NoMadSpaceLab’s design proposal for new activities along Sivegaden in Ørestad City is currently exhibited in the Mountain Dwellings building in Copenhagen. The proposal was developed as a countribution to the design competition “Byrum for Livet”, which was initiated as a response to the empty streets and lack of urban life in Ørestaden.

Design and influence the urban spaces and green areas and use the city as it suits you best! This is the overall idea of the design proposal for the area. To connect the area NoMadSpaceLab designed a coherent wooden structure, which also functions as the main element that will add more greenery to the area. Throughout the year flowers can be added, moved around and you can create your own patterns and caves with different greenery. It will be up to the users of the area to initiate various activities along the canal, while the structure creates the overall framework for a flexible citylife where, for instance, people can build their own garden, use it for playing and climbing, for seating and relaxing, for sunbathing etc.

The open and flexible structure allows users to define new activities in the city and tell their own stories. It helps the users creating an area that can be changed and adjusted according to each person’s specific needs.

MONU 11 on Clean Urbanism has been reprinted. If you did not get a chance to acquire a copy in the first place you are lucky to get the possibility now. The mag is full of interesting articles among these is the opening essay by Samo Pedersen of NoMadSpaceLab. Browse through the magazine on youtube.

Together with our friends at DoUC we have developed a concept for a stretch of decommissioned highway in Calabria. The highway runs for 10km from the town of Scilla to Bagnara.

The Botanical Highway is a response to societies changing attitudes towards the way we understand and view the natural landscape and local culture. It attempts to create a series of different interconnected events, experiences, production methods, and mobility options, which will transform the Autostrada del Sole into a new kind of park suitable for the 21st century. Botanical Highway allows the user to customize their own programatic experience by creating a multiplicity of activities and mobility methods, which constantly transforms the character of the park. For some the park is a place of knowledge by experiencing local food production. For others it is a place to experience an active lifestyle by exploring the various bike trails, bungee jumping points, and the opportunity to scale the Favazzina Viaduct. This method of programatic customization allows the park to constantly respond and change to the needs of the individual user.

Key Elements of Botanical Highway Botanical Highway does not rely on the concept of sustainability, but instead incorporates it in a number of different ways through both its design and program. By connecting with the already existing natural and physical relationships which surround the Autostrada del Sole, physical interventions will have a minimal impact on both the natural environment and the local population. Proposed agricultural interventions build upon and enhance local fauna and production methods. All forms of proposed transportation and infrastructure will be powered by renewable energy, whose power sources are located along the route. A New Story for the Autostrada del Sole Botanical Highway will become a new destination gateway for the south. Commuters, locals, and visitors will experience the landscape and the unique culture of the region in a way they never have before.

Just a short notice on publicity.. which we like in our quest to become ‘Americas next Starchitect’. Today I got a message from a friend, who was reading about NoMadSpaceLab in the Danish architects’ association magazine ‘Arkitekten‘. The news had spread on forehand to the space lab headquarters however we have not yet received a copy here in Shanghai. We look forward to the article and reading the December 2010 issue of Arkitekten.

Since we are at the short notices, here a few words on our schedule. Lene Zingenberg has recently held presentations at universities in Ningbo and Suzhou and in the following week Samo Pedersen will have a presentation at Shanghai  University.

We are currently working on a few publications that hopefully will go to print in the beginning of the new year. Further we are hoping to find time to do a competition in the near future. Thats it for now I think.

The Pop-up city is a Dutch online magazine devoted to exploration of temporalities within urbanism and architecture and how urban spaces of today and tomorrow are exploring flexibility, augmentation, technology, fluidity, and accompanying interventions.

NoMadSpaceLab is in its nature very interested in aforementioned topics and therefore delighted for contributing to The Pop-up city. As we are based in Shanghai our main focus will be on pop-ups in China and immediate surroundings. We are looking froward to a long collaboration with the Dutch guys from Golfstromen, behind the Pop-up City Project, and the magazine’s international contributors.

On Site, Canadian independent journal on arts and architecture, issue 24 on migration is hitting the streets. As we are excited to get hold of some copies here in Shanghai, NoMadSpaceLab is also proud of contributing once again with written work to the journal. ”Network society of bad space” is a comment on settling with something that never really satisfy you, while building castles in the sky.. or in Croatia. And once more we would like to remind that if you do not yet have a subscription it is time to get one.

UN ESCAP and GrAT organized the ICSAD workshop on developing ideas for a sustainable residential program for the Philippine homeless community in San Isidro. The workshop took place in the UN Pavilion of EXPO2010 Shanghai. Samo Pedersen was honored to participate as table host and being able to get inspired by the many creative solutions proposed. The day was also used to celebrate the participants and winners of the 3rd International student competition on sustainable architecture and design leading up to the workshop.

A visiting group of around 45 Danish architects were introduced to architecture in Shanghai at the Building China seminar organized by the Copenhagen Urban Network, Innovation Center Denmark, and the Danish Consulate in Shanghai. Samo of  the SpaceLab was invited speaker at the seminar and contributed with a presentation of the title ‘Speed and Story’. Among others the seminar also offered presentations by the architects Lars Gitz (Lars Gitz Architects) and Jonas Berglund (Kragh & Berglund Landscape Architects).

Even though we get to update the blog a bit in the next couple of days this does not mean that we are retiring from our space travels in the late fall. Therefore keep visiting our blog. Thank you.

Watch the movie at:

On Site blog

Vimeo

50.END from on site on Vimeo.

The Holga camera was designed and first sold in China in 1981. Here 29 years later Shanghai EXPO 2010 is aiming to be the greatest world fair in visitors, amount of pavilions, size, etc. Maybe these two things at first seem very distant from each other, but anyway I will argue that they are oh so similar. And so hollow. To spice up this post, with local tradition, I am photoshopping my 21 megapixel digital photos to imitate good old analogue Holga prints. My images are oh so fake!

To start of my comparison the first similarity between the two is that both are strongly developed to satisfy the masses. Where the Holga camera is developed as an inexpensive option for the mass market, the expo is probably not so inexpensive, but highly serves a similar target group. Only the mass market is in this case chosen to serve Expo, in terms of reaching a satisfying high visitor number.

The distortion of the image quality of the Holga camera became a beloved entertaining element within photography and gained cult popularity. An unintended side-effect that proved its quality through its surrealistic representation of the world.

I will not argue that the Expo is very surreal, however the Expo 2010 is very focused on entertaining 70 million visitors on the cost of experimental architectural practice. Today I only focus on the country pavilions. Very few country pavilions are in fact displaying great new architectural qualities and almost no one relate to the underlying sustainability focus of “Better City, Better Life”.

Overall the expo seems to have been very inspired by Disneyland. Overall it is treated more as an amusement park than and educational world fair. I am not arguing whether this is good or bad. In the general Chinese planning and preparation I guess it is alright to have turned towards an event entertaining the masses, since the astonishing amount of visitors probably find more amusement of colorful folklore and souvenirs, than in technical details. However I am quite disappointed with the lack of architectural quality in many of the country pavilions, who seems to purposely have been built only as a tourist office for the respective countries.

Therefore my midterm evaluation of Expo 2010 is that it is a colorful distorted representation of architectural practice. Very low actual quality but nevertheless entertaining and worth revisiting. You will not get bored. I am looking forward to having a better look at the themed pavilions and the “best urban practices area” and hopefully I will have my longing for new architectural ideas and processes satisfied. And of course I need to clarify that the British pavilion does not fit in this post’s evaluation, as it is spectacular and aesthetically very impressive but also very innovative.