Focus 4 - Dalston Print Club

Went to a crazy exhibition put on by The Dalston Print Club in a damp, dark subterranean bunker-type space just off Dalston High street. There were a couple of eerie projections of shadow-like kids playing with leaves if I can remember......another room with a spiders web covered in lights....a harpist lit by candlelight....and lots of bodies moving about in the dark. The last room was lit by UV with a table tennis table lit with neon tape and matching neon bats....dim fondling of balls with a bunch of strangers.

The second part of the exhibit was at another spot around the corner...above ground....also lit by UV but this time a series of screen prints by local artists all influenced by the patterns and shapes of the various ethnicities found in the Dalston area.

+ Dalston Print Club

Focus 4 - ROA

ROA is an artist from Belgium who's recently been painting in his distinctive sketchy black and white style, huge urban wildlife all over the east ends........

Pure Evil Gallery in Old Street has just held his first exhibition of works....painted on random pieces of metal and wood, ROA's collection is quite beautiful and gritty. Old locker doors are closed and painted with giant rabbits or foxes, and when the doors are opened, the animals internal organs are on display.........brilliant.

New street pieces are popping up on 'abandoned' walls every week. Keep an eye out for that giant bunny...

+ Pure Evil

Focus 3 - The Day the Olympics came to Town

I watched this program on BBC's Inside Out programme, about London's preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

They approached creative directors from a few of the capital's top advertising agencies to discuss promotion of the games using London's iconic buildings and landmarks. Some ideas of the brainstorming sessions looked at including four more London Eye's to make five rings......

Or projections onto some of our cities best known structures......

Londoner's are also per household, apparently spending £200 over the next couple of years to help pay for the Games, and thanks to the Olympic family, (advertisers, etc) there will only be 16,000 tickets available for everyone else. And Londoner's receive no preference over someone from Estonia or Italy. Since we are hosting the games, we invite the world. This is understandable, but why should so many millions of seats be available to the 'Olympic Family'??

The other issue raised in the programme, is that this is supposed to be the 'Green Games', BUT, VIP's and senior officials are residing in Park Lane for the Games, and an Olympic Route Network is planned for them to reach the games in Stratford. The estimated time for travelling in the Olympic lane from Park Lane is 22 and a half minutes, but this means that everyone else loses a lane......I am all for having less cars on the roads but why could they not have stayed in a hotel nearer to the Games site? Why does the whole of central London have to suffer so that the officials can stay in Central London? Absolutely CRAZY.

Aside from the problems, there are so many opportunities the Games can bring to London. They touched on sites that could be used for world music venues etc, and one was the site surrounding Battersea Power Station. The latest design proposal I am working on is about greening this particular area, with a river regeneration project incorporating green spaces on the Grosvenor Road/Chelsea Embankment and Nine Elms edge of the Thames. I think the Thames could be used much more for the Games, perhaps with extra transport routes to Stratford from Central and West London. This traffic route could incorporate new green spaces where events are televised and so allowing for more people to enjoy the Games.

+ all pictures screenshots from The Day the Olympics came to Town

Focus 3 - Graffik Warfare

Some buddies of mine with a graffiti store in Portobello, conveniently had an exhibition in the last Focus week of the year. The theme was yellow and black, and the weekend was sponsored by cutty sark. All so well coordinated.

And this my present to me.

Pics from the show below......

+ pics courtesy of graffik

Focus 3 - Aerial London at Night

Come across some great aerial photographs of London at night - Jason Hawkes has taken these amazing pics while hanging out a helicopter.

Some people choose interesting ways to hang out.

http://www.jasonhawkes.com/lightbox/5

Focus 3 - Palm Oil and the devastation to Orangutan rainforest habitats

When I first set out the third year extended essay, my intentions were always to put a piece together about urban farming, but a chunk of the body was going to address the damage to developing countries and natural habitats, in the struggle to feed the world. I changed my mind at a point and instead chose to focus on how city communities can become more self-sustaining through community supported agriculture (CSA) schemes and Transition Town Movements.

Last night I watched BBC's Panorama program entitled 'Dying for a Biscuit'. It documents the rapid and in most cases, illegal deforestation of Borneo's rainforest - the natural habitat of the orangutan - for Palm Oil.

Undeniably terrifying for our closest cousins, it is just so sad to see what this agri-business schmizness is doing to some of the last magical places we have left on our earth. The orangutan population in this area has been estimated by the International Union for Conservation to have declined by 50% in the last few decades, while the Indonesian government has admitted that deforestation has killed 50,000.

