Urban Neighbourhood

Dear North American Airports, you wish you were as cool as me… love Winnipeg International

If you are a traveller you appreciate a good airport, when I lived overseas I had the pleasure of transiting through Incheon International Airport on a regular basis on my way to the south coast of Korea and I used to marvel at the experience. Bright airy spaces, fast service and a logical design, I used to think that the half hour average time from gate to subway stop was a byproduct of my ‘professor status’ but that airport has been ranked in the top 5 airports in the world since it opened so maybe not so much.

Until now the top airports have been primarily located in Asia but there’s a new city appearing on the list; Winnipeg’s James Armstrong Richardson International Airport.

It made it on the list of the Travel Channel’s top ten most iconic;

 Renowned architect César Pelli (who designed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the International Financial Centre in Hong Kong) drew his inspiration from the vast prairies and sky when he conceived of this terminal, the first freestanding airport building in Canada that’s LEED-certified. Skylights, an atrium and large windows fill the space with light and bring the big sky inside — a design element that (along with “smart” mechanical systems) helps reduce overall energy consumption.  Travel Channel

The existing terminal designed in 1964 is on its way to retirement or to be re-purposed.  The Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA)designed the new terminal with the following principals; abundant use of transparency and natural light, openness to the interior, and connectivity. Special attention was paid to space management which resulted in; wider corridors, larger lounges, more seating, and larger customs facilities, with extra space in the screening and security areas in case any new regulations come along. I guess its important to plan for 1984 even if you don’t want it to happen. s

Either way, the new terminal in Winnipeg is likely to stay near the top of the list for a while, until another North American city gets frustrated that it is being beaten by Winnipeg. To bad for Toronto, and Vancouver, your new Airport’s are already done.

The Winnipeg Airports Authority has a youtube channel if you want to take a closer look.

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For a better gallery of images from inside visit ChrisD.ca for gallery supplied by a local and the requisite photos of college age people wearing inflatable airplanes that authorities love so much.

Surviving A Troll Attack – Or Why I Stopped Blogging For A While

Any semi regular followers of Urban Neighbourhood, or anyone who pays attention to the date range of posts will have no doubt noticed the drastic slow down / reduction in posts here at Urban Neighbourhood over the past year.  I would like to take the opportunity to explain why this outage occurred as Dan starts to gets his Blog back, (Anyone over the age of 25 should get the film reference). I started this post a couple months back but was concerned about the implications of ‘poking the dragon’ after my case was closed, but now that the court is considering sending US Marshals to drag Mr & Ms Righthaven’s asses into court so that they can start liquidating their assets I’m not so worried, seeing as they would be arrested if they showed up to file another suit. That said it should be noted that all my references to the personalities or person hood of the referenced parties are alleged and should not be taken as fact. So if I suggest that the people associated with Righthaven are soulless  trolls who deserve to trip and fall into a tire fire, I am only alleging that they are soulless trolls. The tire fire part however, is totally true.

Anyone paying attention to the blogosphere and the legal wrangling that has been going on for the past 4 years regarding fair use and digital rights will be familiar with the copyright Troll better known as Righthaven(1). Starting last fall, Righthaven began suing bloggers who quoted articles from a paper with the initials LVRJ(2)  for copyright infringement. Even in cases where the quotes were properly sourced and hyper-linked the firm struck. www.urbanneighbourhood.com was the victim (3) of one of these Troll attacks last year, right before Christmas. Just as a footnote I don’t make any money of this blog. In fact it costs me about 30$ bucks a year so any claims that I am making money off the efforts of others are ridonculous.

Now I don’t know if you have ever been sued before but it is not a nice feeling, and getting sued right before Christmas feels even worse. But it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that trolls + christmas doesn’t work. I spent the next couple of weeks freeking out and badgering a good deal of lawyers and other people that knew stuff about lawyering for legal advice. This advice ranged from; ‘your screwed even if your innocent, try to settle for around a grand’, ‘ummm copyright law isn’t really my thing’, to ‘lay low and don’t sign for any packages and use the back door so they can’t serve you’ (4). I spent those could weeks searching all over the internet where I found a few different websites that were great, Righthaven Victims, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, along with a bunch of others but I lost the list when my hard drive died this fall. For those of you that would like to read a full overview of the rise and ultimate crash and burn of Righthaven, please do check out Righthaven Victims.

