Humanitarian Design: Catapult Design, a non-profit firm

Catapult Design is an interdisciplinary design practice that brings engineering, technology, and products to resource-limited settings.

They are engineers, designers, implementers, and educators. They design products, introduce technologies, and foster trends that are appropriate, self-sustaining, socially responsible and culturally sensitive.

"The majority of our world’s population lacks access to life’s basic needs. We develop and implement human-centered products to help them thrive".

Catapult Design focuses on delivering culturally sensitive, environmentally friendly, location-appropriate solutions for communities in need. Technology can empower and liberate. A single, effective product has more potential for worldwide impact – by providing clean water, food, shelter, or income – than any other existing development approach. Through the introduction of inexpensive and simple yet life-altering products the lives of more than 2 billion poverty-stricken people around the globe can be dramatically improved.

With the philosophy that successful products require local knowledge, Catapult Design ensures that these products are accessible, meaningful to local individuals and culturally sensitive to the end-users.

Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, in a few years their list of accomplishments is impressive from harnessing wind power in rural Central America to dealing with water scarcity in arid regions of Africa.

All of its work is undertaken on a fee-for-service basis, providing engineering and implementation support to nonprofits as well as governments, social ventures, and even 500 companies.

More info

www.catapultdesign.org

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Enabling Urban Progress - Financial Times and Citi call for entries for 2013 FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards

In the last two days we talked about winners, today we talk of a premium, unique in its kind.

The 2013 FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards: Urban Ideas in Action are all about recognizing the freshest, brightest, most innovative ideas, wherever they come from that help ensure cities remain centres of creativity and progress.

With more than half the world’s population lives in cities, their leaders, and inhabitants will have to find new ways to thrive. The explosive growth of urban communities is one of the most significant demographic trends of the 21st century. The competitiveness and vitality of the world’s cities depends on the decisions and innovations of all urban stakeholders, from citizens and communities to organizations, corporations and municipalities. This global programme was developed by the Financial Times and Citi, in collaboration with INSEAD, to recognize those promoting urban progress.

In 2012, the Awards featured a broad global representation, with entries from over 40 countries, and from city authorities, community groups, charities and companies. The most important criterion: the winning projects needed to be enduring. Category winners were announced in the fields of Energy, Education, Infrastructure and Healthcare.

The overall winner of the 2012 awards, and winning in the Energy category, was the Community Cooker – based in Kenya, an innovative and practical waste-burning stove, with tremendous potential for environmental, economic and social change in low resource environments. It operates on a simple principle: young locals collect rubbish, which is burned in the cooker at high temperature levels. The heat generated is used for cooking, sterilizing and industrial purposes.

This is an invention that works across a plethora of problems and enhances life for some of society’s poorest. There is no reason why similar technologies might not be applied elsewhere.

CollegePossible won the Education category.

Winning the Infrastructure category was the Vélib’ project, launched by JCDecaux.

The GlaxoSmithKlein New Citizen Health Care Project won the Healthcare category.

In 2013, the FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards will recognize urban ingenuity in a wide range of areas — from city administration, transport systems, energy and utilities, education and resource management, to housing, health, public safety, social services, mobile technologies and community engagement. To be considered, solutions should:

- Have been implemented between 2007 and 2012

- Address a serious social, economic, environmental or health-related challenge

- Improve the quality of urban life

Submissions will be accepted online from January 28, 2013 to March 31, 2013. Winners will be chosen by region and a global winner will be announced at an awards dinner in New York in December 2013.

More info

www.ftcitiawards.com

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Tania Bruguera and Nadia Sirota receive the Meadows Prize

SouthernMethodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts annoucend last week that artist Tania Bruguera and violist Nadia Sirota will receive its annual Meadows Prize.

Inaugurated in October 2009, the Meadows Prize is presented each fall to up to two pioneering artists. It includes support for a residency in Dallas at the Meadows School, in addition to a $25,000 stipend.  But what makes the prize both unique and efficacious is the extent to which past winners have led projects while at SMU that have had a wider impact on the city's inhabitants. The winners have to leave a lasting legacy in Dallas, such as a work of art that remains in the community, a composition or piece of dramatic writing that would be performed locally, or a new way of teaching in a particular discipline.

