that, Ames is only a temporary stop for the homeless not a destination. Most of the people who are live on the streets in Ames are here for just a short period of time -about six months. For example the first man was a seasonal worker while the other had been in Ames for five months and was planning to leave soon. This means some of the homeless projects done in other parts might not work in Ames. Any homeless project needs to specifically respond to the nature of the homeless people in that area.

While homelessness is a new problem in our society, the homeless nomadic lifestyle predates urban settlements. The homeless are the modern day nomads moving from one city to another in search of favorable conditions and jobs. This is especially true in Ames. The second man could have moved to another place in Ames where he is well concealed from the public or to the southern states where it is much warmer. In the same way the seasonal worker migrates from one city to another to work. But even though the homeless live in cities, cities, being a result of established settlements, do not cater for the nomadic lifestyle. Cities have a hierarchy of spaces that range from private to public and have rules and regulations that control how one occupies and behaves in these spaces. For example, private behaviors such as sleeping are only allowed in the private spaces and hardly on the public spaces. Our houses reflect this hierarchical arrangement of spaces by having rooms that are designed for specific purposes, - a dining room, living room and bathroom. What makes a person homeless in the city is the lack of private spaces. They can only use the city's public spaces. This hierarchy of spaces therefore alienates the nomads from the city.

The British Architect and Lecturer Robert Kronenburg, supports this idea by arguing that, for a person to create a home in a place, they have to have the freedom to arrange the space in a way that they like. In his essay, "Modern Architecture and Flexible Dwelling" he says, "when I travel I bundle my possessions into compact containers....when I arrive at my destination a part of settling in is that I open my possessions out into the room I occupy......when we arrive somewhere different we "create" a new home by endowing it with our presence in the form of the interior landscape of our possession. But it is not just the variety and familiarity of these possessions that define our identity in this adopted space, but the way we distribute them..." (ii) He gives an example of a perfect holiday house as the one in which the temporary owners have the freedom to move the furniture and change things around to make the place more at home. Flexibility and objects that can be adapted to serve different functions have always been the characteristics and elements of the nomadic lifestyle. Based on his argument, for a homeless man to be at home in the city the public elements of the city will have to be adaptable and the set of rules and regulations loosened to allow for some of the private behaviors such as sleeping. In other words, the way to provide a home to someone who lives on the streets is by the creation of flexible spaces.

This is good news to both the designers and the city residents because it frees us from the expense of creating new spaces for the single purpose of serving the homeless. Instead of creating a new building, which raises the questions of where it is to be located and who will fund its construction we can simply use the existing elements such as bus shelters and make them adaptable for sleeping at certain hours. The bus shelters in Ames are used during the day and remain unused after midnight. We could design them in such a way that they can transformed to a sleeping compartment from midnight to 6 am. Buildings such as transit bus depots, which Ames does not have at the moment, can serve dual functions by providing services such as public bathrooms, telephones and lockers to both the travelers and the homeless.

We can not fully address the issue of homelessness without looking at the causes for homelessness. Family breakup is the number one reason for homelessness in Iowa followed by domestic violence.(iii) But urban redevelopment ranks high among the causes for homelessness nationwide.(iv) Urban renewal projects have left some of the urban poor homeless. These projects involve a wide range of professionals - Architects, urban planners, developers, and city officials. Urban redevelopment may not be the cause homelessness in Iowa but it impacts us all due to the nomadic lifestyle of the homeless. The homeless men I met in Ames were from San Francisco, Kansas and other parts of the country. We are therefore not isolated from the consequences of what happens in other places.

Homelessness is not a poor design problem in terms of aesthetics and functionality of the architecture of the built environment, but is in part poor design in term of failure to address the impact of the built environment on the society. That is what makes homelessness an architectural problem. The profession of Architecture is as much about aesthetics and functionality as it is about social implication. Homelessness is in a certain way a reflection of how the built environment is becoming more and more geared towards the rich and the elite and is ignoring the urban poor. It is therefore not only desirable that architects should help address the problem of homelessness, it's our duty. Homelessness has become one of the new elements of the urban environment and it's our duty as designers to raise its awareness to the society. It is our duty too to suggest ways in which the homeless can be helped. Homelessness is an economic problem and there will always be the poor amongst us, but we should not ignore them. We need to look at alternative ways of providing housing to those who can not afford to live in a house.

In the city, the nomad is at the mercy of the resident because the city is the resident's territory. The resident is the taxpayer and the one who supports and maintains the city. An Architect may be able to provide adaptable bus shelters, or design public bathrooms but the one who approves of whether the project gets to be executed are the city official, representing the community. The client then is not the homeless but the resident. This makes the resident responsible for the homeless. We are the owners of the city and based on that we all have a choice to make when it comes to homelessness. We can either ignore them, reject them, or accept them. However, as the number of homeless people continues to increase in our community and nationwide the problem becomes more difficult to ignore. Rejecting them by pushing them away will not address the problem. Furthermore it can be argued that we can not push the homeless away from us for the majority of the ones we have in Ames are from other places. We should accept their lifestyle and provide the environment that suits both our lifestyle and theirs.

There are opportunities to provide housing for the homeless people on streets but these can only be accomplished by a joint effort between Architects, the community and different professions. It is our responsibility as Architects to help the homeless because we have the training to design, among other things homes for people. Our services need not to be only traditional homes to those who can afford but non traditional and to those who can not afford normal houses.

Reference:

(i) "Criticism or Cooptation: Can Architects Reveal the Sources of Homelessness?", Peter Marcuse, Crit, Spring 1988, p. 33

(ii) "Modern Architecture and flexible dwelling," Robert Kronenburg, in "Living in Motion - Design and Architecture for flexible dwelling" edited by Mathias Schwartz-Clauss and Alexander von Vegesack, 2002, Weil am Rhein : Vitra Design Museum

(iii) "Iowa Homeless Population: 1999 Estimates and Profile. A Report Prepared for the State of Iowa by the University of Iowa in Cooperation with the Iowa Department of Education and Other State Agencies." http://planning.urban.uiowa.edu/homeless/draft3.htm

(iv) Arlene Zarembka, "The Urban Housing Crisis", 1990, Greenwood Press Inc, Westport Connecticut

Special thanks to the homeless men who provided me with a wealth of insight on being homeless and to the staff and temporary residents of the Ames Emergency Room project.

Prison Pantheon

2007-10-18T01:55:00.000-07:00

A New Home of Hope in Prison

The Tallinn prison is located near the city centre between the old Jewish cemetery and Magasini Street. There are around 1000 inmates in the prison including the guards. Inside the prison is streets and squares. The prison is surrounded by a high stone wall. The prison is a city inside the city.

Architect Vilen Kunnapu proposed building stands in the central square. The orange temple is constructed out of reinforced concrete. It is a 7,5 meters wide cylinder. Inside is a small amphitheatre. It is the Pantheon of the prison.

Vilen Künnapu is an Estonian design-shaman focusing on energy-centre architecture.

Fermentation Cemetery

2007-10-18T01:49:00.000-07:00

The last stop for the urban ecologist. Mechanical Biological Composting units for fementing biological waste including human bodies. When you throw a man into the MBC -unit he gets composted, or actually fermented totally in two weeks. The unit is hermetically sealed so the whole process is anaerobic and computer controlled - so that the fermenting conditions for the anaerobic bacterias are perfect - the moist level, the heat and the preassure. From a 100 kg man you get 30 kg of top soil, the best. The rest is mostly water - biologically cleaned fresh water. The process also produces gases that can be collected into a gas conditioning plant that then feeds the electrical generator. 25 % of the electricity produced is enough to keep the whole process ongoing. The rest you can sell back to the city.

Artist Statement

2007-10-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

August Kunnapu
* Themes that I like are the same as in real life - movies, medicine, literature, music, sports and architecture
* In my paintings I try to describe the world as it is - without making it more beautiful or frightful
* As a source of inspiration I use various black-and-white photos - either taken by me, friends or total strangers
* I mostly paint pure and simple images
* I like to use clear colours - otherwise the images would not be so distinct
* I love images that are dynamic and full of action, but sometimes I also make static paintings
* It is nice to use different format in different places - everything from tiny canvases in cosy coffee shops to huge wall paintings in oil shale factories
* Sometimes I make experiments with different boards - doors of gas stoves, washboards, tv -screens, cupboards or green houses
* I never make sketches or copies of my paintings
* Dislocation in art seems to be an interesting theme

1000 White Flags

2007-10-18T01:33:00.000-07:00

Landscape installation in Koli Nature Park, summer 2000. Casagrande & Rintala

1000 white flags made of used sheets from mental hospitals on three metres long iron bars mounted to a downhill skiing range in the Koli Nature Park in order to celebrate the madness of the businessmen who cut down the ancient forest in this one of Finland's most beautiful spots. Winning entry of a national competition.

SEE HERE

Bird Cage

2007-10-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

An architectonic installation for the third Yokohama Triennial of Contemporary Art 2001 in Yokohama, Japan, curated by Fumio Nanjo.

A cone shaped hangar building for 72 balsa birds which carry 5 seeds and messages in test tubes inside them. The birds are sent to the height of 10 kilometres with Vaisala -meteorological balloons.

After the balloon bursts the bird will glide long distances according to the turbulences and winds landing around Japan and to the Pacific Ocean. The finder of the bird is asked to take responsibility of planting and taking care of the seeds and to send information to Casagrande & Rintala. The building was made out of concrete ironing steel bars and hemp rope.

LINK

May Manifesto

2007-10-18T01:23:00.000-07:00

Indoor and outdoor installation in Helsinki and Tallin Kunsthalle.

The hand of a Finnish farmer from Mäntsälä. Casagrande & Rintala

Part of Maaseudun Sivistysliitto (Cultural Union of Agriculture) 50-years anniversary exhibition Juuret-Juured-Roots in Helsinki and Tallin.

Hanging forest on the facade of Kunsthalle as new urban nature.

Indoor installation of 81 aluminium hands of a farmer lined up for a marching formation on composted topsoil and connected to the roof with fishing lines.
Casagrande & Rintala

Post Urbanist

2007-10-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

One has to die a bit to be reborne. City is dead, long live the compost. For my urban sins I needed Post Urban Rehabilitation and for my sins they gave me one: the cave. Every time I wake up in this chamber the walls move a little bit closer. When I am here, I want to be in the city and when I am there all I want is to get back into the cave.

Marco Casagrande

Chamber of the Post Urbanist 104
C-Laboratory

* Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross, Frank Chen, Nikita Wu.
Taipei MoCA - Museum of Contemporary Art 2005

LINK

Last Socialist

2007-10-17T22:51:00.001-07:00

Build now. Talk abaut the design later.

In the morning at 1:47 a.m, 9/21, 1999, Taiwan suffered from a major earthquake. The epicenter was located in Jip-Jip, Nan-Tou County in the middle of Taiwan - the region where many of the aboriginal tribes have withdrawn from the dominating Han Chinese.

Where as the farming and urban Han received disaster relief from the central government much of the aboriginals were left outside the rehabilitation activities.

Since year 2000 Hsieh Ying-Chun has been activating, training and employing the social outcast aboriginals to form teams of construction workers to regenerate their original societies outside the damaging cities. The aboriginal tribesmen are building their own houses and their own villages. The materials and building methods used are highly cost effective and ecological.

Hsieih is the last socialist in the Republic of China.

E-mail from Hsieh 13.5.2006 18:44:

Tian-Huw tribe resettlement will move in recently. The collaborative construction team set up in December, 2000. Most of the members are unemployed, handicapped or alcoholic aboriginal young people. However, they build more than 300 houses until now.

Hsieh Ying Chun

Last Socialist

2007-10-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

In the morning at 1:47 a.m, 9/21, 1999, Taiwan suffered from a major earthquake. The epicenter was located in Jip-Jip, Nan-Tou County in the middle of Taiwan - the region where many of the aboriginal tribes have withdrawn from the dominating Han Chinese.

Where as the farming and urban Han received disaster relief from the central government much of the aboriginals were left outside the rehabilitation activities.

Since year 2000 Hsieh Ying-Chun has been activating, training and employing the social outcast aboriginals to form teams of construction workers to regenerate their original societies outside the damaging cities. The aboriginal tribesmen are building their own houses and their own villages. The materials and building methods used are highly cost effective and ecological.

Hsieih is the last socialist in the Republic of China.

E-mail from Hsieh 13.5.2006 18:44:

Tian-Huw tribe resettlement will move in recently. The collaborative construction team set up in December, 2000. Most of the members are unemployed, handicapped or alcoholic aboriginal young people. However, they build more than 300 houses until now.

Hsieh Ying Chun

Martin Seljeflåd

2007-10-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

This used to be a naked landscape, until the government decided to plant the Canadian Sitka-fur trees for wood production purposes. They spread out all over the island and nobody can do anything about it, because there are no more farm animals to eat the vegetation and keep down the growth. I make a living out of the way this landscape looks, so I am cutting down as many trees as I can, trying to slow the forestation.

Martin Seljeflåd
Lanscape painter, language teacher for refugees, and landscape -janitor
Interviewed by 3R-W Architects, Norway for Venice Biennale 2006

Most Human Place

2007-10-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

What is the most human place you can think of?
Christian Edlinger, arch. student, Weimar / Jollas, Helsinki!

* Underground stations with the smell of fresh pancakes and cinnamon rolls
* Castles collected and put align to form streets
* Bricolage cafes in orange tents
* The scent of burnt birch wood in the air
* Views leading outsidet
* Whole night buss sings "In excelsis deo" at 2 a.m.
* Street musicians, fried potatoes and masses of people in the streets at 3 a.m., in -15C
* Summer sun
* The glorious amount of silent joy in the people
* Spring comes late, but then!

Cover of the Human - free newspaper for the London Architecture Biennale 2004, C-Laboratory.

Chain Reactor

2007-10-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Architectonic installation for the 3rd Biennale of Montreal, Canada, 2002.

6 x6 x 6 metres cubic steel frame supporting walls of steel chain in the heart of the Montreal information technology area in the Old City.

Inside the structure is a qhite gravel floor in the middle of which 4 benches and a fireplace out of stone.

People enter to gather around the fire and return to their offices with the smell of smoke in their clothes.

Casagrande & Rintala

Real Reality

2007-10-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

The hacking rhythm of life with no space to see the horizon, no supporting values to look for the horizon.

Consuming without questioning and destroying nature which cannot be seen around and so making all this easier. Nature being a loser in economical speculation.

Globalization is concrete in the means of pollution. Economic speculations are fictive. Streams of material are close to reality. Pollution is reality. The responsibility of environmental design is lost to fictive economic speculations with no connection to real reality. Surroundings shaped by no real values will destroy us. Design has replaced reality.

A bear has hair because it is hairy and not because somebody has decided so.

Urbanism is turning into the designing of objects, city planning inhuman. A modern metropolis brings a new perspective to the urban development. Responding to the new urbanism with its chaotic, unpredictable energies and hidden orders – this energy (qi) is the start of a new era. The underground of real reality has to surface.

The city cannot be treated as a camp for a fixed amount of legionaries. Instead of design we need psychoanalysis. The hectic rhythm of life and dominance of economics is reflected in the cityscape, causing bad environments, ecological problems and the illusion of stress. The illusion of stress is the atmosphere in which pollution and prostitution is created. This atmosphere of temporariness provides an excuse not to consider the future. Horizon is of no social value.

A city is organic and the human layers are everywhere in small scale. To save the city this must be scaled up and the structure of Urban Acupuncture must be introduced. It will be easy. People know, what is good, the real reality. All human existence should be in connection with the eternity, nature.

- See the video

Thinking of the real reality, looking at the horizon is mysticism – being in contact with the realities that are behind the reality that we see. Mysticism also applies to modern man: Old people are not shot as they should be according to laws of economics. People sense it is not kind to kill the old people and kindness is real reality. Kindness is just kindness, concrete. Real reality cannot be financially speculated, or otherwise – it is concrete.

We should not be blindfolded by stress, the realm of economics, the online access to entertainment and information. What is real is valuable. City must find a way to be connected to real things, not destructive things or design as entertainment. What is not real is not valuable.

Horizon needs space to be seen, time is not money. One has to have the possibility of being taken from this place and time 1000 years back to see, things are the same. Forcing oneself out of this time and place and going medieval let us go from the illusion of today. It is the social responsibility of artists and architects to look for the future, to be sensitive enough to see the reality and show the horizon. The power of environmental design, such as urban planning, has to be taken away from material speculations. Nowadays architecture and art is traumatized by economics, entertainment, shock values and other external influences.

Ethical awakening in connection with nature should be religious. A city can find its inner peace by admitting her mortality. We must find a strong sense of layers of reality other than material. If so, death is a beautiful end to begin a new life. But if we are stressed by running after money and material, stress for stress’ sake, death is a defeat, bankruptcy.

Economic surroundings do not lend themselves to kindness. Without kindness there will be no positive results.

City has grown hard and dead with temporary masses, thinking cities as microchips, replacing components with more effective ones. Human layers are not valued, the connection between the modern man and nature does not fit into the context of the urban amusement park.

Urban Acupuncture is trying to find new methods to understand the organic city and its energies, it is trying to bring in the reality of nature to the city, with its rhythms, mental space and values. Nature’s flexibility and capacity to adapt to new situations or to die and by dying fertilize ground for better solutions. Nature works in all scales from mega structure to one cell as one. Man is part of nature.

Real reality, values and ethics are always finding a way to push back. They are like the air around us, we notice it when we are running out of it. New air always comes in – the corners are windy. Today’s void in a valueless society will be filled with ethics. People are good deep down in the end – that reality is now depressed by material nonsense.

The thinking of Real Reality is partly inspired by conversations with professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Helsinki University department of Arabic studies.

Installation 1:2001

2007-10-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

The installation 1:2001 is a circular wall of religious, ideological and philosophical books from all over the world. The diameter of the circle is 6,37 metres (diameter of Earth 1:2001000 according to Neil Heimler's Principles of Science) adn the height of the wall is 6,37:2. The books are used as bricks, title-backs outwards.

There will be one entrance to the interior of the installation, which will be a white wall to the contrast of the various title-backs seen on the outside. The viewer inside the installtion will be in focus.

Casagrande & Rintala
Architectural installation for the Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea di Firenze

LINK

Urban Farmer

2007-10-15T03:18:00.001-07:00

by 3RW

- These cows are eating the landscape, producing menure to fetilize it again, and then producing milk and meat. The only real input in the cycle is sunlight in theory. The complications come when society is trying to make the processes more predictable and efficient by introducing artificial components like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and drugs.

Energy Towers in Venice

2007-10-15T03:13:00.000-07:00

by Vilen Künnapu

The energy of the city is at the moment like the energy of the drowning city. For the stimulation of the tired energy we propose a tower into the Venice bay. It is located on the axis of the San Giorgio Maggiore church, and it symbolizes the erected phallus of Shiva. The energy tower is 18 m high and it is covered with the golden metal plates. The other marble stupa (height 4,5 m) is located on the Piazza Di San Marco. We also propose some smaller towers in the piazzas of Venice.

Made in Taiwan

2007-10-15T03:09:00.000-07:00

The proposed TV-documentary is aiming to put Taiwan physically to the world map on the eyes of both Taiwanese and international viewers through an interesting, even absurd land journey by car from Taiwan to Venice Italy. The journey and the documentary is a modern day Marco Polo tale told by an outsider who has got the chance to enjoy the hospitality of a hidden and mysterious culture of the East. Fo the international audience it is interesting to watch Taiwan getting introduced by an outsider and being physically connected to the rest of the world by the journey. For the Taiwanese audience it is interesting to follow how Taiwan is introduced to the rest of the world by an outsider and how Taiwan is physically situated in connection to the rest of the Eurasia.

Instant Taipei

2007-10-15T02:58:00.000-07:00

CITY MUST BE A COMPOST

The Instant Taipei proposal is an organic construction matrix celebrating the original nature of the Taiwanese citizens using the city as an open living room. The desing is inspired by the straight forward humanistic ad-hoc architectural interventions realized by the Taiwanese citizens as the human layer on top of the official city. The Instant Taipei aims to give a face for the independent Taiwanese will of light weight and nomadic structures that form the unofficial identity of Taipei.

The Instant Taipei is a three dimensional collage of Taiwan. The open form and easily modified structure will be given for the citizens as a three dimensional park or public space as a platform for their various public-private activities to take place. The proposed design is at the same time a construction site and a ruin trusting that the city must be a compost.

The construction site - ruin axis gives the Instant Taipei proposal the needed possibility to meet the socio - ecological state of the Taiwanese cities of today in their post industrial condition and to work as an urban laboratory in finding a new balance between the modern man and nature. New cultivated and wild urban nature is introduced backed up with localzed high environmental technology (Mechanical Biological Treatment).

Nothing has been removed from the competition area and nothing heavy has been introduced but instead a new layer has been added overlapping the existing urban context - a human layer. This can be viewed as urban acupuncture reacting on the hidden energy flows (Chi) of Taipei. The acupuncture point is the Wanhua 406 competition site and the acupuncture needle is the Instant Taipei -design. This is a light weight touch on the city organism of Taipei but will effect on a constructive and positive way on the total common subconscious Chi of the city.

Tamkang University Department of Architecture

2007-10-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

Since 1964.

The undergraduate was established in 1964; the graduate was established in 1981. At present, tht graduate is divided into Architectural and Urban Design section, Architectural and Urban Theories section, and Architectural skill section. We integrate four teaching and research direction, including architectural theories and histories, area culture, green architecture, and computer media and new forms. We aim at the development of professional environment and cooperate teachers' research directions.

Department of Architecture Tamkang University
151 Ying-chuan Rd., Tamsui Taipei 25137 Taiwan, R.O.C.
TEL: (02)2621-5656#2610
FAX: (02)2623-5579

Can't Push a River

2007-10-15T02:47:00.000-07:00

Tamkang University Department of Architecture student working with his CityZen Garden by the Danshui River of Taipei Taiwan.

International Workshop for Tamkang University, Taiwan

200 students and 20 professors designing and building CityZen Gardens by the Danshui River of Taipei commenting on the Taiwanese society. Workshop run by professors Marco Casagrande / C-LAB and Haakon Rasmussen-Wiesener / 3RW.

Zen Garden in an abandoned bathtub. The garden would change with every tide.

Taiwan is in many ways the wealthiest country on the Asia Pacific excluded Japan and is facing now the heritage of the last 50 years of hyper industrialization. The heavy industry is moving away and it is time to clean the island.

"One of these days these streets are goin to get organized." -Taxidriver

LINK

S.L.U.M.

2007-10-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

C-Laboratory: S.L.U.M.

S.L.U.M. stands for Sustainable Living Urbanism Mumbai and is an urban planning strategy of Finland based architect team C-Laboratory to naturally restore the polluted Oshiwara River in Mumbai and its surrounding slum communities. The plan views the Oshiwara chain of slums vital energy-points of "urban acupuncture" treating the surrounding city by recycling its waste and producing in exchange organic (buffalo milk and dung, vegetables) and industrial goods. C-Laboratory proposes the developing of the slums into a chain of urban farming communities with heavy impact of modern environmental technology to deal with the growing environmental problems of the Mumbai City.
- Freebase

---

Urban ecological rehabilitation plan for Mumbai City. Oshiwara river valley chain of slums as a case study for urban waste treatment based on the existing fact of the slums as garbage recycling platforms. Modern environmental technology units introduced to the slum communities to control environmental pollution and encouraging towards ecologically sustainable urban living including community farms and bio energy production.

Today the illegal slums treat the urban waste flow from the surrounding city. This may sound ecological but is in fact killing people in the slums due to the forced use of chemicals and inhuman working conditions in general . The slums are situated around river beds. Hazardous means of recycling, illegal factories and overdeveloping results damagingly to the river ecosystems and the rivers can no longer act a the monsoon flood water relief channels causing to annual floods in Mumbai with high death ratios.

The results of the Oshiwara case study are aimed to be multiplied to the other urban slum areas in Mumbai and other Indian cities. Today the slums are the end of the line of urban human exploitation.

Slums are ruining Mumbai. Ruin is when man-made has become part of nature. Slums are the hope of Mumbai. The Third Generation Mumbai will grow from the Slums. They are the compost of the city, the most fertile top-soil.
- Marco Casagrande

S.L.U.M.
Sustainable Living Urbanism Mumbai
Urban Flashes Mumbai - India 2006
Marco Casagrande & C-Laboratory in co-operation with Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Human Environment Group and Tamkang University Department of Architecture.

Flesh is More

2007-10-15T02:12:00.000-07:00

Nonsense - makes no sense. Can be good to start straight with this, really not trying to do anything. No layers, no aesthetics, no method - no idea. Anyway through serious nonsense you arrive somewhere, relaxed in an accident. God's fool style a jester mocking the king and the church and all the time they find him to be a reasonable man.

So everyboty has now his or her's personal magical item with you. You throw it now to the tunnel. Then you go to the tunnel, and listen to the snorkel.

Fish is real.

Listen to the Snorkel?

A way of living in straight connection with nature and depending on people around you requires some weakness.

- What really happened to Porcupine?
- I don't know. I guess the Zone got to him. One day he returned from the Zone and suddenly got amazingly rich, amazingly rich. Then the next week he hanged himself.

The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.

Exfiltrate the house of lie and come back to the construction site of eternity.

Tremendous sexual drive and a big ego - brains don't mean a shit.

Yes I agree that it is good for you to fight for revolution, but be aware when you think that you know what the revolution is.

- I for one stand steady with my two feet on the ground.
- You are standing on the roof of the worm.

Without his uniforms man is just a common ape.

- Do you believe in the dictatorship of sensitivity?
- It is purely impossible. Yes.

Choose glamour.

Who Cares Wins.

A possibility is post industrial meditation.

When the modern man looses his connection to the nature, he will die.

- What is the key of art?
- To be present.

When a man is born, he is perfect. In children's play the intensity of being present is total. Nothing compromises the narrative flow of the play. Everybody improvizes relaxed and are connected to cubconscious levels. Then the world gets to us and we start forgetting this. To get the primeval purity into the design process, we must forget the forgetting.

The transformation is almost complete.

Here we are at the threshold. This is the most important moment of your lives. You have to know that here your most cherished wish will come true. The most sincere one. The one reached through suffering.

A bear has hair because it is hairy and not because somebody has decided so.

The economic surrounding don't support kindness. Without kindness there will be no positive results.

Exfiltrate the house of lie and come back to the construction site of eternity.

And that, that is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.

The artist seeks to destroy the stability by which society lives, for the sake of drawing closer to the ideal. Society seeks stability, the artist, infinity.

In today's world it is like this: if you think positive things, good things will happen. If you think negative things, nothing good will happen.

Nature is just a reflection of god. Of course a man can mirror himself on this.

Dream is the sister of death.

The Snorkel. They say he is a child with gray hair, a grandfather with milkteeth.