Unfortunately none of the Pro Bono firms wanted to take me on as a client, I have a feeling they already had their hands full and my out of country status wouldn’t have helped either. Feeling overwhelmed I was ready to settle and I called the Trolls to offer a pile of my gold, (5) but the Troll’s assistant was busy on another call and asked if he could call back in an hour for my gold. I meekly said ‘OK fine’ and continued to surf the internet for the next hour or so. It was at this point I came upon a goldmine.(6) The Internet was coming to my rescue as since the Trolls had sued about 300 people by this point, all of whom were Internet savvy people, a good portion of them had posted their legal arguments, counter suits, motions, and judgments online, and I realized that by using the appropriate legal citations from those documents I could write my own damn counter suit without having access to a legal library. The only problem was that I was on the last day of my window to respond, so the troll people could motion for summary judgment.

I emailed the assistant troll and apologized for not picking up as I had had a family emergency,(7) and asked for an extension of the window to respond till the following Monday, which assistant troll then gave to me in writing via a return email. (8)  I then proceeded to lock myself into my office at home and at work and spend more time writing that paper then I have any other 22 page paper in my life. On Friday I dropped the completed paper off with FedEx and then spend the next couple of days obsessively checking the tracking website to watch the progress of the first copy, priority overnight to the Court Clerk’s Office, and the second, 3 day shipping to Righthaven’s cave under the bridge (9). On Monday afternoon I got an irate email from the head troll claiming that I had violated fair practice or some shit by offering to settle and then not doing so, to which I responded with a copy of the email granting me the extension and a we’ll see what happens in court. (10)

The Trolls then responded with a counter argument that once again argued that I was starving their poor troll babies and that I was going to bring about the end of civilization if I were permitted to quote and reference articles (11). In many ways this counter argument was a bonus for me because it meant that I could submit my own reply to this counter argument and actually spend three weeks writing it, thus making it even better and full of even more relevant case law as to why the trolls had their heads up their own rear ends.

Meanwhile the news in the courts was not so good… for the Trolls. The Judges that were hearing the cases that had already gone to court were finding Righthaven’s arguments that they were losing money (12) since the only way that they made money was by suing people and that they were failing to see how quoting and hyper-linking to a website was damaging. (13)

A couple months later I got an email from the assistant troll telling me that I had to respond within two weeks to their request for a discovery meeting or else! So I responded with an email stating that I would be more then happy to do a discovery teleconference with them on one of four dates (14). I then got an email from senior troll telling me that this was not good enough, and I must come to the troll cave in person. In a bit of a bluff I calmly replied that since their toll enforcer (15)had served me in Canada they could hire a Canadian Lawyer or fly up here themselves  if they wanted a face to face discovery meeting. Either because I was right, or they didn’t know the law well enough, they didn’t send any more threats for discovery. This could have also been do to the fact that things were going worse and worse for them in the courts.

Then came June 22nd. See it turns out that in one of the other cases that was in front of the court, the judge had ordered that the agreement between Stevens Media and Righthaven be unsealed where upon it turned out that Righthaven didn’t actually own the copy right to anything, they had only been licensed the right to sue. While this may have seemed smart in terms of keeping Steven’s Media shielded from counter suits and liability, it was also completely wrong. See any good lawyer will tell you that you can’t sue over the patent for something unless you actually own it. Wham Bam  good by lawsuit! Since the Judge found that the Trolls had no right to sue, and apparently needed to go back to law school, that and all the other pending lawsuits were dismissed! Good bye legal nightmare!

So now I like to check Righthaven Victims, to follow the saga every couple of weeks because the Judges do not like it when you lie to them and waste the Court’s valuable time with over 400 groundless lawsuits and have in the last couple of months reduced them from a set of scary trolls to a set of fugitives on the run to try to keep from being liquidated, and that my friends is how I survived a Troll Attack.

North America’s Most Sustainable Telecommunications Company Plan’s New LEED Platnum Headquarters

As North American telecommunications companies go, it is hard to find a company with better sustainability cred then TELUS. The firm made the decision to reduce its environmental footprint about 9 years ago, before sustainability was cool and embarked on a now decade long journey to lower it’s impact on the environment.

