Playground in La Gavia Park

Free play area, adapted to the existing terrain, where we hope that everyone can see and find whatever they want: animals, objects, tire dumps that rise from the grave…

Some of the tires from a dump located behind the park itself have been used for its construction, as well as others from various points in Madrid, as well as the contribution of some of them by SIGNUS.

We have tried to include games for all ages mixed, including older ones 🙂 We are looking forward to seeing how you invent games… It has taken a lot to convince (us) that the play area had to adapt to the existing terrain, and not make a hill from scratch, as is usually done. The entire park is made of rubble taken from the #PAUdeVallecas, stabilized with climbable tires, and we hope that you use all the available surface, and not just the little things

The play area is finished off with a tribute to Alberto Sanchez, founder of the EscueladeVallecas, who has guided us throughout the process.

The best thing about the playground is the place: the views, the colors, the wind, the sun. #VivaVallecas #MadridLandscape #NatureIsNotJustGreen

Wild Courtyards

The book  Patios Silvestres (Wild courtyards. Recommendations for the design of outdoor spaces in schools) is the result of almost two years of work in a participatory process in which we have been involved together with Madrid City Council techniques, teachers from the following nursery schools: Luisa Fernanda, El Alba, Hiedra, Captain Grant’s nephews, Los Juncos , Sabina and El Lirón, and professionals from different fields.

Patios Silvestres has a double target, on one hand the educational communities of the schools to provide them with a broader vision and above all with tools that allow them not only to modify their own teaching spaces internally, but to demand and get involved in the design of them together with the public administration. And on the other hand, the municipal technicians of the Madrid City Council, in their different areas, with responsibility for the design, management, provision and maintenance of schools.

 

The guide is organized in 3 main axes

  • The first is a theoretical framework, which addresses from a series of texts by expert voices, some of the challenges that education faces today. It also intends to serve as a conceptual, pedagogical and scientific pillar for the guide. Definitely a theoretical basis tu support the need not only of the transformation of actual education spaces but the of and adequate design before construction of the out door spaces in schools.

 

  • The second addresses the legal framework, where we have try to unravel all the competencies of the diferent administration and the point where we belive the adaptation and modification of the law will be needed. We have focused on Madrid because it is the community where the participatory process has been carried out, but we believe that it can be extrapolated to other places.

 

  • The third, and fundamental, are the concrete design proposals and recommendations for municipal technicians, a support to their work, so that they can focus on the key elements for the design of new schools and at the same time serve as inspiration for the adaptation or transformation of some of the existing ones.

 

You can download the spanish version trough this link Patios Silvestres.

Andalusi Wasserspiele

For eight centuries, Spain was a Muslim country.

During the whole middle ages, most of its culture was completely defined by the Arab heritage. Many features of that time still survive in modern Spain. Among them, the costume of hygiene and constant bathing, together with all water related technologies: irrigation, gardening, reflections, water follies and other ways of managing the scarcity of water proper to oasis and dessert life.

Basurama teams up with ALAS Berlin to study and enjoy that knowledge for creating our own ludic water games and engines for all ages through Andalusi Wasserspiele building collaboratively wheels, cascades, fountains and ponds.

“From May to September 2018 raumlaborberlin created an inner city offshore laboratory for collective, experimental learning. At the rainwater retention pool of the former airport Tempelhof a life-size experiment took place to challenge routines and habits of urban practices – Floating University Berlin.

Student groups from more than twenty international universities together with artists from all over the world, local experts, architects, and dancers came to Berlin. Within critical research seminars, design build courses or mapping classes concerned with the geographic, social and ecological environment they researched practices of urban living, formulate visions and ideas for a better future city and created spaces for communication and commoning.

This booklet documents the research process of Basurama and ALAS Berlin‘s Andalusi Wasserspiele in the context of the Floating University Berlin, a project of raumlaborberlin.”

Floating University Berlin, raumlaborberlin, summer 2018.

For two weeks in summer we had the pleasure of working together with the Floating University Berlin and raumlabor and of course all the people who came to volunteer, learn, collaborate and have fun building and playing with the water games we proposed.