Real reality is a value that can not be speculated - it is total. Like kindness is just kindness and nothing else - it is total. You can not value kindness by economical or political speculations.

Sinners following their instincts closer to the beat, closer to the origins of MTV and Nokia. To surroundings no longer in connection with nature.

One has to take the liberty to take oneself one thousand years back to realize that the things are the same.

This is this, and this ain's something else, but this is this.

We must find a strong sense of other layers of reality than material. If so, death is a beautiful end to begin a new life. But if we are stressed by running after money and materia, stress for stress' sake, death is a defeat, bankrupcy.

Car Park

2007-10-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

Post urban installation for Sensoria Design Symposium in Melbourne Australia 2004. Mitsubishi car and vegetation. C-Laboratory in co-operation with Royal Melbourne institute of Technology RMIT Deparment of Architecture.

A Mitsubishi car out of duty converted into a park. A classic agitation of the Anarchist Gardener. In Australia the car is painted white to meet the requirements of a Driveabout. Driver's seat is open. People loved the park.

Car Park with sprouce is from Tallinn.

Sakura Iso

2007-10-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

Please find the attached photos. These are the devices to take energy and water from outside not rely on infrastructure. One is attached wind mil and generator and water tank. Another is take the rain water and pump into the house and grow sprout. It may be usefull at state of emergency.

What I want to do is to make cirquit. Cirquit is not only accumulation of the material, it is something more. I am searching for something more in the system and I want to take something it is our of control in the system.

Next I will make sound generator connecting with natural phenomena.
Iso Nainen

Sakura Iso is a Japanese installation artist and curator interested in tuning and survival.

Obihiro Walking Street

2007-10-15T01:51:00.000-07:00

FORGET THE FORGETTING

The small town of Obihiro (maybe some 200.000 people) in Hokkaido contacted me and Sami and asked us to run a workshop for the city architects and urban planners. The Obihiro people had been complaining that the city is boring, that the architects and urban planners had done a poor work. When you say things like this in Japan, they take it seriously.

Obihiro instant village.

We flew to Obihiro and said that the conditions are such that you must take your children to a gym and there will be some basic materials like cardboard and paint. In the gym we told the children that now you are the architects and your mothers and fathers are just cheap labor. You tell them how to make a good house and they will do exactly how you say. The only condition for the house is that a child must fit in.

Say hello to my little friend.

The houses got done. We took the children inside the carboard houses to a walk into the city as a walking street. People liked. Sometimes the children needed to take a ret and an instant village took place. It was good to see the organizing of the urbanism based on that the grocery store has to gossip with the church or alike. The children maybe had patience to stay put for 3 minutes and then the grocery store would move to another location to talk with somebody else. All of this was documented carefully by the Japanese.

One of these day these streets are gonna get organized.

In the picturee you see a child's house. There is even smoke coming out of the chimney. The house behind him is done by his father. It is interesting to think that you can draw a line between these two houses and during this line a lot seems to happen. Something that we call education of growing up. Anyway, when you see the child's house, we seem to forget a lot. Real architecture is to forget the forgetting.

Imperialism of Pollution

2007-10-15T01:50:00.000-07:00

Time again for Revolution. Class struggle and imperialism are still here, Soviet Union went down. The Big Oil is here. Before the men were killed by death, now we just fade away. The enemy is grey. Chemical warfare, World War 1 style. Silent, but massive. The final solution.

Map of the World. Marco Casagrande, 2008.

Who can afford not to pollute their own land will buy the pollution to go abroad. China is a good place to pollute. The goods come back in time. People can still die in masses Mao style to fuel the industry. Metropolis, Moloch, money for the few. Locked behind the Himalayas and the Gobi. Nobody knows. They all know the money of course.

Falling Leaf. Marco Casagrande, 2007.

So the three headed dragon eats it all away. USA, China and Russia. Russia though barely surviving to the others. But China and US, yes the mad twins. One has to obey, China doesn’t need to, but the others. Russia survives somehow. Capitalism is gone, industrialism is gone, now the Nazi Pollution.

Pollutionsraum. They even took away the 80’s. Now it’s just grey. Straight forward war. Good time to occupy the moon.

Banyan Domination. Marco Casagrande, 2007.

Who will win – China or USA? If China produces and US consumes, China will win. But the US is in China already and the Chinese have been in US forever. Is it the fusion then – the Pacific King Kong thing? China and America being one? Now you can go, where people are one.

Sanjhih. Marco Casagrande, 2007.

Maybe Africa will survive, because it is so goddamn poor and not interesting. The diamond deal will fade away some day anyway and then it’s just the shit huts again. Osama Bin Laden in Sudan bottling water and thinking of chewing gums, cooking up some explosives and feeling eunuch, because he knows he can’t win. Maybe he can win Africa? Good people around him. Muammar Gaddafi, the Jews. They need him. The rest don’t give a shit. It only makes us stronger if he blows up things in Mid-West. And he knows it. Poor bastard.

Part of Nature. Marco Casagrande, 2007.

Europe, who the hell knows? We can consume all right. Maybe it will go just fine. Yes, but the new world order. The pollution will sort out the population problem in Asia. No more war needed, or maybe they can have some wars. China has land enough; I guess places to breathe too. And the one son policy bringing up the chosen generation of bullies who have had it all. And will. The masses, they will carry the family’s only son back to the forbidden city, the Club of the Sons. Taiwan being quite wealthy in the neighbor, but can unfortunately drown in its own shit. Anyway being the laboratory of the China-American new way.

What’s all this about the new way? No more mocking on China. And where is the money? Give it to us. We need it to save you from yourself.

Kääpä.

And the Russians. Behind their cold as always. Waiting for the shit to hit the fan and then relax big time and flourish. Maybe they will buy America – the China-American Czar. Fucking hell. He is the chosen one.

Alang

2007-10-14T22:51:00.001-07:00

Alang in the Gujarat state of India by the Arabian Sea is the biggest ship wrecking center of the World. Ships from all over the world end up here and will be beached during the full moon when the tide is the highest. Up to 40.000 men break the ships and recycle everything. The main engines will power factories and the smaller engines pump water in the Indian farms.

- See the video Alang Ship Recycling Street

Ropes, cargo nets, bolts, electricity installations, cables, books, uniforms, kitchen ware, kitchens, washing machines, gym equipment, windows, mirrors, asbestos, sheet metal, life vests, life boats, furniture, light bolts, lamps, log books, soap, radios, manuals, pipes, toilet seats, doors, wall paneling and everything else from the ships are sold on a 10 km long road strting from Alang.

The neighboring city Bhavnagar has a constant ship scrap market for further repairing and recycling of ball bearings, engines etc.

- See the video Bhavnagar Ship Scrap Market

The 40.000 men in Alang come from the poorest areas of India and are locked into the beach and work and live in extremely bad conditions. Every day a man dies from a working accident. Estimated 25% will get cancer from asbestos or other hazardous waste. There is no women allowed in Alang and the AIDS rate is the highest in India. Nobody smiles in Alang beach. The smiling starts after the closed gates.

- See the video Bhavnagar Ship Scrap Street After Dark

Potemkin

2007-10-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

POTEMKIN - park for post industrial meditation. Drawing Marco Casagrande.

A permanent park for post industrial meditation in Kuramata village, Japan. Commissioned by Echigo-Tsumari Contemporary Art Triennial 2003. A cultivated junk yard as a mixture of a temple and machine. Big industrial park including in and outdoor spaces constructed out of 1 inch thick Kawasaki steel plates, 130 m long, 12 m wide, 5 m high. Other materials used: white gravel, Kama River bottom stones, crushed concrete, crushed glass, wood, volcanic saand, concrete, asphalt.

The park is situated castle like looking over the Kuramata rice fields and Kamagawa River. Potemkin is blessed and spirituously connected to one of the oldest Shinto shrines in Japan.

The working group was put together with operators from Alaska, Norway, England, Japan, Finland and France.

Casagrande & Rintala
Kuramata village, Nijgata province, Japan 2003
Echigo Tsumari Contemporary Art Triennial
Photos: Dean Carman

Drive Out Cinema

2007-10-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

A van remodeled into a base unit of an ad hoc movie machine. It carries a cinema projector, computer, loudspeakers, beer and hot tea. In the back you will find as well a collection of movies (Stalker, Metropolis, Taxi Driver, Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now!...) and 20 folding chairs.

Driving around the city, looking for empty walls to project and then start with the show immediately.

Floating Sauna

2007-10-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

Constructed in 2002 for the community of Rosendal, Norway the sauna in the Hardangerfjord seves as a democratic centerpoint of the village.

One comes to the public sauna swimming or with a rowing boat, takes off the clothes and enters the bath. The floor is open to the sea, making it possible to have a dip inside the sauna.

The walls are semi-transparent and pulsating according to the steam raising up from the water thrown to the hot stones. All the village can see when the things are cooking.

Norwegians are the masters of boat building, they are the original Vikings, and Finns can not live without a sauna. The Floating Sauna is a happy marriage between the Finnish and Norwegian cultures.

