Laneway revisited, revised and re-done.

Hmmm well my laneway took a divergent course. There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth but what the hell. In the end I created a product that would introduce nature back into the city. This is nature as product. It puts ecology in terms that consumers understand: shopping.















Or maybe it could be more organic...

blog sliders

So I 'm just back from a yoga class. This usually leaves me a bit spacey. Back bends are mindbending.

Anyway, today was the first day for ages that the three groups presented their Costa Rica projects to each other. I thought that it was the best presentations yet. The housing group produces a really interesting housing system based around materials, the town square group showed a brilliant design, and my lot showed one aspect our 'learning from Matapalo' approach - the community roles system (or Dramatis Personae perhaps) that I've blogged about before. The three projects are so different! One is a system, another is a design and the last an exploration.

In our group debrief afterwards, my lot discussed how much doing our project has changed our thinking. Originally we were tasked with creating a masterplan for the region but our, now exploratory, approach is creating a funny kind of masterplan. We believe very much is not being prescriptive but ended our discussion wondering whether we're not prescriptive enough. Silvio (faculty member) pointed out that you need something, a design, to engage people and get them started on a project. Is he right? Can you do this without disempowering people?

So we're now going to try to think of it as a slider. You've got non-intervention at one end and completed solutions at the other. Depending on where you push the slider, a project will be very different. Creating a system for people to make their own designs probably sits somewhere in the middle, for example. So as we move forward with our exploration of learning from Matapalo, we're going to play with the slider a bit. Some outcomes from our work will be prescriptive designs, some systems and some straightforward learnings. I'll post an examples from my group's work soon so you can decided whether we've been successful at this.

OK back to blissful post-yogic staring at the ceiling.

Laneway revisited

So my 'laneway' house is now a spa for the homeless. I know, I know stupid idea but it does throw up a lot of challenges that are fun to work through. I'm starting with a series of mood boards to get a feel for it. Here's one:

Blog Chalk Boards

I've not written anything about Toronto. I should really as it's part of the experience of being at the Institute (at least for a foreign student like me). Well, these chalk boards that stand outside many stores caught my eye. Using language that is at times enticing, comical, impassioned and surrealistic, they brighten up my rambles around the city. So thank you anonymous Torontoian writers and poets.

Role playing

My group is currently looking at the roles played in the community of Matapalo, Costa Rica, that is the focus of the Institute's work this year. We want to create a different kind of 'masterplan' for community renewal that respects and takes account of the way people are living.

We've come up with about 18 roles, distilled from a lot of information. Here's a sneak preview of the icons that we've created for just three: The Organizer, The Visionary and The Representative: