How old furniture is defining Hong Kong’s urban spaces

“The people who design the streets in Hong Kong ignore the need for seating areas, so people in the neighborhood put some furniture they don’t need to good use”

Everything is designed according to a standard formula that doesn’t take into account the unique qualities of a given area. But in traditional urban fabric, “the configuration of space was developed gradually by people through time,” she says. “It allows [people in] the neighbourhood to express the way they want the space to be.”

One thing the pair noticed when studying abandoned furniture was the type of person who uses it: old. With the notable exception of teenagers, says Chan, young people just don’t engage with the city in the same way. “Maybe they like staying at home because they pay all their salary towards it,” she says. “I’m like an old guy — I like to take a newspaper or some food and enjoy the wind and air.”

via CNNGo

Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility

Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility

A Market Returns to Berlin’s Kreuzberg District

November 10, 2011

“Now, Kreuzberg can add another notch in its hard-scrabble belt with the October unveiling of the community-oriented Markthalle Neun. Originally opened in 1891, the market hall has returned, just as storied as the neighborhood it inhabits.

During World War II, the market hall’s windows were darkened with black paint and commerce closed. More recently, Berlin’s municipal government put it up for sale to the highest bidder and Kaiser’s — a German big box chain grocer — became slated to set up shop. True to form, Kreuzberg’s residents responded. In 2009, 500 of them gathered at the market to drink coffee in a publicity move that resulted in the municipality’s agreeing to sell the space instead to the “highest concept”.

(…)

They conceive of the hall as a community meeting place to foster dialogue and education about human-scale agriculture; rather than a luxury market, they hope it will be a convergence point where real people can buy real food that they take home and prepare themselves”.

A Short Detour in Mongkok

“Mongkok might be one of the world’s most crowded places, but sometimes all you need to do to escape is to make a right turn down a quiet alleyway. That’s what I discovered when I was walking from home to the Flower Market the other day. Instead of taking the usual route along Sai Yee Street, I ducked into the laneway that runs behind it and discovered a kind of parallel university of greenery, graffiti and informal living space.

(…) Halfway down the alley is a Chinese altar, some cupboards and a rack of clothes. I’m guessing it’s used by the street sweepers who work around here. Inside the altar are cards representing the various Chinese gods; several lottery tickets are taped to the side. Ash from spent joss sticks covers the altar floor”.

Urbanphoto

Urbanphoto

Cas Oorthuys – Station Square, Central Station, Amsterdam, 1965

Michael Dax Iacovone

“Fuller´s Dymaxion Airocean World Map of 1943 cuts the earth into triangular facets that are then unfold as a flat polyhedron. Both the north and south poles are presented frontally and equally, with little distortion, although the typical viewer is at first likely to be disoriented by this unusual, poly-directional arrangement of countries. Only the graphic graticule of latitude and longitude allows the reader to comprehend the relative orientation of any one location.

Interestingly, the Dymaxion structure can be unfolded and re-oriented in any number of different ways, depending on the thematics of one´s point of view. The polyhedral geometry provides a remarkably flexible and adaptive system wherein different locations and regions can be placed into significantly different sets of relationship. Precisely where the map is cut and folded determines how the parts are seen in relationship to each other, each time in radically altered, yet equally true, configurations. Potentially at least, each arrangement possesses great efficacy with regard to certain socio-political, strategic and imaginative possibilities”.

James Corner, The Agency of Mapping.

Photo: Landon Mackenzie

Tracing Mobility: Cartography and Migration in Networked Space

“Exhibition, Symposium and Open Platform

November 24 – December 12, 2011
Opening: November 23 | 7 pm

Tracing Mobility explores how electronic networks and mobile media are transforming our conceptions of time, space and distance.

The exhibition presents the positions of 16 international artists who trace the shifting terrain of global and local mobility, virtual and material movement. What new spaces are born when online and offline worlds converge? What does the movement of a body in a landscape indicate when every point of the earth is within reach through the aid of digital technology? How do mobile devices and media alter our mindset and change our perception of time and space?

By means of installations, videos, performances and paintings, but also in the guise of iPhone Apps, maps and open-source collaborations, we see artists redefining and experiencing what space means today and how we move within this dynamic topography.

A Symposium and the Tracing Mobility Open Platform will offer further explorations of these themes via lectures, talks and workshops.

Exhibiting artists:
Frank Abbott (UK), Aram Bartholl (DE), Neal Beggs (UK/FR), Heath Bunting (UK), Janet Cardiff / George Bures Miller (CAN), Miles Chalcraft (UK/DE), Simon Faithfull (UK/DE), Yolande Harris (UK/NL), Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser (DE), Landon Mackenzie (CAN), Open_Sailing, plan b (Sophia New & Dan Belasco Rogers) (UK/DE), Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum (NL), Gordan Savicic (AT/NL), Mark Selby (UK), Michelle Teran (CAN/DE)

Speakers:
Heath Bunting (UK), Wolfgang Ernst (DE),Christian Hänggi (CH), Stefan Heidenreich (DE), Landon Mackenzie (CAN), Sadie Plant (UK), Hendrik Speck (DE), Hito Steyerl (DE) Michelle Teran (CAN/DE), Hubertus von Amelunxen (DE) (moderator), Stephen Kovats (CAN/DE) (moderator)

More info and detailed programme: www.tracingmobility.org

http://www.facebook.com/trampoline.artandmedia
http://twitter.com/#!/tracingmobility

Opening hours:
Exhibition: November 24 – December 12, 2011
Wed-Mon, 11am – 7pm, free entrance
Opening: November 23, from 7 pm

Symposium: November 26 11am – 5pm,
Symposium ticket 20 €/15 €

Open Platform: November 26, 3pm – 7pm
November 27, 2pm – 07.30pm
free entrance”