valentina karga
crapisgood: Recently myself (Crap = Good), Valentina Karga (BFL) and Jia Gu submitted a proposal for a competition in Barcelona, Spain called the Eme3 Festival of Architecture - and to our surprise we won!! The topic of this year’s festival was urban activation through architecture, and our idea was to build a temporary office-cabin that could open and close in order to accommodate a series of workshops dealing with issues of resources within the city (like Fruit Jammin with Grandma!). Now we will be in Barcelona, Spain from June 20 - July 1 to build the Institute, set up our exhibition, conduct workshops, investigate the city and its people and temporarily activate the urban space of Barcelona! We have a small budget but we will need to double that in order to realize the project in the best possible way! So like any short-funded creatives, we turned to Kickstarter to augment support . Please take the time to peek at our project and help us make it happen!! And if you happen to be in Barcelona during those day’s you’re more then welcome to help, have a beer or join a workshop! Original Article Tagged: competition  kickstarter  donation   Notes: 6
Recently, together with Jia Gu and Pieterjan Grandry we founded “The Institute Of Placemaking”, which is also a wining entry at Eme3 festival of Architecture. This means we will built it! 28 of June - 1 of July in Barcelona, be there! The Institute of Placemaking is knowledge exchange center and a public institution that gives spatial possibilities to people who desire a place for new ideas and new encounters within the city. An office-cabin and a table are the simple architectural elements around which workshops, dinners and collective gatherings happen. The Institute acts as an infrastructure that ‘grows’ through a series of curated workshops dealing with public action, knowledge exchange and experimentation with do-it-yourself methods of production, which extends to building, making, cooking, using and re-using. Workshops are focused around the looped system of resources, and particular attention is paid to what is commonly neglected in the production cycle of materials or goods: waste. The Institute proposes a 6 workshops that begin to treat the city and its byproducts as a resource. Over time, individuals and organizations in the neighborhood can plug into this structure, and begin to propose their own spatial interventions or knowledge exchanges. Dinners and artist-led bars will play a catalytic role to the getting to know the neighbors and facilitating new encounters.. The Institute proposes a four-day series of workshops and events during the festival: DAY 01           Build Your Own Solar Cooker Do-It-Yourself Marmelade Workshop DAY 02           Soap Opera: Making Soap from Scratch Solar Cooker Tester + Taste Test DAY 03           Recycled Furniture Workshop DAY 04           Big Lunch ONGOING       Exhibition in the Institute Artist-led Bar The Institute of Placemaking is about creating new places from abandoned spaces through knowledge exchange and collective actions in the city. For Eme3, we propose re-using the city as a resource, whose products, people and places are all part of a larger cycle of production. Our workshops and activities operate on the premise of re-use happening at two scales. First, through a series of workshops focused on the production cycle of things and the continuity of systems. The products of each workshop accumulate into a final lunch with the community and festival participants. Leftover groceries from local markets will be cooked in the solar cookers, DIY marmelade will be served with dessert, self-made soap is used to wash the dishes and recycled furniture makes the setting. Eventually all food-waste will end up in a compost bin that can be the start of a community garden hosted at the Institute. Secondly, re-use happens within the entire installation, which will be open for plug-in programs and  appropriation by the community. This once empty lot is transformed into collective space that is shared and actively used by local citizens, visitors and festival participants, beginning to offer to local citizens a sense of place. Tagged: tumblrize  
Notes: 155
sustainable-sam: 3 Easy DIY Greenhouses for Under $300 Tagged: reference  greenhouse  diy  windows   Notes: 272
“The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create. We believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing.” An example of their database, the image above: “EARTH ANGEL RANDON MINE One of six radon health mines in this part of Montana, which apparently are the only active radon health mines in the United States. The Earth Angel, a former gold mine,  has the strongest concentration of radon gas, limiting users to 20 visits at a stretch (instead of the usual 30). Halfway down the 600-foot-long tunnel, a fork leads to a narrow, dry chamber, with a few chairs. The main tunnel, paved with concrete, extends further, and has a small stream of water running alongside the walkway. At the end is a chest high dam with a grate on top, opening onto a reservoir - a dark, linear pool of water, plunging deep into the mountain.  No decorations at all in this mine.” Tagged: tumblrize  
Supper Studio, a series of dinners, relaxed presentations and discussions around the table between guests and students from the architecture department of UCLA is initiated by Jia Gu. I was very happy to help set up the first event of the series and give a presentation. On the program: Knowhow Shop Root Simple Berlin Farn Lab Pulska Group and Crap = Good On the Menu: Mushroom and spinage dumplings Leek and tofu dumplings Pork and green onion dumplings Fresh Salad Wine and Ice cream with strawberry sauce Tagged: tumblrize   Notes: 1
01office: 気持ちよさそうなルーフバルコニー[hamana] Notes: 37
road trip through utah Tagged: utah  road trip   Notes: 3