Valentina Karga

design by gran3
DO

30 days in the garden/ 15 days on Mars : the publication

2013-02-22

The artist Valentina Karga shares her diaries from her adventures in search of self-sufficiency:

What does an urban garden in a European metropolis have to do with a Mars simulation base in the desert in the USA? The two stories recounted in this book unfold in antipodal places and contexts. They have, however, something in common.
Self-sufficiency is a field of various interests, from individuals or small communities wanting to be autonomous for economical, ecological or political motives to the military and its desire to conquer new extra-terrestrial territories.

With contributions from Joseph Redwood-Martinez and Sandra Teitge.

Published by Crap is good publications

Order here

(more…)

Interview with Mr. Spoqui

2012-11-14

Mr. Spoqui is a Portugal based family zine. Its creators are four siblings: Tiago (13), Blanca (16), Milena (19) and Amanda (21).

This issue’s topic is “Plastic food” and I was happy to do an interview with them.

click more to read the interview and see more pictures

(more…)

this ever-whirling engine

2012-10-26

This ever-whirling engine is a lecture-performance and workshop presented at  Graduale 12.

“With an interest in self-sufficiency, DIY and biochemistry, Valentina Karga constructs low-tech “machines” that transform matter. Together with solar engineer Brian Edlefsen Lasch she will explain how to produce solar energy in a workshop.  Together with the participants they will build a small mobile unit for urban applications and will create a step-by-step tutorial to contribute to open source knowledge. The second event questions the existence of of waste and how contemporary society deals with it’s own organic waste. Attendants will learn how to built a simple biogas digestor and will detect processes of recycling.”

A very big thank you to Pieterjan Grandry for the making of the installation, Brian Edlefsen Lasch for teaching the workshop as well as all the enthusiastic workshop participants.

All pictures by Sven Hagolani.

(more…)

The super rocket-stove cook off

2012-09-14

the super rocket stove cook off from Berlin Farm Lab on Vimeo.

Berlin Farm Lab interview on Monocle

2012-09-14

 

Berlin Farm Lab

The Super Solar cook-off

2012-08-09

The Super Solar Cook-off is an urban game that takes part this Sunday, 12 of August in Playpublik festival in Berlin.

If you enjoy cooking or you are a fan of DIY and clean energy, then this game is for you! Participants will built their own solar cookers, scavenge food from the city and cook their best with the sun! The most delicious and well-baked food will be selected from a jury of local chefs and experts of solar cooking! *In case of lack of sun we will play alternatively “the Super Rocket Stove Cook-off” ; a rocket stove is fuel efficient stove that you can also make yourself.

English

Format: Game
sign up at counter, 6-20 players, 4:30 pm Early Dinner

  • August 12, 2012 11:00 – 12:00, 16:30 – 17:00

Breakfast Exchange on Responsibility

2012-07-23

In the context of Voicing responsibility, an event about responsibility on curatorial processes in Kunstwerke, Dinner exchange organized their first Breakfast exchange. People from different fields came together, ate market leftovers transformed in delicious jams and discussed whether small scale initiatives on urban farming can lead to a bigger change.  I was there to introduce Belin Farm Lab. (more…)

The future of the World

2012-06-13

 

MAPPA MUNDI ON WHEELS

presents the Future of the World

 

17 June, 7 pm, Tempelhof Airfield, Berlin

By pisteras3000 (Rosario Talevi & Ana Vogelfang) + Valentina Karga (BerlinFarmLab)+ Sandra Teitge (Dinner Exchange Berlin)

 

A few months ago we met Matthias Rick and Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius with the idea of establishing a temporary alliance between our TU Berlin Seminar on Experimental Architecture and raumlaborberlin for “Die Grosse Weltausstellung 2012”.

The seminar states itself as a platform where students, researchers, collaborators, friends and favourites meet to discuss urban activation processes. It intends to research forms of organization beyond the university context by encouraging thinking and acting on real time.

In this context, Matthias entrusted us his Mappa Mundi. “MAPPA MUNDI can be translated to ‘Map of the World’. However MAPPA can also mean ‘wide-spread or spreading’! (…) The drawing contains one hundred short stories and facts, which circle the earth like clouds, depicting territories, population, resources and social hierarchies.”

The goal was to turn the drawing and its research into a statement.

Later on, Valentina Karga joined the project and brought fresh ideas and expertise on how to built closed circuits that transform waste, basically leftovers or dead particles, into lifecycles. That is how our pavilion found its purpose.

The installation consists of different devices that activate processes, simple architectural elements around which workshops, dinners and collective gatherings happen. MAPPA MUNDI ON WHEELS acts as an infrastructure that ‘grows’ through a series of curated workshops dealing with public action, knowledge exchange and experimentation with do-it-yourself methods of production.

A mobile MAPPA MUNDI table, a greenhouse-rainwater collector, a worm farm, a windmill, events and workshops are parts of this pavilion-machine, which shows the world today and manifests a positive future.

In this context we invited Dinner Exchange Berlin to organize a dinner with leftover-food from markets. Our dinner guests will comprise a combination of people from different disciplines who will discuss the “Future of the World”. Curator and artist Lukas Feireiss will be moderating this event.

 

On the websites of Dinner Exchange Berlin and Berlin Farm Lab you will find the podcast, but you are very welcome to join the event!

 

 

 

the institute of placemaking

2012-05-12

Recently, together with Jia Gu and Pieterjan Grandry we founded “The Institute Of Placemaking”, which is also a wining entry at Eme3 festival of Architecture. This means we will built it! 28 of June – 1 of July in Barcelona, be there!

The Institute of Placemaking is knowledge exchange center and a public institution that gives spatial possibilities to people who desire a place for new ideas and new encounters within the city.

An office-cabin and a table are the simple architectural elements around which workshops, dinners and collective gatherings happen. The Institute acts as an infrastructure that ‘grows’ through a series of curated workshops dealing with public action, knowledge exchange and experimentation with do-it-yourself methods of production, which extends to building, making, cooking, using and re-using. Workshops are focused around the looped system of resources, and particular attention is paid to what is commonly neglected in the production cycle of materials or goods: waste. The Institute proposes a 6 workshops that begin to treat the city and its byproducts as a resource.

Over time, individuals and organizations in the neighborhood can plug into this structure, and begin to propose their own spatial interventions or knowledge exchanges. Dinners and artist-led bars will play a catalytic role to the getting to know the neighbors and facilitating new encounters..

The Institute proposes a four-day series of workshops and events during the festival:

 

DAY 01           Build Your Own Solar Cooker

Do-It-Yourself Marmelade Workshop

DAY 02           Soap Opera: Making Soap from Scratch

Solar Cooker Tester + Taste Test

DAY 03           Recycled Furniture Workshop

DAY 04           Big Lunch

ONGOING       Exhibition in the Institute

Artist-led Bar

 

We begin with a simple, transformable architecture constructed from recovered materials (doors, windows, cabinets etc) that can be taken apart to make workshops with. An office-cabin and a table are the simple spatial elements around which workshops, dinners, film screenings, exhibitions and collective gatherings happen.

workshops

cinema

lunch together

in the night the institute closes


The Institute of Placemaking is about creating new places from abandoned spaces through knowledge exchange and collective actions in the city. For Eme3, we propose re-using the city as a resource, whose products, people and places are all part of a larger cycle of production.

Our workshops and activities operate on the premise of re-use happening at two scales. First, through a series of workshops focused on the production cycle of things and the continuity of systems. The products of each workshop accumulate into a final lunch with the community and festival participants. Leftover groceries from local markets will be cooked in the solar cookers, DIY marmelade will be served with dessert, self-made soap is used to wash the dishes and recycled furniture makes the setting. Eventually all food-waste will end up in a compost bin that can be the start of a community garden hosted at the Institute. Secondly, re-use happens within the entire installation, which will be open for plug-in programs and  appropriation by the community.

This once empty lot is transformed into collective space that is shared and actively used by local citizens, visitors and festival participants, beginning to offer to local citizens a sense of place.

A big thank you for the people who donated via Kickstarter. We also want to welcome new team members who will help us to make it happen, such as Rosario Talevi, Bea Verges Duran and Sergi Tuchi. (more to be added soon)

This project is dedicated to our dear friend Matthias Rick, who left us too suddenly. He was one of the bravest and most talented of his generation, who opened up a new approach to architecture and urbanism and shared the path with others. His ideas and spirit live on in our work. We loved him and we will deeply miss him.

 

supper studio

2012-03-07

Supper Studio, a series of dinners, relaxed presentations and discussions around the table between guests and students from the architecture department of UCLA is initiated by Jia Gu. I was very happy to help set up the first event of the series and give a presentation.

On the Menu:

Mushroom and spinage dumplings

Leek and tofu dumplings

Pork and green onion dumplings

Fresh Salad

Wine and Ice cream with strawberry sauce

(more…)

Art in Use

2012-01-22

Valentina Karga invites the artist duo Ooze & Marjetica Potrc to present their common projects which features bottom-up approaches for water infrastructure projects in different cities together with the inhabitants.
Lecturer:
Marjetica Potrc
Ooze (Eva Pfannes & Sylvain Hartenberg)
Moderator:
Matthias Rick
When: Monday, 23-01-2012, 19:00 H
Where: »Kosmetiksalon Babette« – Karl-Marx-Allee 36, 10178 Berlin
A series of events organized by Graduiertenschule für die Künsteund die Wissenschaf ten der Universität der Künste Berlin

Eme3_2011 catalog

2012-01-04
Last summer I participated at Eme3, an international architecture festival in Barcelona. The topic was Work in progress: Global problems Local solutions.

Grad offen 14.12.11

2011-12-24

A small exhibition at the UDK to show work in progress from the Graduate School. You can see the automatic fish feeder, an explanatory animation of the whole installation, Berlin Farm Lab and the miniponics.

Lecture @ Greesis; Trigger

2011-12-11

Lecture with title:  Mechanisms (on) Experience: the Berlin Farm Lab experiment @University of Thessally Department of Architecture.