Casagrande & Rintala with Västlands Kunstakademiet

Floating Sauna - drawing by Marco Casagrande.

Sixty Minute Man

2007-10-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Venice Biennale 2000
Casagrande & Rintala

The 60 Minute Man was a temporary collage of biological and industrial streams of waste produced by society.

The barge was found out of duty and filled with mud and dirt in the port of Chioggia in the Laguna of Venice. We took the ship ashore and made it water proof again. Some cuttings was done into the central axis in order to create a series of interior spaces.

- See the video

We also tracked down where the digested sludge goes out of Venice - what happens when you flush a toilet. All the material gets collected into one point and then treated by Dottore Codato. We asked him how much Venice produces human waste annually and then took the number down to 60 minutes worth fo the material which we biologically cleaned and composted and then took into our boat as the topsoil for a small forest of oaks.

The compost was covered with a layer of white stones from the Alpine rivers so that the people wouldn't know on what they are actually standing.

In the last room there is a marble stone on which is carved: "This park has been planted on sixty minutes worth of human waste produced by the city of Venice."

The installation was created on the special request of the director of the Biennale architect Massimilliano Fuksas to comment on the theme of the special exhibition Citta Less Aesthetics More Etchics and was nominated as the best realized project of the Biennale 2000 by Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times.

- Video

Post Industrial Fleet

2007-10-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

The Post Industrial Fleet introduces recycling strategies for industrial ships and barges out of duty.

Post Industrial Fleet by CREW*31 in the Venice Architecture Biennale 2004.

Today most of the ships find the end of the line in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh and are demolished under inhuman working conditions and cost of serious local and global pollution. PIF recycles these ships in their countries of origin as fixed platforms for urban waste treatment with in vessel machinery, community spaces and 3D villages. In Denmark alone 31 of its 100 harbor towns are closing down the harbor activities due to centralized mega harbors. PIF reactivates the harbor fronts with water as the new democratic layer of the city. The PIF designs can be applied globally.

Bio-Ship containing urban environmental technology to be plugged into any harbor city.

Without his ships man is just a common ape.

CREW*31
Commissioned by Danish Arts Foundation's Architecture Committee, Denmark

- Venice Biennale 2004

- Taiwan Design Expo 2005

Rebecca Arthy

Christina Sofia Capetillo

Marco Casagrande

Dan Cornelius

Susanne Lund Jensen

Kristine Jensen

Sten Bisgaard Jensen

Lea Andersen

Elina M. Braunstein

Sofie Palm

Martin Metalgod Ross

SEE: ARCHITIZER

Shelter

2007-10-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

Independent teaching makes a big part of our operations. Many of the works are done with students. Teaching moves in between architecture, urban planning, environmental planning, environmental art and other disciplines of art and science.

Tamkang University Department of Architecture, Taiwan
Helsinki University of Arts and Design, Finland
Helsinki University of Technology Department of Architecture, Finland
Open University, Finland
Oulu University Department of Architecture, Finland
Bergen School of Architecture, Norway
Bergen Art Academy, Norway
Oslo Architecture University, Norway
Trondheim University of Technology, Norway
Yokohama National University, Japan
Musashino Art University, Japan
Tokyo University Tadao Ando Laboratory, Japan
Sapporo Art University, Japan
Estonian Art Academy, Estonia
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Puerto Rico Ploytechnic New School of Architecture, Puerto Rico
Metropolitan University, UK
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne Department of Architecture, UK
Sheffield University Department of Architecture, UK
University of Manitoba Department of Architecture, Canada
University of Waterloo Department of Architecture, Canada
University of Regina Department of Fine Arts, Canada
University of Calgary Department of Environmental Sciences, Canada
Alaska University Art Department, USA
Washington University Department of Architecture, USA
Chinese Culture University, Taiwan
National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Shih Chien University Department of Architecture, Taiwan
Taipei National University of Technogoly, Taiwan
Tunghai University Department of Architecture, Taiwan
Royal Danish Art Academy Department of Architecture, Denmark
Royan Melbourne Institure of Technology, Australia
Kamla Raheja Institute of Architecture, India

Redrum

2007-10-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Rerdum! Redrum! Drawing Marco Casagrande.

We were invited to Anchorage in February 2003 by Alaska Design Forum and decided to drive there by car. We shipped a Land Rover Defender from Helsinki to Halifax Nova Scotia in the Atlantic coast of Canada and drove it to Anchorage across the frozen North America. The Alaska Highway is surrounded by broken trucks, oil tanks and occasional moose. the closer to Alaska you get the more oil related junk there is in the nature.

Inspired by this and the Alaskan oil industry in general we decided to build a temple for oil in the middle of Anchorage. The material is recycled Alaska Railroad oil tanks cut to sections and set standing to frame away the city and open to sky. The floor is out of 7.000 pounds of oyster shells, the origin of oil. The brutal structure is painted bright red inside and has a fireplace in the end.

There was a vote in the local TV: "Is this a piece of fine art of a slap against the face of Alaska?" Fine arts lost. People were complaining that the temple smelled like oil.

Casagrande & Rintala 2003
Alaska Design Form
Anchorage Alaska
Link

Architizer
Wikipedia

Let Everything Come True

2007-10-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

from Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979 Mosfilm)

Let everything that has been planned become true.

Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy but just the friction between their souls and the outside world.

And most important: let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because:

weakness is a great thing and strength is nothing.

When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it is tender and pliant, but then it is dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

Public Attic

2007-10-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Architectonic installation for the Helsinki Festival 2004.

Wooden public attic construction on legs facing the Parliament of Finland in Helsinki.

C-Laboratory task force: Christian Edlinger, Daniel Guishard, Dirk Schultz, Tuomas Makkonen.

During the Helsinki Festival the citizens were offered a public attic space for recycling objects, drink tea and talk. The material for the attic was collected from left over wood from different construction sites around Helsinki.

Like the attic is the memory and subconscious of the house we need to build up urban public attics to reinforce the common psyche and give the urban subconscious platforms to take form. The urban attics are offering a possibility to meet human time.

Attics are places to store things. The objects on attic have fine qualities of meaning and story. Walkabout in other people's heads. The attic space is not fixed to the present moment but floats in time being a space where memories and subconscious can be met mixing architecture and poetry. On this level every human being can be touched. A personal story might get evoked inside every one entering the attic - this is human architecture and this we must bring to city.

These structures are not at ground level, they are above it. It is necessary to climb up a set of stairs or a ladder in order to access them. Like emotional memories are stored upstairs in the brain. Memory is rarely, if ever, perfect. The objects on the attic might get changed by the time becoming distorted or no longer being what was the truth then. The truth now is a memory that you had which has been manipulated by every second of your life experience.

The story is alive in us. We need to scale this up into urban planning with the same human accidental quality of truth.

Treasure Hill

2007-10-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

I became the cleaner man in Treasure Hill. There was no garbage bins and the small snaking allies were full of filth. The people were hiding behind their windows but I saw that they were old. In the foot of the hill some three stories of houses had been demolished, bulldozed away and instead of the houses there was green grass. A lawn instead of a settlement because officially now this was a park zone. For nature lawn is the same as concentration camp. It is nothing. It produces a shameful amount of oxygen and is merely the roof of a worm.

Missis Chen - the matriarchal leader of Treasure Hill community of urban farmers.

And these people had been living there for some 50 years and these people were gardeners, I saw the fragments everywhere – village people, growing their own food. City had stepped in and the village people had to go. Same old story.

Tresure Hill badge worn by the urban restoration taskforce C-Laboratory, mainly consisting of volunteers and architecture students from Tamkang and National Taiwan universities.

So I became the cleaner man. The first day the people were hiding and I started to clean and transport trash from their streets down of the hill to be picked up. The next day the same. On the third day there were already some buckets waiting for me and on the fourth day the people were cleaning themselves too. Together with me was also an increasing amount of architecture students from Tamkang University and National Taiwan University.

Soon the little settlement of Treasure Hill was cleaned from the garbage and I started to build up stairs to connect the remained stairways of the torn down houses. By that time Treasure Hill was a dead end and I needed to create a loop for circular movement.

The upper part of the staircase system linking together the existing steps in the ruins of the demolished houses.

In the end of 3 weeks I had 200 students working with me and architect Shieih Yin-Jun had come down from the mountains too.

With Shieih every morning we met and agreed who builds where. I don’t know what language we spoke. In the end the steps were built and even a small parade took place. Treasure Hill could stay and the bulldozing was stopped. In the place of the lawn where once the houses had stood was now a vegetable garden, food and the inhabitants were eager to cultivate the land.

City learned to appreciate this small sustainable settlement – a small urban poem. It helped that the poet Liao was in the charge of the Department of the Cultural Affairs.
Restored vegetable garden, bamboo shade and steps.

Treasure Hill was important for me maybe because I felt that the place was so real and the city around it was so fictive. So many external powers in the city dominating the humanistic energy and in Treasure Hill none.

On the other hand a fire-place in a ruin; on the other hand a high-way bridge above a polluted river.

Now after a couple of years I am happy to see that Treasure Hill still survives. I survived the heat and the construction process partly due Missis Chen, the matriarch of the settlement, who gave me Chinese medicines and feed me fish and a lot of beer.