..everything from diesel generators and chemicals to batteries and pole storage. “As an incumbent telecommunications company, we’ve been around a long time, so we have older infrastructure in some areas,” says Joe Pach, Telus’s environment director. “We recognize the risk that that represents to us, so we’ve embarked on a program to upgrade these systems.  In the past, we have had people say to us, ‘Why are we even doing this? They’re not.’ [But] we can’t take that approach, because the risk to the company in terms of its public profile … is greater to us than the monetary risk of, say, a fine … TELUS wants to send a very clear signal to the investment community that we are a very well-managed company.” And there’s no better way to do that than taking care of all the small, green details. S.

It is all well and  good for a company to say that . it is a green company but the proof is in the details and TELUS has those to back it up.  TELUS has been ranked among the world’s leading companies on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the past nine years. It is the only North American telecommunications company to make the list and one of only 11 Canadian businesses across all sectors included on the global index.S.

As part of its ongoing efforts TELUS has also being upgrading its corporate offices, Known as TELUS Houses, 3 so far have been renovated or constructed,  TELUS House Toronto and Ottawa were awarded LEED Gold, and TELUS House Quebec LEED Silver. For its new National Headquarters in Vancouver the company is aiming for LEED Platinum.  The $750-million, one-million square foot project will radically transform an aging downtown block into one of the most technologically and environmentally-advanced sites in the world

In the Company’s own words:

The million-square foot, $750 million project will see almost the entire block of prime downtown real estate bounded by Georgia, Robson, Seymour and Richards rebuilt into one of the most technologically and environmentally-advanced sites of commerce, employment and living in the world. It will create half a million square feet of much-needed new office space available for multiple tenants and 500 new residential units, all setting new standards for environmental sustainability. The 22-storey signature office tower will be the first building in Canada built to the new 2009 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum standard and the 44-storey residential tower will be built to the LEED Gold standard.

“TELUS Garden will exemplify the TELUS brand and be a truly amazing destination for our team members, the community and the city,” said Darren Entwistle, TELUS president and CEO. “Our vision is that TELUS Garden will be a beautiful and unique location where leading-edge technology, urban living, environmental sustainability and tomorrow’s work styles are elegantly integrated into a vibrant community. This development, which will inject millions of dollars into our economy, will highlight TELUS’ advanced communications technologies and environmental innovation in a way never before seen. TELUS Garden will be a breathtaking place to live and work, an architectural icon that will consume 30 per cent less energy thanks to its responsible, leading-edge design. It will be a celebrated urban oasis that is literally alive with plant life and showcases our great province’s arts and culture.”

The landmark development reinforces TELUS’ commitment to the City of Vancouver, and will make a significant contribution to the city’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the world. Once complete, TELUS’ new headquarters will be unique in North America, featuring 10,000 square feet of green roofs providing organic produce for local restaurants, two elevated roof forests, British Columbia artwork, LED lighting on the western façade projecting programmable coloured images on to fritted glass, and media walls where cultural events such as symphony concerts can be broadcast to the public.

“The fact that TELUS is choosing to build a new national headquarters in Vancouver is a great vote of confidence in our local economy,” said Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Their proposal to build to LEED Platinum is extremely ambitious and sends a signal that in Vancouver, going green is good for business and the environment. I’m very excited that they are investing in Vancouver – we’ve worked hard to build a competitive climate for business, and when companies like TELUS choose to expand their presence it is great for creating new jobs and economic spin-offs in our city.”

TELUS has partnered with Westbank to lead the project, and has engaged Henriquez Partners as the architect that is designing the iconic development. TELUS will fund its share of the development predominantly through leveraging its existing real estate holdings in this block, coupled with the sale and lease of space in the new buildings. The investment is consistent with TELUS’ overall capital expenditure target for 2011 and longer term capital intensity goals. TELUS has just entered into an agreement to purchase the city-owned parkade at the corner of Georgia and Richards, consolidating the entire block, other than the Kingston Hotel, to create a unified development.

While I don’t envy guests of the Kingston Hotel during construction, when the dust settles the hotel will be better situated between two cutting edge and lively buildings instead of a pair of park aids. As an observer of the development landscape here in Canada I have been watching with interest to see what TELUS would decide to do after the company announced it was considering a new Headquarters. In Keeping with its previous property investments in Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec City, TELUS once again delivers an office building that looks forward and sees a city where “the future is friendly.”

A Panorama of Paris

I love looking at cities, I study street pattern and pour over satellite images, walk down the sidewalk with my head craned up towards the sky because I want to look at everything. Any new look I can get at a place and I`ll spend some time to looking at everything.  Tonight thanks to the wonders of Stumbleupon I came across this birds eye, or rather tower top 360 degree 360 panoramic view of the city of lights  from the Eiffel Tower.  In case you were n`t aware the Eiffel Tower is the tallest building in Paris, and the most-visited paid monument in the world.

The Circling  shot has views  of Le Palais de Chaillot, the Mussee du Qaui Branly, Avenue de Saxe, Tour Montparnasse and much more.  The joy of Gilles Vidal`s photography is that its a never ending panorama, so you can put it on and just watch the city turn below. 

So if you would like to enjoy a panoramic spin above Paris then you have found the right place to click.

Shot by gilles vidal photographe.

The 3D Plan View

From military application to building design competition, one of the latest innovations in presenting geographic and building data are 3D plans created by Zebra Imaging. A constant issue when it comes to presenting design idea`s is how to have others see them the way you do. How do you have an average person conceptualize how the design is supposed to look embedded within the city. Well there is help using new technology from Zebra Imaging.

Zebra’s holographic images are unlike anything you have ever seen. The image literally “floats” in the air. You will be tempted to reach into the image with the expectation that you will touch the object being presented. You can move around the image to view it from a wide variety of angles with no special glasses or other viewing aids. S

Visions of An Organic Future

What if we lived in a green future? Cities that didn’t just have green space, but cities that were green space. Trees and plants make up the structure of the city instead of concrete and plastics.

Luc Schuiten thinks up cities using Archiborescence – the designs are cities that are grown and tended. Prairie parks, houses that hide under leaves, and skyscraper trees.

The Vegetal City is conceived as a progression in time and space, through Luc Schuiten’s eye. It takes us on the path of this thoughts about Mother Nature’s presence as a model of a new way of building named by him “archiborescence”.

For three decades, this eco-visionary has been imagining and realizing homes, urban landscapes, cities… inspired by all he has been able to observe in natural environments.

The website opens the door to a harmonious future, possible through the modifications of our behaviours in our living environments. Nature is no longer considered as an inexhaustible manna from heaven but rather as an ally, likely to cooperate in edification of a long lasting society.

The Story Of New Songdo

The City of New Songdo or Songdo New City as it is known in Korea is the country’s bid to take city building into the future. City officials say that it will be a “compact, smart and green city,” at a press conference covered by The Korean Herald. Songdo is being built on reclaimed land in the western port city of Incheon, which is currently known more for the international airport, (which incidentally is rated one of the best in the world to fly through, and I can attest to from experience) S. New Songdo wants to change that and become known as a compact sustainable city that provides all necessary services in close proximity.

To achieve this goal the city will have facilities for business, health care, education, leisure, shopping and high tech industries all within a five kilometre radius. In the central city, residents will use bicycles or public transportation rather than cars to get around according to city officials, of course the six lane roads that form the block structure of the city and my experience with living in ‘green Ulsan’ (and its massive petrochemical complex) makes me wonder just how likely this assertion will be.

“(In the compact city,) all functions are located within the city center, unlike conventional cities which have a business complex in the center and the residential area in the suburbs,” Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo said.

New Songdo residents may work in the 68-floor Northeast Asia Trade Tower that should be completed this year, or the 151-floor Incheon Tower set to to be completed in 2014. The city has a Central Park, which is Korea’s first park to have a seawater filled canal. Student in the city will go to “Songdo Global Campus,” which will host foreign universities like North Carolina State University and the State University of New York.

Incheon University Campus Proposal

The city is being wired by Cisco and will set up to allow residents to communicate through a variety of wired and wireless portals and devices based on ubiquitous computing technologies.

“The ‘smart’ city means a city equipped with ‘ubiquitous’ infrastructure that manages and control the city’s functions automatically at an optimal time. This enables the cost-effective management of the city,” Ahn said.

To learn more about New Songdo check out the article in The Korean Herald, or if you are interested in taking a look at the housing and office space options in New Songdo Check out our article on The Prau, or on The # First World. You can also take a look at what they are doing with container architecture.

A 100 million square foot new city on 1,500 acres. S

Washington 2054

What does the city of the future look like?

James Clyne gives us a look at his vision for the future with some stills from Minority Report.  The concept for what Washington DC looks like in the background cityscape is a series of hyperstructures that nestle up to the Patomac.  It look green and shiny and it is hard to really grasp the amount of structure/infrastructure required for a  city/building of this scope. The it’s a future that is any developer’s most glorious dream for construction prospects over the next 44 years.

Stay tuned for other artists visions of what the future brings in the weeks to come.

Namba Parks

Shopping malls are have a long history of being unattractive here in North America, when seen from the outside they tend to look like giant boxes with acres of parking around them, giant intteruptions in the urban and suburban fabric. Suburban malls are usually built on fringe sights and surrounded by ‘new’ land and appear as a hulking mass up ahead, but a shopping mall doesn’t have to look this way, the acres of parking are a result of zoning requiring extensive parking allowances and cheap land which makes it less expensive to buy the acres then to pay to put the parking underground.

What then if you envision a different kind of mall? What happens when common sense moves the parking inside and the mall is conceived as a land form and a park that is integrated into the urban fabric. The sloping park connects to the street, making it easy for passers-by to enter its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves a path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues.

Then you might get something like Namba Parks in Namba-naka Nichome, Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Japan. Namba parks is a shopping mall in Japan that opened in October of 2003.  In the days before sustainability really caught on, and there was little fanfare on the International scene. Namba Parks was the result of a visionary design, in a city that wanted something great and didn’t have real estate to waste on parking spaces.  The resulting commercial mall and mixed use residential complex is what a mall should be.

From the Project Page:

When Osaka’s baseball stadium closed its doors, it opened the door to a prime redevelopment opportunity in a new commercial district adjacent to Namba Train Station, the first stop from Kansai Airport. Given the location, owner Nankai Electric Railway asked Jerde to create a gateway that would redefine Osaka’s identity. So Jerde conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves an experiential path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues. Namba Parks creates a new natural experience for Osaka that celebrates the interaction of people, culture and recreation.

Built in October 2003, “Jerde Partnership Architects “conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces.”

Project Statistics

The Lilypad

The Lilypad concept

I have always been a fan of looking towards the future, and I especially love looking at the future, or potential future of Cities, enter the Lilypad, brainchild of  Vincent Callebaut Architectures, the Lilypad is a design for an auto-sufficient amphibious city.  The designer takes the view that we humans are not going to be able to get our act together fast enough to stop the impending Climate Crisis. According to more conservative forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate) the ocean is likely to rise by about a meter in the 21st century, leaving approximately 50 million people to be evacuated from the low lying areas that will be affected.

Lilypad in harbour

Lilypad, a prototype of auto-sufficient amphibious city

Whereas the Netherlands and the United Arabic Emirates « fatten » their beach with billion of euros to build their short-living polders and their protective dams for a decade, the project «Lilypad» deals with a tenable solution to the water rising! Actually, facing the worldwide ecological crisis, this floating Ecopolis has the double objective not only to widen sustainabely in offshore the territories of the most developed countries such as the Monaco principality but above all to grant the housing of future climatic refugees of he next submerged ultra-marine territories such as the Polynesian atolls. New biotechnological prototype of ecologic resilience dedicated to the nomadism and the urban ecology in the sea, Lilypad travels on the water line of the oceans, from the equator to the poles following the marine streams warm ascending of the Gulf Stream or cold descending of the Labrador.

It is a true amphibian half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed ballasting thus the city. It enables to live in the heart of the subaquatic depths. The multifunctional programming is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated respectively to the work, the shops and the entertainments. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline. The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of the couple Human / Nature and to explore new modes of living the sea by building with fluidity collective spaces in proximity, overwhelming spaces of social inclusion suitable to the meeting of all the inhabitants – denizen or foreign-born, recent or old, young or aged people.

