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
Showing posts with label Marco Casagrande. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marco Casagrande. Show all posts
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Antti's message
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
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.
Glass Garden
YUO-YUAN
Glass garden for Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion 2006
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.
Red Square and Black Square
Steel suprematistic gate for Chen family in Danshui, Taiwan 2005. Homage Kasimir Malevitch.
My Movies
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.
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
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
Editorial Team
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.
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
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
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
Fermentation Cemetery
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.
Post Urbanist
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 CasagrandeChamber of the Post Urbanist 104
C-Laboratory
* Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross, Frank Chen, Nikita Wu.
Taipei MoCA - Museum of Contemporary Art 2005
Taipei MoCA - Museum of Contemporary Art 2005
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Chain Reactor
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
Monday, October 15, 2007
Real Reality
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.
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
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
Instant Taipei
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.
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.
Can't Push a River
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
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." -TaxidriverS.L.U.M.
C-Laboratory: S.L.U.M.---
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.
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.
Obihiro Walking Street
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.
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
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.
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