Ethnobotanical Station
Ethnobotanical Station (E.B.) is a mobile module that draws upon the diverse lineage of knowledge to study the complex relations between plants and humans. It brings in the question our faith in modern quantitative science as compared to the long tradition of qualitative indigenous knowledge through an inventory of distinctive tools, exemplary specimen and mappings that explore new ways to relate to the plant life around us. A combination of mythology and science fiction combined with qualitative science is used to create an experimental framework that regenerates traditional knowledge. Hands-on workshops and visual display are the vehicle for exploration and sharing new configurations of knowledge. Just like the intricate mechanisms for seed dispersal, E.B. moves freely to collect and disperse knowledge freely.
Visit project website
With:
Amy Franceschini
At:
Art, Environment, Action!, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC), Parsons The New School for Design, NYC and
ReGeneration, NY Hall of Science
Year:
2012-13
Learning from Plants: Aeronautics
Studying the flight technology of plants to think up and build practical and imaginary structures for air travel, wind powered flying apparatuses, catapulting machines, pollen based mailing systems, floating leaf garments… MORE
ReMarshing: Wastelands to Wetlands
A process of enabling the ecosystem to rebuild itself as a wetland while also cleaning the water of its toxins. MORE
Energy Harvests Claiming Energy Leaks as Resource
Our energy distribution infrastructures are clumsy, spilling off large amounts of energy as heat, light, and vibration in the process of delivering their goods. How might people literally plug in to surplus energies that they’ve accumulated, powering their own objects or feeding a local micro energy network? MORE…
Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots
The Wunschgarten is a celebration of the city’s wild features and creatures, and a vision of utopian measures that reach beyond existing mitigation schemes and municipal green-space planning. MORE…
Beneath the Pavement: A Garden
This project considers biological forms and how they relate to political and social systems. It looks at the potential of a small plot of land to tell social and political stories, deconstructing systems, propagating them and watching them grow, pollinate and die. It’s a temporary, experimental school bringing together a range of practitioners to engage in exchange and co-production of a garden. MORE…
Micro Turf
Micro Turf is a project and process, where we survey parking lot ecosystems, abandoned infra-structures, trade routes, and micro habitats of Berlin by dissecting the fringe-ecologies within the city. Analyzing ecological succession, the expedition collects samples, maps wildlife, illustrates the topography, detects seismographic data, and observes the micro-climates to create models of future urban habitats. MORE…
Visual Voltage Workshop
Through Design we can turn an invisible activity of energy consumption into a process that can be experienced, thereby potentially altering awareness and leading to a change in behaviour. This workshop brings together a group of professional designers to reflect, discuss and develop ideas for making energy consumption more visible and tangible. MORE…
Raising the Rockies Moving Corridors for Alpine Apollos
As temperatures rise globally, the tree lines in high altitudes rise along. This causes alpine meadows to become fragmented, shrinking in size and thereby reducing habitats for local species.
On this walk, people create moving meadows to guide butterflies through trees to new habitats. MORE…
Metabolic Toys
This workshop explores how products are part of the ecosystem too as they take shape, transform, decay and turn into new resources. Students will take up the challenge of tracing toy lives, playing with plants, and designing for transformation and benign toy deaths. MORE…
F.R.U.I.T. Exploring your city and its connection to the world via fruit
Our food is travelling to reach us, and the environmental costs of these journeys are adding up. F.R.U.I.T. researches why we don’t know where our food comes from, with reports on local food movements, proposals for agriculture in cities and offers a platform for online demonstration. MORE…
Cité Sauvage
Cities become a refuge to wildlife, often providing better conditions and niches than surrounding agricultural landscapes. Berlin has become the city of nightingales and is a home to about 30 000 species of plants and animals. The co-existence of people and wildlife needs rethinking as we share the same resources, spaces and services. MORE…
Redoo
An online collection for enviro-techno/ political inventions, open to anyone to contribute: Redoo imperfect systems, unfortunate courses and undesirable conventions for better coexistence. MORE…
Towns R Us Playing on Public Objects
Public objects are mostly considered by their functional properties, sometimes by their aesthetic qualities and happen to escape people’s consciousness during their daily routines. However, these objects often act as mediators between strangers and create curious social situations: think of escalators, traffic lights, cameras, benches, revolving doors, but also trees or water wells. This is a workshop about re-purposing public objects and modifying their rules of interaction. MORE…
Airconomy Relating economies and air conditions
The city of Sibiu in Romania is heavily exposed to air pollution, caused by the transit of goods from the south-east to the west of Europe. As Airconomists, we set up a mobile air quality sensing station and street poll, asking residents to vote between economic benefits and air qualities. MORE…
Human Powered Objects How could people become their own renewable source of energy?
A growing number of everyday objects are now fitted with electronic features, making them dependent on standby energy sources. Mobile devices, toys, alarm clocks use up mountains of batteries each year. While technology so far has been developed towards a state of minimum human effort, this workshop now explores the potential of using the human body itself as a renewable power source. MORE…
Politics of Play Enabling collaborative networks in public places
Politics of Play is a collaborative workshop inviting artists, sociologists, designers, game designers, urban planners… PEOPLE to come together in an expedition. The purpose of this journey is to foster collaborative networks in the city through the medium of play. MORE…
UNESCO Toys Workshop Toys for children’s rehabilitation
During this two week workshop we visited different childcare facilities in Yerevan to develop new toys for children with special needs.
The symposium, workshop and exhibition were a joint effort of Studio-College of the National Aesthetics Center, the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute (OSI), World Vision Armenia, Fördern durch Spielmittel – Spielzeug für behinderte Kinder e.V. and UNESCO Armenia. MORE…
Learning Tree
Through the Learning Tree leaflets, people of Chicago’s Midway Plaisance, Eaglewood and Woodlawn districts were asked to share what they know with their neighbours. Fragments of knowledge, expertise, and identity within the community became locally published, such as cooking recipes, chemical formulas or tree information for the benefit of other passersby. MORE…
Neighbourhood Satellites Environment Sensing Adventures in the City
To make the detection of local environmental conditions an engaging activity, this project integrates mobile game play with grassroots air sensing. MORE…
The Great Park Project
El Toro, a former military base in Orange County will become the biggest public park of the United States.
Proposals, stories, surveys, research, and simulations on the future of this land and its possible transformations. MORE…
The Global Warming Tracking Network
This is a concept where people offer the idle time of their cell phones to compute changes in global climate. Together with an additional information service for posting wishes, they can stay in touch with events related to global warming. MORE…
Amazing All-Band Radio
A set of three radios allow for hunting the waves of the whole radio spectrum from the comfort of one’s home. MORE…
