FREE SOIL

Free Soil is an international hybrid collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners who take a participatory role in the transformation of our environment. Free Soil fosters discourse, develops projects and gives support for critical art practices that reflect and change the urban and natural environment. We believe art can be a catalyst for social awareness and positive change.

Links to loads of stuff, architectural exhibitions, texts, etc......

LEARNING SITE

Learning Site pays attention to the local conditions it finds in the place where it chooses to work. In the past years Learning Site has mainly worked with resource materials and economies related to the specific situations where work has been carried out. Economic, environmental, labor, property rights, and many other issues are investigated in tandem to produce a variety of perspectives.

Learning Site takes part of a discussion of how knowledge is distributed and produced.

N55

Introduction:

N55 works with art as a part of everyday life.



Construction:

N55 is a platform for persons who wants to work together, share places to live, economy, and means of production.
N55 is based both in Copenhagen, and in LAND.


Production / distribution:

N55 has its own means of production and distribution.
Manuals for N55 things are published at www.N55.dk and in the N55 periodical. Furthermore, N55 things are implemented in various situations around the world, initiated by N55 or in collaboration with different persons and institutions.


Economy:

N55 is non-commercial. N55 is financed primarily by exhibitions, grants and educational work.


Politics:

N55 suggests respecting conditions for description: logical relations and facts, as a basis for politics.
Ideologies, religions, subjective opinions, social conventions, and habitual conceptions do not necessarily respect conditions for description.
An example of a decisive logical relation is the logical relation between persons and their rights. Persons should be treated as persons and therefore as having rights. If we deny this assertion it goes wrong: here we have a person, but this person should not be treated as a person, or: here is a person, who should be treated as a person, but not as having rights. Therefore we can only talk about persons in a way that makes sense if we know that persons have rights.
An example of a decisive fact is that concentrations of power characterise our society. Concentrations of power do not necessarily respect person's rights.
Concentrations of power force persons to concentrate on participating in competition and power games, in order to create a social position for themselves. Concurrently with the concentrations of power dominating our conscious mind and being decisive to our situations, the significance of our fellow humans diminishes. And our own significance becomes the significance we have for concentrations of power, the growth of concentrations of power, and the conflicts of concentrations of power. It is decisive that persons try to find ways of existing with as small concentrations of power as possible.


History:

In 1994 a non-commercial exhibition space and lab was initiated in Nørre Farimagsgade 55, Copenhagen. N55 grew out of this collaboration. In 1996, a number of persons started living together in an apartment located in the center of Copenhagen, trying to "rebuild the city from within" and using their everyday life situation as a platform for public events and collaborations. In the year 2000 FLOATING PLATFORM and N55 SPACEFRAME were constructed in the harbour area. N55 SPACEFRAME served as a starting point for local initiatives and interventions, a workspace and living space for the group until 2004. It now serves as a living space.In 2005 co-founder of N55 Ingvil Aarbakke died. N55 continues activities locally and elsewhere in collaboration with various persons.

URBAN PRESCRIPTIONS

Santiago Cirugeda Parejo exploits gaps in administrative structures, governmental bodies’ supervisory energies, official procedures, and where the law falls short. As Benedicte Grosjean writes in ArchiLab’s Futurehouse (2002): “(Cirugeda) formulates realistic and empirical strategies to push the law to its limits and find pockets of non-law in which to develop a possible habitat.”

more maya stuff

Hi - heres a link to Columbia's maya resources - mostly quite basic but there is a laser cutter wizard and a couple of other interesting bits - so something for n00bs and others...
enjoy.
j

LINK!!

Biomimetics: Design inspired by nature

Biomimetics is an enabling discipline which looks towards nature for ideas that may be adapted and adopted for solving problems:

The burr on a dog's fur was the inspiration for Velcro!

An interesting site, with many links and information on ideas borrowed from nature applied in fields as innovative material research from aeronautical, submarine engineering to architecture etc

TheVeryMany

Hi all.
John you might know this guy from your time at the AA. Mark Fornes. His research, some of which is displayed on his blog, is all about parametric/scripted/encoded processes in design. There's a couple of rhino scripts that can be copied and tested in the comfort and safety of your own home!

GM