The floating structure in « branches » of the Ecopolis is directly inspired of the highly ribbed leave of the great lilypad of Amazonia Victoria Regia increased 250 times. Coming from the family of Nympheas, this aquatic plant with exceptional plasticity was discovered by the German botanist Thaddeaus Haenke and dedicated to the Queen Victoria of England in the 19th Century. The double skin is made of polyester fibres covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) like an anatase which by reacting to the ultraviolet rays enable to absorb the atmospheric pollution by photocatalytic effect. Entirely autosufficient, Lilypad takes up the four main challenges launched by the OECD in March 2008: climate, biodiversity, water and health. It reached a positive energetic balance with zero carbone emission by the integration of all the renewable energies (solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass) producing thus durably more energy that it consumes! True biotope entirely recyclable, this floating Ecopolis tends thus towards the positive eco-accountancy of the building in the oceanic ecosystems by producing and softening itself the oxygen and the electricity, by recycling the CO2 and the waste, by purifying and softening biologically the used waters and by integrating ecological niches, aquaculture fields and biotic corridors on and under its body to meet its own food needs.

To reply to the mutation of the migratory flows coming from the hydroclimatic factors, Lilypad join thus on the mode of anticipation particular to the Jules Verne’s literature, the alternative possibility of a multicultural floating Ecopolis whose metabolism would be in perfect symbiosis with the cycles of the nature. It will be one of the major challenges of the 21st Century to create an international convention inventing new special means to accommodate the environmental migrants by recognizing their rights and obligations. Political and social challenge, the urban sustainable development must more than ever enter in resonance worldly with the human sustainable development!

Model Activism: Townhouse Neighbourhood 1:35

Model Neighbourhood

It isn’t every day that you come across a new kind of activism, but I would like to suggest model activism as a new term. Wouter Osterhold and Elke Uitentuis, the artists in residence at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, used architectural modeling to spur their neighbours into action and spur discourse on the plans for this city neighbourhood.

The Artists have recreated the urban area they live in in Downtown Cairo into a miniature model (1:35 scale as the title suggests) in an effort to stimulate the individual ideas of its inhabitants. The goal is to enable residents and workers in the neighbourhood to understand the urban fabric in its complexity and reflect on their surroundings. The city of Cairo has targeted this area for redevelopment and gentrification and wishes to ‘clean up’ the central city;

The government has the wish to ‘clean up’ the Downtown area. They want to remove the improvised extensions and commercial signs, they want to clean the roofs, renovate the monumental colonial architecture and relocate and accommodate the small businesses on the outskirts of Cairo. In addition to this a group of architects and urban planners developed a plan to transform the abandoned ‘Said Halim Pasha palace’ into a museum of Cairo. The ‘Townhouse neighbourhood 1:35′ project focuses on the development of an alternative vision on the future urban renewal developments.S

As is roof details

The Artists are hoping that by bringing the scale of the neighbourhood down to a level that is easily understood by its inhabitants it will empower them to become involved and try to influence the government’s current top down approach to development in the area.

We try to create a participatory exhibition in which the inhabitants will be challenged to think about their own ideas with regard to the future developments of their direct surrounding.S

The First Gallery Show was from January to March of the past year. The models are not just of the buildings but of everything from the broken windows to abandoned furniture, posters, laundry lines, and even the garbage. The level of detail gives residents a whole new perspective on their properties and this has caused some residents to see their homes and buisnesses in a new light. “When he noticed the trash on his roof in the model, one man decided he finally had to do something to clean it up,” S

The artists plan to take the results of the first gallery show, workshops and other feedback gathered from residents and compile them into a publication that they plan to present back to the residents and more importantly to the architects, urban planners, and politicians who are deciding what to do with the neighbourhood.

The second Gallery Show is from January 1st 2009 to March 8th 2009 at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo Egypt.

Balconies on the left side of the townhouse model

The local coffee shop

The Townhouse Model

Model of the factory building

The Townhouse Gallery is located in the rear of the factory building

Model of the neighbouring Prince Said Halim Pasha Palace

If you are a planning nerd, or would just like to see even more pictures and write ups on the residents of this Cairo Neighbourhood check out the blog, it has a wealth of information, and it is all just so darn interesting…

Wouter Osterholt en Elke Uitentuis, residency at the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo