Civic Center Victory Garden

Claiming civic space for food production

On July 1, 2008 volunteer urban gardeners, led by Rebar, began removing 10,000 square feet of turf from San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza. Over the course of the following two weeks, teams of volunteers transformed the site into a temporary food-producing garden. On July 12, over 250 volunteers transplanted thousands of seedlings into donated soil.
Wedged between San Francisco’s Civic Center, an area that contains many of the city’s largest government and cultural institutions, and the Tenderloin, a neighborhood shackled with significant poverty, homelessness, and crime, the garden stood as a true social and political experiment. Within weeks, this new ‘Garden of Communities’ was producing approximately 100 lbs of fresh organic produce a week, all of which was donated to the San Francisco Food Bank, and subsequently distributed to meals programs throughout the City.
Originally slated to be removed on September 21, Mayor Gavin Newsom requested that the Garden stay in place through Thanksgiving 2008. The Garden was part of a broader effort to reconsider the way we think about urban open space, transforming ornamental landscapes into productive landscapes.
The project was a great success, but a temporary garden is not sufficient to achieve the fundamental change in the food system we seek. If the Civic Center Victory Garden truly succeeds, it will become a powerful symbolic gesture of both the political will in City Hall to support urban agriculture in San Francisco, and of the collective surge of interest in fixing our country’s broken food system.
Numerous groups are at work in San Francisco and across the nation responding to rising fuel prices and food costs by getting their hands dirty and rebuilding the practice of local food production, building bridges between urban communities and the peri-urban and rural farm families that support them, and teaching young and old how to garden again.
The Civic Center Victory Garden was built in collaboration with SF Victory Gardens, Slow Food Nation, City Slicker Farms, CMG landscape Architecture, and hundreds of community volunteers.
Date: Summer, 2008
Location: Civic Center, San Francisco, CA

http://rebargroup.org/victory-garden/

Art installation in Vadi Salib

'Lively Architecture Festival' in Montpellier

http://www.yatzer.com/the-encounter-lively-architecture-festival-montpelier-yatzer

''Floats'', a site-specific installation of oversized silver balloon disks. The disks reminiscent of a donut’s shape were aimed at inviting people to explore their form and shape. The disks were a welcome addition to the courtyard filling the space and serving as a continuation of a research program that is in progress examining the possibilities of sensation that ephemeral objects in a constructed environment, evoke.

''Between Doors'', an installation by MOBA STUDIO (I. Kovačević / Y. Vašourková/ K. Srámková / Z. Kuldová / B. Simonová / M. Neruda /T. Dufková). The array of doors, which the architects turned into an interactive installation, was aimed at reintroducing the public to the sometimes forgotten value of personal contact. Moba Studio selected different doors from demolished buildings and installed them in the middle of a courtyard inviting the public to open them thereby encountering their history and what they represent. The doors selected were from a prison, an apartment and a shopping gallery. When the visitors opened the different doors, they came into direct contact with the different ‘worlds’ that the doors represented. This intellectual game communicated to the public the meaning of a real and personal contact in a very direct and yet metaphorical way.

''Ma Cour dants ta cour'', an installation by Plux.5 (M. Charbonneau / O. Bourgeois / J-B Morissette / J-P Saucier /  E. Bernier) won the public’s prize and was aimed at investigating The Encounter between the image of the courtyard from Montpellier and the allegory of the Quebecois courtyard through its archetypes. The installation was playful, colourful and intrigued the visitors’ imagination.

''Expo d'expe'' by GoaGroup (N. Canessa / N. Pisani / G. Pisani / P. Raffetto) won the Jury Prize. This installation made out of huge white cylinders, invited the public to hide and wander around it. Again an undertone of the sense of community and communication was evoked and developed as the visitors explored this interactive installation. Once more, the Encounter theme was perfectly manifested through this sight-specific installation, which encouraged the visitors to leave their traces, by drawing on the white cylinders.

The Special Award was given to Remy Roux for the installation: ''Balade Sensorielle'', an installation, which was more like a sensory trip. Through sitting on the wooden frames/boxes, visitors were encouraged to try and guess who was at the other end. The installation’s aim was to develop their curiosity and their urge to discover the person at the other side.   ''Balade Sensorielle'' was a witty and interactive installation aimed at sharpening someone’s perception.

The ''DOTS'' Installation by RD Factory (S. Dambielle/ F. Roussin) was a passage of oversized dots aimed at encouraging visitors to take small and different steps. In such a way, visitors were able to create their own channel within the colourful dots around them animating and in a way dictating their own distinct route.

The ''Will'' installation by Universite D’AALTO was a textile sculpture in the middle of a courtyard. The light, which came through, created different shades while the wind moved the textiles making it look like a living organism within the space.

''Ondes De Choc'' by D!ENTRE (Florine Sachy / Arnaud Manneheut / Audrey Rzentkowski / Jérôme Scorielle), was a spectacular sound installation aimed at providing a meeting point between heritage and contemporary architecture. When people visited the courtyard, the installation moved and created sounds, which in turn symbolized the merger of the space’s heritage with modern architecture.

Public Farm One/ work AC

PF1 (Public Farm One) is an urban farm concept built with inexpensive and sustainable materials recyclable after its use at P.S.1, such as cardboard tubes that form a continuous surface creating multiple zones of activity including swings, fans, sound effects, innovative seating areas, and a refreshing pool at its center, as an Urban Beach.

http://www.archdaily.com/708/ps1-young-architects-program-2008-work-architecture-company/

http://www.publicfarm1.org/index.php?/images/

Warm Up – Cool Down

Taking as a starting point the relief we experience when we move between temperature extremes—from hot sunshine into a cool pool of shaded water, for example—Matter Practice’s proposal juxtaposes warm and cool areas throughout MoMA PS1’s outdoor spaces. The firm proposes to install a cooling tower and a solar chimney in one of the small side courtyards, supplying cool air to the main area while venting heat. Moving between the ventilated and unventilated areas, visitors enjoy the relief of warming up or cooling down on a microclimatic level. A colorful canopy shades the entire space, blocking ultraviolet rays and eliminating foundation supports at ground level.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/yap/2011ny_warmup

Pole Dance

The brainchild of Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO-IL), the Brooklyn-based firm founded by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu in 2007, it consists of several dozen 30-foot-high fiberglass poles connected by bungee cords, with an open net slung over the bungees at a height of about 15 feet. Weighing down the net at intervals are 120 colorful inflated balls. As wind blows through the courtyard, the poles sway and the balls bob peacefully above your head. Things get more interesting when somebody decides to give one of the poles a nice violent shake, sending convulsions through the entire installation and maybe even launching a few of the balls skyward.

visitors wanting to take full advantage of Pole Dance’s interactivity will need to get out their iPhones. Eight of the poles in a side courtyard (below) are rigged with accelerometers; as those poles swivel and vibrate, data is sent to a piece of software that converts the poles’ motion into eerie electronic tones emitted from a ring of speakers. (The sound design is by Arup.) And iPhone-toting attendees can visit www.poledance.so-il.org to adjust the quality of the sound in real time.

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20100625/seriously-playful#more-16095