Mobile architectures may have been around for a long time, but they are a technology, art form, and vision worth revisiting in today's city. With the neoliberalization of the processes that shape and govern the urban landscape, cities demand radical architectural, design and planning responses that involve collaboration and authenticity. The urban ecosystem consists of a plurality of actors. Therefore, place-making should respect poly-rationalities that interpret public space in varying ways, and furthermore, not be driven by externally-directed pecuniary agendas. This perspective for the contestation of space and the regulations (i.e., zoning laws, property regimes) that define and control it, while offering opportunities for dynamic landscape appropriation and conversion and unexpected futures by creatives and subcultures.
The sociologist, George Simmel, argued that the metropolis is an overstimulating environment with negative psychological effects on the human. This has led to a line of thinking which assumes that the city dweller needs protection from contradictory or offensive uses of landscapes. However, this only restricts opportunities for creation and alternative interpretation of the public realm. But mobile architecture demonstrates the endless possibilities in a city where space is no longer pre-defined and normalized and capitalist-driven top-down planning ceases to dominate.
This past August, I was able to collaborate on one such mobile architecture experiment with a Berlin-based design collective, ON/OFF. The invention combines printmaking with political activism and freedom of expression into one 'machine'. With the monopolization of media and the restriction of freedom of expression, this mobile architecture, called the GuerillaPrintingPress (copyrighted by ON/OFF) enables the public to print their own leaflets (or zines if they want to keep it playful) anywhere in the city. The machine consists of reconfigurable furniture pieces. The pieces can be stacked or turned to the side, and rolled around, enabling flexibility A printer/copier can be stacked on top of one furniture piece, while the other two serve as a station for binding work space and storage shelves. This way, the public can get involved in journalism and information dissemination.
 |
| The GuerillaPrintingPress is currently on display at the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau museum in Germany |
Here are a few more examples of mobile architectural inventions:
Hortummachina B is an intelligent cyber gardener and machine, with twelve modules of gardens consisting of sensors. These create a robotic environment for the plants to grow in. The machine takes the form of a Buckminster Fuller, enabling it to roll around in the city. This mobile architecture contests the static nature of traditional architecture and places, such as buildings and designated gardens and parks. Click here to read more.
The architect behind Creation station describes his invention as a mobile tool box, with a publicly accessible workspace and platform to build and fix things in a place-based and public fashion. It is useful as it can be placed anywhere in the city and enables collaboration. For example, the machine can be deployed in construction sites, schools, parking lots, sidewalks, and market squares. More importantly, it has the potential to encourage circular economy principles so that fewer things are thrown out and more are repaired or parts reassembled for reuse.
Exquisite Triciclo fulfills a social and artistic purpose as a sales cart tricycle that can be 'pimped' by owners. It brings diversity to public space, as each tricycle can be outfitted differently to fulfill the personal needs and desires of the street vendor. The tricycles reflect the interests of the general public while making public space, such as streets and markets, colorful, variable, and unexpected.
Read more on mobile disruptive architectures: http://www.onoff.cc/co-machines
No comments:
Post a Comment