If you ever wondered how the North builds, this exhibition is for you. The “Nordic Urban Spaces” shows examples of Nordic architecture and urban planning already implemented that make life in the city better. The Nordic weather tends to be quite extreme, being either a bright and hot summer or a very long and cold winter, so weather particularly affects architecture and urban planning.
This exhibition shows successful, innovative and participatory examples of Nordic construction and planning. The projects not only bring summer into the city (for example, with urban swimming spots) but also provide light and color in winter (for example with brightly colored subway stations). They also try to demonstrate that functionality and sustainability, consideration and elegance are not mutually exclusive.
We are happy to announce that our project Dreamhamar is displayed in the exhibition until the 28th of September. The redesign of the Stortorget Square in Hamar, Norway, through participation and a network design process, took place during Fall 2011. Citizens took part in a collective creative process that helped us shape the future of the square. Our approach was supported by workshops, lectures, urban actions, communication, and participation tools. Dreamhamar was awarded as BEST PRACTICE by the United Nations-HABITAT program in 2014.
If you are in Berlin and want to check it out, go to The Felleshus. This building is the cultural center and event venue of the five Nordic embassies (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden).
Como os contamos anteriormente en este post, el pasado Diciembre realizamos la instalación Networked Urbanism en la UABB | Bi-city Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism en Shenzhen, en la sección Radical Urbanism, siendo invitados por Alfredo Brillembourg y Hubert Klumpner.
Antes de llegar a la definición de la forma final de la instalación así como se presenta hoy —visitable en la antigua fábrica de harina Dacheng hasta el 4 de Marzo 2016— en ecosistema urbano tuvimos una efervescente fase de reuniones creativas y experimentaciones con diferentes formas de comunicación y representación de los proyectos.
Desde el principio teníamos la idea de transformar el espacio a disposición para la instalación (7,30 x 2,50 m) en un ambiente muy visual, que atrajese a los visitantes desde distancias lejanas — diseño gráfico y colores brillantes — y también, una vez dentro del propio espacio, por algunos elementos más pequeños, emblemáticos y misteriosos, visibles a medias: dispositivos para generar curiosidad.
El común denominador de todos los elementos que componen la instalación corresponde con 3+1 requisitos:
1. Ser low bulk, de poco peso y tamaño, para poder ser transportada por dos personas de España a China como equipaje facturable en cualquier compañía aérea.
2. Ser low maintenance, utilizando tecnologías simples y que no necesiten mantenimiento durante los cuatro meses de la Biennale.
3. Ser low cost, teniendo en cuenta el bajo presupuesto disponible.
4. Y además, claro, ser novedoso, divertido, sorprendente…
Este cuádruple reto nos enganchó igual que otras veces en las que hemos intentado aplicarlo, como la instalación Jardín de Sueños en Bahamas o la exposición Formula X en el DAZ de Berlín.
Comenzamos a desarrollar la idea de contener artefactos en una caja que motivase los visitantes a acercarse y explorar los micromundos contenidos en ella. Cada caja debía contener los elementos necesarios para describir de manera abstracta y al mismo tiempo comprensible, cada uno de los 11 proyectos que narran la filosofía del Networked Urbanism, tema de la instalación. Hicimos entonces un trabajo de exploración de referencias de diferentes técnicas, entre ellas: el vídeo, los libros pop-up, la superposición de capas transparentes impresas, las ilusiones ópticas del efecto Moiré, figuras efímeras como resultado de sombras de diferentes objetos, etc.º Os compartimos nuestro tablero de Pinterest con una buena colección de referencias sobre el tema.
Referencias encontradas en la fase de investigación. Fuente: https://it.pinterest.com/ecourb/shenzhen-installation/
Particularmente inspiradora fue una visita al Museo del Cinema de Turín dentro de la imponente Mole Antonelliana; en este hay una amplia sección totalmente dedicada a las técnicas que permitían de crear animaciones en los siglos antes el nacimiento del cine. En el fascinante mundo precinematográfico se crearon una gran cantidad de dispositivos y objetos misteriosos, capaces de maravillar también al espectador contemporáneo. Entre estos extraños objetos se encuentran cajas ópticas, linternas mágicas, phenaquistiscopios, taumatropi y muchos más. Para los que quieren explorar más el tema del precinematografía, aquí dejamos un link de Wikipedia bastante exhaustivo.
