intervention_aditya pawar

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2 URBAN FOOD COMMONS Aditya Pawar 10th August 2015 WS1: Reflections I conducted the first site visit with Chotima where we explored the corporate landscape of Ørestad. We spent a significant amount of time in and around the offices of Ramboll observing the rhythms of work life in contrast with public activity outside. My habits of mind that i tried to challenge could be called solutionism! During the course of the day we stayed with the anxiety of simply trying to engage the people in the building for example by hosting lunch conversations and being invited for a tour of the company. It was evident that the people spoke highly of the company, designer furnishings, its director, company culture, smart environment and manicured indoor plants. The space seemed to be a paradise for work in an otherwise seemingly empty landscape of concrete and tarmac. The highly closed private space itched for being opened up! Our initial fledgling attempts at physically restructuring their space for un-conventional use (by re-

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Page 1: Intervention_Aditya Pawar

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URBAN FOOD COMMONSAditya Pawar10th August 2015

WS1: Reflections I conducted the first site visit with Chotima where we explored the corporate landscape of Ørestad. We spent a significant amount of time in and around the offices of Ramboll observing the rhythms of work life in contrast with public activity outside. My habits of mind that i tried to challenge could be called solutionism! During the course of the day we stayed with the anxiety of simply trying to engage the people in the building for exampleby hosting lunch conversations and being invited for a tour of the company.

It was evident that the people spoke highly of the company, designer furnishings, its director, company culture, smart environment and manicured indoor plants. The space seemed to be a paradise for work in an otherwise seemingly empty landscape of concrete and tarmac. The highly closed private space itched for being opened up! Our initial fledgling attempts at physically restructuring their space for un-conventional use (by re-arranging chairs) did not provide us with conversations as we expected but on the other hand made us think of the material configurations that might be necessary such a space for alternative (common) use.

In the next session of the Exploring fieldwork course i would like to start with the basic idea of opening up space. Linking this to my thesis work and as a reaction to the corporate landscape i would like to enact different forms of urban-commons that could find a way to link up, break apart or replace highly closed private spaces.

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WS2: Intervention ProposalUrban commons are broadly defined as places for collaboration, sharing and collective ownership. These could be in the form of shared resources, property, services that become a kind of boundary infrastructure in between the corporate workers, residents in the area, tourists and the general public.

Some of the urban commons that would make sense to explore within this area could be - Food commons (urban gardens). The method of enquiry is as yet not finalised but would be influenced by design-games and other ways for simulating a commons phenomenon. The text chosen by me for this part of the course is a paper by Pheobe Sengers and Bill Gaver titled - Staying Open to Interpretation: Engaging Multiple Meanings in Design and Evaluation. This text is quite appropriate for my habits of mind as it encourages the designer to create open works, systems, services, mockups that allow multiple interpretations than a single preferred one. Thus, one important constraint i would like to give myself is that the intervention should allow for interpretative flexibility (even besides the ones intended by the designer).

Tentative setup:

The exercise takes the form of a design-kiosk, which invites participants to a space, which allows them to express their opinions about work and life in Orestad. The design researchers role is to provide the participants with imaginative (future) constraints and situations where s/he may find himself and prompt him to reflect and dream. The tentative theme chosen for this session is – FOOD COMMONS.

Few ways to create these prompts could be to use urban probes:

(i). A public confession box requires participants to reflect on their behavior around food(ii). A passage from the book ‘secret garden’ is read out to the participants and they are asked to draw the garden they see on a canvas with a sketch of Orestad

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(iia). The participants asked to do a blind food test (with drinks) or smell different kinds of fruits (natural odours) and then work on their sketch(iib). The participants are made to listen to sounds from nature and asked to work on their sketch(iii). A ‘ghost object’ (a basic shape in white on a flat surface) is given to the participants to play with to imagine a new urban landscape along with the designer (iv). The session concludes by create a page of ‘standard ethical procedure on food’ for Ramboll and based on that the designer imagines Rambolls Kitchenware or premesis