Have you ever wanted to test out a business, arts or community project in a temporary space but been unsure about how to get started? The Coming Soon Club is here to help. The Coming Soon Club will help people in Wembley find out how to start their own ?meanwhile? projects in the area.
http://thecomingsoonclub.wordpress.com/about-the-coming-soon-club/
New Windows on Willesden Green is one of the Mayor?s Outer London Fund projects, and is an exciting opportunity to reactivate the empty shops along a section of Willesden High Road and Walm Lane.
…and the successful project!
Johanna Werschnig, co-founder of Zirkus in Vienna’s 2nd district introduces the space, converted from an abandoned book binding manufacture into an architecture & design studio.
On the occasion of the next week lecture by Eszter Gantner: a short post on a resent example of “Zwischennutzen” in Berlin. If you happen to be around the suburban Grünau, which is famous for its history in watersports, visit the old mansion at the end of Regattastrasse (number 277.). This summer, it has been legally occupied by creative thinkers and doers dealing with alternative forms of living in the city, sustainability and upcycling. The privately owned ex-radiostation gives space for example for collectives like Bootschaft eV. or Kulturlabor Trial&Error e.V. An article in the topic for those who speak german.
Funkhaus Grünau, Berlin. Source: http://www.trial-error.org
André Cools from Studio Synthese explains the concept of a temporary Campscape in a leftover space of Eindhoven, under a high-speed expressway. The open call for ideas for the site is amplified by the attention brought to the area by the Dutch Design Week. Details at http://www.urbansprinkle.com/urban-campscape-en/
Weakened power of the state as a result of global and local changes left a spatial print in the form of ever ‘more opened’ planning and building processes. The lack of a clear strategy of the urban development resulted in a great number of abandoned premises with unsolved ownership status or the remains of urban fiber of undefined use purpose. The project ?Invisible Zagreb? sees in such premises the creativity zones in which it is possible to experiment with new types of temporary public spaces used for various cultural activities. By establishing a network of such spaces, a spatial infrastructure to be used by all producers of culture was implemented.
Details at:
http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_platform981_en.htm
http://www.anahusman.net/projekti-2/u-mjesto-mjesta/
http://www.labforculture.org/de/content/view/detail/24463
http://www.networkedcultures.org/index.php?tdid=46
The French minister of Habitat, Cécile Duflot doesn’t exclude the possibility of expropriating vacant apartments, she told at a meeting with NGOs engaged in improving the housing situation in the country. Read the article here.
Photo: designboom.com
This elevated, linear park is built on a 1930s former freight rail structure on Manhattan’s West Side. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan’s largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park. http://www.thehighline.org/
After Walmart abandoned one of its retail stores in McAllen, Texas, the city decided to reuse the structure as a new main library.
Photo by MS&R Architecture
A conversion project in Denmark by C. F. M?ller Architects és a Christian Carlsen Arkitektfirma:
http://www.cfmoller.com/p/Siloetten-i2029.html
In this video, Elma van Boxtel and Kristian Koreman talk about their studio ZUS, about the establishment of the Schieblok as an urban laboratory, and their plans. http://www.zus.cc/
Richard Boeser, one of the founders of Het Rotterdam Collectief, a shared space of work and collaboration established in an abandoned office building, talks about the concept of the Collective.
Ronald and Erik Rietveld, authors of the Vacant NL project presented at the 2010 Venice Biennial of Architecture, interviewed by Arjen Oosterman in Volume 33.
“The current discussion about ‘empty square meters’, particularly office buildings, is excessively boring. It’s limited to the reductive jargon of architects to simply ‘fill up’ the program in square meters. But tens of thousands of public buildings are involved; mostly inspiring cultural heritage. At the same time, the Netherlands wants to be one of the top five knowledge-based economies of the world; a part of this includes the creative industry. The dormant economic potential of the vacant legacy is tremendous. Especially when you bear in mind that many of those buildings are in the middle of a city. (…) A carefully designed and precisely selected intervention sets something in motion, more than the thing itself. We focus on forms of collaboration, between technology, science and interested parties, with the designer occupying a central place, and amassing knowledge. And that knowledge has to be translated to smart design interventions, which in their turn need design craft. But rapidly signaling and utilizing when things become vacant is important, too. Vacancy occurs, but use it somehow.”
Exhibition detail from Vacant NL, Venice Biennial of Architecture, 2010
“This place is exemplary of the vacancy situation. It’s been vacant for four years – and belongs to the municipality. And all this time it’s not being used. They’re making plans for it, but that takes so much time, that between the moment it became vacant and now, nothing happened. Four wasted years for a top location.”
In the summer of 2012, the real estate holding of the city of Pécs announced a call for projects to temporarily use their empty properties, located in central parts of the city. The detailed decription (in Hungarian):
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