Vista interior de una caja óptica del siglo XVIII, con transición de luz de día/noche
Diorama del siglo XVIII – Museo del Cinema, Torino y diorama contemporaneo creado por Harikrishnan Panicker y Deepti Nair
Decidimos entonces crear dos tipos de cajas: un diorama y una caja que contuviese algo más que un vídeo, un holograma.
La realización de la primera tipología de caja, el diorama, consistió en la descomposición de una representación en perspectiva del proyecto en 5 o 6 dibujos impresos en acetato transparente y dispuestos en secuencia, de manera que la correcta visión de la imagen fuese posible exclusivamente desde un único punto de vista. En el fondo de la caja, una pantalla proyecta ambientaciones, colores y fondos que animan el diorama y establecen un diálogo con los elementos impresos de las distintas capas.
Diorama del proyecto Dreamhamar
El segundo tipo de caja, el que contiene el holograma, requirió una fase de experimentación y pruebas más larga. En primer lugar hay que decir que probablemente crear estos hologramas sin Internet habría sido mucho más complicado para nosotros. Pero afortunadamente vivimos en la época del conocimiento compartido, y pudimos encontrar en Youtube una serie de tutoriales que explican cómo realizar un holograma casero de manera muy sencilla, con sólo una pantalla y una pirámide de plástico transparente. A continuación os dejamos uno de los varios vídeos que podréis encontrar por la red.
Una vez aprendida la técnica (afinada y personalizada, a través de numerosos prototipos, para nuestras necesidades específicas) tuvimos que realizar los vídeos que cuentan los restantes 6 proyectos de Networked Urbanism, siguiendo el criterio de dejar el fondo negro e invertir/reflejar las imágenes para su correcta visualización.
Hologramas | work in progress
Caja con el holograma del Ecobulevar
Los otros vídeos realizados para ser visualizados como hologramas están disponibles en estos links: Ecópolis Plaza, Air Tree Shanghai, Energy Carousel, Madrid Chair. ¡Construyendo una pirámide transparente, tu también puedes visualizar estos vídeos como hologramas!
Las 11 cajas fueron diseñadas ad hoc para la instalación por ecosistema urbano y posteriormente realizadas a corte láser por EXarchitects.
Para saber más sobre el resultado final, aquí dejamos el link a otro post y el teaser de Networked Urbanism. Enjoy!
Between November and December 2015 we spent one week in Shenzhen on the occasion of the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, being invited by curators Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner to be part of the Radical Urbanism section of the exhibition. The brief of this edition of the Biennale is “Re-Living the city”, a reflection about reuse and rethinking existing buildings, the reimagination of our cities, and the remaking of our daily lives by design. The main location of the event was connected to the topic of the Biennale: the former Dacheng Flour Factory has been transformed into a massive container of thoughts and innovative practices in urbanism without hiding its recent past of industrial activity and its uncertain future.
The Dacheng Flour Factory_ Image: UABB
Our installation at the UABB Biennale, called Networked Urbanism, displays a selection of pilot projects exploring physical and immaterial urban improvement, a critical catalogue of their urban contexts, the understanding of urban complexity and the new tools developed to address it. The colourful multimedia exhibition displays 10 pilots projects, implemented during the past 10 years in different contexts around the world, but also displays 1 mockup, a real scale version of an urban furniture design.
The Networked Urbanism Installation reflects the working method: an overall strategic vision that relies on short term punctual and powerful interventions in specific and emblematic spots (pilot projects), rather than long term and high resources urban strategies. Ecosistema Urbano’s projects empower people and engage citizens in the tangible transformation of the places where they live.
The definition and final layout of the installation was an intense process of research and real scale experimentation to find interactions between graphic design, communication, animation and optical effects. We tried to show the common philosophy behind each project in a very visual and communicative way. Each pilot project is communicated with a graphic slogan synthesizing the nature of the intervention and its message, a reference to the city where the project is implemented, and a description of the overall urban strategy.
The other 5 pilot projects presented in Networked Urbanism installation are described throughout short movies displayed as holograms, thanks to a DIY fascinating technique. The videos of the projects Ecobulevard, Air Tree Shanghai, Ecópolis Plaza, Energy Carousel, Escuela Febres intervention in Cuenca , explain with 3d holograms the complexity of this interventions, showing the different layers and their several possible points of view and configurations.
Hologram of Ecobulevar project
1 Mockup
Well centered on the main wall of the space lays the message “Customize public space“, surrounded by drawings of the possible configurations of Madrid Chair. In the central area of the exhibition there are 18 pieces of this flexible and multipurpose urban furniture in red and orange versions allowing visitors to interact and create their own favourite exhibition layout.
