human

Wisdom p01

This newspaper describes the ideas and methods of the urban megastructure Human Layer for the London City. The Human Layer is developed by the Finland based architecture office C-Laboratory to contribute for the British Architecture Foundation«s Greetings From London urban planning exhibition.The Human Layer London is a network of

economical or political means or other-wise.

Values that are total.

The Human Layer is a democratic free offering from the city to the citizens activating the urban subconscious towards softer more democratic human living.

strategies aiming to reinforce primary human values within the context of themodern city as a human living environ-ment. Without moving anything from the city or adding anything heavy but over-lapping a new layer of small scale inter-ventions tuning the urban psyche towards kindness and other values of real reality - values that can not be speculated by

There used to be a time in the Medieval Prague when there was free beer offered in the street corners. It was the right of the Prague citizen to drink beer for free. This was a democratic offering from the city.The Human Layer offers the modern man a possibility of taking himself a thousand years back to realize that the things are the same.

PLANET EARTH ?No mysteries here. Everything is very simple and still we are more simple to ignore the simple truth. Now the time is somehow unique, since we have finally gained the tools to destroy this all - or at least ourselves. Degenera-tion is happening. Nature will win. The big question is, if the human nature will still be part of the nature.HUMAN BEING ?It is fascinating how we are turning into space ships operating in a vacuum. I miss the Middle Ages. Luckily among us is still people having the tools to bring us back there. We could try the dictatorship of sensitivity for a while. Not hippie, but fascist way.LONDON ?Great place. If London takes the Human Layer, it can change the world. London is the world.CIRCUS ?The presence of accident of possibility of accident is one of the driving forces of humanity and circus displays this in a pure way. This presence is lacking in architecture and urban planning in general having the design replacing reality. In the end architects, artists and humanists should be the ones sensitive enough to feel the real realities of human life and show the horizon, but they are too serious. Circus is not serious in academic ways. I believe circus has a chance. I live in a circus. My family is a circus family. My work is commedia dell architettura.COUNTRYSIDE ?Clean country living: vodka and incest. The city is degenerating the countryside aswell. CUBE ?Cube is good. I like the paradox of total control - like in Zen garden or with the cube. It gives the important possibility of making mistakes and losing control.GREEN ?Red is better. And black. White is good too. No other colours.BATHROOM ?Interesting phenomena. People are very happy pissing on trees and urinating on streets. Bathroom is quite a narsistic setting, nothing wrong with that. The dignity unit.NECKLACE ?I am too weak to wear any jewelery myself, yet, but the time may come. Necklace brings into my mind violent and pornographic atmospheres.GARBAGE / CARROT ?Garbage is as vital as bread. When in our work we find solutions for recycling material we are safe. This must be scaled up to a total megastructure of recycling, there is no other way. War is nothing, pollution is inhuman, disgustingly unnatural and stupid. In the garbage can be found the future of human kind. City must be a compost.PANTOMIME ?Commedia Dell Arte is the king of drama. And the marionets. Straight interface to dream world and subconscious. I think the politicians should only act pantomime way. This way all the nations would be one and wise.ESTLAND ?Estonia is a very fine country. You have still the dramatics of fastly growing and active creature. This kind of atmosphere is very important for all the world. Soon you will start degenerating too. Be clever to attack now.CREATIVITY ?Every man has creativity and every man is very clever to understand art. For this reason the dictatorship of sensitivity can happen. You can«t learn creativity just learn to accept it and not to corrupt your initial feeling.ETERNITY ?-All the human life must be in close connection with eternity. One must be able to take the liberty to go one thousand years back to realize the things are the same. Future is the big question, how long will the eternity last for us.

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GRAVEL

CRUSHED WINDOW SHIELDS

OIL

I-BEAM

MEADOW

CRUSHED BRICK RUNNING TRACK

CRUSHED RUBBER

SAND

CRUSHED CONCRETE

WHEAT

SHEET METAL RE-BAR FOREST TREE I-BEAM

ASPHALT AND FIREPLACE

STONES

CRUSHED BOTTLES

CRUSHED BOTTLES

AKROPOLIS / CASAGRANDE LABORATORY / 2004

CORRIGATED STEEL

80M

50M

The modern metropol is needs the possibility of post industrial meditation. Many cities must be attacked with nature, including human na-ture. Architecture needs an archaic pilgrimage, religious anger in terms of human ecology. Ci ty must be a compost, otherwise it is working for destruction. The hectic rythm of life and dom-inance of economics reflects in the cityscape badly caus-ing bad environments, eco-logical problems and the illusion of stress. The illusion of stress is the atmosphere in which pollu-tion and prostitution is crea-ted. This a tmosphere is closed and paranoic as in malaria. The atmosphere of temporarity is giving the cause not to think of future. Horizon is in no social value. Instead of design we need psychoanalysis.

The Agropolis including the swinging temple, running track, wheat fields, a forest of iron rods as well as an oil pool.

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SAUNA

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HOT WATER

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BENCH

STOVE

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FRONT FACADE LONGITUDAL SECTION BACK FACADE CROSS SECTION SIDE FACADE

CONCRETE FRAME

RE-BAR TOILET

COMPOST TOP SOIL

SAUNA SAUNA LAUNDRY WORKSHOP WORKSHOP WOOD STORAGE

STOVE

SMOKE PIPE

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TOILET

COMPOSTED TOP SOIL

TOILET

WELDING COURTAIN

RE-BAR

SAUNA

BOTTOM FLOOR

DECK 3 ROOF

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CHILL OUT ROOM

SAUNA

COMPOST GARDEN

TOILET

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Leena Torim, architect, Soomaa I just came back from Paris. Paris is a human city indeed. Let's take Jardin de Luxembourg, where the pancake seller was very helpful and made jokes with us. Human beings can do all kinds of things in Paris: play, run, read books, take a nap, feed ducks (or pigeons)...A human place is also the smokesauna in Soomaa (small place in south-western Estonia), where you can get very clean and fresh, 'a new human being' as they say. The building is very small - human-scale. And local human beings are very friendly. People of different nations get different feelings - Japanese shout for joy like little children, but Paris girls can interprete an invitation to sauna in a wrong way and won't ever forgive you. They are left without a hot smoke-sauna in a shore of a cold river in a cosy summer evening. It is a miracle-working elixire to both the human body and human spirit.

led wood collected into the spots. Collection point of yesterdays bread, vegetables and other donated food.Urban p icnic a rea wi th cover from the weather.

The nar row p lan o f the dignity unit fits into parking lots, useless alleyways, roof-tops etc.

STOVEBATH LAUNDRY DRYING CLOTHESEAT DRYING CLOTHESEAT BATH LAUNDRYSTOVE

DRYING CLOTHESEAT BATH LAUNDRYSTOVE

CANVAS

METAL WIRE

WELDING COURTAIN

STEEL SQUARE TUBE FRAME

1800

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DIGNITY UNIT / HUMAN LAYER_LONDON / C-LABORATORY / 2004

STEEL SQUARE TUBE FRAME

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A unit for the homeless, travellers and other urban nomads to have a decent shower, maybe a shave, washing clothes and making food on public kitchens.Heating up the water and cooking the food with recyc-

The Human Cocoon is a one man sleeping shelter that can be attached to a fa•ade of any existing building, be-tween two light poles, under a bridge, on a roof or into an abandoned building. The shelter will offer public pri-vacy inside the city.The shelters are raised one floor above the street level and accessed by a ladder that can be lifted up to the shel-ter, when it is occupied. The steel construction offers protection against the weath-er and violence. There is a small stove inside the shelter for warming up and cooking food, burning leftover wood, cardboard or paper.The cocoons are providing a shelter for an urban meta-morphosis by getting a de-cent sleep.