(more…)

grad offen

2011-11-30

Invitation to an open studio day with all the fellows from the Graduate school including myself. 14/12, 17:00 Hardenbergstrasse 33,Univesrity of Arts,  Berlin, room 101

machine for sustainable living and greenwasher, sustainable active chamber

2011-06-02

// This is an interactive representation of the project, you can zoom and drag or pan your way around it.//

The project “Greenwasher, active sustainable chamber” is a research on a DIY contemporary lifestyle.   The first part is a manual of “how to make yourself” a complete system to produce at home all goods for contemporary living, such as electricity, biogas, food and biodiesel while collecting heat from the sun and rainwater. The following characteristics make the system the perfect solution for global sustainability: low-budget for broad application, local production and reuse of materials and therefore less energy required in the process, biologic food production and green energy production. The second part is an application of the manual in a one person’s habitat. The aim is to minimize use of natural resources and co2 emissions during the building and living process. The idea for creating the manual began with the collection of systems aimed at an ecologically bearable conscious contemporary lifestyle. Next step was the restriction of the system to “do it yourself” version. For this reason we studied «how to» and «Do It yourself» youtube videos and websites that offer such expertise to ease of manufacture and low cost.  Adaptations were made in the way of building the systems with emphasis on the implementation of used items. Changes or adjustments of the use of objects are possible. Finally, we combined all segments in a single system in a “nothing is wasted” concept. Special feature is the excessive economy. In other case would be characterized meanness. With neurotic patience, the user utilizes the water through a hierarchy system of value, until that evaporates. Moreover, by simple chemical processes, produces useful goods from useless garbage, while producing no waste, since he re-uses everything. One could describe the model as a concentrated version of the complexity of gathering the goods of modern life. As regard the aesthetic issue, we can talk about a new species of architecture that is free of the question about form; the appearance is simply what derives from the collection and assemblage of existing systems and elements. The project seems to be the perfect sustainable solution on building and living. However, the personal motivation, time and effort required, opens the discussion about changes that could be done in the society, political and economic system to make this lifestyle possible for everyone. (more…)

soft shells

2011-04-27

Graphic design for Sophia Vyzoviti‘s new book, Soft Shells. In collaboration with Pieterjan Grandry.

emergency ecopark / uia-ares competition

2011-01-11

(more…)

small catastrophe enchiridion

2010-11-19

Real time and representation time

The initial intention of the research was the creation of an archive/ catalog about fire. Archives are evolvable and can possibly refresh themselves persistently. Thus, the archive´s concept can possibly be redefined.

This should have happened, in a manner of speaking, simultaneously with some representation of the same process, the one we call file-lodgment. The lodgment’s order is not the same with the chronic order that the files had emerged at the time of investigation. Besides, representation does not happen in autonomic real time, but invokes observer’s time. Thus, the distortion of the chronic relations facilitates some kind of “distortion” of the accuracy of the file lodgment procedure. In addition, this is not that important. What is important is the transmission of some, not-that-clear yet, sensation that fire and architecture are related to each other. Finally, the selection and lodgment of the “fire fragments” request to reveal some abstract relation to architecture.

(more…)

washing machine-like house

2010-11-18

life in the microprocessor

2010-11-17

Reusing a PCB.

jobs and internships

2010-11-17

 

Production of the catalog for the show Weak Monuments, a “Buit Event” by Aristide Antonas, Alexios Dallas andFilippos Oreopoulos, for the biennale of Thessaloniki 2009. Read and see more from Aristide Antonas.

(more…)

schoolbuilding

2010-11-17

(more…)

shape 04

2010-11-17

(more…)

pleat pavillion

2010-11-16

(more…)

thermal baths

2010-11-16

(more…)

mom’s compact home

2010-11-16

(more…)

easa shelter prototype

2010-11-16

(more…)

the game

2010-11-16

(more…)

revolving backpack

2010-11-16

(more…)

transframing

2010-11-09

TRANSFRAMING workshop, an introducion to rhino and digital manufacturing, with Asterios Agathidis and Sophia Vyzoviti.

transplant systems: self generating urbanism through built and landscape inputs

2010-11-09

(more…)

voronoi graphics

2010-11-09


Data visualization graphics for the statistics of designing absence using NODEBOX 2. Each country is represented with a “planet”. The density of each “planet” is generated by popularity.

connected moulds

2010-11-09


“Connected moulds” is a habitation concept.

There is a clear split of the three main functions of a house (sleeping, eating and bathing) into levels. Each function has its own level. There is one nested small space and a ramp as an introduction to the house. Using curves as design tool and softness as a material choice aiming to achieve comfort, someone is able to sit down, lay or sleep everywhere. There is luck of privacy. This house is an open, common space for its users. There is only an extra option for the perpendicular shape in the last level to become private using sliding closing panels, just in cases that someone really needs some hours of privacy.Each function is a closed shape. This shape has been extruded in order to become three-dimensional space. Between these moulds that came up there is a vertical connection so the three different moulds are assembled in one system and the one space flows inside the other.