Assembly phase of Madrid Chairs
The UABB Biennale will be open until March 3rd 2016, if you are planning to visit Shenzhen, don’t miss it!
Last February we were invited by the Art Institute of Chicago, the second largest museum of United States after the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to participate in the exhibition Chatter: Architecture Talks Back, an exhibition curated by Karen Kice and Iker Gil. The exhibition explores the new possibilities that technology offers to communication in architecture, aiming to establish an ideal dialogue between architecture’s present and past. The thesis of the exhibition is that Chatter is the new way for architects to communicate their ideas; social media as Twitter and Instagram are nowadays working tools for architects to produce and present their work. The exhibition focuses on the creative process of some international architectural firms, such as: Bureau Spectacular, Erin Besler, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, Formlessfinder, and John Szot Studio; and highlights how they conceive new designs and ideas that reflect upon and expand the legacy of their field.
In this framework we were invited to exhibit our project Dreamhamar in the Gallery 283, in the section curated by Iker Gil, Director of the design publication Mas Context. In this part of the exhibition, that explores the multiple ways in which architecture can be communicated, our work represented the section “Empowering”, one of the concepts used to support the thesis of this section, together with others as “Challenging”, “Satirical”, “Collective”, “Revealing” and “Diagnostic“.
Photo: David Schalliol
Photo: David Schalliol
The projects presented in this space were produced by a range of practitioners worldwide: Ecosistema Urbano; over, under and pinkcomma; Mimi Zeiger and Neil Donnelly with the School of Visual Arts Summer Design Writing and Research Intensive; Koldo Lus Arana (Klaus); Project_ with Sarah Hirschman; 300.000km/s with Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona; Luis Úrculo; and Christopher Baker.
Photo: David Schalliol
Photo: David Schalliol
If you are planning to go to Chicago, don’t miss it! It will be open from April 11th, 2015, through July 12th, 2015 in the Architecture and Design galleries in the museum’s Modern Wing.
Next Friday we will be in Reggio Emilia at the presentation of the Reggio Children educational project “A school as a learning community”, together with Graziano Delrio, Luca Molinari, Carla Rinaldi and Maddalena Tedeschi. We will talk about our proposal for the Reggio Children experimental learning centre, and after that an exhibition will be opened, showing the projects submitted to the competition.
Summary:
Progettare Spazi per l’Apprendimento
Friday, February 15 2013 at 16.30
Centro Internazionale Loris Malaguzzi – Sala Kuwait
Today we are sharing with you some pictures of the impressive exhibition Importing Architecture which is on right now at the Nasjonalmuseet (National Museum for Art and Architecture) in Oslo.
We had the pleasure to be included in the selection and it was a great opportunity to attend the opening last November and get a chance to know more about the different projects which are under construction or have been just finished as well as the international offices who are behind them.
The exhibition raises the question of Norwegian identity in architecture and how ‘imported architects’ respond to it:
Are foreign architects reinforcing the trend toward a type of globalization that is dissolving national and cultural differences? Or are they even more concerned with formulating a Nordic or Norwegian identity than their Norwegian counterparts? Is it possible for an architect to create exceptional architecture in Norway without first-hand experience of Norwegian society, building traditions, climate or the natural environment? Or on the contrary, do foreign architects bring new ideas and ways of thinking that enrich the quality of Norwegian architecture?
Our installation is located by the ramp at the entrance of the exhibition. We tried to take advantage of the windows to display images of the Dreamhamarproject, along with four screens showing videos from the process. The physical-digital scale model of Stortorget (Main Square) was also brought from Hamar and installed on top of a vinyl that covers the floor resembling the pattern painted by Boamistura on the asphalt of the real square.
If you are in Oslo sometime between now and April, don’t miss it!
Today, Thursday Nov. 22nd is the official opening of the exhibition Importing Architecture at the NasjonalMuseet of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo. The exhibition will be open to the public from tomorrow until April 2013.
Ecosistema Urbano team is pleased to be part of this exhibition with Dreamhamar project, a collective dream to redesign Hamar’s main public space, Stortorget. Other architecture offices included in the selection are: Steven Holl, MVDRV, Peter Zumthor, Renzo Piano, Vandkunsten, JDS, etc…
Here is the introduction by the curator of the exhibition, Eva Elisabeth Madshus:
An increasing number of foreign architects are winning competitions or receiving commissions in Norway. The exhibition takes up this relatively new and interesting development, which is primarily due to the introduction of the EU directive on competitions and more building activity in Norway than the rest of Europe.