Architectonic installation for the 3rd Biennale of Montréal, Canada, 2002. 6 x 6 x 6 metres cubic steel frame supporting walls of chain in the heart of Montréal IT-area in the Old City. Inside the struc-ture is a white 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. Authors Casagrande & Rintala.

I 03humanlayer LONDON JUNE 2004 I 05

human city is a concoction of different social, natural, energetic etc. rhythms and places. these combine into patterns that define our personal surroundings in any given city. thus every person may have a city of her/his own that more or less suits to his/her liking.

my city is a result of my active choices. yours may be the result of your per-sonal preferences.

what exactly have i chosen to be included in my city in every city or what these choices are based upon is rather irrelevant. though in my case a certain degree of responsibility seems to be important in composing it. to illustrate:

recently i invited a dearly loved person to join me in a town that i knew was an uncharted and even slightly hostile territory in her perception. the routes and places i took her to acti-vated her negative pre-judice in a very unexpected way. she did not feel good.

a little bit of empathy would have changed my personal city. i hope this will be the case in the future and that it is already so with a lot of people every day.

empathy, being sensitive towards those around me, may rearrange a lot of personal patterns. this may well result in changes of the physical world: open sea views, flying carpets as public transport, a restored wooden door of your old kindergarten. tim kolk, tarttu, 22 may 2004

HARRY PYE, Gallerist, London. The most human place I can think of is... the Eagle's nest cafe in Lee Green, South London. I meet a friend in the upstairs of this cafe a couple of times a week, and we just sit there chatting. The girls who work there are French, they are very shy, sensitive and attractive. I ask them to bring me up different drinks, they usually forget to charge us. From the window you see lots of children going to the park and lots of old people going to the pub. Most of the people in Lee Green are amusing in some way, often they have a strange way of walking or choose bad clothes. There's an old guy called "Tough" who used to be a boxer that comes and talks to us sometimes.He's always looking for someone to bore about how he used to know the Kray Brothers, or how he beat up a young mugger. The eagle's nest food is very basic, they bring it to you on gigantic plates. The cafe is very spacious, very white, very clean. Only two of the windows open, there are no blinds or curtains. I feel very safe there, very relaxed. It's a good place to sit and watch the world go by.

that has been planned come true. Let them be-lieve. And let them have a laugh at their passions.Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy but just the friction between their souls and the outside world.And most important: let them believe in them-selves.Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing and strength is nothing.

When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies he is hard and insensitive.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 fresh-ness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.from Andrei Tarkowski's Stalker (1979, Mosfilm).

Despite the efforts to pro-vide affordable housing, the number of people who are homeless continues to increase. The problem has now crossed the bound-aries of dense urban areas and reached small com-munities such as Ames. When I started to research the homelessness I was surprised to learn that some of the homeless people who live on streets have the choice of living in a shelter, but choose to live on streets instead. Home-lessness as a choice of living presents the greatest challenge to the problem. How can you design or provide a home to some-one who does not want it? As long as it remains a choice of living for some, we will never be able to eradicate the problem of people living on the streets. But is there anything we can do to assist those who choose to live on streets? And how can we as Archi-tects, justify being invol-ved or not being involved with the homeless?

To some extent I agree with what the Professor of Urban Planning Peter Mar-cuse says in his article, "Criticism or Cooptation - Can Architects reveal the sources of Homelessness?" where he states, "Home-lessness is not a design problem. Yet to the extent it has been considered by architects, by schools of architecture, by the Archi-tectural profession... Indeed, it is desirable that architects should help address the present crisis of homeless... we can en-lighten ourselves and others about homeless as we try to detail housing for them. We can show them that their needs are essen-tially ours." (i) Homeless-ness is at the core an economic problem. However homelessness as a choice presents new ave-nues for designers to re-think the idea of a house. Can we and how do we meet the housing needs of a homeless man on the street?

There are various reasons for the homeless to reject the shelter services that are being offered. Some enjoy the challenge of living by day, others do not want to live "under" someone else's "rules" or codes of be-haviour and expectation. Whichever the reason,

At Home in the City Angela Nkya, Iowa State University, USA

arrive somewhere different we "create" a new home by endowing it with our pre-sence in the form of the interior landscape of our possession. But it is not just the variety and fami-liarity of these possessions that define our identity in this adopted space, but the way we distribute them..." (ii) He gives an example of a perfect holiday house as the one in which the tem-porary owners have the freedom to move the fur-niture and change things around to make the place more at home. Flexibility and objects that can be adapted to serve different functions have always been the characteristics and ele-ments of the nomadic life-style. Based on his argu-ment, for a homeless man to be at home in the city the public elements of the city will have to be adapt-able and the set of rules and regulations loosened to allow for some of the pri-vate behaviors such as sleeping. In other words, the way to provide a home to someone who lives on the streets is by the crea-tion of flexible spaces.

This is good news to both the designers and the city residents because it frees us from the expense of creating new spaces for the single purpose of serving the homeless. Instead of creating a new building, which raises the questions of where it is to be located and who will fund its construction we can simply use the existing elements such as bus shelters and make them adaptable for sleeping at certain hours. The bus shelters in Ames are used during the day and remain unused after mid-night. We could design them in such a way that they can transformed to a sleeping compartment from midnight to 6 am. Buildings such as transit bus depots, which Ames does not have at the moment, can serve dual functions by providing ser-vices such as public bath-rooms, telephones and lockers to both the travel-ers and the homeless.

We can not fully address the issue of homelessness without looking at the causes for homelessness. Family breakup is the number one reason for homelessness in Iowa followed by domestic vio-lence (iii). But urban redevelopment ranks high among the causes for

shelter is one of the basic human needs and still con-tinues to be whether one chooses to live in the house or on the streets. Those who choose to live on streets need protection from weather, security and privacy that housing can provide as much as the people who live in houses do. They already have a way of obtaining these that differs from the people who live in houses. They have places such as soup kitchens where they go for food, places they go to shower, and places to sleep. Rather than having all these under one roof, the homeless obtain these from different places in the city. In essence, the home-less live in the city in the same way as one lives in a house. Their home is the city.

During my study of home-lessness I had an opportu-nity to converse with two homeless men who chose to live in the city. The first man I met at the men's homeless shelter. He is a seasonal worker in Ames and came to the shelter to shower and do laundry but not to spend the night or eat. He willingly agreed to stay for dinner and socia-lize when invited, but re-jected the offer to freely spend the night at the shel-ter. The second man, on the other hand, does not want to live in shelter because he can not have much pri-vacy at the shelter and he does not want to be depen-dent on anyone. He makes his living waking up early in the morning to collect cans and use the little income he gets from that to support himself. He lived in a forested area, con-cealed from the public where he made a small tent and spent most of his day time reading. He had lived there since June but his home was exposed during fall and he did not live there longer after that.

One lesson that I took from studying the homeless is that the homeless patterns differ from one place to another. In Ames you are most likely to find people who work and not pan handling as you see in other places. In addition to that, Ames is only a tem-porary stop for the home-less not a destination. Most of the people who are live on the streets in Ames are

here for just a short period of time - about six months. For example the first man was a seasonal worker while the other had been in Ames for five months and was planning to leave soon. This means some of the homeless projects done in other parts might not work in Ames. Any home-less project needs to speci-fically respond to the na-ture of the homeless people in that area.

While homelessness is a new problem in our so-ciety, the homeless noma-dic lifestyle predates urban settlements. The homeless are the modern day no-mads moving from one city to another in search of favorable conditions and jobs. This is especially true in Ames. The second man could have moved to another place in Ames where he is well concealed from the public or to the southern states where it is much warmer. In the same way the seasonal worker migrates from one city to another to work. But even though the homeless live in cities, cities, being a result of established settlements, do not cater for the no-madic lifestyle. Cities have a hierarchy of spaces that range from private to pub-lic and have rules and re-gulations that control how one occupies and behaves in these spaces. For example, private behaviors such as sleeping are only allowed in the private spaces and hardly on the public spaces. Our houses reflect this hierarchical arrangement of spaces by having rooms that are de-signed for specific purpo-ses, - a dining room, living room and bathroom. What makes a person homeless in the city is the lack of private spaces. They can only use the city's public spaces. This hierarchy of spaces therefore alienates the nomads from the city.

The British Architect and Lecturer Robert Kronen-burg, supports this idea by arguing that, for a person to create a home in a place, they have to have the freedom to arrange the space in a way that they like. In his essay, "Modern Architecture and Flexible Dwelling" he says, "when I travel I bundle my possess-ions into compact contain-ers... when I arrive at my destination a part of settling in is that I open my possessions out into the room I occupy... when we

homelessness nation-wide.(iv) Urban renewal projects have left some of the urban poor homeless. These projects involve a wide range of profess-ionals - Architects, urban planners, developers, and city officials. Urban rede-velopment may not be the cause homelessness in Iowa but it impacts us all due to the nomadic life-style of the homeless. The homeless men I met in Ames were from San Fran-cisco, Kansas and other parts of the country. We are therefore not isolated from the consequences of what happens in other places.

Homelessness is not a poor design problem in terms of aesthetics and functionality of the architecture of the built environment, but is in part poor design in term of failure to address the im-pact of the built environ-ment on the society. That is what makes homelessness an architectural problem. The profession of Archi-tecture is as much about aesthetics and functionality as it is about social impli-cation. Homelessness is in a certain way a reflection of how the built environ-ment is becoming more and more geared towards the rich and the elite and is ignoring the urban poor. It is therefore not only de-sirable that architects should help address the problem of homelessness, it's our duty. Homelessness has become one of the new elements of the urban en-vironment and it's our duty as designers to raise its awareness to the society. It is our duty too to suggest ways in which the home-less can be helped.Homelessness is an eco-nomic problem and there will always be the poor amongst us, but we should not ignore them. We need to look at alternative ways of providing housing to those who can not afford to live in a house.

In the city, the nomad is at the mercy of the resident because the city is the resident's territory. The resident is the taxpayer and the one who supports and maintains the city. An Architect may be able to provide adaptable bus shelters, or design public bathrooms but the one who approves of whether the project gets to be executed are the city official, representing the commun-ity. The client then is not the homeless but the resi-

dent. This makes the resi-dent responsible for the homeless. We are the own-ers of the city and based on that we all have a choice to make when it comes to homelessness. We can either ignore them, reject them, or accept them.However, as the number of homeless people conti-nues to increase in our community and nation-wide the problem be-comes more difficult to ignore. Rejecting them by pushing them away will not address the problem. Furthermore it can be ar-gued that we can not push the homeless away from us for the majority of the ones we have in Ames are from other places. We should accept their lifestyle and provide the environment that suits both our lifestyle and theirs.

There are opportunities to provide housing for the homeless people on streets but these can only be accomplished by a joint effort between Architects, the community and differ-ent professions. It is our responsibility as Archi-tects to help the homeless because we have the train-ing to design, among other things homes for people. Our services need not to be only traditional homes to those who can afford but non traditional and to those who can not afford normal houses.

(i) "Criticism or Cooptation: Can Architects Reveal the Sources of Homelessness?", Peter Marcuse, Crit, Spring 1988, p. 33

(ii) "Modern Architecture and flexible dwelling," Robert Kronenburg, in "Living in Motion - Design and Archi-tecture for flexible dwelling" edited by Mathias Schwartz-Clauss and Alexander von Vegesack, 2002, Weil am Rhein : Vitra Design Museum

(iii) "Iowa Homeless Population: 1999 Estimates and Profile. A Report Pre-pared for the State of Iowa by the University of Iowa in Cooperation with the Iowa Department of Education and Other State Agencies." http://planning.urban.uiowa.edu/homeless/draft3.htm

(iv) Arlene Zarembka, "The Urban Housing Crisis", 1990, Greenwood Press Inc, Westport Connecticut

Special thanks to the homeless men who provided me with a wealth of insight on being homeless and to the staff and temporary residents of the Ames Emergency Room project.Angela Nkya is the Winner of the Ber-keley Prize 2004.

humanlayer LONDON JUNE 2004 I 05

Homo conclusus Tommy Plummer

We live in a society that established itself on community and developed through science. While the foundation of community is a pure one, the advancement of science has gradually re-moved itself from such a pure gesture. The notion of purity has been warped and now society has adopted science over com-munity. We have forgotten our natural roots. Speculation is re-placed by fact, supported by undisputable evidence. Ignorance is bliss, but bliss seems unimportant in modern society.

Nature is naturally and effortlessly beautiful (it has had the practice and paid for its mistakes). Humans have negated the process of natural selection and the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest through the evolution of tools, weapons, religious doctrine and science, thus replacing it with technology, and the philosophies of dominance and servitude (renouncing our equality to our fellow inhabitants of the earth). Humans have taken the process of evolution into their own hands and made it redundant in its own species. They have dispatched of a vital process and the replacement will be weighed and found wanting. It is my ,and i¥m sure many others¥, opinion, however, that before technology kills man it will make humans and humanity impotent, physically and philosophically. Humans are the only animals who have anything more than a stick as a tool or weapon. Certain things have been granted us by our own permission. Such as the ability for conflict on a multiplicitous level - one man can extinguish an entire population with his index finger. Such as the ability to cut down the producers of our life-breath, the trees, faster than they will grow. The removal of interactions with nature and instinctive behaviour is the process and the increase of allergies, disease, depression and suicide has been the cost.

Medicine won't save us, it's most prominent facet, genetics allows us to meddle with evolution which has been perfecting it`s art for hundreds of millions of years. Genetics cannot com-pete with this, and now medicine is facing an evolutionary re-gression whereby the genome can be manipulated for human benefit. No longer are we homo sapiens, we gave up the right to such a dignified name when we embraced these multiplicitous technologies. We may, I suggest, more accurately call ourselves homo conclusus. Humankind is going nowhere but to its own extinction and we¥re going to drag as many other species as we possibly can, with us. Society does not work without humanity, without humanity society is ugly.

Urban planning is an obvious answer for the anguishes suffered in society as a result of the disconnection from nature. Removing of preconceived ideas of the city superstructure - in essence removing city from city, breaking it down to multiple individual communities and the family unit and building it up in the form of the prime factor of that community, the family unit and the home, rather than a homogenised mass of inhumane walking brains, is the cornerstone of the human layer. It's the instinct of animals to establish a territory, and many root themselves further by building shelter for warmth, protection etc.. So why not extend the basic home unit so that it encapsulates many such individual units. Making the city a house, forming the city in the mould of a home. You can eat here, sleep there, relax in the CityZen garden here, store things there. But all this is sensed on the level of community, shared experience and rehabilitated culture. A common goal is thus realised, humanity develops.

So the human layer provides a zone not just for the individual, or a group made up of plural individuals, but one where humanity is reintroduced in its basic, pure, and undistorted form; reintroduced by small gestures of kindness provided by community. Urban metamorphosis. Everything functions on some level, whether mechanically, emotionally, or to serve the senses. The human layer restores humanity to society. The human layer works and so it is beautiful.

The writer Tommy Plummer is a biologist who joined C-Laboratory in Tallinn on his way back home from a bicycle trip from England to Moscow.

Homo conclusus Tommy Plummer

We live in a society that established itself on community and developed through science. While the foundation of community is a pure one, the advancement of science has gradually re-moved itself from such a pure gesture. The notion of purity has been warped and now society has adopted science over com-munity. We have forgotten our natural roots. Speculation is re-placed by fact, supported by undisputable evidence. Ignorance is bliss, but bliss seems unimportant in modern society.

Nature is naturally and effortlessly beautiful (it has had the practice and paid for its mistakes). Humans have negated the process of natural selection and the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest through the evolution of tools, weapons, religious doctrine and science, thus replacing it with technology, and the philosophies of dominance and servitude (renouncing our equality to our fellow inhabitants of the earth). Humans have taken the process of evolution into their own hands and made it redundant in its own species. They have dispatched of a vital process and the replacement will be weighed and found wanting. It is my ,and i¥m sure many others¥, opinion, however, that before technology kills man it will make humans and humanity impotent, physically and philosophically. Humans are the only animals who have anything more than a stick as a tool or weapon. Certain things have been granted us by our own permission. Such as the ability for conflict on a multiplicitous level - one man can extinguish an entire population with his index finger. Such as the ability to cut down the producers of our life-breath, the trees, faster than they will grow. The removal of interactions with nature and instinctive behaviour is the process and the increase of allergies, disease, depression and suicide has been the cost.

Medicine won't save us, it's most prominent facet, genetics allows us to meddle with evolution which has been perfecting it`s art for hundreds of millions of years. Genetics cannot com-pete with this, and now medicine is facing an evolutionary re-gression whereby the genome can be manipulated for human benefit. No longer are we homo sapiens, we gave up the right to such a dignified name when we embraced these multiplicitous technologies. We may, I suggest, more accurately call ourselves homo conclusus. Humankind is going nowhere but to its own extinction and we¥re going to drag as many other species as we possibly can, with us. Society does not work without humanity, without humanity society is ugly.

Urban planning is an obvious answer for the anguishes suffered in society as a result of the disconnection from nature. Removing of preconceived ideas of the city superstructure - in essence removing city from city, breaking it down to multiple individual communities and the family unit and building it up in the form of the prime factor of that community, the family unit and the home, rather than a homogenised mass of inhumane walking brains, is the cornerstone of the human layer. It's the instinct of animals to establish a territory, and many root themselves further by building shelter for warmth, protection etc.. So why not extend the basic home unit so that it encapsulates many such individual units. Making the city a house, forming the city in the mould of a home. You can eat here, sleep there, relax in the CityZen garden here, store things there. But all this is sensed on the level of community, shared experience and rehabilitated culture. A common goal is thus realised, humanity develops.

So the human layer provides a zone not just for the individual, or a group made up of plural individuals, but one where humanity is reintroduced in its basic, pure, and undistorted form; reintroduced by small gestures of kindness provided by community. Urban metamorphosis. Everything functions on some level, whether mechanically, emotionally, or to serve the senses. The human layer restores humanity to society. The human layer works and so it is beautiful.

The writer Tommy Plummer is a biologist who joined C-Laboratory in Tallinn on his way back home from a bicycle trip from England to Moscow.

FINLANDGERMANYNETHERLANDSIRELANDITALYGREECEFRANCEAUSTRIABELGIUMSWEDENENGLAND

1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.

POPULATION5 200 000

82 357 00016 150 0003 920 0005 748 000

10 970 00060 144 0008 116 0001 031 8008 880 000

58 789 194

OVERNIGHT TOURISTS2 826

17 96999 0956 746

39 79914 18077 01218 6116 7242 8946 957

HOMELESS9 660

41 0003 2005 500

17 0001 700

55 00070 00020 00012 6009 680

10 1

4

11

5

2

7

6

3

A STUDY for an urban strategy for sustainable living in Taipei City, Taiwan by changing the illegal settlement of Treasure Hill into an urban laboratory of testing different solution of sustainable urban life. Composting of organic community waste, grey water vegetation filtering, vegetable gardens, shelter for playing mah-jong and ping-pong, fireplace, complex system of stairways, terraces and bridges activating the vertically built village, occupation of houses for student living units. Changing the illegal village for a part of permanent piece of environmental art.

is an illegal village inside Taipei City, Taiwan. The population is mainly elderly Kuoming-tang veterans that are continuing old Chinese village living in the middle of the hectic city. The life is very much down to earth and based on basic human values. The city wanted to bulldoze down the village and plant a park to the site. I was comissioned by the Taipei City Goverment Department of Cultural Affairs to realize and architectonic or landscape installation for the city. I chose Treasure Hill to work with and started to implant and reinforce values in the village that I feel the modern city is missing. Treasure Hill turned into an urban laboratory of sustainable living and ecological rehabilitation. The values found in Treasure Hill will be brought to Taipei as the megastructure of Or-ganic Layer_Taipei in future. I worked in Treasure Hill with altogether 200 students from different universities, mainly Tamkang University and National Taiwanese University. After realizing the fragments of Organic Layer_Taipei in Treasure Hill the values were brought to the city center in a parade of Trojan Horses.

Bird CageYokohama An Architectonic installation for the third Yokohama Triennial of Contemporary Art 2001 in Yokohama, Japan, which was curated by Fumio Nanjo. A hangar built for 72 balsa birds which carry 5 seeds and messages in test tubes inside them. The birds are sent to the height of 10 kilometres with VAISALA - meteorological

balloons. After the burst of the balloon the birds will glide long distances according to the turbulences and winds landing around Japan and to the Pacific Ocean. The finder of the bird is asked to take responsibility of planting and taking care of the seeds and to send information to Casagrande & Rintala. The building was made out of concrete ironing steel bars and hemp rope.

"And that, that is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny"

Liking what you've got to do. Necessity is the key to happiness and virtue. The luxuries and excesses are superfluous and unne-cessary burdens of society, unless it is to become an unhappy, greedy one.

Hypnopaedia, not through the spoken word, and not while asleep. In the living, breathing environment that surrounds us. Change the environment and the attitudes will change.

Urban planning is hypno-paedia. Framing nature in a particular way so as to affect attitude and philo-sophy.

Emotion and attitude is the glue that welds community. Urban planning, archi-tecture, humanism and art are the producers of the glue. The better the glue the stronger the bond in the community.

Urban Hypnopaedia

Exploring an innate nomadic tendency, and in need of distancing myself from the pressures of home and the rat race, I set out on a cycle trip from my home in the UK to Red Square in Moscow. The distancing was important, there is a need to remove oneself from a problem to look at it objectively. Like looking at a picture an inch from your face, you need to step back in order to see the bigger picture, so you can explore the details in the context of the picture.

I made every effort to consciously think about, and work through my problems at home, but mile after mile, and long hours of endless stretches of monotonous road were not conducive to such rational reminiscences. Instead I found myself, from a very early stage, thinking of absolutely nothing. I would look at a road sign indicat-ing where to turn at a crossroad and, a hundred yards on, entirely forget where i was going. I was like a robot, my legs pe-dalling without complaint, and my brain empty.

Mr. Cycly Man

Now I feel more contented and I think I have resolved my problems, if only by displacing them from my mind with a void, like a vacuum of conscious thought. No doubt when I return the bubble will burst, I will be reminded of all the reasons for leaving the UK. Although I was alone I didn`t feel lonely, and despite much adversity I never got very stressed or gave up. To me, now, these seem like constructs of my old life.

Rather than the trip ending in glorious festivities, I found myself visiting the British Embassy due to visa problems, and sub-sequently sleeping on the streets of Moscow in the rain and near freezing temperatures. Not prepared to spend further nights sleeping rough, I left for Latvia the following day, reducing my stay in Russia by nearly two weeks.

Time again for a Revolution. Class struggle and impe-rialism still exist. Soviet Union went down. The Big Oil is here. Before, the men were killed by death, now they fade away. The enemy is grey. Chemical warfare, World War 1 style. More si-lent, but more massive. The final solution.

Who can afford not to poll-ute their own land, they buy the pollution to go abroad. China is a good place to poll-ute. The goods come back home in time. People can still die in masses the Mao style to fuel the industry. Metropolis, Moloch, money to the few. Locked behind the Himalayas and the Gobi. Nobody knows. They all know the money of course.

So the three headed dragon eats it all away. USA, China, Russia. Russia barely sur-viving to the others. But China and US, yes the mad twins. One has to obey, Chi-na doesnÕt need to, but the others . Russia survives somehow. Capitalism is gone, industrialism is gone, now the Nazis.

for the shit to hit the fan and then re lax b ig t ime and flourish. Maybe they will buy America Ð the China-American Czar. Fucking hell. He is the chosen one.

Pollutionsraum. They even took away the 80Õs. Now itÕs just grey. Straight forwarded war. Good time to occupy the moon.

Who will win Ð 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 Ð the Pacific King Kong thing? China and America being one? Now you can go, where people are one?

Maybe Africa will survive, because it is so god damn poor and not interesting. The diamond deal will fade away some day anyway and then itÕs 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 canÕt win. Maybe he can win in Africa? Good people around him.Muammar Gaddaf i , the Jews. They need him. The rest donÕt give a shit. It only makes us s t ronger i f he blows up things in Mid-

West. And he knows it. Poor bastard.

Europe, who the hell knows. We can consume all right. M a y b e i t w i l l g o j u s t fine.Yes, but the new world order. The pollution will sort out the population problem i n A s i a . N o m o r e w a r needed, or maybe they have some wars. China has land enough, I guess places to breathe too. And the one son p o l i c y b r i n g i n g u p t h e chosen generation of bullies who have had it all. And will. The masses, they will carry the familyÕs only son back to the forbidden city, the Club of the Sons. Taiwan being quite healthy in the ne ighbour , bu t can un -fortunately drown in its own shi t . Anyway being the laboratory of the China-American new way.

WhatÕs 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.

And the Russians. Behind their cold as always. Waiting

Oxford St. Selfridges department store was attacked by friendly fire from a snow canon fil led with dandelion seeds. So far, no one was injured but material damage done will be just realizable in the next spring. At this t ime, the yellow herbal guerilla is expected to take over.

Not just Oxford St. Exchange Take A w a y B o o k s t a n d s a r e n o w installed in every major street of every London Borough. Browse through the vast range of books already there and bring your own o l d b o o k s i n e x c h a n g e f o r everyones' pleasure. Sure all the books look nice on your home shelf, too... Remember that the boxes with the books are always heaviest when moving!FREE TRADE TERRORIST BERGEN

Trojan Rocking Horse

The Trojan Rocking Horse is a mailbox for recording urban subconscious. The citizens are encouraged to leave their comments about their living environ-ment, their dreams and their deepest wishes into the Trojan Horses placed around London.

Every third month the Tro-jan Rocking Horses will be opened by C-LAB and the recorded data will be examined. C-LAB will re-act to the information by means of urban planning, architecture or environ-mental art or free mixtures of the mentioned disci-plines.

The Trojan Rocking Hor-ses are aiming to find a straight interface between the citizens and urban planning.

"The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart." Fritz Lang, Metropolis.

Like the attic is the memory and subconscious of the house we need to build up urban public attics to rein-force the common psyche and give the urban subcon-scious platforms to take form. The urban attics are

by the time becoming dis-torted and it is no longer what was the truth then. It is the truth now of a memory that you had which has been manipulated by every second of your life experience.The story is alive in us. We need to scale this up into urban planning with the same human accidenta l quality of truth.

stress and artificial time offering a possibility to meet human time.

Attics are a place to store things. The objects on attic have fine qualities of mean-ing and story. Walk about in

other peoples heads. The attic space is not fixed to the present moment but floats in time being a space where memories and subconscious can be met mixing archi-tecture and poetry. On this level every human being can be touched. A personal story might get evoked inside every one entering the attic - this is human architecture

and this we must bring to city.These structures are not at ground level, they are above it. It is necessary to climb up a set of stairs or a ladder in order to access them. Like emotional memories are stored upstairs in the brain. Memory is rarely, if ever, perfect, the objects on the attic might get changed

Constructed in 2002 for the community of Rosendal, Norway, the sauna in the Hardangerfjord serves as a democratic centerpoint of the village.

A floating transparent sauna in Hardangerfjord, Norway.

the sauna. The walls are s e m i - t r a n s p a r e n t a n d pulsating according to the steam raising up from the water thrown to the hot stones.

There was a t ime in the Medieval Prague when there was free beer in the street corners. It was the right for a Prague citizen to get his free beer. This was a democratic offering from the city. We can add these kinds of democratic offerings to all ex i s t ing c i t i e s wi thou t removing anything or ba-sically building anything - like urban accupuncture. Add a new layer to the existing urban context, a Human Layer and heal the body.

Urban Accupuncture

One comes to the public sauna with a rowing boat, takes off the clothes and enters the bath. The floor is open to the sea, making it possible to have a dip inside

It has been observed that Mandala Temples of Tibet shed energy that remark-ably improves the harvest within the radius of 20 km.The current project puts 9 Mandala Temples in the centre of London along the river Thames within 3-4 km. The project takes notice of the historical formation of the London city centre.The temples w i l l be l oca ted i n the a r e a s b e t w e e n t h e bridges more along the southern shore. A chain of yantras will be brought into being to interfere in the l i f e rhy thm o f the c e n t r a l L o n d o n w i t h positive energy. The Mandala Temples on

river Thames are quite small: they should fit in a cube of 12x12x12 m. The g r o u n d p l a n o f e a c h temple has an image of a certain mandala. 3-dimensional mandala becomes the instrument o f God . The shape o f current buildings have been derived from cubes, cones and cylinders. In the centre of the eastern-most temple stands the statue of Buddha, the holy statues of the other tem-ples are situated on the edges of the plan. The central space of the temples is empty: it is ap-pointed for the monks to make the mandalas.These spaces are lighted by little cupolas.

The making of the manda-la takes place once a year and it lasts for 7 days. After that the colourful sand is wiped together and thrown into the river Thames. In other days of the year the temples are freely opened to medita-tors and prayers.The mantras of the me-ditators and the yantras of the linear temples bring f o r t h a n e n o r m o u s l y powerful wave of positive energy that covers the whole London with a me-dicative veil.London gets rid of anxiety, fears, desires, cars, beg-gars, whores, drunkards, drug addicts, ugly build-ings, rotten tomatoes, sad cats and finally himself.

Swimming in the river Thames may result in a near-to-death expe-rience if you believe local authorities. Prevailing strong cur-rents impose the risk of drowning to the pleased swimmer, sharp objects like broken glass and metal pieces on the ground, a piranha here and there once in a while, and - of course - the quality of the water harming your respira-

tory tract, eyes, and ears. But did you know that until 1972, the City of London was putting up a beach close to Lon-don Tower, refreshing the sand every year? Actually, you will find more spots than you can think of to take a dip close to your city.Places where you might go for a swim as pro-posed by the River and Lakes Swimming Asso-ciation (RALSA):

* Tooting Bec Lido* the Serpentine* Highgate ponds * Frensham Great Pond* Clifton Hampden Dux-

ford, difficult to find, down a private-look-ing pea-gravel path beside a tiny that-ched cottage.

* Hurley Meadows cara-van park, no need to have a caravan!

* Rushey Weir Pool loads of picnic space.

A morning.Alone.A rock… a point in space.the history of the world at this point. Listen to the wisest thing in the world; the Rock.The sea… dark, furious… unpredictable… my mother and my death. respect… silence… angriness… furor… and peace.The wind, whispering stories in my head… tales coming frome so far… dreams from them. carry my thoughts…The Triskell… The three celtic elements... earth… water… air… and me.Nothing more. Nothing less.Nature… true… me… human, a boy, a man… peace… furor. life. The truth.A morning.Alone together.I miss her.

Fermentation Cemetery see page 18 for details

Philippe Gelard

ETERNITY

3

THE ETERNAL GARDENS

WATER SAND

BAMBOO FOREST GLASSHOUSE

CONVEYOR BELT

RED STEEL

BAMBOO FOREST GLASSHOUSE

THE ETERNAL GARDENS

MBC UNIT

1 2

CONVEYOR BELT

RUNNING TRACK

RUNNING TRACK

MBC UNIT 2

MBC UNIT 1

POWER GENERATOR

GAS CONDITIONING

HEATING PLANT

WASTE RECEIVING AREA

MAGNETIC SEPARATOR

ROTARY SCREEN

SEPARATOR

SEPARATOR

FEED TANK FORSORTING PLATFORM

+ DIGESTED SLUDGE

BLENDING SCREEN RESIDUES

PULPEN MACERATOR

INSTALLATIONS

ELECTRICAL

CONVEYOR BELT

CONVEYOR BELT DOWN

CONVEYOR BELT UP

DOWN

UP

PROCESS DECK

ETERNAL GARDENS

SIDE FACADE

CROSS SECTION

LOADING AREA

Christian Edlinger, ark.yo. Weimar/Jollas Helsinki!*Underground stations with the smell of fresh pancakes and cinnamon rolls*Castles collected and put align to form streets*Bricolage cafés in orange tents*The scent of burnt birch wood in the air*Views leading outside *Whole night buss sings "In excelsis deo" 2 a.m.*Street musicians, fried potatoes and masses of people in the streets at 3 a.m. , -15°C*Summer sun*The gloriouos amount of silent joy in the people*Spring comes late, but then!

“We don’t advertise.We just give the money!”


LENGTH 35,5 M / BREDTH 9 M / SIDE HIGHT 2,5 M

DU

FIRE PLACE CRUSHED GLASS

CONCRETE IRONING BAR

FIREPLACE BARGE / POST INDUSTRIAL FLEET / C-LAB / 2004

CORRIGATED STEEL

BARGE

SECTION

UPPER DECK

SECTION

SIDE

ROOF

DECK

SECTION

ROOF

UPPER DECK

BOTTOM

SECTION

SIDE

CONCRETE IRONING BAR

BOOKSHELVES

BENCH

CRUSHED CONCRETE

U

CONCRETE IRONING STEEL

BENCH

BOOK SHELVE

CRUSHED CONCRETE

SWING

RECYCLED BOOKS BARGE / POST INDUSTRIAL FLEET / C-LAB / 2004


CINEMA PARK BARGE / POST INDUSTRIAL FLEET / C-LAB / 2004


BOTTOM

SECTION

UPPER DECK

SIDE

SECTION

ROOF

BIO TOILET

COMPOST TOP SOIL

COMPOST TOILET

COMPOST

CRUSHED GLASS

MOVIE SCREEN

FIRE PLACE

BOOKSHELVES

MOVIE SCREEN

D

Attic-like compositions for recycling of goods out of use like books, magazines, childrens toys and clothes, table wear, furniture etc.The architecture will pro-tect the items against the weather and create a cosy and controlled attic-like atmosphere. The platforms can be connected with open workshops to repair

things like furniture.

Vertical attics of construc-tion scaffoldings attached to existing buildings con-taining items that people are bringing to be recycled.

Some of the platforms can be just simple stands for a collection of one kind of items, like books.

1. BRITISH...2. GENTLEMAN SITTING IN THE RICKSHAW NEXT TO SIR RICHARD RODGERS (SEE COLLAGE ON PAGE 17)3. LONDON AND VILNIUS BASED ART GALLERY4. JUN'ICHIRO TANIZAKI’S ESSAY-BOOK ABOUT SPACE5. RECENT NORWEGIAN MOVIE (VERY HUMAN!)6. ITALIAN WRITER WHO PERFORMED AND PUBLISHED A CD WITH ‘AIR’7. AKIRA KUROSAWA’S MOVIE SHOT IN SIBERIA8. ESTONIAN COMPOSER9. ENGLISHMEN ALWAYS TALK ABOUT...

FIND THE SOLUTION ON PAGE 22!!!

cityzengarden swinging

HUMOUR

KENLIVINGSTONE

IBIDPROJECTS

INPRAISEOFSHADOWS

KITCHENSTORIES

ALESSANDROBARICCO

DERSUUZALA

ARVOPAERT

WEATHER

The gardens will act as physical symbols or frag-ments of sustainable urban living. When the modern man loses his connection to the nature, he will die.

All the parks, fields, gar-dens, parasites and occu-pation of houses and post industrial facilities are site- specific projects and work-ing in different scales in close co-operation with the population of the place.

- Vegetable gardens and fields of biologically cleaned and composted organic waste produced by

the city. Changing the London roofscape into fields for sheep and cow. Vegetable gardens for citizens.- Framed pieces of nature imported to the city. Walls high enough to block off the surrounding city and noise. One can see just the nature and the sky.- Community gardens on the roofs and courtyards of housing blocks as centrepoints of the com-munityÕs waste separation and recycling.- Anarchist gardens on abandoned or sleeping ur-ban sites and buildings.

Dominating the nomadÕs land with nature.- Parasite gardens attached to the existing buildings on scaffoldings and hanging platforms.- One man toilet parks con-structed by framing one tree with walls. - Industrial Zen gardens of aesthetically controlled and recycled industrial waste for post industrial medita-tion. Parks in different sca-les constructed by cultivat-ing urban waste combined with vegetation. Swings hanging in the parks. One man swing park. 12 man swing park and so forth.

FRONT FACADE SECTION

PLANROOF

COR-TEN STEEL

1500

1500

1500

One man pissing tree constructed by framing one tree with walls.

Many people would shrink away at the suggestion that they are standing on a parkland of composted hu-man waste, or that they should urinate against a tree, or sign their body over to the MBC unit when they die. One of the aims of the Kyoto Protocol is to control harmful emissions and waste at a global level, most notably from heavy industry. It is a protocol signed and controlled by a governing body, and there is no small amount of hy-pocrisy from those people who criticice those govern-ments for not adhering to it, and do nothing about it on a personal level. The Kyoto Protocol can be brought down from the governments to the indi-vidual, and from industry to the human body. Each individual becomes

responsible for recycling their own waste products, both in life and death - a corpse is still full of ener-gy, which can be exploited and harvested in the Fer-mentation cemetry. Everyone would take care of themselves and the re-sult is a society of indi-viduals with some selfpre-servation. Furthermore, in looking after self, each in-dividual contributes to a larger system of energy efficiency. Humans are the perfect source of renew-able energy. The days will be gone, of seeing mothers holding their young children while urine runs down their legs and trickles into a drain, or drunken louts urinating against a wall in full view of passers-by. The children can stand proud against a tree and relieve themsel-ves. The louts can retain

some dignity. Open sewers and sewerage plants will be a thing of the past, and graveyards full of bodies, so saturated with preser-vatives that decomposition is prolonged, will be nothing but a nostalgic memory. The human layer turns previously unacceptable practices on their head, making such activities not only acceptable, but also the responsibility of every individual. The sustainable city is not a fiction or even needs that much planning to be done. The perfect sustainable city has already been. China had cities with a million people thousands of year ago. Cities with no artificial material and with total waste recycling. Very densely built big cities. We forget this. Now is time to forget the forgetting.

