Urban Fruit and Vegetables

I just came across two great initiatives which could be very useful on the way towards a more integrated urban farming strategy for Amsterdam Noord.

In terms of mapping potential (semi-)public green spaces in the city the idea behind the Urbana-Champaign Fruit Map, initiated by the people from La Casa Urbana, is interesting. This Google Maps community map presents publicly accesible fruit trees in the neighbourhood of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Everyone can add to the map and make use of the map for his or her everyday dose of free fresh and ripe fruit.

via The Pop Up City

Noord has a huge amount of unused or unmaintained ‘green’ structure, ranging from infrastructural residual space to plenty of messy, grown-over gardens in the old neighbourhoods. For an inventarisation of these spaces and their potential such a map could be very useful.

The second initiative is a public allotment garden on a small, unused plot in Amsterdam, Ijburg developed by Rudy Luijters for Het Blauwe Huis. The inhabitants of Blok 35  maintain the garden collectively and share the harvest, but also visitors  and people of the neighbourhood can use  the garden 24/7 if they want to. All of the plants in the garden are eatible.

via Het Blauwe Huis

This is a great example of how unused green space can be turned into a communal practice.

Filed under: Amsterdam Noord, International Practice, National Practice , Het Blauwe Huis, Mapping, Puplic Space, Urban Farming

Urban Century Audiovisual Archive

That’s how we like it. Tons of movies, documentaries, lectures and discussions on the urban condition, all availible for free. As part of the Urban Century project the VPRO provides an excellent, ever evolving audiovisual archive. The footage is accessible as free download, stream, torrent or podcast. You can select content wheather by geographical location, theme, director or just alphabetically by program. Some of the footage is only provided in Dutch, but hey, pictures speak for themselves, don’t they?

Also in this respect, the 5th edition of the International Amsterdam Film Festival will host this years Re-Imagining the City Forum from 9-11 October. They have got plenty of films worth seeing, workshops, the MAFIA exibition and loads of other stuff. Check the website for more information.

Filed under: National Practice, Press , Amsterdam, Archive, IABR, IAFF, Urban Century, VPRO

2059 Speculative Peculiars

Futureology is going strong lately.  2059 Speculative Peculiars is initiated by Femke Lutgerink en Partizan Publik Urgestein Christiaan Fruneaux. The series is an imaginary and visionary glance at the future of urban landscapes. It is an interdisciplinary program about the possible and the impossible, the politics, subcultures, developments and conventions that will govern and shape Amsterdam and Montreal 50 years from now.
Speculative Peculiars wants to explore how we’ll live, work and socialize in the future. What kind of places we would frequent and what kind of people we would meet. It wants to map how we would give meaning to our surroundings.

The second edition will take off next Sunday, October 4 th, at 4 pm at the Sid Lee Collective Canteen Gallery featuring

Edwin Gardner: architect, web-editor and theorist working for Volume/Archis and Partizan Publik.
Rutger Groot Wassink: policy advisor on labour market and social security at FNV vakcentrale and fraction chairman of Groen Links in Amsterdam Westerpark.
Liedewij Loorbach: freelance journalist.
Daniela Bershan: artist.

And what about future lingua? Our ‘Dichter des Vaderlands’, National Poet Ramsey Nasr wrote a poem called mi have a droom, a poem about his city Rotterdam in 2059. Is it Dutch? Yes, no, a bit…Check it yourself.

Filed under: National Practice, Theory , Amsterdam, Montreal, Sid Lee

The Freestate of Amsterdam

The exibition ‘The Freestate of Amsterdam’ (dutch website), which is the contribution of the municipality of Amsterdam to the 4th IABR, curated by DRO director Zef Hemel, opened its gates to the public yesterday. The exibition takes place in our backyard, the Tolhuistuin.
Nine Dutch urban design offices present their visions on the future of Amsterdam, in nine large models for sections of the future metropolis. The offices were given, as it is said, a free hand to make their designs without predetermined rules or restrictions. Their models intend not to show plans or blueprints for the city as such, but rather inspirational ideas for the long term.

Urhahn Urban Design

Rietveld Landscape I Atelier de Lyon

Already twee weeks ago Dutch public broadcaster VPRO screened a documentary entitled Amsterdam Makeover 2040, where at least some guys dropped some critical notes on the vision of the Physical Planning Departement. VPRO also initiated the Urban Century project, which is really taking off at the moment en forms a nice platform for divers information on the urban cauldron.

   

Filed under: Architecture, Design, National Practice, Social Engineering , IABR, Vrijstaat Amsterdam

Intervention: De Kast van Noord: An exchange closet

by Koen Elzerman

Students Joeri Jörg and Koen Elzerman initiated a place where people can leave items (clothes, books, sleeping-bags and domestic products) which they do not need anymore, while other people still might be happy with it. In this manner people can contribute to the daily-struggle that people have to cope with their limited economic situation. Amsterdam North is a district with many socio-economic problems, and the exchange closet delivers a micro-economic service for those who need it.

Similar to this alternative form of recycling, the focus lies on informing people about homelessness and addiction as important societal issues. The city of Amsterdam wants to initiate new asylums spread over the city, but history has shown some bad examples of starting such an asylum. The NIMBY-effect (‘Not In My Backyard’) can ruin the relation between asylum and neighbourhood, while people rarely realise that the asylum fulfils an important part of the societal needs. Above that, the line between having a house and homelessness is not that big as people might think. It does not take very much to lose your house and become homeless, especially in Amsterdam North.

