Playground
The collapsible playground transforms any piece of wasteland into a recreational area for children in no time.
To transform an abandoned piece of land into an area where children can enjoy themselves is often a time- and energy-consuming effort. When children have the idea to use an urban space as their playground, they want it to happen now. And that is what the collapsible playground can do. In 5 minutes children have their playing field, and asks attention for city-users below 5 years old.
The collapsible playground is a carrier tricycle with a slide, a merry-go-round, a seesaw, a swing and two small football goals and even comes with artificial grass. It probably takes an adult to ride the bicycle, and to help set up the playground, but from there on children can help themselves.
The collapsible playground is available in Brussels and has been used by groups who promote children’s rights and urban public space alike.
Limite Limite
Limite Limite was a landmark building, the start of a local coalition and a trademark for the Brabant neighbourhood in Brussels from 1999 to 2004.
Limite Limite turned an urgent need for green space into an opportunity to bring stakeholders together and to put the Brabant neighbourhood on the Regional agenda. Architect Chris Rossaert designed a highly visible 9-metre high translucent tower that protruded into the street, and that served as a meeting and exhibition space. Through Wijkpartenariaat local residents were involved in design and building process. APAJ, apprenticeship training that prepares local unemployed for jobs in the construction industry, trained a number of its students through raising the tower.
Construction and use of the building served as a catalyst to bring together disparate groups in the neighbourhood. JP Morgan Guarantee Trust Company financed the structure, but also took responsibility in keeping the new network together. A numer of local high schools –Vlekho, Sint-Lucas, Social Highschool- participated with their students in one or more stages of the project and local shopkeepers also took a place in the network.
The temporary tower had to make way for a more permanent building in 2004, but the organization, Limiet Limite vzw continued to work in the area, and the material and a number of partners took the project a step further in Relimite.
Pocket gardens
'Pocket gardens' are elevated public spaces and were present in the streets of Brussels from 15 August until 15 September 2004.
Because cars and their parking spaces take up most of the streets in inner city neighbourhoods, it has become very difficult for children to claim a space to play or for grown-ups to sit outside. Less space for unplanned encounter in a sense implies less 'city'. That is why Y. Denayer, R. Menestret and F. Fraeys developed 'pocket gardens'.
A pocket garden is a large strip, covered with a wooden terrace and accessible via a swimming pool ladder, and secured against falling of by a tennis-net around the sides. In the summer of 2004 six pocket gardens travelled through Saint-Josse and the City of Brussels. They were placed alongside the pavement and were freely accessible for local residents and passers-by. They were used to brunch, barbecue, dance, play theatre and even tan.
The pocket gardens were sponsored by the Fondation Roi Boudoin, hors categorie 2004 and the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie.
Zebra
The portable zebra crossing helps pedestrians safely cross the road anywhere they want and make drivers reflect on how the city is structured while they wait.
The zebra crossing is one of the rare universal signs to make motor vehicles stop. Their characteristic of not-being-there-when-you need-one is probably as generally known. The portable zebra-crossing provides a solution to this acute need, and by shuffling the hierarchy of car over pedestrian raises issues of use of public space.
The portable zebra crossing consist of a slab of black plastic measuring (2 by 10 metres) with white rectangles painted upon them. It is not designed as a permanent solution to the absence of a safe way to cross the street, but rather as a way to brace the request for a more permanent solution.
The portable zebra crossings have successfully supported the demands from schools and youth clubs in Brussels, and are still being used to make a case for safer roads.
Four Days on the Outside
For 4 days on the outside project 6 architecture students made a work with or visible to people in Sheffield, UK, 2002.
“Encouraging more interaction between the university and its surroundings, discrete projects ran in various urban venues. City Mine(d) asked their participants to design and construct a structure made of old car tyres. Tackling issues of ownership, surveillance, transgression and citizenship, students explore the parameters of public space as they tried to site their sculpture at different locations.” (from Building Clouds, Drifting Walls, Ruth Morrow)
Among the places where the sculpture was placed, was a space in front of the City Hall, in the heart of Sheffield. When after half an hour local police insisted that the object would be removed ASAP, the students of the Sheffield University School of Architecture could personally experience regulations –invisible at first glimpse- that are imposed on public space.
This was the first collaboration between professor Ruth Morrow and City Mine(d), many were to follow.
Van Schoor
Layout of a park with local resident in Schaarbeek, Brussels in April 1997.
The Pavilion neighbourhood is a densely populated and built-up area in the lower parts of Schaarbeek. The population consists mainly of children and young people below the age of 19. But there is hardly, if any, green space in the area. Besides that,the busy traffic allows children not to play on the street on the street, and make even playing on the pavement quite a hazard
Therefore the local residents decided to create their own park on the corner of the Rue de Palais and the Rue Van Schoor. With some rolls of grass, children’s drawings the size of commercial billboards, some benches and a grassy knoll, a piece of wasteland became a park for both children and parents. The park was created without permission of the owners of the land; once it was finished, they allowed it to stay.
Van Schoor was made by the neighbourhood committee,cultural centre the Kriekelaar and the children of Les Petits Pas.
Gallery
Uti Willy
Uti Willy is a direct action strategy for more exciting and tailor made street furniture, devised in February 2000.
Street furniture facilitates the use of public space. Yet it also plays a vital role in a city’s look and even identity. Unfortunately, local residents are not empowered to choose the furniture for their own area. Instead, multi-national corporation decide what cities from Hammerfest to Tarifa and even beyond should look like – preferably all the same, as that helps mass production. Uti Willy was developed for people who want their area to stand out from the crowd. It wants to give everybody the means to use their right to shape their own local environment.
Uti Willy provides a catalogue of easy to do, low (or even no) cost intervention. It does not provide material or equipment, but explains what to do and what is required to obtain a specific result. The catalogue has not been published yet, but interventions have been made. An area was given new signage with hubcaps as carriers; a multi-step method was developed to remove a tile from the pavement and replace it with a micro-garden; and with a piece of wood and two ropes children’s swings were made.
Uti Willy is an ongoing project, to which occasionally new items are added. The catalogue Uti Willy is waiting to be published.
Football Ground
Lay out of a small park with football ground by the local community as a new impulse for development in Anderlecht, April 1998.
The neglect of empty spaces in neighbourhoods, or even their use waste dumps, contributes to a negative representation and reputation of the area. At the same time, those spaces escape the radar of governing authorities, which makes them excellent places to bring people together, to address topical issues, and to take action. And what better action is there than sports, art, song and dance?
Rue des Goujons is fenced off by a 3 metre high steel wall from the arterial road that connects the city centre with the south of the country. In the middle of this residential street an electricity relay stands in the middle of an acre of unused land. From 6 to 11 April 1998, local residents with the help of the local council and a number of social organizations cleaned up the place, and installed benches, playthings, a football ground and a gigantic mural. On Easter Saturday, the new community space was inaugurated with a barbecue, rap performances and a football tournament.
The project brought together local residents and the following organizations: Come-Wijns, Réussir, Maison des Enfants, Le Nekko, Alhambra, Couleurs Jeunes, Arc en Ciel, Agora, Peetermans, Chez Julie, Jong Kureghem, La Rosée and Avicenne.
Gallery
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