This exhibition presents a selection of foreign architectural firms with projects in Norway. It also provides the basis for examining what this increasing internationalization means for Norwegian architecture’s identity and quality.
– Are foreign architects reinforcing the trend toward a type of globalization that is dissolving national and cultural differences? Or are they even more concerned with formulating a Nordic or Norwegian identity than their Norwegian counterparts?
– Is it possible for an architect to create exceptional architecture in Norway without firsthand experience of Norwegian society, building traditions, climate or the natural environment? Or on the contrary, do foreign architects bring new ideas and ways of thinking that enrich the quality of Norwegian architecture?
– Do the EU’s competition regulations, with their criteria for participation and ranking, ensure that the best architectural projects win? Or are foreign architects displacing their Norwegian counterparts in today’s highly competitive building market?
Debate about foreign influences on architecture is not entirely new. Craftsmen from the continent were involved in building Norwegian mediaeval churches, and after the dissolution of the union in 1814 the country’s new institutions were by and large designed by Danish and German architects. But since the beginning of the 1900s, once architecture was an established course of study at NTH (Norwegian Institute of Technology; today the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim), Norwegian architects have been responsible for the vast majority of building works in the country. It was not until the EU competition regulations were adopted in 1994 that foreign architects began to make inroads in the Norwegian market, and the trend has been sustained by the country’s strong oil-driven economy and numerous public sector building projects. In 2012 the results of these factors are striking: a dozen public building projects designed by foreign architects are either in preparation, under construction, or completed.
The architects included in this exhibition are consummate professionals. Their projects reflect exceptional quality at every stage – planning, design, choice of materials, execution – and many of them will become important sources of inspiration. Norwegian architecture is well served by intensified international competition. Every good architect can acquire competence about the particular context that a building project is always a part of, regardless of national origin. Thus, increasing globalization need not lead to uniformity in architecture.
The Pavillon de l’Arsenal has invited fifteen European agencies —including Ecosistema Urbano— that question the way that modern-day cities are built to participate in an exhibition that will be opening this wednesday in Paris under the motto “RE-cycle, RE-use, RE-invest, RE-build”.
We are very glad to be there among such a great selection of agencies and collectives (some of them featured in our recent series about placemaking) that share the same interests and explore similar approaches while working in quite different contexts.
Our contribution to the exhibition will be focused on dreamhamar, our most recent participatory project in Hamar (Norway), in which we have applied our ideas about network design.
A quote from the exhibition follows:
In Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris or Rotterdam,… these extraordinary teams have taken up a critical stance. They admit to exploring the role of architecture in societal changes. They are pro-action and produce and often even build their projects themselves. The practices are promises which revive long-forgotten utopian ideals.
They all invent wonderful standards and approach the complexities of modern life with the ability to transform into reality the potential that lies at the crossroads between experience and the built-up world. They are pragmatic, good at conveying their message and tend to work with the existing residents and for the inhabitants of the future.
The thirty exhibited proposals, shown at the various stages of development, describe the conditions in which the orders were placed, the study behind the projects, participative action as well as the conditions in which studies were carried out and the projects completed. Each proposal is thus presented through videos, drawings, interviews, plans and photographs to provide the public with an idea of the innovative and experimental nature of their research. Whether temporary or permanent, these projects are perfectly in line with the times and do not create extra constraints which could limit future choices.
We highly recommend you to visit the exhibition if you can, and to have a closer look at the work of the rest of the participants:
More info: official website
Place: Pavillon de l’Arsenal
Open: Tue-Sat 10.30 a.m. – 6.30 p.m | Sun 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Entrance: Free, 12th april – 2th september 2012
During the past year over 1000 grievances, gripes, and annoyances were collected from people across the city. The Toronto Complaints Choir transform this complains into “disappointed people’s song”.
BMD studio decided to do something about it. Studio designers Amanda Happé, Kar Yan Cheung, Chris Braden, Michal Dudek, and Paul Kawai team set up a pop-up studio, working in real-time in the Propeller Centre. They tried to design solutions in response to the complaints. A book of these ideas was also simultaneously designed, and sent throughout the city of Toronto and their citizens.
ecosistema urbano is an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a special point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology. The team’s field of interest is defined by something they call ‘creative urban sustainability’, from where to react to the present situation of cities through innovation, creativity and particularly action.
ecosistema urbano was founded in 2000 in Madrid and it is formed by a group of creative professionals in architecture and connected disciplines. continue reading