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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Urban Recycling for the Locarno Film Festival

A new way to think architecture in our social and economic crisis times comes from AZPA (Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture). The London-Barcelona based practice has been announced as winner of an international competition aimed to establish a recognisable home for the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Breaking away from the starchitect notion of public architecture needing to make an “extravagant gesture”, AZPA’s innovative proposal partakes in an act of “urban recycling and sustainability performance” by reusing the pre-existent complex of the Palazzo Scolastico and the Piazza Remo Rossi. Both represents a great opportunity to encrust the Film Festival within an urban structure which has already deep affective relations to the Locarno citizens, and a significant presence in today’s cityscape.

There are two primary aims in AZPA's project:

- Economy of resources through urban recycling. With an estimated price tag of 28 million Swiss Francs, this renovation is said to be no more than the cost of a complete demolition.

- Consolidation and rebranding of the public identity of the "Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno".

As Architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo claims: “I do not want to redraw the city, but keep the city.” Beyond the preservation of the historical memory of Locarno, they believe that the Palazzo Scolastico is an adequate building that deserves to be preserved and recycled. The project aim to transform the building interior courtyard into three larger theaters. Additionally, a complimentary renovation will take place on the surrounding Piazza Remo Rossi, which will be repaved with red natural stone, will become the "Red Carpet Piazza" consolidating the presence of the Film Festival into Locarno’s structure of open spaces.

AZPA declere: “When conceiving our proposal for the Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno, we tried to avoid the dominant trend, prevalent during the last few decades, that public architecture needs to make extravagant gestures in order to curate our cities public realm. In the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis, rampant global warming, and perhaps the demise of “starchitecture” as a default procedure to build urban identity, our proposal is guided by principles of economy and the attempt to capitalize on the existing structure and the public affection for the Palazzo Scolastico – which was used to host the local schools and now hosts a variety of NGOs and community associations – to provide an architectural identity for the new cinema complex in Piazza Remo Rossi.”

More info:

www.azpa.com

Locarno International Film Festival

photo credits © AZPA (Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture)

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What can be Made from Recycled Cargo Straps? Bundubags!

Bundubags makes innovative, totally recycled bags with a core belief that lives can be changed by good design. Bundubags began with a creative idea, a love of contemporary African design and a desire to support African women.

Handwoven using traditional African weaving techniques, each bag is made from recycled cargo strapping made from PET, which is spun into long strips. One of the beach bags for examples, uses the equivalent of 6 to 8 pieces of 1.5L PET bottle , so more PET recycled bags means less waste in our daily life .

They also collect offcuts, unused strapping bales as well as used strips, that they sort and clean and re-use in the production of each bag. So it is twice recycled!

The project is based in the Alexandra township on the outskirts of Johannesburg South Africa, and it now employs 40 women, all of whom earn a sustainable income.

More info

www.bundubags.wordpress.com

Photo credit © bundubags

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Temporary Fire Shelter in Copenaghen, by Shjworks

The project Fire Shelter by Danish firm Shjworks consist of a built structure, located in Sydhavnstippen - Copenhagen, and an open letter.

"The starting point for the design emerged from a fascination of the place. It´s a temporary project and a design experiment that wish to celebrate the place. The project has public access, and it establishes experiences of spatial and social character. In the creation of it nobody has been asked of advice, neither has it been possible for anyone to tell his or her opinion. It is simply thought of as a gift."

Sydhavnstippen is an amazing place by a 20-minute bike ride from the city center. After the second world war it became landfilled with building materials, until 1973. Today it is a habitat for a variety of animals, since the landfill plants, bushes and trees have taken over the area. The “wild” appearance of the nature on top of the building materials, which are visible some places, makes you think of a “post-apocalyptic” nature.

Fire Shelter was totally constructed and conceived by Shjworks and the people that helped, that wished to act independently. If bureaucracy had been taken into account, the project probably wouldn’t have happened.

The shelter is a unique and specific project. It is realized with plywood floor, polycarbonate structure and all the different parts are fabricated using CNC technology. Inside is a fire place surrounded by a bench filled with building materials found on the site. It´s about being in the company of good friends, in a fantastic place, around a fire during the dark time of the year.

The design influenced by the vernacular buldings of ethnic and nomadic people, consisting in a shape stretching around the sky, one hole in the top and two openings at the bottom create a flow of ventilation. After dusk the light from the fire will shine through to the exterior, alluding to old time lighthouses.

Hopefully the shelter can stand for a year.

More info

Simon Hjermind Jensen

photo credit Simon Hjermind Jensen and Christian Bøcker Sørensen

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