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

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

1. How did the idea of Berlin Farm Lab came out?

BFL is a realization of a dream. As my thesis for the school of architecture I designed the, at that time called “Greenwashing manual”, and Berlin Farm Lab is the realization of that design. After I graduated from architecture I received a grant from the Graduate school of the university of the arts in Berlin to continue my research on self-sufficiency and really apply practically what I learn. My thesis is a manual for a DIY system that you can apply to your place to live a bit more (or, totally, if you want and can) self-sufficiently that can be adapted to space, needs, aesthetics, budget, climate, local resources. So, I got this manual and scaled down to my personal needs for the summer time in Berlin (the winters here here are too cold to grow food), and now I am building it, step by step. I don’t know many architects who materialized their thesis, so I consider myself very lucky. It’s a two-year’s plan, so last year I managed to be one month totally autonomous regarding food, but next year I plan water and electricity.

2. What we can find in your garden?

My garden is mobile. It changes place and content every year. This year it was in the garden of my friends’ Raphael dead grandpa’s house and I now I am looking for a place for next year. There you could find historic shorts of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beets, onions, strawberries, spinach, swiss chard, kale, a variety of herbs, fish, a compost toilet, a solar cooker, a rocket stove, a semi-finished biogas digester and my humanure in the state of composting.

3. What were the limitations (but specially) the challenges of the project?

The biggest limitation is the constant need of the human person to take care of the system. The lifestyle of self-sufficiency can be urban (accepting also the fact you may have to move it every year) but is not compatible with a nomadic lifestyle. After I install the system for that particular summer months you I want it to run, I cannot leave anymore. This year I left one week to visit my family and all my fish died. There was a technical complication and there was no one there to solve it.

4. What was the most incredible experience during this experiment?

 Hard to choose one. I would say the most fascinating part was from the harvest to the table in 10 minutes. I found incredible the experience of harvesting, cooking and eating there, on the spot. It reminded me of when I was a kid in my grandparents’ garden; I would cut a tomato and eat it just like this.

5. The past Saturday (15th of September) was your last day of the experiment in the garden. How do you feel about the result?

I felt really healthy eating all these fresh organic vegetables from the garden for 30 days. And the social aspect of the project filled me with a lot of positive feedback, which is exactly what I need to go on. 65 people came by and exchanged products and stories, which made the garden, become more like a social space at the end. That was an aspect I didn’t plan and I didn’t control; it just happened and evolved. I am happy to go back home and order pizza some days I have much to do and no time for cooking, but on the other hand my diet is not as perfect as in that month. I already feel the difference in my body and miss my own vegetables. The ones from the super market are not as appealing.

6. Which direction is going to take this project now?

Now I am back in my office in the graduate school together with my biogas digester that I am still trying to optimize. I am producing a small publication about the 30 days in the garden, which is going to be published by crap is good press, I am continuing the research on self-sufficient systems and I am trying to find a new home for my project. All this until March. From April and on I will start again the same experiment but more complete; I want to include self-sufficiency on energy and water. And then live 60 days totally autonomous.

7. After your personal experience, what advices would you give to someone that wants to start his own self-sufficient garden?

To be enthusiastic because it is a really great project to do, but also to take into account that this project needs discipline, patience, a lot of personal time and care. And to check the BerlinFarmLab blog for information: www.berlinfarmlab.com

8. What do you think about actual alimentation patterns?

I wouldn’t worry so much about chemicals and junk food. Of course they are still everywhere but I am quite hopeful that the way society deals with food is changing. Thanks to the internet, food awareness is raising and people are rediscovering how they like their food. Too many options and too much information though can cause confusion. If during the 90’s we had the junk food problem, today we have the opposite extremes; for example raw-foodism or any other of these dogmatic alimentation ideas. Eating exclusively raw-food as a manifestation of being super healthy is equally problematic as eating junk food, maybe even scarier because it’s a well though action that requires a lot of effort and knowledge. My interest lays more to the contemporary foodie model. They know a lot about food and they prefer more original well-cooked comfort food rather than gourmet extremities. They love organic farmer’s market, slow food, and experimenting at home with a bit more complex cooking processes: making fresh pasta, cheese, brewing beer, making your own soya sauce, ice cream, even chocolate are some examples. It is amazing how much information you can find on the web for such “unusual” cooking processes.  I think I am talking more for a combination of the foodie and the maker subculture.

Thank you Amanda!

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.