SALVAJE Festival

SALVAJE is a proposal from the scenic arts collective LA TRISTURA for the course of cultural management AUTOBARRIOS SANCRISTOBAL. This festival has been organized together with the young trainees of the course #culturabajopuente: YasynHlaloum, Nuria Jiménez, Nhoa R. Palomo, Sandra Reyeros y César Romero. AutobarriosSanCristobalis a proyect of the creative collective Basurama & Sarah FdezDeutsch with the local associations Casa San Cristóbal-Fundación Montemadrid y Educación Cultura y Solidaridad.

Salvaje is not only an scenic proposal, is the opportunity to change the order of the things, of showing there something that otherwise would not have happened, of declaring a low exception status. Of testing the boisterious, vital, and  Madrid and feral personality of a neighborhood in the outskirts of Madrid.

From January 2012 AutobarriosSanCristobal is the history of a collective transformation process of  a run-down place -known as  “El Puente de Colores” “The Colourful Bridge”- in a cultural space that is outdoors, organized by and for the youngsters of the neighborhood. From July 2014 a Cultural Management Course started with the aim of training the youngster of the neighborhood in the activation of the recovered space. In order to do so they have been inviting different collectives to complete their training, among them La tristura.

As part of the proposal from La tristura is Salvaje. We believe that artistic creation is one the most powerful tools able to transform live. Scenic arts specifically, due to its immediate and direct component, have the weird ability of confronting the society by themselves and to make youtself aware of things that are in front of your eyes but were unable to observe or to see their value.

Day 1: Dominio Público (Public Domain), Roger Bernat.

«Dominio Público is (like)  a real-size board game in which the spectator is more than just a pawn. The theater creator Roger Bernat reunites a group of people (the public) in a square. Who are them? Where do they come from? Which are the relationships that connect them? They walk through the square while they listen to a battery of questions and instructions through their headphones, some more innocent than others. It cannot be affirmed the same about the result: from the simple movements of the participants, small groups are being formed. These microcommunities reflect subyacent social structures and tell a history that Bernat start shaping carefully. Public  domain start resembling a 3D poll that starts taking shape and ends up becoming a bizarre fiction.» KunstenFestivalDesArts’09

Dat 2: Realize how tiredness defeats thinking, El Conde de Torrefiel (Count of Torrefiel).

This is the second artwork of Salvaje. This piece embodies the spirit of the festival. It is deep, vital, popular in the best sense, and happily points to an important reflexion.

The work keeps on building through an stetic gadget that contrats what can be seen to what can be heard. What we see and what we listen to apparently are not related, but both things are secretely joined by the idea of conflict, of sorting out the problems, of defeating tiredness and of winning the match.

“One day I discovered that the truth of the things appear after a whole night of no sleeping. Then I spend a whole year awake, wanting to know everything. Today marks an exact year since I decided that I would not sleep never again. After all this time I have been the AUSTERO landscape, close to a pure state, that lttile by little disintegrates due to a lack of intellectual stimulli”

This show was released in 2011, since then has been showed in countries such as  the UK, Chile, Spain or Slovenia among others.

Day 3: Take a walk on the wild side, Emilio Rivas.

Total release. This artpiece has been specifically created for SALVAJE. It will be a tour in the streets of San Cristóbal. At half the way between the documentary at the fabule, we will walk through San Cristóbal spaces that will change thanks to the gaze of Emilio Rivas, who will be our guide for this time. As a good companion during stroll, he will try to give us a good conversation, telling us some stories, either real or made-up.

” What is happening? Have we lost our rhytim? Have we lost the beat? Come here, follow me. Let´s go for a walk. I have to tell you something.”

Piece of the reflection of VÍCTOR MORENO for the Teatro SALVAJE festival (Days 1, 2 y 3)

More information about the festival can be found in the links under:

PAISAJE SUR. Intervention in San Juan´s orchard

More pictures of the proyect
Pictures of all the interventions of Paisaje Sur proyect.