The choice of Bruguera sticks out-to me. Tania Bruguera is one of the leading political and performance artists of her generation. Her work researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life; she seeks to create a public forum to debate ideas shown in their state of contradictions and to focus on the transformation of the condition of “viewer” into one of “citizenry.” Bruguera uses the terms “arte de conducta” (conduct/behavior art) and “arte útil” (useful art) to define her practice. She works on appropriating the resources of power to create power, and on creating political situations through art.

Since 2011 the artist develops his project Immigrant Movement International, supported by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, explores and puts into question the issue of immigration is a political and as a condition of life.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a bold new-music interpreter and the violist of choice among downtown ensembles these days,” violist Nadia Sirota is best known for her unique interpretations of new scores and for commissioning and premiering works by some of the most talented composers of her generation, including Marcos Balter, Caleb Burhans, Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli and Nico Muhly. Her debut album, First Things First (New Amsterdam Records), was a New York Times 2009 record of the year. A regular guest with such groups as the Meredith Monk Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound and Continuum, she is a founding member of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), yMusic and the Wordless Music Orchestra.

In addition to performing classical concert music, Sirota has performed with such songwriters and bands as Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Stars of the Lid and others more, and can be heard on new and recent albums by Arcade Fire’s Grammy-winning album The Suburbs.

More info

MeadowsPrize

www.taniabruguera.com

www.nadiasirota.com

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Liberos, the community of readers of Sardinia

Liberos is a social network built by some writers, publishers, booksellers, libraries, cultural institutions, festivals and other publishing professionals in Sardinia.

Liberos won yesterday, January 29, the "Prize cheFare" The jury, after studying the proposals of the six finalists, decided to award the victory to the network that enhances the value chain of the book, and the protagonist of cultural projects.

The reasons are:

• recognizes the reading value economic, cultural and social, individual and collective;

• involves an original way all the actors in the chain of the book;

• develop a model capable of balancing instances commercial and cultural;

• Balance physical and virtual network in the process of building community;

• the promoters were able to act in a highly reactive and have used the announcement as an opportunity for learning and focus the project efforts.

The project is now firmly anchored in the reality of Sardinia, but the problem is that addresses national concerns in the first place and the less populated areas of the country and those who do not have a bookshop or a library. The Jury recommends that, during the maturation phase of the project, the winning group to address explicitly the issue of the growth of the idea beyond regional borders.

Liberos born as a working group in July 2012 and was officially presented at the Festival “Isole delle Storie" in Gavoi. The Association is formally established September 18, 2012 by seven founding members who each represent a segment of the chain of the book. The social network has now registered the satisfaction of the readers and operators, who approached with a curious attitude and full of expectations.

Turning point in the conference "Stile Liberos" organized in Fordongianus on 13-14 October, with the participation of publishers and writers of national importance.

Liberos make of the interaction its strong point. Users - in addition to the normal functions of the forum - have the opportunity to sign a card (card VIR - Very Important Reader) and to accumulate points that will enable them to have easier access to presentations, festivals and initiatives related to the book. These points will be accumulated through actions in line with the ethical manifesto of the project, such as the purchase of books in-store associates and constructive participation in the community. Readers will have the opportunity to receive automatic updates regarding publications and initiatives in which they are declared explicitly concerned; publishers and authors to propose thus its novelty, and booksellers to communicate presentation events and new arrivals in the catalog, as well as libraries.

So explain: "The crisis that we were doing to die one by one, has come to show us that we are not exploiting the potential: the common strength of our relationships and expertise."

More info

www.liberos.it

PremioCheFare

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Synoikia, a communal lighting installation from donated fixtures

Located in the heart of Athens, Ittaki is a small street in Monastiraki area, one of the most characteristic quarters with narrow and winding lanes and small buildings that date back to Byzantine and Ottoman period. This street hosts only few small shops, very few residents and an amazing lighting installation.

Beforelight, a Greek based creative Studio that experiment with the use of light, in collaboration with Imagine the city, a cluster for city branding and urban renovation, has invited and mobilized the residents to donate their old luminaires, fixtures and lamp shades in order to transform the abandoned street of old central Athens into a homely space, with the site-specific installation "Synoikia", that means neighborhood.

An empty shop was temporarily transformed into an open workspace for people to gather, observe and participate in the development of the project. A process of repairing, testing and waterproofing the lamps engaged volunteers that, in collaboration with greek creative studio beforelight, prepared more then 150 lamps to create a colorful ceiling over the street, in an effort to encourage the public collective experience with artificial light.

This effort was supported by the City of Athens and sponsored by Coca Cola.

More info

www.beforelight.gr

www.imaginethecity.gr

photo credits © Beforelight – Imagine the City

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The Green Bike project, Fuori Salone - Milan Design Week 2013

From the desire to increase the use of bicycle Claudia Zanfi, founder of aMAZElab, a non-profit cultural lab which works for the diffusion and knowledge of contemporary cultures active since 2000, created in collaboration with the Embassy and the Consulate General of theKingdom of the Netherlands in Milan on project THE GREEN BIKE.

The event will be realized in April at the next edition of the Fuori Salone - Milan Design Week 2013.

The project idea - new in its kind - comes by the urgency of extend the city of Milan and practices sustainable lifestyles, the need to take concrete action within the urban reality and offer incentives able to engage the public and targeting it towards virtuous models of urban mobility, following the example of 'best practice' Dutch, together with the diffusion of green areas in the city.

Monday, April 8 opens to the public a week of shows, meetings and conferences in various areas of the city and dedicated to the philosophy of the bicycle. Were selected three Bike Stores marking a sort of "green line" in the three major points of passage of the city: Urban Balance, Island neighborhood, Nord Milano; Rossignoli, Via Garibaldi, Downtown, Elm, Piazza Vetra, South Zone Milan.

In these three areas will be presented works of art and design from the world of cycling, made by famous designers such as: Jan Gunneweg (with its original wooden bicycles), Max Lipsey (with sculptures made from recycled bicycle parts ) and Maarten Kolk (with its lightboxes of images dedicated to trees and soft mobility).

Wide space will be given to young creativity. In fact, all the installations will be created by young designers and landscapers Italians from Milan Polidesign whose task will be to set up "green urban landscapes" in the three exhibition spaces. By partnering with the Flower Council of Holland, the installation will be carried out using special types of vegetable with sound absorbing properties and anti pollutants tested by NASA. The project will offer the public an idea of new green spaces, installations able to combine the design with the beneficial properties of plants. Will be presented systems made with soundproofing products that integrate with moss particular plant species and varieties of plants can purify the air as the Boston fern, the Areca, the Anthurium, the Ivy varied and many others, produced by the Air So Pure.

Within the various conferences will be presented the design of the bike path that will connect the city center with the future area Expo 2015, and the project "Orti Urbani" for the recovery of urban green spaces into disuse. In order to stimulate the public as much as possible every day citizens are being organized Bike Tours, bicycle led by art historians to discover hidden gardens, anecdotes and stories of Milan less well known. The project will focus on the new technologies at the service of cyclists, with a special application for smartphones and tablets designed exclusively for the occasion by the Bikedistrict, winners of the Sustainable Urban Innovation Award, organized by Legambiente, Chamber of Commerce, University Bocconi, government partners of Green Bike.

More info

www.amaze.it

Fuori Salone - Milan Design Week 2013

Wooden Bicycles by Jan Gunneweg

From the series Acciaio 2 by Max Lipsey

Temporary Trees, lightbox, by Maarten Kolk

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Sunday's Tale - The new concept of the city: the city-container Over het IJ festival in Amsterdam.

Sunday's Tale: a post from the past.

Last summer for the twentieth anniversary of Amsterdam’s Over het IJtheatre Festival, local architecture studio O+A created a gigantic recycled shipping container "stage city" made from locally sourced materials, in North Amsterdam’s huge NDSM shipyard. Lasting only two weeks, the structures provoked theatrical artists in exploring the disused shipyard for site-specific theatre performances.

The festival have been held at the NDSM shipyard, an amzing venue, for over two decades. Theatrical artists, both young and experienced, are challenged to employ, interact and investigate the disused shipyard for unique and context-specific performances.

In the fall of 2011, artistic director Lode van Piggelen asked O A to collaborate on the 20th anniversary edition of the festival. The brief was simple: use the festival's literal building block - the shipping container - to create the beating heart of the event. Besides the central hospitality space, the containers offer ample context for the theatrical artists.

The containers were stacked horizontally and re-invented as pop-up stores, multi-level platforms and even a restaurant.

The project’s three-dimensional checkerboard pattern offers a great spatial diversity, while simultaneously communicating the Festival's ambition to the city. As such, the hospitality area is tall, airy and compelling, while the artists use the labyrinthine aspects of the container city, structure creates an indoor/outdoor space that is both rough and “gezelligheid” (cozy).

More info

www.oplusa.nl

Over het IJ Festival

photo credits O+A Studio

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