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

Berlin Farm Lab

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

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.

Other guests were:

Intro Sandra Teitge (Dinner Exchange Berlin)

http://dinnerexchangeberlin.wordpress.com/

Nils Aguilar (sociologist and filmmaker) with Markus Bier (geographer)

3 min film extract of the documentary “Voices of Transitions”

http://www.milpafilms.org/

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!

Don’t miss the chance to see your answer to this book project! I will submit for sure!

“The future of” is the first participatory book project initiated by crap is good (thats us!) and tries to provide an insight into the future role of architecture. Every architectural attempt starts by making a representation of an imaginative situation or design, which will happen or could happen in the future.  In many cases an architectural design remains a future plan. In times of economical or political crisis, the question is what comes next. So, while architects shape the future, we are concerning about the future of architecture. In our opinion, there is no single answer to this question, and that is where our book project starts.

The future of architecture  consists of 2 parts. We have invited a selection of very interesting architectural offices, thinkers, historians and academics to answer to one simple but complex question “What is the future of architecture?” these various answers supply a professional angle to this question and will form the first chapter of the book.

The second chapter is still open and is up to you to complete. We have opened up the question “What is the future of architecture?” to the public and are trying to reach as many people possible to send in their answers. This chapter will provide a different angle to the same question, and completes the book.

The book is a fragmented map of thoughts of hundreds of people that study or deal, in general, with architecture. Putting together the pieces of this map, we might be able to view a glimpse of  the architectural future. To participate with this project please send in your answer trough the website www.the-future-of.org!

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

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.

The Institute of Placemaking is going to happen in Barcelona during eme3 architectural festival in an abandoned urban spot.

Help us make it happen via Kickstarter! Eternal gratitude, postcards and photos in exchange!

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.

“The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create. We believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing.”

An example of their database, the image above:

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.

“Brief overview of year-long body-based art performance. Together with several farm animals, Ayumi Matsuzaka experiences the natural food cycle from ingestion through digestion, fertilization and regrowth; the project completes the cycle with both Ayumi and the animals eating vegetables grown using their own bodily wastes.

Berlin and environs, 2010-2011.
ayumi-matsuzaka.com

Camera & editing: Goesta Struve-Dencher
Music: Nedret Akcaoglu (oriental-records.com)”

And this is my favorite cabin! submit yours at freecabinporn.com

Last time I ‘ve been in Greece I got this book as a present from Phoebe Giannisi, professor of mine at the UTH school of architecture and curator of the exhibition “the Ark” for the 12th Venice Biennale together with Zisis Kotionis. The book is the exhibition’s catalog with contributions from y 25 both Greek and non-Greek writers, architects, botanists, farmer-activists, theoreticians related the issue of ecology and urban agriculture, questioning the current trend of sustainability, farming and food from all sides possible, positive and negative. The exhibition – a wooden ark- seed bank and kitchen- was dealing with the issue of the lost seed varieties; the current trials to retrieve and save them and the importance of these actions not in a quantitave but in a symbolic level. I really love the introduction written from the curators and I will post here a small piece, taken from the website where I suggest you to read the manifest:

“8.HEDONISM The diversity of species and of their uses is important as are the ways and means of cultivation, in the reintroduction to the hedonistic approach to life (Epicure) through different parameters of time and of quality. For a large part of the human population, especially those residing in the Western world, hedonism today is connected to the quantity and the speed (Virilio) of the consumption of goods, especially lifestyle goods. The time of mandatory consumption is short. Man hurriedly guzzles bought goods to do with entertainment or personal aggrandizement. Seeds and cultivation remind us of pleasure as waiting and as duration. The annual cycle of the seasons, the cyclic alternation of periods with the activities appropriate to each, plant again human beings in the earth as one among other members of global life, of the pain and pleasure therein. The hedonism of deceleration (Kundera) throws in doubt the competitive paradigm of Western society, the financial and political model of continuous development.”

The catalog is so variable that even contains recipes form Eleni Psychouli. At the time i took the pictures,  I was cooking one of them, ” Egklouvi Lentis with parsley chicken”, unfortunately without Lentils from Egklouvi but rather imported from India.

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

Dinner cooked from the students at the postgradual course at the class of Aristide Antonas. After dinner we talked about the theme of “phusis” and god in philosophy.

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

1679 Cassini

read the article

Exchange Radical Recipes by Raumlabor Berlin. 11 Hours, 11 cooks, 11 radical recipes as part of the Live Art Festival “Exchange Radical Moments” that was going on yesterday  on 11/11/11 in in Berlin, Bitola, Chisinau, Linz, Liverpool, London, Paris, Prague, Riga, Slubfurt and Stockholm at the same time and people could follow the live stream.

“This festival is tempted to make an effective break into our daily routine. Live Art projects, which meets us in the middle of our every day life, which interrupts the usual routine and unbalances us, hold, pause. They ask us: Are we ready to engage extraordinary moments of exchange?”

The food was amazing and Matthias and Benny from Raumlabor gave an excellent 11hrs show.

I was even tempted to try fried grasshoppers but I did not dare. People said though they felt very powerfull after eating that mexican delight!

12:00 Zapata’s letzter Wille / Zapata’s last wish by Darinka Ezeta (MEX)

There was even fresh fish from Berlin’s river smoked in an installation of the rooftop of the theater. Supercool!

14:00 Smoke on the Water by Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius (DE) Berk Asal (TR)

At last, there was ironed fish and soldered caramelized apple. Literally.

19:00 Kochen nach Art des Handwerks / craft-made cooking by Wolfgang Grillitsch (Ö)

link

by Olivier Lellouche, Olivier Lebrun & Maori Murota

“Everything pivots on a steam emitting machine, everything hinges on the energy and the beneficial powers of this rather fashionable element, or maybe, in vogue from time immemorial. The original idea is combining different activities related to the presence of steam. Eating, taking a sauna bath, making design. If the meal consists in two simple though tasty dishes proposed by the chef Maori Murota, the steam, besides representing a healthy and light way of cooking, becomes a tool to bend wood and “design” objects, as well as a source for relaxation. An efficacious and playful chance to get people together around the simplicity and the strength of an invisible but very useful element.” via Abitare

The city of Berlin gave to its inhabidants a piece of Tempelhof abandoned airport to create their own urban gardens. About 200 garden have been developed in all kinds of shapes and plants.

“Verdonck’s “negative Garden of Eden” transformed the white walls of a contemporary art gallery into an enclosed bio-dome, a glorious but poisoned ecosystem that speaks of man’s increasing interference in nature. Overgrown with non-native species, EXOTE presents itself as the canned result of manmade biological imbalance.” link

”

“Paul DeMarinis has been working as an electronic media artist since 1971 and has created numerous performance works, sound and computer installations and interactive electronic inventions. Much of his work involves speech processed and synthesized by computers, available on the Lovely Music Ltd. compact disc “Music as a Second Language”, and the Apollohuis CD “A Listener’s Companion” Major installation works include “The Edison Effect” that uses optics and computers to make new sounds by scanning ancient phonograph records with lasers, “Gray Matter” that uses the interaction of body and electricity to make music, and “The Messenger” that examines the myths of electricity in communication.”

Arabeschi di latte is a group of italian female designers that deal with culinary tradition and culture. They are researching about the notion of daily pleasures and relationships that can be created through food. Their work is participatory therefore can have the format of a workshop or dinner.

“Futurefarmers is a group of artists and designers working together since 1995. Our design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, aritist in residency program and research interests. We are teachers, researchers, designers, gardeners, scientists, engineers, illustrators, people who know how to sew, cooks and bus drivers with a common interest in creating work that challenges current social, political and economic systems.”

In the picture you see the project Rainwater Harvester/Greywater System Feedback Loop, which is a water saving system built from reused materials.

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” Yowayowa camera woman” lives in Tokyo and has a “levitation diary”. Follow her blog for a levitated trip around Tokyo.

In a real hole, in the ground. Only in Berlin.

A design festival in the complex building of abandoned Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.

One of the projects I saw, Funfutopia is about DIY mushroom cultivation and why this is interesting in urban scale.

Be sure to visit the website.

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. The idea for creating the manual began with the collection of systems aimed at an ecologically bearable conscious contemporary lifestyle. Next step was tthe 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. The low cost factor has a similar relationship with the construction of ecological factors when taken into account the reuse of objects. Thus, adaptations were made in the way of manufacturing systems with emphasis on the implementation of used items may change or adjust the use of objects. For example, a reused tub acts as a tank – aquarium in the hydroponic / aquaponic system. Finally, we combined all segments in a single system with the logic that “nothing is wasted”.The elements that trigger the system is water and sun. Water can be collected from the roof when it rains through the gutters and stored in tanks. Using a filter and proper maintenance of tanks, this water is drinkable. The clean water goes to the sink. Whatever is spent for washing dishes and washing vegetables led to the cistern where it can be reused. The toilet waste is transported to the burner biomass. There, may also be led discarded remnants of food and the excess biomass of algae after extraction of oil. The biomass after fermentation process gives biogas, which, passing through a boiler can heat water for radiators and showers. The radiator may be used only in conditions of lack of solar energy, ie when the solar heater can not operate. Biogas can be used for cooking when there is not enough solar energy to function the solar oven. The low quality of water leaving the boiler biomass after fermentation with the waste water in the shower, can be reused in the cultivation of algae for biodiesel production. This led to a tank where it is mixed with a small quantity of microalgae, some nutrients plus carbon dioxide, while the contaminated water contains enough already. The mixture is sent by a pump in transparent tubes. After a day of exposure to sunlight, the algae have grown considerably. Harvesting can be done in a container covered with a filter that keeps the biomass from the water. The water can be sent back to the tank algae. The biomass of micro-algae left in the sun to dry. The paste is dried biomass is transferred to an oil press. The extract of the oil must be transported to the biodiesel processor to make biodiesel fuel. The hot water process requires heat on biogas. For the operation of pumps of the machines, a photovoltaic installation is necessary. Electrical energy is stored in a second hand car batteries, and in sufficient quantity, can supply power throughout the house. Regarding nutrition, a hydroponic system combined with a aquaponic system can provide daily fresh vegetables and fish and rice, cereals, soybeans and nuts. Food can also be some species of algae. For hygiene, soap can be made by algae. During the treatment process of vegetable oil from algae into biodiesel, glycerin derives, which can be mixed with seaweed paste, essential ingredients of seaweed soap. The representation of the parts is real, but not unique. Is an example that may be arranged according to specific needs and circumstances of the users and the environment. Also, the lack of space and time, can result in a party and not the entire system. Built in its final form and ideal environmental conditions, can offer complete self-sufficiency with zero energy footprint. However, this means full-time working in the system daily. The representation of the system is graphical. Can be tailored to each building plan, including an apartment in a more concise form. Feature is excessive economy, which would otherwise be characterized meanness. With neurotic patience, the user utilizes the water through a hierarchy system of value, until evaporated. Moreover, by simple chemical processes, produces useful goods from useless waste, while producing no waste, since he re-uses everything. The appearance of the system seems complicated, but consists of humble materials. It is an assembly of used items, garbage, cables, pipes and fluids of changing purity, transparency and clotting interfering or cooperating with the building. One could describe it as a concentrated version of the complexity of gathering the goods of modern life. The same thrift-austerity is applied to diet. The range of food of the user is much more limited than the range that can be found on the market. Consume only locally produced seasonal and organic food, avoiding meat, appertaining the model of macrobiotic diet. He does not consume more than he needs, many times consumes the food raw and when the cooks, the cooks with solar energy or biogas. However, if someone does not wants to follow a strict macrobiotic diet model, it is possible to add animals. Indeed, animal waste can be used to the system to produce more biogas. This, however, needs land and conflicts with the hydroponic soiless concept. Although the model is rural, it is possible and even recommended that the cities, as there is no need for land. The hydroponic / aquaponic crop can be inside, close to major openings to the south, on balconies, patios and terraces. Indeed, the balcony is ideal because it can easily be turned into glass during winter by adding nylon. With the growing algae does not need anything but light and water and could be grown in transparent tubes or bags on the southern sides of buildings. As the algae grow faster with the addition of carbon dioxide could capture carbon dioxide in polluted urban air and acts as a barrier of improvement of the atmosphere of the building. It is a more flexible model of urban farm. Besides, while urban farms still look like farms, this model can be presented as architectural element, for example, a facade which consists of transparent tubes containing algae.

Published on Archdaily

Published on Designboom

Selected project for eme03, International architecture festival Barcelona,2011

© Valentina Karga

http://www.paulahayes.com/

An empty building in London transformed in an urban farm, with aquaponic systems, chickens on the roof and kefir grains fermenting in the basement. Read the whole article.

“Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes in the widening net, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings, Tbilisi). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Then comes the “speaking architecture” widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity. It also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before the country was brought to its end.”

To test how an aquaponic installation works, a small aquarium was used. Its capacity is ten fish and similar amount of plants. Two plastic tanks are used as growbeds and work with over flow. A pump circulates the water from the aquarium to the grow beds. A collaboration of Valentina Karga, Pieterjan Grandry and Prinzessinengärten.

“Architecture has become like fashion: public curiosity is generated by magazines which present architects like superstars and sell them as brands; cities order iconic buildings as products for tourism; international exhibitions aim to attract ever more people to see the biggest, the most impressive, the most technologically advanced… and the most expensive. What is the aim of all this?  In paralell to this architectural spectacle, what are the projects which rethink culture, the urban environment and nature? Which attempt to improve living conditions? Which care about the waste of natural resources? The projects which try to find answers to actual scial problems? Which go beyond architecture? These are the projects that eme3 aims to present in its 5th edition. eme3_2010 aims to reflect about the present situation of the architectural discipline, as well as the role played by the architect, in order to rethink its possibilities, compromises and limits. It is about analizing from a critical point of view the situation of the discipline to name those places, inside or outside architecture, where new practical possibilities are born and architects are playing new roles.”

” [...] I wanted people to get no ideas as to the principles of how this could work.  I wanted to accept this thing before their eyes, even if they found it strange. When something is undefined in terms of mechanism or concept, it can exist free of people’s decision to accept or reject the mechanism or concept, free of any judgment based on an individual’s  experience or subjectivity.” Junya Ishigami

” Monadnock proposes a system of access for a museum in an urban context, a prototype which is based on an arrangement of connected rooms. Monumental yet intimate, this collection of rooms offers a wide variety of spaces, with precisely defined proportions. Large openings connect the galleries to one another to form sequences of spaces. These can be closed off by big doors, offering curators the possibility to influence the order of observation. Objects can be presented in all sorts of ways: chronologically, hierarchically or randomly. Visitors move from room to room, offered constantly changing perspectives to the main hall along the way, well aware of their position in this gigantic structure. Free to choose their own route of discovery, they may browse at random or in a directed order. The enfilade offers horizontal connections between the galleries and a secondary system of stairs, hidden within thick walls along with all technical equipment, provides a vertical circulation route. The result is a vast and permanent matrix of rooms which allows an infinite amount of changes and dynamics. “

Installation from Jason Van der Woude  in Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke

Buttefly Effect installation by Raphael August Opstaele and Beaufort Aeneas Wilder Installation in Verbeke Foundation.

found here

All Photographs © Irina Werning

all images © thomas kalak

from the german photographer thomas kalak via designboom

found here

This is the IKEA cookbook Hembakat är Bäst (Homemade is Best), designed by Carl Kleiner. I like the idea of representing ingredients and amounts in this minimal and straightforward way.

Apart from recipe design which is what we used to know so far, here comes recipe re-design, which is what you get when you visualize standart recipes in a more creative, graphical way. Why didn’t we do that earlier? GOOD followed this upcoming trend and organized a competition about this topic. Results are in and you can vote for your favorite one here. Click more to see a comic-like udon, an ikea-like pho bo, a data visualization-like lasagna and more.

reposted from Parfois

Dezeen » Blog Archive » Meteorite Unit – Leonidou 58 by Aristeide Antonas -

““Meteorite Unit – Leonidou 58”, designed by Aristide Antonas, won the Greek award of ‘The Best Project of the Years 2008-2010’, in the framework of DOMES 2011 awards.”

“future islands”

Before becoming an illustrator, Julien Pacaud was, by turns : an astrophysician, an international snooker player, a hypnotist and an esperanto teacher.

A Freebox in Berlin, Germany 2005, serving as a distribution center for free donated materials

Freegans “embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.”^[1] Freeganism involves choosing to salvage discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as ‘dumpster diving‘.

The word “freegan” is a portmanteau of “free” and “vegan“^[2]; freegans are not actually vegetarian, the “egan” comes from vegans who cite ethical rather than health reasons for not eating or using animal products. Freeganism started in the mid 1960s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food.^[2]

from wikipedia

international competition, honorable mention

An easy to transport and assemble paper shelter for people affected by natural dissasters.

project credits: Sophia Vyzoviti, Yota Adilenidou, Valentina Karga, Stergios Michos, Myrto Chronaki

Infographics made by Density Design, a research group in the design department of the Polytechnico di Milano.

Infographics made by Density Design, a research group in the design department of the Polytechnico di Milano.

The diagram describe the input-output flows in the production of wood-based products. From raw materials/energy/chemicals/water to waste/emissions/water. In between, the products!