Context

Since 2013, the Office for Urban Landscaping of the Arts Section of Madrid City Council fights to carry out improvement projects of the urban landscape in different neighborhoods of the city. The objective of all these projects is to generate colaborative processes among neighborhood associations, local agents and artistic collectives for the analysis of environments in a neighborhood-scale and the activation of spaces through collaborative interventions.

After the experience of the proyectPaisaje Tetuán, in 2014 a second experience starts in the districts of Usera y Villaverde, under the name of Paisaje SUR.

 

Proyect

After working several months centered in establishing alliances between the diverse agents involved in the process and analysis of the neighborhoods of Usera and Villaverde, Paisaje Sur´s working team defined four intervention context to be developed by four different collectives in collaboration with the neighborhood associations of  Zofío en Usera y La Incolora in Villaverde, together with several local agents closely related to each one of the processes.

One of those four contexts was the one in Huerto de San Juan de Ávila (San Juan de Ávila´s Orchard), an space next to the parish of the same name in which since long ago there was a proyect of an orchard space managed by a group of neighborhoods. It was considered a plus the pre-existence of a communal process in the place and the ability of the orchard proyect to open up to the neighborhood and to collaborate with several initiatives of the area.

Defined the context and the work group of this proyect (comunity of Huerto de San Juan de Ávila, San Juan de Ávila´s parish, Zofío neighborhood asociation, Asociación Creatica Association, Intermediae and Basurama), we moved on to a phase of specific development of the intervention through several encounters were we tried to give responses to the different problems of the proyect: cuestions related with the use, the scale, the durability and the participation with the group of the orchard, the parish and Zofío; adaptation to the normative, permits, deadlines and budgets with Intermediae and the Office of Urban Landscaping; disponibility of materials with Intermediae and the Environmental Office.

The Environmental Office donated to the project the wood from the local benches (Romantic bench and Madrid Bench models), so the estrategy to establish a process of co-design was based in a preliminary study of the construction possibilites of wood.

By consedering more important all the negotiation surrounding the desing of the intervention rather than the final design itself, the whole formal project that was presented to the agents and neighbours that participated in Paisaje Romántico was a prototipe of union of woods of Romantic Bench, designed to be easy to build with few means and low cost.

Based on a model of a constructive details (and a possible angular family) and during the following meetings that took place in Dicember of 2014 the project started taking shape, improving its design as it was starting to be able to answer to more needs and problems. The intervention proyect went from being a constructed object to an object of mediation between the agents.

Once the process of design was closed and the materials ready, the construction started by the end of 2015. A team composed of Basurama´s members, collaboratos and volunteers worked with a fixed schedule in the intervention space, like an open workshop to anyone that wants to participate. Together with members of Zofío, Creática and the neighborhoods the orchard of the project kept on growing until finalizing its construction by the end of March, 2015.

For Saturdays, the official days, special working sessions were programmed, not so much for keeping on building but more for celebrating the process.

 

 

Currently the Orchard of San Juan de Ávila in Usera is an spce for the meeting and the realization of activities, open and free to the whole neighborhood. You only need to go Zofío´s association or to write to the email of the Orchard´s group to participate in it  or to propose an activity.

Futuro House is Public Space

Tapiola is a relevant example in the history of nordic garden cities which is having a deep renovation nowadays, with heavy works taking place all around. The core ideas which inspired this urbanism trend are nowadays in the point of view.

In this context, Architecture Information Center Finland chose not distant EMMA, Espoo Museum of Moder Art to host a seminar about ‘Architecture in education for Children’ and invited basurama to host a workshop with local students, using architecture as a tool to experience the city and its functioning.

As an inspiration we used ‘Futuro House’, an experimental architecture icon designed in the 60´s by Matti Suuronen which is also present in EMMA. Futuro House and Tapiola are strongly connected with the utopian trend and we consider that they can really inspire young people learning. Our idea is to use this architectural icons, make them interact with contemporary ingredients and let the students be part of this experience.

