The beauty and wonder of nature have provided inspiration for artists and architects for centuries. Since the 1960s, the increasingly evident degradation of the natural world and the effects of climate change have brought a new urgency to their responses. The 2011 AIM Group Project will draw upon this legacy, working with ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism.
The Project will involve an interactive 3D cityscape, based upon inner city Melbourne. However, our familiar city will be transformed into an imaginary dystopian future, in which oil and food resources have been depleted and the landscape has fallen into decay. Viewers are invited to interact with the work, and to re-invigorate the shattered cityscape through processes such as recycling and urban agriculture. Through thoughtful interaction, the cityscape may be transformed from a decaying wasteland, to a fruitful and vibrant metropolis. Objects scattered throughout the decaying city may be transformed, by the participant, into useful vessels and materials for urban agriculture. With every plant that is grown, the quality of air and life in the inner city will increase.
The Project will address our global context, in which over 50% of the world's population lives in cities. By 2015, about 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. To feed a city of this size – at least 6000 tonnes of food must be imported each day. Urban agriculture addresses this problem of food distribution, and the growing poverty of low income urban dwellers, by bringing the means for food production into the inner city. As such, it provides both a utopian vision for the future and a practical strategy for living in the now.
Check out some awesome ideas on the websites listed below:
http://thecommonstudio.com/index.php?/project/greenaid/
http://www.thewaterpod.org/about.html
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/
http://www.urbanfarming.org/
We could be on to something here! :) Solar and wind energy, passive heating and cooling, rainwater collection, greywater re-use, orienting and shading buildings the right way, etc etc etc. With the added challenges of said dystopian future where the climate is hotter and drier, there is more pollution, possibly flooding due to sea levels rising?
ReplyDeleteMelbourne City Council's CH2 building is a good real-life example:
http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Environment/CH2/Pages/CH2Ourgreenbuilding.aspx
As is 60 Leicester Street:
http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=3100
It would be really cool to kick off the exhibition with the decaying dystopian cityscape, and have people transform it progressively over the two weeks with the planting, rainwater harvesting, etc. And things could die off a little bit overnight or something...
My two cents :)
Jin
Hmmm...so I'm interested by this concept. It's like a virtual garden that people will be able to grow? Errr...a virtual garden the size of dystopian melbourne? And people can cause it to either be more or less fertile?
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