The crew exists of people who have lived on the street, have been addicted or have worked in prostitution. They concentrate on telling their personal stories to the visitors of the Mosveld market, the place where the closet is situated. Goal is to decrease the NIMBY-feelings which people have in relation to these marginalised groups of society.

The launch on Saturday 13^th of June showed that people respond very positive on this form of interaction. Most of them understood the importance of facilities for homeless and addicted people, and several people spoke out their enthusiasm about the project. One of the strengths of the closet is that it does not only serve the homeless and addicted people: it also benefits the local residents and the deprived neighbourhood around the Mosveld market.

Pictures by Bert Elzerman.

Publications in the media (NoordNieuws (2), De Echo and Het Parool), widespread enthusiasm by project partners, the city district of  Amsterdam North and housing corporation Ymere, social partners and the local residents form the basis of a long term continuation of the project.

After the successful launch of the closet, both students are now in discussion with several social partners, in order to ensure the sustainability of the intervention. The students will be related to the project until these negotiations result in a societal coalition which can maintain the exchange closet as a social facility, embedded in the neighbourhood.

You can also view the final presentation of the ‘Addicted to the City’ case at the Amsterdam City Hall last week.

Filed under: Amsterdam Noord, Maakbaarheid in de Grote Stad, National Practice, Press, Social Engineering, Teaching , Amsterdam, Intervention, Office for Social Engineering, Public Space, Research, Social Action

Intervention: Making the invisible, visible: The Secret of North

by Flora Lysen

Is there a way to involve neighborhood residents with a developing city park?

The 4 students of the ‘Green Team’ of the minor ‘Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis’ researched the development of the new ‘Noorderpark’, an urban park that is now being developed into one of the largest city parks of Amsterdam. Compared to other parks in the city, the Noorderpark is lagging behind in the number and diversity of its park visitors. Can the Noorderpark become as widely and highly appreciated as the popular Westerpark or the Vondelpark?

The Green Team observed a remarkable ‘invisibility’ of the Noorderpark within the adjacent neighborhoods and the borough of Amsterdam Noord. Together they created an elaborate ‘visibility’ campaign with green ‘welcome in my backyard’ posters on the windows of empty social housing, with guerilla sign posting all over the neighborhood and, together with the people of ‘Streetprov Amsterdam’, they organized a performance and a video about the ‘secret of North’: the beautiful Noorderpark.

The guys from Streetprov also made an edit of the ‘Tour de IJ’:

more about “Streetprov! – Videos“, posted with vodpod

You can also view the final presentation the Green Team gave at the Amsterdam City Hall last week.

Filed under: Amsterdam Noord, Maakbaarheid in de Grote Stad, National Practice, Social Engineering, Teaching, Uncategorized , Amsterdam, Geheim van Noord, Intervention, Office for Social Engineering, Public Space, Streetprov

Interactive website: City one minutes

Today, the new interactive website cityoneminutes.org has been launched. The site is a initiative from Holland Doc 24 editor in chief Hansje van Etten.

via Century of the City

Via a huge network of artists the website is collecting videofootage from more than 100 cities all over the world. One minute of film is one hour in the life of a metropolis somewhere. Check out for example Asmara at midnight, Amsterdam at 8am, Sao Paolo at 10pm or Times Square in New York at 3am.

At the moment there are more than 300 videos online, but there are plenty of gabs to be filled still. So, If you deliver good quality material you can submit your own footage from wherever you stay, go or live.

There are also oneminutes from countries all over the world, from trainrides or even from weddings. Check out the website of the one minute foundation.

via VPRO’s Century of the City

Filed under: National Practice , Video Art, VPRO

Publicity Plant: growing plants through social media attention

Sander Veenhof designed an interactive greenhouse in which a bouquet of ‘graduation flowers’ is growing, depending on your help! A greenhouse control system converts all online publicity into plant growth by switching on the grow-lights when you blog or Twitter about it, upload a photo at Flickr, or bookmark ‘puplicityplant’ on Delicious. Below you can watch the plants grow in realtime. The project is a graduation project for the Gerrit Rietveld art academy in Amsterdam.

Filed under: Design, National Practice, Social Engineering , Social Media

Publication ‘Ruimte maken voor krimp’

Laatst week the results of the research conducted by Ontwerplab Krimp in three different areas in the Netherlands have been presented at NAi. The research was focused on shrinking cities and, in contrast to the most research on the topic until today, on the opportunities and chances these developments bring with them. You can download the webversion (dutch) of the publication right here.

Filed under: Architecture, Design, National Practice, Press, Theory , Shrinking Cities

Independent Fashion Pop Up Store in Amsterdam

Tomorrow Golfstromen are launching their new project, the Independent Fashion Store. In collaboration with upcoming fashion labels OntFront and Nuzyn they have transformed two former prostitution rooms in downtown Amsterdam into a (work)shop were upcoming designers and labels can present and sell their new collections. The project is another chapter in Golfstromens’ history of flexible urbanism and the temporary use of vacant urban spaces.

via popupcity

Filed under: National Practice , Flexible Urbanism, Golfstromen, Temporary City