ARTIST'S PUBLIC-SITE INSTALLATION WORKS

IMPROVISED VILLAGES: (WANDSWORTH & KEW BRIDGE 'ECO VILLAGES')

ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED

IMPROVISED OPEN-SITE: ("THE NOMADIC COMMUNITY GARDEN")

TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE: ("FRANK'S CAFE" & "SOUTHWARK LIDO")

VERNACULAR - PRAGMATISM & STYLE: (BERDUN VILLAGE BARNS & HOUSES)

"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - HOUSE

ART - 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA  
GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART 
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN

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IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES  

This large 'web-book' is a visual/conceptual/experiential documentation of four squatted and collectivised industrial sites in central Amsterdam, researched and recorded between 1990 and 1997 and between 2006 and 2008. 

THE 4-SITES	"GRAIN SILO"	"TETTERODE"	"DE LOODS"	"EDELWEIS"

Unlike the improvised 'villages' shown in the 'Improvised Architecture ...' website, which are made inside large buildings and thus enjoy primary shelter, this section shows villages improvised on open-sites. These large unused areas of relatively cleared urban land (often owned by local councils or 'developers') are usually occupied by people who want to build a village of dwellings that as far as possible is self-sustaining and minimally wasteful of resources. With no primary shelter, not only are all the homes and shared facilities complete and independent structures, but their disposition on the site - unconstrained by the a priori organization of an enclosing building - must be at least provisionally organized in relation to facilities and routes. A loosely developing village plan thus grows more or less intentionally - as a sum of individual and communal choices - uniting the separate building-structures as foci in a single pattern. These latter are works of scrap-architecture that necessarily use a minimum of materials - improvised from scavenged building debris and donations of local people.

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ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED

Allotments are the last UK preserve of scope-limited but free inventiveness - places where grown-ups can improvise practical structures from what elsewhere would be despised as 'rubbish'. Their plots display objects that provoke one to examine the junction between practical improvisation and art. Their inventions sometimes exceed the allotment's traditional raison d'etre of food production and elaborate pragmatism into 'play'. Though their intention is to develop 'settlements' for the welfare and management of plants, the plans and furnishings of their plots may resemble sketches and models of possible human architecture.

Unlike the improvised 'villages' shown in the 'Improvised Architecture ...' website, which are made inside large buildings and thus enjoy primary shelter, this section shows villages improvised on open-sites. These large unused areas of relatively cleared urban land (often owned by local councils or 'developers') are usually occupied by people who want to build a village of dwellings that as far as possible is self-sustaining and minimally wasteful of resources. With no primary shelter, not only are all the homes and shared facilities complete and independent structures, but their disposition on the site - unconstrained by the a priori organization of an enclosing building - must be at least provisionally organized in relation to facilities and routes. A loosely developing village plan thus grows more or less intentionally - as a sum of individual and communal choices - uniting the separate building-structures as foci in a single pattern. These latter are works of scrap-architecture that necessarily use a minimum of materials - improvised from scavenged building debris and donations of local people.

LINK TO : .

ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED

Allotments are the last UK preserve of scope-limited but free inventiveness - places where grown-ups can improvise practical structures from what elsewhere would be despised as 'rubbish'. Their plots display objects that provoke one to examine the junction between practical improvisation and art. Their inventions sometimes exceed the allotment's traditional raison d'etre of food production and elaborate pragmatism into 'play'. Though their intention is to develop 'settlements' for the welfare and management of plants, the plans and furnishings of their plots may resemble sketches and models of possible human architecture.

An extraordinary aspect of British culture is that people whose main social/working persona is 'adult' - 'tough' / 'professional' / 'hard-headed' / 'no-nonsense' / 'commonsensical' / 'power-seeking' - can, apparently without embarrassment, expose to the gaze of all who pass their house, even proudly display, a view of a 'private' persona that is dominated by sentimental fantasies.

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"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA PERSONAL CHOICES  

This section shows homes that have formed primarily around personal needs and experiences; whose use of their society's products is more practical than 'tribal' and for whom the game of 'taste-display' is an irrelevance. 

(This is a companion to the previous sections, which shows the homes of people who display to themselves and others the quality of their commitment to the styles, meanings, behaviors of their society's averaged concept of "home".)