The gardening is going well of course, since these people know what to do if given a chance.

There is still a lot of lawn, a useless layer of artificial nature which should be a garden too. It is good that the city is injecting new energy to the place by some artists working there but I also felt the danger of the real settlement becoming a background for art pieces. Now when I go there most of the junk laying around the mango trees and water streams are from art works – light stands, posters, pieces or worthless installations etc. If art becomes the junk of Treasure Hill, what is that? People don't have to exploit Treasure Hill or use it for anything, people should just appreciate it. What comes to art or action in a place like Treasure Hill – build another one. Build a new Treasure Hill, the Ultra Village in the hearts of Taipei.

link: ORGANIC LAYER

Letter from Tallinn Prison

2007-10-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

by Andrus Elbing

The court, the law,
the lawyers, the roll,
guilty of the judge,
no on parole.
The convoy, the cops,
the bars, the locks,
the prison, the blocs,
they hold,
my physical body in the
concrete box.

The gangs, the shots,
the gunmans from the east
and western blocks.
the robbers, the killers,
the smugglers, the dealers,
the troubles, thrillers,
the illusion bubbles,
for the moms and children.
The drugs, the speed,
the crack, the weed,
the management sowed
here,
hatefulness seed.

The killing, the fighting,
the beating, the knifing,
the hypocrite snake biting,
of god, you see that shit,
but you aint listening.

The snitchers, the rats,
the workers, the plants,
torpedos, the tanks,
you want some drugs,
no thanks.
The thiefs,
the housebreakers,
the burglars, the rakers,
the lovers, the haters,
the system is
totally faithless.
The tuberculosis, HIV,
the AIDS, all STDs.
The guard, the business,
the bribe, the greediness,
money talks,
all other things is nonsense,
but hey,
were is the bitches.
The fags, the suckers,
the perverts, the fuckers,
the system has,
many skeletons
in the lockers.
The darkness, but I see,
the silence, but I hear,
no air, but I breathe,
no life, but I live,
no god,
but I still believe...

Anarchist Gardener

2007-10-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

Anarchist Gardener is planting fragments of a new layer into the urban context of San Juan - a human layer. He takes distance to self infected stress and dominance of invented powers not based on human reality which are destroying the ecological balance and health of modern man. Anarchist Gardener is working the city towards kindness.

Anarchist Gardener belives that the people are good in the end. Kindness and other real values of ethics will always find a way to push back. Like the air around us, we notice it when it gets polluted, when we run out of it. New air always comes in - the corners are windy. Anarchist Gardener works to fill the void in today´s valueless society with ethics. The real reality of kindness is now depressed by material nonsense. Who Cares Wins.

12 industrial Zen gardens. (2,5 x 5 metres) done in real time on site during the religious parade of the Anarchist Gardener.

CityZen Train plan for urban tramway and light rail network in Bayamon and Hato Rei, San Juan.

Organized by PR'01 En Ruta M+M Proyectos. Curated by Paula Toppila for Open Marks.

FUTURE PAVILLIUM

2007-10-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Ti-Nan Chi's Micro Urbanism in the Future Pavillion.

Taiwan Design Expo 2005

Cover of the free newspaper PePo, edited by Nikita Wu.

The Future Pavilion was realized in an abandoned classical cross shaped energy center construction with a central tower originally designed for the Japanese army for washing clothes, men and horses. The cross shaped horizontal axises meet a strong vertical axis in the centre of the building in the focus of which is a deep well for fresh water. The place is situated in Kaoshioung, South-Taiwan.

Marco Casagrande's drawing of the Future Pavillion with its four wings: Ocean, Urban Acupunture, Urban Nomad and Organic Layer.

After the Japanese Army the building had been used by the Taiwanese army but later on was abandoned due to strong rumors of Ghosts. When I first found the building it was due to be demolished. The building itself had been pretty much castrated during the Taiwanese rule: the axises were blocked by walls, the windows were nailed shut with plywood and the whole building was filled with military garbage.

Future Pavillion interior. One of these days this war is going to end.

Before inviting the participating artists and architects to the building the axises and the windows were opened again and an additional set of entry openings were knocked into the outer walls of each of the four wings. These openings were later on used to create a circular perimeter leading the visitors around the building from wing to wing. The building was cleaned of trash leaving us with a very respectable piece of architecture filled with memories and archaic qualities of space, material and light. The whole building is designed for a scale of a man + horse. One can ride through the axises. The Future Pavilion was designed by architect Marco Casagrande and the exhibition curated by Casagrande and Nikita Wu in co-operation with architect Roan Chin-Yueh.

PARTICIPANTS AND WORKS (A SELECTION)

Each of the four wings carried one theme to look for future: Urban Nomad, Ocean, Urban Acupuncture and Organic Layer. The central tower was received for a Japanese installation artist Sakura Iso. In the wings the participants were free to use the smaller rooms and the central corridor. The graphic prints were laminated on acrylic and placed into the window openings.

URBAN NOMAD

Taiwanese photographer Yeh Wei-Li’s five photo series ”Emperor Go Moves to City” confused the people. The painting of Emperor Go is a standard issue in every Taiwanese garrison and this historical character is also canonized to be a God. The Emperor wanted to win back his lost empire as the Kuomingtang party officially wanted to win back the Mainland China after being kicked out to the island of Taiwan by the communist army in the end of the 40’s. The photographer had found the portrait of Emperor Go amongst the garbage in the Future pavilion before its cleaning and then moved the painting into his city flat in the capital city Taipei and had documented the whole process. Witnessing the great Emperor and God Go in his status of trash and then bunking in the suburbs of Taipei did not charm everybody.

Into the middle of the wing Finland and Taiwan based C-Laboratory architects constructed “The Chamber of the Post Urbanist” – steel furniture for post urban meditation. Heavy metal objects as sofa, table, bed, water reservoir, fire place and toilet. The walls were wall papered by Nikita Wu’s free newspaper for the Future Pavilion, the “Pe Po”.

Nikita Wu reading the free newspaper PePo being seated at Marco Casagrande's steel furniture of the Chamber of the Post Urbanist.

Estonian architect and painter August Künnapu painted a five meters high wall painting “Lemurian” to the front facade of the wing in which an extra terrestrial looking bold head is saluting the visitors with a frog hand.

Dear brother sir! Lemurian by Estonian painter August Künnapu.

To the other end of the axis he had painted a big baby cat and a gymnast for 1930’s. Families took photos of themselves with the cat, the gymnast was maybe a bit odd and the Lemurian was obviously a bit scary. Mr. Künnapu has a rear talent of sensing the energies, memories and other subconscious narratives of sites and buildings and the processing these feelings into paintings as mediators between the visitors and the otherwise too hard too articulate real realities of architecture and space. His paintings are never negative but always constructive – he is an architect in the end.

Cat and the Gymnast painted by August Künnapu.

ORGANIC LAYER

Taiwanese performance artist Kao Jyn-Hong has walked around Taiwan with vegetation in his back bag. Kao goes to the forest, digs of a tree, places it into his aquarium like back bag an starts walking and running. In his video Kao is running on a highway with a tree in his back or silently looking dressed as a monk with the tree in his robe.

Jun-Hong Kao in his robe and his vegetation.

Yoshio Kato’s (the pioneer of Japanese sustainable architecture) houses are almost laboratories, where the prevailing weather conditions are examined to the very details and no artificial air conditioning or other energy consumption is allowed. Professor Kato is a walking laboratory himself, an operator of ecological intelligence service with pockets and vehicle full of sensors ready to document the weather conditions when ever, where ever.

Yoshio Kato's bio-climatic architecture exhibition. "I think the Taiwanese mind is quite messy."

Together with multimedia artist Nikita Wu we produced an experimental documentary film Zero City for the exhibition following the developing of a future housing area in the North of Taipei. When Hong Kong was about to go to the Chinese authority in 1997 the town of Danshui estimated some 300.000 immigrants to move to Danshui escaping the communist rule. They developed this area with urban infrastructure including roads, traffic lights and road signs such as “School”, “Hospital”, “Be Aware of Children” and so on for the people to move in with a slogan: “Hey guys, immigrate to Danshui!” The Hong Kong people never came and the area has stood empty ever since. Step by step the nature has overtaken the sites of the planned houses and the roads are used mainly by ants. The traffic lights are still working.
- See the video

OCEAN

CREW*31's Bio-Ship - recycled general cargo ship transformed into an in-vessel platform of environmental technolgy to treat the urban waste of any sea-side town.

The Ocean –wing exhibited works to encourage the Taiwanese visitors to start thinking seriously about the possibilities of ecological rehabilitation focused on the waters. Denmark based architects, artists and landscape architects CREW*31 converted industrial ships out of duty into fixed position urban use, including Bio Ship and Community Ship (realized urban plans for harbor cities in Denmark and Taiwan).

The Post Industrial Fleet by CREW*31 from Denmark and Finland. A celebrated project from the Venice Biennale 2004.

