The Community – Sharing Stories

With the start of the course we have explored the suggestion that how we view our environment has an impact on how we treat it. Sustainability in the built environment is as much an action to our surroundings as a reaction to it. Many in the course have already expressed the lack of knowledge surrounding sustainability and its impact on the environment. Your midterm assignment is to explore, through representation, a mapping that will illustrate the inherent forces/flows/metabolisms occurring within your images from assignment 1.

Swyngedouw, from Social Power and the Urbanization of Water, states that urbanization is connected to the transformation of nature and the social relations inscribed within. Your explorations will take a two step process that will attempt to “re-present” the complex relationships of nature and social relations (as well as political and economic) occurring within/around/about the urban condition of your image. By exposing the underlying layers of a site’s perceived urban construct we can better understand the contradictory forces operating. True sustainable design has the capacity to mediate the power struggles that can disengage us from a sites fullest potential. This exercise will prepare us in creating a new process of socio-environmental reconstruction.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Karine + Rana

I am walking down the street
I am walking down the mountain…
I feel a drop of water falling on my head
I step on a puddle of mud…
I see a cut off translucent gallon by the wall, on the sidewalk. It is half filled with water
I see a yellow opaque gallon sitting on the ground, by the rocks
I hear – plop –the sound of a drop falling into the container water overlying the echo of cars honking
I hear – plur- the sound of a smooth water flow meeting the water on the ground complementing the sound of the wind and leaves
Stains of water are unevenly marked on the sidewalk… it is infiltrating through the joints of the squared tiles…moisture is taking over the white wall… It seems like water has been going outside the bucket. Did it overflow? Did it miss the target? Is there a leak?
A deep puddle of water surrounds the gallon. It is created due to the flat void in the ground…greenery is taking over the edge… It is spreading between the rocks. Where is all this water coming from? What happens to it?
I look up; I see where the water is coming from: a thin tube coming out from an AC unit. It is deviating the natural free fall of water to be collected
I take a step forward; I notice the tip of a bottle sticking out of a higher level of earth. It is diverging from the natural flow of water without touching the ground to reach it and drink it
Can I drink it? Is it collected to be used or, not to be stepped or dropped on? Can I use it rather than waste it?
I am drinking it. It is tasty and fresh. I use my hands to collect the water. It is dripping down my arms. I take an empty bottle and fill it with this natural water
I am walking away… I feel a drop of water falling on my head
I am stepping over the source….I am walking down the mountain….I am thirsty…I can’t find another source of water… it is good I have my bottle























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