The palm oil industry is estimated at £5 billion ($7.7 billion) in Indonesia. The Panorama team went to a plantation with a peat specialist to test the land that the plantations are grown upon. By law, any land that has a peat depth of 3 meters or more is not to be touched at all. Any interference with the soils will release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They tested the soil with a 3 meter testing pole, and what do you know, there was peat over 3.5 meters deep, on land that had palm oil plantations upon it. Duta Palma Group is responsible for this, and for logging illegally on high conservation land. The Indonesian agriculture minister gave the usual bureaucratic answers to questions posed to him by Panorama why this is happening.

Panorama has gone on to sending out questionnaires to UK supermarkets and leading product manufacturers about their use of palm oil in products. Sainsbury's is the only brand to have addressed a substantial portion of its palm oil footprint since it first began its sustainable palm oil programme in 2008. On their boxes of fish fingers they clearly state the palm oil is sourced sustainably, and a spokesman said they can go right to the source, knowing where the palm oil is from.

As a consumer, I do my damndest to ensure that the products I use are not tested on animals, and much prefer organic meat over any other, I'd rather go without if there is no choice. But when it comes to palm oil, manufacturers are so vague about ingredients in their products, stating simply that the product contains a percentage of vegetable oils. How can we as environmentally aware consumers be confident about what we are buying?? How can legislations be placed upon consumer products? There are already so many arguments about unclear salt levels, sugar levels, e numbers....etc etc.

The problem is that no price can be put upon what is being lost, until it is gone. Why is this so hard for governments to understand.

My other argument is that we wouldn't have these awful situations if it wasn't for human overpopulation. That's probably something for another day. I can feel body temperature warming rather swiftly.

+ BBC iplayer - Dying for a Biscuit

+ Orangutan survival and the shopping trolley - article

+ Palm oil products and the weekly shop - article

Thames Clean up

A gorgeous sunny day with temps in the two figures, and the lowest day time tides in five years....what else to do but head down to the river and do some cleaning.

This was a call by Thames21 for volunteers to help clean up various sites along the river that are not normally exposed. Tuesday morning was at the Isle of Dogs. A good turnout, dirty job but so worth it.

Focus 3 - Seoul's Cheonggyecheon Stream regeneration

Seoul has made a commitment to its people and flushed away any divisions the past had between North and South, by demolishing a highway that covered the Cheonggyecheon stream, which was formed during the Joseon Dynasty. For three decades, the stream was hidden beneath the highway, and it has now been turned into a gorgeous 5.8km urban river park.

The stream was designed to provide drainage for the city, and lasted hundreds of years until a shanty town developed next to it due to the city's overpopulation, with obvious pollution issues. This was in the 1940's, and over the next few decades the stream was gradually covered with concrete, and finally by 1976 a 5.6km highway was built over it.

Of course authorities were satisfied with the modernisation of the new highway and connections it created, but in 2003 city planners developed the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project. The purpose was to revitalise the stream, and place Seoul in a position of being a more environmentally friendly city. The project cost around £186 million, and took two years, but is a beautiful example of how an inner city river or stream can bring new life, and create community pride.

After researching many city river regeneration projects, this project has influenced me the most. Perhaps it is the graphics, but I think more so, it is seeing city planners creating spaces that are sympathetic to the environment, and peeling away the layers of man-made infrastructure to expose the earth's beauty beneath.

+ pictures courtesy of inhabitat

Focus 2 - Heart of Africa in Chester Zoo

Chester Zoo unveiled today a new £225 million project that is said to transform it into the largest conservation, animal and leisure attraction of its kind in Europe. Chester Zoo's website describe it as the first domed ecosystem in the UK, with an African rainforest-themed sanctuary for a band of Gorillas, a large troop of chimpanzees, Okapi, and a variety of tropical birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and invertebrates, moving freely among lush vegetation.

It really saddens me that we have to save these animals from the natural environments that we have ruined over the years. The cgi images are seductive, and the concept no doubt gets many people very excited, but for me, it just seems such a shame.

Proctor and Matthews Architects were responsible for the Gorilla Kingdom in London Zoo, and the Lions at the Whipsnade Zoo, both projects commissioned by the Zoological Society of London.