Waste is more than the surplus of city functioning, it is present in the all the production processes -tangible or intangible- operating in the city. Waste is also one of the ‘dark sides’ of many of the utopic ideas. Most of these dreams were made obsolescent, mass productive and were made of plastic.
Using waste we advocate for transforming this discarded material into a powerful source of raw material and show the participants experience efficient ways of designing and building.
We also aimed considering ‘wasted’ spaces’, so common in sprawl cities as Tapiola. Inflating the House in this spaces can show the participants how to occupy them and give them life.
The plastic bags used in the workshop were collected by Archinfo and the students themselves some days prior the workshop. During two days they were classified, opened and then taped with scissors and regular tape to make the inflatable architecture surfaces. As a way to experience the scale and the impact of the plastic bags altogether, we took the bubble to different locations.
Basurama has created inflatables in cities as Taipei, Casablanca, Sao Paulo or Bangkok and everywhere we have found abundant discarded material to make them.
With this Manual, you can also make your own Plastic Futuro House.

Agostamiento (Withered). Abierto x Obras.

Basurama proposes an interior landscape for Abierto por Obras. It has been extracted from the plantation of 7000 sunflowers it has cultivated on Gran Vía del Sureste Avenue during the summer of 2016 with the community of the Ensanche de Vallecas area on the very southeasternmost edge of Madrid. An impossible public space welcoming everyone for a chat and a few sunflower seeds. (Sunflower seeds are one of the most popular snacks in Spain and have served as the cheapest form of entertainment for decades).

What was to be the main boulevard of the 60 meter- wide avenue is actually a secluded terrain vague of 350 mts long and 30 mts wide that has been standing there for years, waiting for a plan that is not to be completed. It is one of the many leftovers that the 2002- 2007 housing bubble left in Madrid when it bursted. A bleakly heartbreaking and unsettling urban landscape, set out to be and reinvented as an agricultural landscape, becomes a meeting place, producing both crops and relations.

Among the leftovers of the new city, there are people living, who have decided to take their lives and their communities in their own hands, taking care of them and its public spaces. When in August is time to plough, the cycle of life and inflorescence gives way to an space for life to be built and shared.

Photos of the process

Some more info:

 

Caixa de Som (Music Box)

São Paulo 2013

Mexico D.F. 2014

Madrid 2014

 

More images

Caixa de Som is a public interactive installation for playing with the city street sounds.

Caixa de Som is a musical instrument for children under 99 years old, created to ease people interaction and interaction with the public space.

With Caixa de Som you can make music with street vendor chants and other sounds of the urban imaginary.

You don´t need previous music knowledge. Just select a base and play with the infinite possibilities!

Caixa de Som is also a project for documenting urban sound landscapes with -at the moment- sounds from Brasil, Mexico, Spain and Italy.

 

Sao Paolo

 

Mexico D.F.

 

Madrid, Spain

 

Feira MADE Pop Up. Shopping Cidade Jardim. Sao Paolo

The City is For Playing

The City is For Playing ephemerally hacked two of Sao Paulo´s most central highlines for the Virada Cultural festival. Viaduto do Chá and ‘Minhocão’ (elevado Costa e Silva) under spaces remain abbandoned decades after their construction and are the perfect examples of wasted spaces of the modernist metropolis.

Just with some swings made of ropes, reused advertisement outdoors and discarded tires, we transformed the use of this wasted spaces into vibrant, playful and diverse Places.
Workers and commuters, who normally avoid the areas, feel atracted by the balance of the giant swings.
Homeless people living under the Viaduto do Chá, started pushing the lonely visitors, receiving some money as gratitude.

‘Use’ is the soul of spaces. As Jane Jacobs announced, places full of people, are safer and happier.

 

(RE)_Create Taipei

more photos

One of the main problem that Taipei city is facing today in relation with city development and urban planning is that common infrastructures such as playgrounds and other public spaces are been replaced by new ones made by plastic and with same pattern and same style.

We have identified several citizen movements against the standardization of this public spaces, that reclaim playgrounds more textures and designes, places that allow to imagine ways of playing rather than forcing you to play in an specific way.

(RE)Create Taipei is project that takes place in the Taipei World Design Capital 2016 framework. The project will focus on working in public space,urban waste and local communities.

