installed in Melbourne, August 2010
limbo
[lim-boh]
In limbo
according to the Macquarie Dictionary 2010:
Pronunciation of limbo // (say ‘limboh)
noun (plural limbos)
1. a place to which persons or things are regarded as being relegated when cast aside, forgotten, past, or out of date.
2. prison, jail, or confinement.
3. –phrase - in limbo, in a situation characterised by uncertainty, as when waiting for a decision to be made.
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| 'Limbo' space off Russell Street, Melbourne Australia. Site for Milk Crate Installation |
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| Milk Crates dispersed along Melbourne's Alleyways, possibly seats for 'smokos' |
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| Milk Crates accumulated on limbo site |
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| 'Limbonite' [lim-boh-nite] - a person or persons representing limbo space in infiltrating other parts of the city. |
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| Collecting milk crates for installation |
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| Diagrams showing intentions of intervening in limbo space. The idea is to allow for infiltration and extraction into the rest of the urban fabric from limbo space and allowing it to inform its surroundings instead of the reverse during its time in limbo before formal development, in this case, a high rise residential tower. |
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| Concept development prior to site installation: High rise to 'Craterise' |
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| Concept drawing - from high rise to crate rise at night |
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| Concept drawing - planting in crate rise |
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| Attaching crates onto steel mesh |
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| Sowing seeds in material |
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| Crate[or] in the making |
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| Crate[or] view |
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| Crate[or] infiltrating sidewalk |
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| Watering |
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| Crate[or] exposed to the elements |
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| Crate[or] left to its faith |
“it has become about the disappearance of space and the lack of meaningful choice”.
(Klein 2005, No Logo)
(Klein 2005, No Logo)
Limbo space according to a limbonite:
to me...:
is a space created by something else.
is not a blank canvas/empty site.
is left-out from another space filler.
is part of a larger system of limbo spaces.
is nothing for some.
is everything for others.
is a positive phenomenon.
is a possibility for design.
is a temporary phenomenon.
is a space that collects landscape systems.
is a space stuck in economic and political red tape.
to me...:
is a space created by something else.
is not a blank canvas/empty site.
is left-out from another space filler.
is part of a larger system of limbo spaces.
is nothing for some.
is everything for others.
is a positive phenomenon.
is a possibility for design.
is a temporary phenomenon.
is a space that collects landscape systems.
is a space stuck in economic and political red tape.
Limbo space, time and temporary processes
The interesting aspect of a limbo space is that it is temporary. So to approach these spaces with design would mean that you’d have to approach them with time in mind. The installation at Russell Street was an attempt to gather interest from passersby that don’t usually see more than an empty space when walking past this site. Just because change and time might not be visible to the eye, does not mean that the processes are not there.
I believe that these sites have value in the way that we perceive and understand the city. First and foremost, it is constantly changing, whether it is the economic factors driving the development of a site or it is smaller components such as the crates, garbage collection, vegetation growing or graffiti artists making their mark or perhaps the climatic forces of wind, sun and water. I find that the smaller components of a space are the mediums which I want to work with. They are the traces of other uses in the city.
These limbo sites are prime examples of a non-prescriptive environment and the antithesis of over determined and excessively prescribed public spaces or space that is driven by commercial interests. So to approach it with design is to respect these qualities and to celebrate the very temporality that is limbo sites' primary characteristic.
The time frames I am speaking of here, vary. There are processes that occur over varying amounts of time, I would like to map the development of limbo spaces, the frequency rate at which they occur and the time frames they exist within and the visible and non-visible elements that play out here until these sites disappear. This will perhaps spatially manifest the very economic and bottom up systems that drive the shaping of limbo sites in the first place. Why is this useful then? I think that this knowledge might grow into more projections as to where limbo spaces will occur or even how to use the time frames to design your own limbo spaces within a design. This research will perhaps also begin to question how a city is approached in terms of design and development that steps away from the top down (in lacking another word) approach to designing and understanding our cities. I am working towards an eye-level approach to the design of our urban environment because this is where we truly understand the realities in which we live.
I believe that these sites have value in the way that we perceive and understand the city. First and foremost, it is constantly changing, whether it is the economic factors driving the development of a site or it is smaller components such as the crates, garbage collection, vegetation growing or graffiti artists making their mark or perhaps the climatic forces of wind, sun and water. I find that the smaller components of a space are the mediums which I want to work with. They are the traces of other uses in the city.
These limbo sites are prime examples of a non-prescriptive environment and the antithesis of over determined and excessively prescribed public spaces or space that is driven by commercial interests. So to approach it with design is to respect these qualities and to celebrate the very temporality that is limbo sites' primary characteristic.
The time frames I am speaking of here, vary. There are processes that occur over varying amounts of time, I would like to map the development of limbo spaces, the frequency rate at which they occur and the time frames they exist within and the visible and non-visible elements that play out here until these sites disappear. This will perhaps spatially manifest the very economic and bottom up systems that drive the shaping of limbo sites in the first place. Why is this useful then? I think that this knowledge might grow into more projections as to where limbo spaces will occur or even how to use the time frames to design your own limbo spaces within a design. This research will perhaps also begin to question how a city is approached in terms of design and development that steps away from the top down (in lacking another word) approach to designing and understanding our cities. I am working towards an eye-level approach to the design of our urban environment because this is where we truly understand the realities in which we live.
Meaningful choice in the urban environment could be found in understanding limbo space, not eliminating capitalist consumerist development and behaviour. I need these to exist, if it wasn't for modernity, industrialization and the rise of consumerism (post-modern), I wouldn't find the very grown richness that manifests itself in those limbo sites that I deem fit for appropriation and exploration. If it wasn’t for the economic interests in the first place, planning and demolishing these sites, then I would have no sites to work on.
We have just come out of the worst economic down-turn since the great depression in the 1920s and who knows how long these sites are going to stay in its state of limbo, seemingly dormant to the untrained eye, unless someone challenges the very system that allows for this spatial opportunity in the first place? These sites provide an opportunity to celebrate the temporality that is the urban, the inhabitants within it, not the prescription that the larger scale master planning and policy tend to address, the types that provide a formula for resolving a declining world. I don't believe this is even possible. I am wondering through, if there is such a thing as recycling a left-over site? Reusing a site? Crat[or] address the idea of disappearance of meaningful choice in the city, it address the high rise developments that consumes the places that we are suppose to thrive in on a human scale which is the scale at which I think the city need to be approached, where it's happening for real and not from a birds eye cartographic or policy perspective.
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