Close to the thinking of CREW*31 is Casagrande & Rintala’s ”60 Minute Man” for Venice Biennale 2000 in which we planted a small oak forest into an abandoned industrial barge on top of 60 minutes worth of human waste produced by the city of Venice.

Casagrande & Rintala's 60 Minute Man from the Venice Biennale 2000. An archaic oak garden on top of 60 minutes worth of biologically cleaned and composted human waste.

For the small village of Rosendahl in Norway we constructed a floating sauna as the center point of the village spreading around the final bay of the Hardanger fjord. The sauna has transparent walls and open floor to the ocean. One can jump from the steaming heat straight to the sea.

Casagrande & Rintala's Floating Sauna in the Hardangerfjord of Norway. A classic excample of the cross-over architectural works of the Finnish architect-artist duo.

URBAN ACUPUNCTURE

Architect Ti-Nan Chi from Taiwan. The mind behind the thinking of Micro Urbanism.

Chi Ti-Nan, a Taiwanese architect and urban planner, is practicing the acupuncture in the light of his personal working method Micro-Urbanism, which is looking at the vulnerable and insignificant side of contemporary cities around the world. He believes that these forgotten and often abandoned areas of everyday life under urban design and capital driven development are, in fact, holding the genuine quality of each city.

For the pavilion Chi did five plans for the host city Kaoshioung but his part of the exhibition was considered politically so challenging that the organizer Taiwan Design Center tried to ban parts of his graphics in several occasions without success.

Marco Casagrande with Alaskan industrial artist Martin Ross and students of Tamkang University constructed 8 adult size steel made movable rocking horses and placed then to strategic points around Taipei city and started to move towards the center and eventually to surround the city hall. During the march the horses acted as mail boxes for the citizens to write comments, memories and suggestions to Mayor Ma Ying-Jeou as bases for urban planning following Fritz Lang’s maxim from the movie “Metropolis”: “The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.”

Industrial artist and fisherman Martin "Metalgod" Ross mounted on a Trojan Rocking Horse in Tallinn, Estonia 2004 prior to the final assault on London City as part of the London Architecture Biennale and Greetings from London.

- See the video

Estonian Vilen Künnapu, an old school constructivist and leading Estonian architect all the way from the 70’s has during the last couple of years concentrated on energy central architecture inspired by the Tibetian Mandalas, Palladio and Luis Khan. To the surroundings of the Future Pavilion Mr. Künnapu constructed two three meters high red Stupa –buildings out of plywood. “These structures are important for the environment. The exhibition building itself is already very healthy.”

Vilen Künnapu's stupa outside the Future Pavillion. The setting reminds a lot the Soviet film "Stalker" by Andrei Tarkovski 1978.

According to Künnapu the Stupas were both 1:1 scale energy center structures in the exhibition as well as models for bigger Mandala –temples to be realized in the Kaoshioung harbor and outside the city hall.

Vilen Künnapu's stupa in the Kaoshioung harbor.

Some visitors stopped in front of the Stupas to pray. Inside the pavilion architect Künnapu exhibited his design line including the Buddhist Center of Tallin, Mandala –temple for Tallin Prison and 9 Mandala Temples for river Thames in London.

CENTER

A detail of Sakura Iso's Generator connecting the future pavillion with the surrounding nature. "She takes her commands from the jungle..."

Japanese installation artist Sakura Iso washed the dirty laundry of the Japanese Ghost in the dark middle tower. The work called “Generator” was a complex mix of electronic sensors, microphones and oscillators mounted to the tower itself, into the deep well and the to the overtaking vegetation. Small laud speakers were then hidden into the structures, roots and leaves to create a gentle soundscape to work together with the ever altering natural light conditions of the tower and the shadows cast by the surrounding trees. Even the loud Taiwanese entered the space in silence and Miss Iso was believed to be able to communicate with the Ghost.

Living nature in a plastic bottle, in a ruin, above a well.

CATALOGUE

Essential part of the exhibition was the free newspaper edited by Miss Nikita Wu. She used the media of a newspaper instead of a catalogue to put together the thinking of the participating exhibitors in a direct way avoiding the common clichés of an exhibition catalogue. It seems thought that the exhibition and the newspaper have had enough time to raise conversation in Taiwan about the future and especially the role of an artist and architect as the ones to look towards the horizon. Most of the visitors though walked slowly in the wings with a silent smile on their lips. The leading Sufi researcher of Finland professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila could have commented: “One has to take the liberty to take one self one thousand years back to realize, that the real things are the same.”

Nikita Wu

Land(e)scape

2007-10-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

Architectonic landscape installation realized in Savonlinna, Finland, 1999

Three abandoned barnhouses mounted on wooden shanks in the hight of 10 meters in order to give them a slow, majestic walk.

Desolate, longing after their farmers, the barns have cut their primeval union with the soil and are now swaying towards the cities of the south.

The story ended on a dark night of October when the barns were set on fire by the coreography of dancer Reijo Kela during a traditional slaughtrer carnival. The work was commenting the desertation process of Finnish countryside.

- See the video

Architectural Review 12/99, Emerging Architecture Award
La Biennale di Venezia 7. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura

Dallas-Kalevala

2007-10-14T20:20:00.001-07:00

Dallas-Kalevala is a journey from todays existance back to origines of people living between Finland and Hokkaido. It is also a personal journey to feel genetic memory in places people always have been moving between east and west.

Our journey started in Helsinki Finland and ended in Obihiro Hokkaido Japan. The trip was made by car - Land Rover Defender. We followed roughly the borderline between taiga and tundra, cities and nomads. This is the climate area the northern civilizations exist.

We photgraphed grandmothers, collected old axes and recorded local radio. Each place the same prosedure.

Daily routines included finding diesel, making documentation, finding food, navigating, asking for the road, driving and setting up camp in safe locations. We slept in the nature and avoided big cities. When the road stopped we got diesel from road construction workers of the future Amur highway or from timber machines. This fuel was for free or exchanged to Finnish beer or conservated food.

12.000 km included good roads with relatively high speed, bad road on which we could keep quite normal speed but personal cars were crawling, tracks suitable only for military trucks and jeeps, road construction beds in different states of process and off road to some extreme nastiness with mud, rivercrossings, wet land, dust and dirt etc. Our Defender was equipped with a snorkel, winch and bottom armor. We crossed 10 bigger rivers and many more smaller ones. The car got stucked several times and was dragged onwards with the winch. We carried with us 140 litres of spare diesel in canisters. Between Cita and Simanovsk there is no roads shown on map. This distance is about 1000 km.

Near Erofej Pavlovic some 40 km north of Chinese border and river Amur the journey faced its hardest difficulties. We tried to approach Erofej Pavlovic from Amazar but got stucked in an endless wet marshland. The clouds were promising heavy rain which would mean us spending the rest of the year in the mud. Step by step we got back from the marsh with winching and some unconventional methods of subconscious driving. Just before the rain which made the whole marsh to a floting field of muddy porrige. We managed to go round the wetlands and found againg the construction site of the future highway. No bridges of course and the track was cut by the deep river Urka. Two of the big military 6 x 6 wheel drive Kamaz trucks had tried to cross it and the wrecks stood in the middle of the deep river together with a huge road construction machine that had tried to come to help them. The river was too bad. No chance to cross it and we had to turn back.

Luckily we were not alone with the problem. Vasili and Sergei from Sahalin needed to get their Kamaz also to the other side of the river and together with them we managed to organize us an own train in Amazar on which the vehicles were mounted. It took us four days with the train to cross the river. Due to Russian railroad logistics we had to travel back to Mogocha to be connected to a bigger train, then again to Amazar and finally over the river to Erofej Pavlovic and further to Skovorodino where we got the car of the platform.

We carried with us conserved food and Finnish beer to celebrate important moments. Fresh fish from the rivers and shashlik brought occasional luxury to the daily life. Our medical pack included surgery eguippement, oxygen, anti-shock liquides, antibiotics and other drugs. We had contact with doctors from EMA -group (Emergency Medical Assistace) every third day with a satellite telephone to report our location and state of fysical and mental health. In case of trouble we could contact the EMA doctors to get on-line medical assistance, which was luckily not needed. Also evacuation procedures were prepaired.

We know it is possible to go from Finland to Japan on ground. It has always been possible. What was important to realize was how natural it has been for the people to move east-west wise. One grandmother in Burjatia was half Ukrainan half Chinese. One grandmother in Sahalin was born in the Finnish border in Karelia and spoke Karelian Finnish. The grandmother in Japan was born in Sahalin. In the middle of Siberia we could see Tatar villages. In Irkutsk there is a lively Chinese market. From Ural to east every modern car is a second hand vehicle imported from Japan. Asia as we see it starts in Amur, not in Ural as we have been told. Siberia is not Europe and not Asia. Everywhere in this nordic borderline we could feel home. We could understand the logics of the nature and how man is facing his surroundings. Birch tree, kuckoo and the same stars followed us all the way. Japanese turist is a legend. For us now you are just the next door neighbour.

The work was done in co-operation with: DEMETER, Lapin Kulta, Lohjan Laatuautot, Off Road Center, Land Rover Finland, Land Rover Japan, EMA -group, Benefon ESC!, Sonera, Haglöfs and Lundén Foods.

AK/MC interview

2007-10-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

August Künnapu interviewing Marco Casagrande

PLANET EARTH ?
No mysteries here. Everything is very simple and still we are more simple to ignore the simple truth. Now the time is somehow unique, since we have finally gained the tools to destroy thsi all - or at least ourselves. Degeneration is happening. Nature will win. The big question is, if the human nature will still be part of nature.

HUMAN BEING?
It is fascinating how we are turning into space ships operating in a vacuum. I miss the Medieval times. Luckily among us is still people having the tools to bring us back there. We could try the dictatorship of sensitivity for a while. Not hippie, but fascist way.

LONDON ?
Great place. If London takes the Human Layer, it can change the world. London is the world.

CIRCUS?
The presence of accident of possibility of accident is one of the driving forces of humanity and circus displays this in a pure way. This presence is lacking in architecture and urban planning in general having the design replacing reality. In the end architects, artists and humanists should be the ones sensitive enough to feel the real realities of human life and show the horizon, but they are too serious. Circus is not serious in academic ways. I believe circus has a chance. I live in a circus. My family is a circus family. My work is commedia dell architettura.

COUNTRYSIDE ?
Clean country living: vodka and incest. The city is degenerating the countryside aswell.

CUBE?
Cube is good. I like the paradox of total control - like in Zen garden or with the cube. It gives the important possibility of making mistakes and losing control.

GREEN ?
Red is better. And black. White is good too. No other colours.

BATHROOM ?
Interesting phenomena. People are very happy pissing on trees and urinating on streets. Bathroom is quite a narsistic setting, nothing wrong with that. The dignity unit.

NECKLACE ?
I am too weak to wear any jewelery myself, yet, but the time may come. Necklace brings into my mind violent and pornographic atmospheres.

GARBAGE / CARROT
Garbage is as vital as bread. When in our work we find solutions for recycling material we are safe. This must be scaled up to a total megastructure of recycling, there is no other way. War is nothing, pollution is inhuman, disgustingly unnatural and stupid. In the garbage can be found the future of human kind. City must be a compost.

PANTOMIME ?
Commedia Dell Arte is the king of drama. And the marionets. Straight interface to dream world and subconscious. I think the politicians should only act pantomime way. This way all the nations would be one and wise.

ESTLAND ?
Estonia is a very fine country. You have still the dramatics of fastly growing and active creature. This kind of atmosphere is very important for all the world. Soon you will start degenerating too. Be clever to attack now.

CREATIVITY ?
Every man has creativity and every man is very clever to enderstand art. For this reason the dictatorship of sensitivity can happen. You can't lear creativity just learn to accept it and not to corrupt your initial feeling.

ETERNITY ?
All the human life must be in close connection with eternity. One must be able to take the liberty to go one thousand years back to realize the things are the same. Future is the big question, how long will the eternity last for us.

Human Layer

2007-10-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Human Layer_Taipei is based on the ideas and methods of the Urban Acupuncture and Fritz Lang's maxim in the movie Metropolis: "The Mediator between the Head and the Hands must be the Heart."

Taipei City, an urbanized river basin of 7 million people.

C-Laboratory Taipei was set up by C-LAB Helsinki personnel Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross and Kerby McGhee in September 2004 in co-operation with the Tamkang University's Department of Architecture and reinforced by Tuomas Makkonen in November. The C-LAB moved to China with one motorcycle and one car.

With a design force of 10 operators the first step of the urban acupuncture in order to understand the energy flows and patterns in the case of Taipei was taken. This initial intelligence was analyzed and 8 basic strategic ways of the energies (Chi for the energy in classical Chinese) could be determined.

Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, now President of Taiwan, reading the Trojan Rocking Horse messages.

The symbolic Head of Taipei is Mayor Ma Ying-jeou. (Ma = Horse in Chinese) The Hands are the citizens. We needed to create the Mediator, the Heart. The result was to build up 8 Trojan Rocking Horses out of steel and move them following the 8 Chi channels collecting all the time data from the citizens to be brought to Mayor Ma. The citizens were asked to write down their dreams, memories, wishes of other comments about Taipei and put these letters inside the Trojan Rocking Horses that were working as mobile mail boxes.

After five days of marching the army of the Trojan Rocking Horses surrounded the Taipei City Hall and eventually forced Mayor Ma to step out. The cavalry was lined up for his inspection and the keys of the city were presented to him. The horses were locked with the citizen data inside. Mayor Ma opened the horses and started to read the letters to the media. After some time we agreed that C-LAB will document and analyze the data and base designs of urban planning and architecture in combination with other disciplines of art, science and humanism on this information and present him the results.

The Dictatorship of Sensitivity has begun: Mayor Ma in C-LAB's public interrogation.

C-Laboratory realized 8 reactions for the citizen data resulting to some important ways of possible urban future planning. This is now taken further during the Spring and Summer 2005. The main goal is now focused on the ecological rehabilitation of the Taipei City.

C-LAB for Human Layer_Taipei: architect Marco Casagrande, industrial artist Martin Ross, painter Kerby McGhee, station manager Tuomas Makkonen, operator Ai, operator Point, operator Neil, operator Bruce, operator Emily, operator Shinu Shin Jr., operator Daniel and operator Luo. The Trojan Rocking Horse action was kindly sponsored by Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs for Taipei on the Move –exhibition curated by Jo Hsiao. The C-LAB exodus to China was kindly sponsored by Halti, Harley Davidson Finland, Wärtsilä and Jussi Salonoja.

C-Laboratory Taiwan: Tamkang University Department of Architecture students, Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross and Tuomas Makkonen.

"Who Cares Wins"

2007-10-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

Taipei
The Army of the Trojan Rocking Horses recording the urban subconsious.
Page 02

Mumbai
Oshiwara chain of slums introducing the Organic Layer to save the city.
Page 18

Bershet
June 7, Perm Tatar grandmother

16 CHINATOWNS
1. Bangkok, Thailand
2. Calcutta, India
3. Havana, Cuba
4. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
5. Irkutsk, Russia
6. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
7. London, UK
8. Manila, Philippines
9. New York City, USA
10. Paris, France
11. San Francisco, USA
12. Seoul, South-Korea
13. Singapore
14. Sydney, Australia
15. Toronto, Canada
16. Yokohama, Japan

Venice Biennale 2006 - Introduction to Urban Acupuncture

2007-10-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

Finland and Taiwan based C-Laboratory to introduce the new layer on the urban context, the Urban Acupuncture as means of small scale interventions to regulate the hidden energy flows of the existing urban body.

The Urban Acupuncture is a network of strategies aiming to reinforce primary human values within the context of teh modern city as a human living environment. Without moving anything from the city or adding anything heavy but overlapping a new layer of small scale interventions tuning the urban psyche towards kindness and other values of Real Reality - values that cannot be speculated by economic or political means, or otherwise.

Values that are total

The Urban Acupuncture is a democratic free offering from the city to the citizens activating the urban subconscious towards softer more dmocratic human living. There used to be a time in the Medieval Prague when there was free beer offered i the street corners. It was the right of the Prague citizen to drink beer for free. This was a democratic offering from the city.

The Urban Acupuncture offers the modern man a possibility of taking himself a thousand years back to realize that the things are the same.

The Dictatorship of Sensitivity has begun!

CityZen Garden for the Taiwan Pavillion in the Venice Biennale. Pendelum. Time. Sinus -> circle. Man as part of circular movement. City must be a compost.

When an architect is a gardener he is a constructor. If he is not a gardener he can easily be a destructor - there is a danger.

"What really happened to Porcupine?"

"I don't know. I guess the Zone got to him. One day he returned from the Zone and suddenly got amazingly rich, amazingly rich. Then the next weeek he hanged himself."

IL UOMO

Dictatorship of Sensitivity

Writer architects

Antti's message

CityZen Garden

Ice Speedway

Glass Garden

Traktorfan

Red Square and Black Square

My Movies

The Mist

City Horoscopes

Editorial Team

Caveman Style

At Home in the City

Prison Pantheon

Fermentation Cemetery

Sponsors

Artist Statement

1000 White Flags

Bird Cage

May Manifesto

Post Urbanist

Last Socialist

Last Socialist

Martin Seljeflåd

Most Human Place

Chain Reactor

Real Reality

Installation 1:2001

Urban Farmer

Energy Towers in Venice

Made in Taiwan

Instant Taipei

Tamkang University Department of Architecture

Can't Push a River

S.L.U.M.

Flesh is More

Car Park

Sakura Iso

Obihiro Walking Street

Imperialism of Pollution

Alang

Potemkin

Drive Out Cinema

Floating Sauna

Sixty Minute Man

Post Industrial Fleet

Shelter

Redrum

Let Everything Come True

Public Attic

Treasure Hill

Letter from Tallinn Prison

Anarchist Gardener

FUTURE PAVILLIUM

Land(e)scape

Dallas-Kalevala

AK/MC interview

Human Layer

"Who Cares Wins"

Venice Biennale 2006 - Introduction to Urban Acupuncture