Urban Typhoon Workshop in Koliwada, Mumbai: March 16-22, 2008
Participatory Urban Design & the Future of Alternative Communities

“The Urban Typhoon brought together artists, architects, activists and academics from all over the world with the residents of Koliwada, Dharavi to collectively generate ideas, visions and plans, and archive biographies and histories. The workshop’s philosophy is based on the idea that communities should be allowed to determine their future and that everyone, no matter the age, language or qualification should be allowed to participate in the process.

The Urban Typhoon workshop is a global experiment in participatory design. It is directly connected to the various communities of Dharavi and its grassroots community groups.
The workshop is multicultural, multidisciplinary and multimedia. Students, urban planners, architects, designers, artists, sociologists, media artists, political activists, utopists, and other nomads to come together for a week to imagine the future of Koliwada.

The objective is to produce creative alternatives for the future of a neighborhood threatened by a redevelopment plan of the government as well as a multimedia testimony to the unique spirit of Koliwada.”

Found this while hypertexting… looking at the organizers of UBIQUITOUS CITY:

Seen with Oren on the streets of Copenhagen… I can’t but share it with you… Have you ever seen an espresso machine on a bike before??? Ole, is the driver. He was working in the coffee industry before. Now he designed this mobile coffee shop “Welcome to my lounge” he says. “Tomorrow there will be music… Some Bossa Nova. Bossa Nova and coffee, or Jazz… there isn’t anything better really!” “In big coffee shops, the coffee is not as fresh.” Ole buys his coffee from 3 local shops (Roasted there) in Copenhagen. A friend helped him build the top of the vehicle. The bike? A company designs these kind of bikes. In the trunk on the front of the vehicle, he has 300(?) cups… I have tasted: THE COFFEE IS A MIRACLE!

Via Marketing Alternatif.

The art center summit 2008, in Pasadena CA.

“The second Summit has an ambitious program. The Art Center Summit: Systems, Cities & Sustainable Mobility will look at the big picture: the broad systems thinking and systems integration needed to create a better future for society. How can design encourage large groups to rethink how they move from Point A to Point B? How does one design attractive, efficient and financially viable solutions for new communities? How can new systems be designed for existing environments? How should the design process integrate with cross-disciplinary systems and teams”

Check this fantastic “bahnhof markt” video until the end… a beautiful example of mobility, un clin d’oeil aux frères Lumière, et un beau ballet. Thanks to Sidsel for the info.

bahnhof markt

Met kids gaming in the Commons… In light of my interest for the Freedom Trail, I asked what it was. Urban Interactive is:

Blending mobile technology, improvisational actors, and theatric props, Urban Interactive creates immersive tourism adventures that suffuses the player’s real surroundings with a “heightened reality” of intrigue, mystery, and adventure.

A very interesting 52 minutes 1972 BBC documentary (directed by Julian Cooper) staring Reyner Banham (1922-1988), architecture theorist, member of the Independent Group, who also had contacts with Archigram.

We learn in Encyclopedia Britannica…

[…] The automobile so dominates life in this uniquely mobile community [Los Angeles] that Reyner Banham, an English observer who took his cue from scholars who study Italian in order to read Dante, is said to have learned to drive a car so he could “read Los Angeles in the original.”

Reyner Banham is according to Nigel Whiteley the Historian of the Immediate Future!

To read as well: The kinetic icon: Reyner Banham on Los Angeles as mobile metropolis.