Bottom-up urbanism at its finest - Heath Nash at HIFA 2011

Recycle plastic bottle pattern - Image via designboom courtesy of Heath Nash

 This project includes all the things that I love about design and more specifically about the urban landscape and meaningful spatial site interventions. Heath Nash, project coordinator and designer produced and organised this work along with local artisans for Harare International Festival of the Art. HIFA performing arts festival 2011. The South-African designer, reused thousands of recycled plastic bottles and other materials such as plastic buckets and aluminium cans to create a set of canopies for the urban dweller to take to when in need of shade. According to designboom, Nash got the inspiration from simply walking the streets of the Zimbabwean capital whilst observing how people occupied and congregated under the city's tree canopies so to avoid the Southern African mercury. 

This observation was translated into a pragmatic and spatial take on the idea of recycling waste materials derived from consumption. 

Components of an extensive distribution system - Image via designboom courtesy of Heath Nash

The way in which the canopies are constructed is simply magic. Repetitive pattern is one of the most powerful ways of generating beauty and striking form in my eyes and the combining of cultural and social observation with a commentary of mass-consumption, leads way to a meaningful site intervention.

The project suggests a site intervention that is constructed at a 1:1 scale, utilising local craftsmanship with the organising mind of a designer. The other beauty in this project lie in the system that this 1:1 site intervention actually represents. Where all these bottles, cans and buckets come from remain unrepresented, perhaps it is not doable but I hope that you get the picture. A 1:1 intervention that assembles tens of thousands of small objects that was part of a mass-distribution system going out for consumption to then be returned to another system, that of recycling and end up in this meaningful installation. Simply beauty.

re-ordering, re-assembling, re-configuring - Image via designboom courtesy of Heath Nash

process - Image via designboom courtesy of Heath Nash

Roskilde wee tree pee

p-tree by Aandeboom, via dezeen

I LOVE the Roskilde festival, I used to religiously go every summer back in my teens and I LOVE this clever urinal solution by dutch designers Aandeboom. I guess the only criticism I have with this intervention is: how will the ladies go with it? I guess in the state that I put myself in on these festivals, personal space is sort vanished anyway, bloody heck, I used to shower butt naked with thousands of people and nobody frowns upon it, so perhaps this critique doesn't belong here?

The urinal can be connected to the main sewer system or a tank via pump. I guess if it was a lemon tree that wouldn't be necessary because apparently the thrive in a p-environment. (do not take this too seriously tho)

Although, it would be nice to see a picture of a female using this.

p-tree by Aandeboom, via dezeen

p-tree by Aandeboom, via dezeen