LONDINIUM

How are you, Londinium?

U are fine

Magnificently smart

A nd multicultural

New and old

Londinium – city of contrasts

A nonymous

Yet specific

Extravagant, but common

Radical, but conservative

So smart

Oh Londinium

U are

Nice, but shabby

Dignified

Still anarchical

General and concrete

Oxford Street and Deptford

Oh Londinium – city of contrasts

Dobrõi UtroAugust Künnapu


1 2 3 4 5

SAUNA

1

LAUNDRYSAUNA

2 3

WORKSHOP

4

WORKSHOP

5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

6

6

BENCHES

HOT WATER

WELDING COURTAIN

BENCH

STOVE

6

PLANS

6

WOOD STORAGE

FRONT FACADE LONGITUDAL SECTION BACK FACADE CROSS SECTION SIDE FACADE

CONCRETE FRAME

RE-BAR TOILET

COMPOST TOP SOIL

SAUNA SAUNA LAUNDRY WORKSHOP WORKSHOP WOOD STORAGE

STOVE

SMOKE PIPE

ENTRANCE

TOILET

COMPOSTED TOP SOIL

TOILET

WELDING COURTAIN

RE-BAR

SAUNA

BOTTOM FLOOR

DECK 3 ROOF

SUN DECK

STOVE

WELDING COURTAIN

CHILL OUT ROOM

SAUNA

COMPOST GARDEN

TOILET

20100

20100

3000

3000

560010001000

7600

5300

3000

3000

5300

TOILET

The Zero City is a basic strategy for low cost and down-to-earth urban zero ground living - cave man style!

The basic Zero City plat-forms:

1. Concrete Cave Man PlatformConcrete frame 6 floors high shelve-like platform for standard 3 metres wide, 3 high and 5,3 long living units with a fire stove. Bottom floor for general activities including sauna, laundry, workshops and storage for fire wood. Roof top garden recycling composted organic waste. Toilets on the garden deck

The living units can be warmed with, and food cooked on, the personal fire stove by burning waste wood collected to the Zero City -units. The individual cave«s front facade is completely open. Privacy level and room temperature can be controlled with a welding courtain hanging on the opening. On top of the open concrete frame facade is attached a net like layer of concrete reinforcing bars protecting the inhabitants from falling and securing privacy.

The Concrete Cave Man Platfrom provides the basic needs for a more archaic way of sustainable urban living.

2. Post Urban Rehabilitation CenterThe Post Urban Rehabilita-

city, plumbing and internet.

5. Fermentation CemeteryThe last stop for the urban ecologist. Mechanical Bio-logical Composting units for fermenting biological waste including human bodies. When you throw a man into the MBC -unit (Mechanical Biological Cleaning Unit) he gets composted, or actually fer-mented totally in two weeks. The unit is herme-tically sealed so the whole process is anaerobic and computer controlled - so that the fermenting condi-tions for the anaerobic bacterias are perfect - the moist level, the heat and the pressure. From a 100 kg man you get 30 kg of top soil, the best. The rest is mostly water - biolo-gically cleaned fresh water. The process also produces gases that can be collected into a gas conditioning plant that then feeds the electrical gene-rator. 25 % of the electr-icity produced is enough to keep the whole process ongoing. The rest you can sell back to the city.

-tion Center is a strategy of recycling industrial build-ings and ships out of duty and abandoned commercial and residential buildings for alternative Tolstoyan communities for the mod-ern man in his urban crisis.

The PURC provides the necessary dicipline in order to achieve the Tolstoyan extacy of clean community living. "Without his uni-forms man is just a com-mon ape."

3. Instant VillageAd-hoc urban structures recycling sea containers out of use. Fire place attached to the containers that can be piled for high rise stuctures. Construction site scaffoldings providing the necessary storage, gardening and movement infrastructure. Community containers for washing, laundry, compost, sauna and workshop activities.

4. Plug-in Sophisto HiveSteel made scaffolding as a vertical building platform for self made housing units. The scaffolding offers plug-ins for electri-

16800

16800

3000

3000

FACADE SECTION

300 X 300 MM STEEL SQUARE PIPE

PLAN FLAT EXAMPLE

PLUMBING

ELECTRICITY

INTERNET

300 X 300 MM STEEL SQUARE PIPE

The citizens of Obihiro town in Hokkaido, Japan were complaining that their city is boring. We were invited to run a workshop for the city planners and town architects. We told them to bring their children with them to a gym. I n t h e g y m w e t o l d t h e children that now you are the

architects and your mothers and fathers are just labour-force. You will tell them how to do a good house and they will do exactly as they are told. The only criteria was that the child could fit into the card board house. In the end we took the child-ren in their houses to the streets of Obihiro as a walk-

ing street. Sometimes they made spontaneous villages or streets Ð church gossiping with the grocery store.

Obihiro Walking StreetWorkshop by Casagrande &

RintalaDemeter 2002

Obihiro, Hokkaido, Japan

Post Urban Rehabilitation Therapy (PURT) 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 Philosophy Treatment industry, it has also been adopted by urban planners and town councils.

Since its introduction PURT has overwhelmed its competition pushing the previously popular "Thinkabout" into the number two slot. The popularity of the "Thinkabout" has been diminishing in recent years and the developers of PURT have answered the call of people disillusioned by the stresses of modern society. Much like the "Thinkabout" PURT 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 depths of early homo sapiens philosophy and finding answers in caveman society.

PURT 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 sky-rocket 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 built 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 PURT, the healing is in itself the cost.

The man behind PURT, afflicted by the stresses caused by his new found wealth, was himself receiving treatment, and was thus unavailable for comment.

Post Urban Rehabilitation Therapy (P.U.R.T.) is set to change the face of escapism as the evolutionarily re-gressive 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 be-

coming a popular vision for the future, not just within the Philosophy Treatment industry, it has also been adopted by urban planners and town coun-cils. Since its introduction, P.U.R.T. has overwhelmed its competition pushing the previously popular "Think-about" into the number two slot. The popularity of the "Thinkabout" has been

diminishing in recent years and the developers of P.U.R.T. have answered the call of people dis-illusioned 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, how-ever, is now looking beyond oral cultures such as Aboriginal society (afterall, the name Think-about was derived from the Walkabout) for answers,

early homo sapiens philosophy and finding answers in caveman society.P.U.R.T. is designed to re-move one from the afflictions caused by mo-dern 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 popu-larity of the treatment has caused the costs to sky-rocket and, despite the expense, the result is a philosophical overhaul and a mental renaissance. The paradox is that financially and mentally it is ne-cessary to die a little - to dispose of ones central philosophies built up on

the foundations of a modern society ruled by money and capitalist eco-nomic policy and adopt a philosophy of necessity rather than greed. The irony is that by relin-quishing 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 re-ceiving treatment, and was thus unavailable for comment. tp

Three abandoned barn-houses were mounted on w o o d e n s h a n k s i n t h e height of 10 meters in or-der to give them a slow, majestic walk. Desolate, longing af ter the i r far -mers, the barns had cut their primeval union with the soil and were sway-ing towards the cities of t h e s o u t h . T h e s t o r y ended on a dark night of October when the barns we re s e t on f i r e by the choreography of dancer Reijo Kela during a tradi-tional slaughter carnival. The work was comment-ing the desertation pro-cess of Finnish country-side.

For more details see: Architectural Review 12/ 99, www.labiennale.org.

- Architectonic landscape ins ta l la t ion real ized in Savonl inna, Finland in 1999.

- Architectural Review´s Emerging Architecture 1999 award.- Exhibited in: La Bien-nale di Venezia 7. Mostra Internazionale di Archi-t e t tu ra , Venice , I t a ly / Emerging Architecture in McIntosh Lighthouse,

Land(e)scapeG l a s g o w , S c o t l a n d / Emerging Architecture in R . I . B . A . A r c h i t e c t u r e G a l l e r y , L o n d o n U K / Time of Wood, Fiskars, Finland / Centro Wilfre-do Lam, Museum of co-ntemporary art, Havanna, Cuba / Instituto Superior Politecnico Jose Antonio E c h e v a r r i a , H a v a n n a , C u b a / N e w T r e n d s o f Archi tecture in Europe and Japan 2001, Hillside Forum, Tokyo , Japan / N o v a s T e n d e n c i a s d a Arquitectura na Europa e J a p a o 2 0 0 1 , E s p a c o 2001 , Por to , Por tuga l , 2 0 0 1 / N e w T r e n d s o f Archi tecture in Europe a n d J a p a n , B e r l a g e Institute, Rotterdam, The Nether lands , 2001 / La B i e n n a l e D e l l ´ A r t e Contemporanea, Firenze, I t a l y , 2 0 0 1 / U r b a n Flashes 2 , Taipe i , Tai -wan, 2002- Au tho rs : Casag rande & Rintala

- Working team: Marco Casagrande, Sami Rin-tala, J-P Heikkinen, Aki Vepsäläinen, Heikki Lei-kola, Tuomas Makkonen, Pontus Soramäki.- Photos: Juss i Tiainen (daytime), Heikki Leiko-la (burning barns).

- V i d e o f i l m i n g : S a m i Rinta la , Edi t ing: Ant t i Antinoja - Dance and choreogra-phy: Reijo Kela- Web release: Antti An-tinoja, Neon Zion Ltd.- Kindly sponsored by: Central Union of Forest-ry and Agriculture MTK, P e k k a n i s k a O y , U P M Kymmene, AVEK, Finn-ish Fund of Art Exchance F R A M E , M i n i s t r y o f E d u c a t i o n / F i n l a n d , Uudenmaan Taidetoimi-kunta, Neon Zion Ltd.

Informal habitats in Tokyo

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Homeless crib in San Paulo

Informal cardboard habitat at Broadway, Los Angeles

by Maria Cecilia Loschiavo, University of San Paulo, Brazil

The possibility to join the Human Layer London Pro-ject came to me unex-pectedly, an e-mail from Christian Edlinger, in May 2004, asking if I would like to write an article dis-cussing homelessness in contemporary cities. I accepted, first, because since 1994 I am conducting research about homeless-ness in global cities, and second, because, in my opinion, it is always time to raise the critical aware-ness related to the issue, especially considering that the main topic of Casa-grande’s Laboratory Pro-ject is the humanization of our cities.

world’s major cities, ex-posing to the public the miserable status of huge numbers of homeless people in their community and around the world.

Looking at these informal habitats provide us with a sense of how homeless communities adapted themselves to the life on the streets as well as how do they adapt to the built environment of each city, generating thus a diverse adaptive strategy to deal with the problem of shelter.

Homeless adaptive culture in each of these cities has its own specific political,

Talking about human-ization means talking about to be human, which re-presents engage in relation-ships with otherness in a certain space. What role does architecture play in the humanization of our cities? How a humane architecture could encom-pass homelessness? How a humane architecture could design for the entire civil society?

The literature available today about homelessness has discussed important aspects of the issue across a wide spectrum, but there has been very little re-search on homelessness and architecture and de-sign. Such work is urgently needed.

It is important to under-stand the material aspects of the homeless’ culture: the informal habitat created by the homeless and its impact on the urban environment of global cities, such as San Paulo, Los Angeles and Tokyo, among others.

Although large numbers of highly visible homeless, with their spontaneous living arrangements, have long been associated with Third World cities, in the latter part of the past century some of these cardboard and plastic cities began to appear in the

social and cultural com-ponents. But in each locale the material culture of the homeless reveals their creativity, ingenuity and spontaneous design. On the top of it all, homeless’ adaptive behavior indicates that it is central to look at them not only as victims, but also as active agents that are able to create and construct their makeshift habitat by reusing what-ever discarded materials and products available.

These cardboard and plastic cities are con-structed from the trash of our technological and industrialized culture and they touch upon our daily life. Facing the experience of diving vertiginously into the shadows, into the depth of the material that allows the construction of a fragile habitat, moved by the need of shelter, homeless people have transformed the con-cept and the dynamics of the city.

Within the cardboard and plastic cities it is possible to observe a series of practices related to the homeless’ culture and presence: 1) the cultures of unemployment: nomadism, bricolages, and resistance in global cities, 2) the divided city: the formal structure of the city and the informal habitat, spontan-eous design and everyday

recognize that the essence of a transformative edu-cation is liberty and an architecture that takes seriously liberty could be liberatory, under certain conditions. In a famous interview about Space, Knowledge and Power, talking about architecture as a force of liberation, Michel Foucault’s stressed:

“Liberty is a practice. So there may, in fact, always be a certain number of projects whose aim is to modify some constraints, to loosen, or even to break them, but none of these projects can simply by its nature, assure that people will have liberty auto-matically, that it will be established by the project itself. The liberty of men is never assured by the institutions and laws that are intended to guarantee them. […] Architecture can and does produce positive effects when the liberating intentions of the architect coincide with the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom”.

I am deeply thankful to the homeless communities of Los Angeles, San Paulo

life on the streets of San Paulo, Los Angeles and Tokyo; 3) the meaning for society of construction of the home on the street, and the streets as home, and the reactions against the use of public space for the con-struction of the informal habitat, including a huge array of exclusionary prac-tices, even the use of police forces; 4) the final com-plementary line of analysis is an extension of the dis-cussion about the of pro-ducts and materials in the homeless material culture. The use of salvaged materials to build their habitats allows them to express their creativity and ingenuity, as well as ge-nerating income through recycling.

The data of my research was the result of ethno-graphic journeys to the homeless squats of São Paulo, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Photographs of the informal habitats taken in these three cities are juxtaposed, to create a visual dialogue, to present a comparative inter-pretation of the material culture and identity of the homeless.

The cities of paper and plastic constitute a drama-tic heritage of the twentieth century; it is one of the pressing questions that now face architects, urban planners, politicians and the civil society. How to formulate an architecture that could encompass homelessness?

It is not an exaggeration to say that one of the very first aspect to be con-sidered is to stress the high importance of situate architects’ work and ex-perience in political terms, committed to the larger society and interested in developing alternative visions and practices to shelter the destitute.

Another aspect is to recognize that we are in urgent need of shifting the architectural education paradigm towards a trans-formative education, where everyone feels a demo-cratic responsibility to contribute to change the situation of the un-housed.

Finally, it is important to

and Tokyo who have welcomed me into their informal habitats, sharing information, encourage-ment and friendship.

human

Documents

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