ENERGY OVERLAYS Civic Art for a Circular Economy

In 2018, the directors of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) invited Beatriz Maturana Cossio as the Founder of Architects for Peace and academic of University of Chile, to be a member of the judging panel for the competition for an urban intervention in the highly controversial St. Kilda triangle in Melbourne, Australia. The competition was a call for feasible proposals for an urban intervention based on a cross disciplinary response to this unique public space, based in landscape and urban design and the physical, social and economic aspects of sustainability. A perfect fit for the principles of Architects for Peace. LAGI occurs in a different city each year. The following article, published with the permission of its authors, presents LAGI’s contribution to the built environment through ecological civic art that produces renewable energy.

ENERGY OVERLAYS
Civic Art for a Circular Economy

Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian
Founding Directors,
Land Art Generator Initiative

“The next culture will be a culture of ‘stewardship,’ the energy driving it will be renewable, and the art it produces will be quite different from the art favored by production and consumption cultures.” — Margaret Atwood on the writing of Barry Lord¹

“All life is a struggle for free energy.” — Leslie White²

More than a decade after the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth there remains a vocal segment of the public who are unmoved by images showing rising sea levels and global heat map projections. Talk of mass extinction events and droughts still does not seem to motivate many of us to take civic action to protect the climate. In some cases it can have the exact opposite effect, either entrenching denial or causing political paralysis in the face of the problem’s enormity. The scope of climate change leaves many feeling un-empowered as individuals to make a difference.

It pains us to hear such acquiescence on display, like the time we casually remarked about the unusual weather we were experiencing during the week of one of our LAGI workshops. A 14-year old girl responded in earnest, “I heard the world is ending because of the climate.”

What if instead we could change the message of fear and disaster into one of hope and optimism—an inspirational message about the greatness of a post-carbon future? What if rather than show disaster images to run away from, we could instead design a future that people desire to run towards? What if we changed the conversation about gloom and doom to one of beauty and cultural transformation? While science communication has enlightened the world and brought us to where we are today in the climate debate, it is the humanities and the arts that make us unique and that remind us of what is worth saving for tomorrow.

Culture and energy are two sides of the same coin, but as a consequence of this geometry they rarely catch a glimpse of one another. We know that fuel and electricity keep the lights bright upon our stages, the welding torches lit, and our audio visual equipment humming. It is energy that makes it possible to turn four billion trees every year into magazines, journals, paper, and books.³ Culture can be thought of as a reflection of a society’s ability to orchestrate the use of energy beyond that required for the most basic human survival.

La Monarca. This Land Art Generator Solar Mural artwork for San Antonio is a functioning solar array with a capacity of 1 kW. The graphic was designed by San Antonio artist Cruz Ortiz with creative direction by Penelope Boyer. Photographed at the San Antonio Zoo by Penelope Boyer

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Launched: Momentum - new Victorian architecture

The Office of the Victorian Government Architect launched its book Momentum: new Victorian architecture last month. There are a handful of mentions of Architects for Peace, along with a number of other Victorian-based organisations offering alternative ways to engage with architectural practice in an article inside 'Architectural ecology: speculations on emerging practices' by Anna Tweeddale. It's the closing piece - paving the way for the sequel perhaps??

A New Atlas: Architectures of the 21st Century: African and the Middle East

Just letting you know of a fine new atlas that has seen the participation of more than one Arch-Peace member.

http://www.fbbva.es/TLFU/tlfu/ing/publicaciones/libros/fichalibro/index.jsp?codigo=633

This ATLAS, devoted to the most recent architecture of Africa and the Middle East, is the third volume in a series of four which develop and update the work published in 2007 by the BBVA Foundation, Atlas. Global Architecture circa 2000. With the same intellectual coordinates as the previous books, which attempted to simultaneously reflect the ‘state of the world’ and the ‘state of the art’, this publication gathers a selection of recent works and projects along with ten texts by prominent experts on the different countries or regions of the area, from Southern Africa to Turkey, passing through the heart of the continent, the Maghreb, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and the territories that once were Persia, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Initiated with a volume on Asia and the Pacific, the series continued with one devoted to America, and will complete the itinerary with a fourth volume on the architectures of Europe, ending at the finis terrae of the Iberian Peninsula.

The Atlas features articles and a considerable of projects covering different countries and regions including

Luis Fernández-Galiano; Springs and Storms. An Architectural Itinerary from Southern Africa to the Bosphorus

Southern Africa Iain Low - Nostalgia for the Specific. Southern Africa, Local Cultures and Global Pressures

Central and Eastern Africa Antoni Folkers - Aspirations and Inspirations. Central and Eastern Africa, Precarious and Booming

Western Africa Nnamdi Elleh - Vernacular Poetry. Western Africa, the Aesthetics of Scarcity

Northern Africa Hassan Radoine - Modernity with Context. The North of Africa, a Mediterranean ‘genius loci’.

Egypt Khaled Asfour - Future Pasts. Egypt, the Character of a Culture

Arabian Peninsula Ashraf M. Salama - Identity Flows. The Arabian Peninsula, Emerging Metropolises

Iran Farrokh Derakhshani - Longing and Contemporaneity. Iran, New Forms of Self-Expression

Mesopotamia and Levant Mohammad al-Asad - A Volatile Creativity. Mesopotamia and the Levant, Sprouts of Hope

Israel Rafi Segal - Parallel Realities. Israel, between Conflict and Retreat

Turkey Suha Özkan - Between East and West. Turkey, a Mosaic of Scales and Experiences

KERB 20 - Call for submissions to annual design journal

Our friends at cross-disciplinary design publication ‘Kerb’, produced by the RMIT University School of Architecture and Design in Melbourne, Australia, are seeking submissions of essays/projects/ artworks/ stories etc on the subject of Speculative Narrative.

"Speculative narrative and the potential of imagination are important factors in creative production. It is considered that a multitude of small stories are the “quintessential form of imaginative invention”. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. 1979

Speculation through narrative offers an apparatus through which we may investigate the concept of ‘reality’. Immersed within our current understandings, speculation is influenced by our contemporary condition. In these fictional dispositions, the variables and constraints of ‘reality’ can be controlled, omitted completely or utilized as key motives for the foundations of new territories.

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IntentCITY, the book: now download as PDF

IntentCITY: the political city 
IntentCITY was the inaugural forum establishing many of the principles of the Architects for Peace. This publication features the articles presented to the IntentCITY forum and discussions about social responsibility and the right to the city. Contributors to include Dr Darko Radovic, Dr Beatriz Maturana, Dr Kit Lazaroo and Liz Coleman, Marc Purcell, Geoff Hogg, Su Mellersh-Lucas and Mick Pearce.

You can now download the book free of charge. But if you feel this book is special, and worth something to you, then we would like to encourage you to donate what you can via 'Our Community' button below — it's up to you.

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Maturana, Beatriz C., and Anthony McInneny, eds. IntentCITY: the political city. Edited by Architects for Peace. Melbourne: Architects for Peace, 2010. ISBN 9780646490748.

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Prishtina is Everywhere

After NATO-led KFOR troops ended civil war in Kosovo (1999), an instant building boom changed the capital Prishtina dramatically. Within a few years its population doubled, partly as a consequence of an influx of returning refugees. Local investors profited, creating quick returns on ‘hit and run’ projects. On the fringes of the city ‘maverick urbanism’ had a different face: family clans invested family capital in large houses, built on farmland. The result was a random spread and development of the city, causing serious functional and structural problems for the future.

Prishtina is Everywhere describes, maps and analyzes the situation in Prishtina after 1999, documents problem-solving strategies, and discusses the significance of this kind of urban development for the way urban life evolves in crisis zones. The title hints at two phenomena: firstly, urban development of this type is typical for many post-conflict situations, and secondly, most of the construction in Prishtina has been financed by remittances from family members working abroad (one-fifth of Kosovo’s entire population lives abroad, specifically in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria).

With contributions of Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Caroline Arnulf, Thilo Fuchs, Wilfried Hackenbroich, Irmgard Zerr, Florina Jerliu, Visar Geci, Ilir Gjinolli, Lilet Breddels, Arjen Oosterman.

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Prishtina capital-Publication

bad architects group publication ‘Prishtina capital’ is available since march 1st.

The publication edited by ursula faix and paul burgstaller contains contributions by Edmond Hajrizi, Thomas Hrabal, Georg Grasser, Binak Beqaj, Arno Ritter and students' projects from the university of business and technology, Prishtina.

The basic idea behind this publication was the editors’ wish to publish the students’ project of the ‘City Planning’ design studio during the winter semester 2007/2008. These projects envision the dreams and hopes for the future development of the city of a young generation who has directly lived a war or at least followed it in exile abroad.

One envelope for the projects, providing the students with background information, are articles and texts written by our colleagues, most of them teaching at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Business and Technology (UBT). These texts present a view of the city from the outside produced by periodical visits to Prishtina and research on the city reflecting on the changing conditions of Prishtina as the capital of a newborn state. In this transition phase new identities, potentials and a legal basis are emerging, together with some problems.

The photographic part is a city portrait by the Austrian architectural photographer Günter Richard Wett; it presents a view of the city by a person who is visiting Prishtina for the first time in his life. The images by Günter Richard Wett are so outstanding, that they have become the (silent) envelope for both, the texts and projects. All images tell stories and many are worth more than a whole article. We also hope that this publication will contribute to diversifying the image of Kosovo in Austria and foster the urban discourse on Prishtina.