Looking into the Heart of Africa project at a little more detail, the dome itself is to be constructed from a material called Ethylene Tetraflouroethylene (ETFE). I wanted to know what it was comprised of and what environmental issues if any, it had. I came across a blog called Greenline which has a good explanaition of what EFTE is. Very basically, it is a plastic which is very strong and was designed to have high corrosion resistance over a range of temperatures. Its one of these new brilliant materials that has self-cleaning qualities, thanks to its chemical composition. It is super light, weighing only 1% of a comparable glass panel, and as a result, Proctor and Matthews Architects could design a space in excess of 10,800m2 of column free planting, with a longitudinal span of 165m and cross span of 75m. Finally, EFTE transmits more light than glass, is completely recyclable and installation costs are between 24% and 70% less than for glass panels.

Some buildings that have used EFTE are The Eden Project in Cornwall, The Beijing National Aquatics Centre and The Allianz Arena in Munich.

+ pictures courtesy of archinet

+ Chester Zoo

+ Proctor & Matthews Architects

+ Greenline blog

Focus 2 - Capital Growth

''We want to help Londoners transform the capital by creating 2,012 new food growing spaces by the end of 2012.''

The Capital Growth campaign offers practical advice and support to communities around London, and helps people get access to land to create successful food growing spaces.

+ Capital Growth

+ London Food Link

Focus 2 - Tree Cube

I found this article in an airplane magazine and thought I'd look into it this Focus week....When I began this blog I looked at various treehouses around the world....I fantasise about living in the trees!

This is the Harads hotel, created by Swedish architects Tham and Videgard and is perched high up in the treetops. Its a room for two, with a large bed, kitchenette, bath AND a living room and roof terrace. To me it looks like a hologram! Access to the cabin is by rope ladder or rope bridge.

Apparently, to avoid accidental bird collisions, the laminate glass will have an ultraviolet colour screenprint which is only visible to birds. Clever.

I do wonder though, how the structure is attached to the tree....not enough detail in the drawing below. I would imagine the tree is protected, since they've considered the birds.

+ Tham & Videgard Architects

Focus 2 - 2012 Park - Green Oasis

Today's Evening Standard article showed some interesting cgi's of the Olympic Park and surrounding parklands.

4000 semi-mature trees will be planted in time for the opening in 2012...A company I worked for in the summer are the landscape architects for the Olympic Village, and were incredibly frustrated because as usual, the landscape budget is continually reduced as the realities of the other costs surface. This meant that hundreds of trees had to be removed from the initial proposal. 250 acres of parklands will hopefully not look too sparse.

The wetlands is probably one of the most exciting elements to this project....little is mentioned in the article so I shall say no more. . . .

As much as I hate the travel to that side of the world, I am really looking forward to seeing the end results, and considering various budget cuts, hope it will be as lush and rich in habitats and wildlife as the landscape architects and other environmentalists intend it to.

+ Evening Standard

Focus 2 - Growing Communities

Today some of us landscape arch's volunteered our brains and brawn in the freezing cold to help Growing Communities in their new urban growing site located on the grounds at the Castle Climbing Centre in Stoke Newington.

Growing Communities is a social enterprise run by local Hackney residents, with volunteers from the area and surrounds. They work to create sustainable food systems in the form of urban growing projects and sourcing perishable fruit and veg from local farmers and selling it via local box schemes.

The people at Growing Communities are a real inspiration, with 4 growing sites in the area and a packing site from which the boxes are then distributed. Whilst digging up the new grow sites, we got to engage in chatter with everyone, finding out how they help out and the various social opportunities Growing Communities nurtures. Everything they grow is completely organic and approved by the soil assciation.

This particular site is quite interesting, and since the Castle Climbing Centre has its own environmental policies, its quite appropriate for the disused land surrounding the castle to be used for a productive landscape. the Castle Climbing centre also has an environmental blog found here.

After working on this site we were taken to Allens Gardens, one of their other growing sites that has been established for a few years now. Mainly growing salad veg and herbs, it also has a little classroom with a sedum roof and composting loo for the beds. And a rainwater harvesting system. I did ask the lady who showed the site to us how they compromise with Hackney council the uses of these plots of land. Urban growing schemes are renowned for encountering barriers with land owners and councils...I imagine since Growing Communities is quite well established, they have been able to over the last few years prove their sustainability and economic viability.

