Old Minburee Market Playground, Week 2.

I arrive in time for the second week of the 'playground as catalyst' project. Ploy a young architect in her second year at CASE is running the project, she has given me some background and we have visited the community earlier in the week to put up posters advertising the saturday workshop.

When saturday arrives, we meet the kids at the playground site and go to a nearby building for shelter from the heat. Ploy introduces the activity and distributes the cardboard and crayons for drawing. The kids gather on the floor and draw their ideas of how their playground should be. Ploy encourages them to draw not just the playground but also all the things they like to play.

The kids draw in four groups, some are shy to begin, but Ploy and the GE volunteers prompt them and soon they are discussing amongst themselves and drawing so much they all flip over the cardboard to use the other side!


The drawings are very diverse, there are birds-eye views of football fields and gardens as well as side views of plants, slippery dips, swings and other play equipment. There are also more whimsical and abstract drawings.

Ploy and the volunteers then go to each group in turn and ask what each drawing is, the kids explain and label the drawings as well as write their names on it. they do this one by one so that everyone gets to hear the ideas of each group.


Once everyone has had a chance to explain, each group holds up their drawing and the others clap. the ones who get the loudest clap get to have their picture on the poster for next week.

A Playground for kids in the Old Minburee Market

The first project that I am participating in with CASE is a playground for the kids who live in the Old Minburee Market. CASE has been involved with the Old Market communities for sometime as it is only a short walk from their office. Chumchonthai Foundation funded CASE to look at the feasibility of doing a project with the community, after spending time with the locals the concept of a playground was raised and a suitable site chosen. A multinational finance corporation with offices in Bangkok also approached CASE seeking a suitable project for its office workers to participate in as part of a volunteer community engagement programme. The corporation will fund the costs of all community design workshops and the construction of the playground itself.

Below is an outline of the project as presented by CASE to the corporation.

CASE studio, an introduction.

CASE (Community Architects for Shelter and Environment) is a group of young Thai architects in practice for more than ten years. They are the first practice that I will embed myself in for the research project; working with the informal, learning from the informal. From June until December I will work with CASE, participating in a range of their projects and learning from their unique philosophy and methods of community engagement. The results of this will be continuously documented on this blog.

Below is an introduction to the work of CASE. More detailed information is available
from their website (http://www.casestudio.info)

london

I met with Jorge Fiori, Director of the Housing and Urbanism Programme at the AA (Architectural Association). He shared with me some of his views on the past and future of the involvement of architects in poverty alleviation and the upgrading of informal settlements:

As a reaction against the disastrous spatial determinism of the Modern movement, dialogue related to the ‘improving the lives of slum-dwellers’ has avoided any discussion of the spatial aspects of informal settlements, focussing entirely on the social and policy aspects of upgrading. This move away from discussing the urban and architectonic characteristics of informal settlements and using spatial and design techniques in their development was a result of very real concerns about the damage caused by a previous generation of large scale architectural interventions, usually of the demolish and relocate (or simply demolish) kind. A new generation of architects in the 60s and 70s recognised and celebrated the ingenuity and responsiveness of owner-built settlements.

While Fiori believes strongly in the importance of this movement, he argues that the total exclusion of a spatial understanding has severely limited the scope and success of slum upgrading projects to date. He argues that spatial analysis and tactics of upgrading be intergrated with social and political techniques to achieve a holistic result. He believes his balance has been exemplified by the Favela Bairro project undertaken by the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro since 1994.

Fiori describes the limitations of small scale, specific interventions as being too insular and ingnoring the crucial relationship of the settlement with the city as a whole. He believes that as important as making the city accessible to the residents of the slum is making the slum accessible to the rest of the city.

rotterdam

From the 24th to the 26th of May I attended the 3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The central exhibition and conference, Visionary Power: Producing the Contemporary City. The IABR invited 5 teams of theorists and practitioners to interrogate the powers behind the production of cities and the role which can be played by architects. The 5 forces chosen for investigation were Representation (Capital Cities), Capital (Corporate Cities), Tourism (Spectacle Cities), Migration (Informal Cities) and Fear (Hidden Cities).

Underlying the whole project was a recognition of the imminent ‘Urban Majority’ and the urgent need for architects to once again engage critically with the production of space and the needs of society.

While this resulted in some tired calls for a return to grand visions and monumentality (by Elia Zhengalis and others) a progressive movement of agile, critical and subversive practices revealed some genuine developments in the field. Teddy Cruz argued strongly for a practice of urban activism, of architects joining with engaged communities to rethink and rework the city and its institutions. Lieven De Cauter and Michiel Dehaene drew links between refugee internment camps, shanty towns and gated villages to reveal the underbelly of architectural practice based on fear and resulting in a global polarity of camp vs refuge, of total exclusion vs total sterility . Mayor Edi Rama of Tirana showed the diversity of urban and social situations, and the political and spatial tactics needed in his projects such as the mass demolision of kiosks and the painting of stalinist housing blocks pink to reconnect the city to its inhabitants after a decade of ‘revenge against public space’.

A street in the Albanian capital of Tirana, the gaudy paint job sparked national debate, leading the people to re-engage with their public space and eventually a national referendum on colour choice.

berlin

For the month of May Informalism was invited to participate in the transit lounge (www.transitlounge.org) an international artist in residence programme situated in Mitte, Berlin.

unguided tours:

Together with artists Isabel Cordiero and Kenzee Patterson we explored urban landscapes and everyday moments of Berlin, drawn into secret corners and subjected to strange coincidences by invented games for arbitrary navigation. we sought new ways of mapping the city as it is immediately experienced.

These drawings were done as a continuous roll as I moved through the city, on foot and on train. Click to view.

sous les pavés, la plage!

‘A rogue beach pavilion takes to the streets to subvert kapital and urbanism`s unholy alliance of socio-spatial control. But will the people listen? Will anyone come out to play?’

S.L.P.L.P! is designed to give anyone who enters it immediate control of a little piece of the public space. Passers by are given the chance to own a space simply by inhabiting it.

How it works...

One spring morning on frankfurter allee...

Kids...

..and the others.