The project take its shape through research, analysis, meetings, actions, events and installations conceived by Basurama and City Yeast together with other cultural agents and citizens.

The work schedule is designed with the following phases:

PRE-ACTIVE

INTERVENTION

POST-ACTIVE

Dates

Research

V

Analysis

V

Meeting with target groups

V

Workshop

V

V

Forum

V

Pr-design and prototype

V

Implementation

V

Exhibition

V

Website dissemination

Ｖ

V

V

1st Travel:

>> Meet our with our counterpart, City Yeast, to establish the objectives of our work, our priorities an a timetable for action
>> Participate in the seminar (RE) Create_Taipei: challenges for design and use of public space and public parks.

>> Identify potential intervention sites
>> Identify collaborators, from project partners to citizen groups
>> Study flows of trash materials and identify potential waste for the construction of new spaces

>> Carried out a workshop for the construction of a Bubble station, or portable office, that let us to make interventions in different spaces of the city to establish dialogues with neighbors and citizens about what is public space for them,how do they imagine public space, which colors they would like to prevail in these spaces,what kind of uses they would like to develop in public space…etc.

01

02

HALFTIME (APRIL-JUNE)

During this period, we have been working online, managing and coordinating the whole process, advising and sharing information using email and IP calls.

>> City Yeast kept stimulating the debate about Public Space through the Bubble Station built in the previous trip. We also kept on moving forward on the Communication between us and the citizens and neighbours, and we worked on the permissions so the interventions could remain until late October.
>> Together with the local agents, we have been doing an exhaustive search of the waste material to be used, either comming from industries or Taipei´s gardens and parks itselfs.
>> Basurama focused on the design and the creative process, digging deep in the possibilities of materials and spaces.
03

2nd TrIp (July 8-24th)

We arrived in Taipei with the places to be intervened, target users already chosen and with a whole imaginary for both spaces.

The  Kid Ambition Park or Watertank Playground is located in southeast Jhongxiao Rd. and Jinhua Rd, close to a kindergarden.
The intervention consits in one huge water tank formerly used for industrial refrigeration and five other tanks of different dimensions used for home refrigeration systems.

Our working process with the material used for this intervention started by taking care of the material, fixing it, and adapting it to its new purpose. Every tank was cleaned and protected with the proper varnish before combined them together to create a new an unique park in Taipei. This is, probably, the first park ever created only with reused water tanks.

The main objetive of the park is exploration and discovery. We pretend to encourage free play, no indications, let the kids become explorers searching for new paths in the same park, able to create their own itineraries.

We designed a place where kids can feel free while playing, with places to hide and secret corners but allowing the grown-ups to watch them. We achieve this by using holes or by playing with the dimensions and the points of view, so the adults can watch them without being seen.

> The largest tank works as a big fishbowl with hanging elements. The inner space is cozy and encourage a new way of looking, since the open end frames the sky and the buildings, creating new perspectives. Furthermore, the open end that acts as an entrance also has an slide and a sort of climbing device .

04

> The spyhole room works as a ball pit, but also as a poetic space, a place with infinite illumination posibilities thanks to the hundred holes that filter the light through the interior, projecting shadows that change during the day.

05
> Tanks of different sizes form the labyrinth. The maze interior is covered with different textures: mirrors, bubbles, tree bark, soft walls and grasslike patched seats, a pletora of outside-school learning tools.

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> The tunnel is a passing place, also a den, a cave to protect oneself from the rain or the sun, to relax in the softness of the pompoms that cover ir.

07

The second intervention Civic Swing Space or LampPost Open Space  can be found under the Bridge of Shimin boulevar in the union between Civic Boulevard, section 3 and Andong street. The space aim is going beyond a play yard or a park. It meant to be a new multipurpose space in the city, a gathering place with swings, chilling areas and even a stage for several prouposes.

 

 08

3rd TrIp (october 8-20th)

On October the 13rd  the Exhibition of the  World Design Capital Taipei 2016 was inaugurated in Sonshang Creative Park. Our project, (Re)_Create Taipei,  was included in the pavillion of Taipei Issuuuue.

You can check the summary vídeo 🙂