Since I have been working on the thesis, I've discovered many urban community farming initiatives, but very few are researched and documented, and some are just too small to probably warrant websites. Growing Communities is probably one of the most effective entrepreneurial growing schemes I have come across in any of my research, and they have a very informative website, with good links too.

Brilliant for the focus week, the volunteering opportunity, meeting new people who are driven to make these much needed changes, and also to inform my extended essay. Thanks to Ida for providing the opportunity to help out. Will definitely squeeze in more time over the coming months to keep in touch and see how this garden grows!

+ growing communities

+ the castle climbing centre

+ the castle environmental blog

Focus 2 - Container City in Mexico

A new container city has opened in Cholula, about 2 hours outside of Mexico City. It is beautiful, brightly painted, hip and looks like a brilliant spot to hang out and drink afternoon coffees. Created by a small community of businesses, it covers an area of about 4500 sq m and consists of restaurants, juicebars and normal bars, bookstores, art galleries, and even living spaces.

The clever layout of the 50 containers has also created alleys courtyards, streets and even an open public space with ping pong tables and bands playing for various events. I think this is such a brilliant project, and I have posted other container projects around the world in the past but this is by far the most attractive and sensible use of containers. One of the 1st floor containers even has a slide access to the ground!! So so cool. It puts container city in Greenwich to absolute shame.

The Container City website is also quite cool...........

+ Container City Mexico

Focus 2 - Sustainable Habit Reminders

Came across these cute household stickers to create a visual focus around wall plugs and light switches, in order to increase people's awareness about electricity consumption....created by London-based studio hu2.

There's a selection of images for each room in the house....the one below is probably a neccessity in plenty homes.............how many times I've walked out without the keys.....

And the studio's run by a couple of hotties. Nothing wrong with that.

+ Hu2 Design

Focus 2 - A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

Focus Week 3 started a few days early with the viewing of a multi-award winning documentary A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash at a new little cinema in Kensal Rise - The Lexi. My local transition town movement Transition Kensal to Kilburn is quick on the mark inviting members to events, talks, market days and important events like this documentary viewing.

The documentary, produced and directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack highlights the frightening issues surrounding our exhaustion of this non-renewable fossil fuel, in a manner that even a toddler will understand. Oil is described as the excrement of the devil, black blood, the blood of the earth and the bloodstream of the world economy, the latter seemingly the most appropriate when you consider pretty much every single thing we use, wear, consume has come to being thanks to oil.

The viewer is shown disturbing imagery of some of the world's most prominent ex-oil mining sites, dry, deserted and incredibly depressing - McCamey Texas, Maracaibo Venezuela and Baku Azerbaijan.

McCamey, Texas

Maracaibo, Venezuela

Baku, Azerbaijan

By 1900, 95% of Russian oil came from Baku, thereafter Venezuela discovered oil in 1914 and became the largest importer in the world. The USA is described as being the Saudi Arabia until the 1950's, being the largest oil producer for 100 years. Noone thought it would peak, yet a Geophysicist, the late Dr. M. King Hubbert had said for years that it will come to an end. He was laughed at. He created a graph of oil discovery and production called Hubbert's Peak which showed quite clearly the concerning issue's in relation to oil supply and demand.

The message throughout is that oil has peaked, but there are doubts about the middle east. Every year, oil producing countries have the same numbers for oil reserves and production, and some even rise, which according to those interviewed, does not make sense. If countries like India and China continue to grow, and strive for the standards of living that the rest of the world is used to, how are decreasing oil reserves meant to cope with these new demands for cars, food, products and industry? Worryingly, if Saudi Arabia does in fact exceed its sustainable oil supply, then the world has reached its supply.

We will continue to have multi-generational RESOURCE wars if the world's behaviours and attitudes do not change and look seriously for energy alternatives.

There are interviews with hugely influential people in the world-wide oil industry - a list of whom can be found here. Matt Savinar, interviewed throughout the film is an attourney from California with a political science degree and an informed individual in the peak oil crisis (often quoted in the US Congress, and US journals). His website lifeaftertheoilcrash is assigned reading at multiple university courses around the world, and worth adding to favourites.

I hope this documentary makes it onto the mainstream cinema circuits, with household effects like that the Inconvenient Truth did, but then again, like all things political, it probably wont.

+ oil crash the movie
+ transition kensal to kilburn
+ the lexi cinema
+ Hubberts Peak
+ lifeaftertheoilcrash

Focus 1 - November 2009

Last week our London branch of the field study took us back down to the Embankment to look at and record waterfront landscapes.

We headed off first to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens or Spring Gardens, which hold quite an interesting history. The gardens opened in 1661, and were most popular during the early 1800's, with various entertainment activities including faires, hot air balloon ascents, fountains and fireworks. I found it to be quite a bland space, surrounded by housing and with the Vauxhall City Farm on one end. It didn't feel unsafe since there wasn't very much inthe way of shrub planting or hiding space but there was something about the absence of people during the day that made me think I would rather take a detour than walk through there at night. Either way it seemed well maintained and clean.

The City Farm is a great example of a community taking ownership of their environments to create a facility for their pleasure and purpose. The squatters on thsi site in the 70's grew their own vegetables and looked after livestock.

Our next stop was Harleyford Road Community Garden which links to Bonnington Square Gardens, both for me such inspirational community spaces. The central square of Bonnington Gardens was going to be turned into a car scrap yard after the war, and the local residents, a mix of squatters, home owners and tenants, joined forces to oppose the council's scrap yard decision and proposed a community garden. From its conception it was so successful, people living around the square started planting window boxes and greening the streets, creating bespoke street planters. Today it is a garden of Eden.....I was completely blown away at how beautiful it is.....the atmosphere is amazing, even in the last few days of autumn, the street is awash with leafyness. Brilliant precedent for greening streets, for the local community by the local community. A guy called Drake, local resident and landscape architect gave us an overview of the area, and what they had to deal with over the years with the council etc......the website is worth looking at too with some interesting stuff in the byelaws.

Finally we took the Tate to Tate boat which gave me time to take in the tight birch planting around the Tate Modern, a project of Vogt Landscape Architects who I worked for in the summer.

+ Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (Spring Gardens)
+Vauxhall City Farm
+ Gross Max
+ Bonnington Square Gardens
+ Harleyford Road Community Garden
+ Vogt Landscape Architects

Focus 1 - Teach-In: 2012 Imperative - Day 2 Workshops

Day 2 of the Teach-in was an organised day of workshops at the participating universities and colleges. All of the students were to work together on various schemes and initiatives suggested by their tutors or themselves which will create awareness or change for their local community/ies in adapting to climate change.

The group I worked in looked at creating a community supported vertical urban farm. We had a lot of good input from various Kingston tutors who joined the workshop, as well as sustainability rep's and also local residents who are involved in various schemes in and around Kingston.

Below is a flow chart I created with the help of a group member, which using the context of the a south facing building of our campus - Knight's Park - describes the processes involved in creatinf this vertical farm, supported by students and supplying produce to the canteen.

Focus 1 - Teach-In: 2012 Imperative

The first Focus Week of this year and we were invited to take part in a one day set of presentations by pretty influential folk, aimed at invoking changes in the way University and College curriculums adapt teachings to climate change, through ecological literacy.

It took place at the Lecture room at the V&A on Monday 12 October. Organised by Jody Boehnert (established EcoLabs in 2006 and also co-founded Transition town Brixton) the various presenters each had some really interesting things to say, and an enthusiatic outlook in changing they way we and future students are taught.

I think the most important lesson to be learned from the day, was about changes happening from the bottom up. Curriculums and the issues surrounding changing these are swamped in beauracracy and red-tape......we cannot rely on governments to adapt at the speeds we need them to.

Below are some of the websites of associated peoples who spoke at the Teach-in:

+ Teach-in

+ Eco-labs

+ Climate Safety

+ New Economics Foundation

+ Doors of Perception

+ Tactical Technology Collective

Focus 1 - Serpentine Pavillion 2009

I visited the latest Serpentine Gallery Pavillion of 2009 before it closed on a gorgeous Autumn sunny day. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA Architects.

They describe their structure as: ‘The Pavilion is floating aluminium, drifting freely between the trees like smoke. The reflective canopy undulates across the site, expanding the park and sky. Its appearance changes according to the weather, allowing it to melt into the surroundings. It works as a field of activity with no walls, allowing uninterrupted view across the park and encouraging access from all sides. It is a sheltered extension of the park where people can read, relax and enjoy lovely summer days.’

I really liked its delicateness, the organic curves, and the reflective peacefulness of such a simple structure. I think I may have read some bad reviews when it first was constructed but as with everything, it's all a matter of personal choice.

+ Serpentine Pavillion

+ SANAA