A hoodie is not just a hoodie. In a world full of stuff, smart items should be transformable, editable. They should engage the possibility to be transformed into something else. We do not need a new object. We  rather need to get rid of some of them, to reduce the complex network of things around us. Just undo it is a collection of reversible objects that could be made from a hoodie at no cost. How to videos here.

A hoodie is not just a hoodie. In a world full of stuff, smart items should be transformable, editable. They should engage the possibility to be transformed into something else. We do not need a new object, a new thing. Rather we need to get rid of some of them, to reduce the complex network of things around us.

Just undo it is a collection of reversible objects that could be made from a hoodie at no cost, no particular knowledge nor tools.
The instructions about how to make a computer sleeve was just published in this month issue of WIRED Italia. Check it out.

Stefano Mirti published on Abitare’s blog this interview I have made with Andrea Branzi in November 2004. The original version was released in 2005: ‘Andrea Branzi: la ville continue [Interview with Andrea Branzi]’ in Moniteur Architecture AMC no.150 March 2005 / p.88-94. It was never published in Italian before, so thank you Stefano.

Yökalenteri means, in Finnish language, “Night Calendar”. A calendar that displays the minutes of night time in Helsinki throughout the year. Yökalenteri hosts “Rêvalités”, a work of Finnish Poet and writer Cia Rinne.”Rêvalités” consists of 36 mini prose pieces, dreams recorded during the time span of a year, which thematically deal with a variety of issues.

Yökalentari (Inkjet on paper 375×154 cm) will be on display at “Terra Infirma“, curated by Chiara Sartori, visiting curator at ISCP, NY. “Terra Infirma” gathers the works of six international renowned artists, exploring the ways in which a geographical context is able to affect emotions. Addressing feelings of melancholy and sorrow, the exhibition tentatively links attempts to interact with, modify and understand natural phenomena, landscapes and geographical codifications with the subtle and ephemeral emotional dimension of human existence.

Participating Artists: Rosa Barba, Laurent Grasso, Alban Hajdinaj, Marie Velardi.

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 14 6-9 PM
Gallery Hours: Friday, January 15, 2-16
Open weekly until February 14 every Saturday and Sundays 2-6 PM

ISCP. International Studio & Curatorial Program
1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.iscp-nyc.org

Re-Use is a diy diary that allow you to save 50% of the office A4 paper you discard. Download the PDF file and print it on the unused side of your boring papers. The 2010 Re-Use PDF file is available here.
Print it- fold it – punch it – bind it. The graphics are designed in a way that with one single layout you can have three different formats: A4-A5-A6. Re-Use is free and under Creative Commons – not commercial – share alike licence. Happy new year!

Conferenza Antonio Scarponi

giovedi 10_12_09 H 15:00

Politecnico di Milano_Sede Piacenza_Aula 6

Our project Italia in fumo will be exhibited  online at “the word is yours“. Opening 15th of October at 00.00 until November 19th at 23.00. Care of Gaspare Caliri.

Italia in fumo is a project in collaboration with Peppe Clemente for the promotion  of the Italian constitution. The articles are framed within the graphic appearance of the non smoking policy of the European Community. Italia in fumo means, in Italian, “Italy made of smoke” and “Italy is burning out”. Our intent is to claim the deep gap between the actual country and the beauty of its constitution. You can download DIY devices for “non smoking” Italian Constitution here.

Friday 16 th October at 11.00 am talk “Manuali Metropolitani / istruzioni per l’uso” @ festival della creatività, sala dell’arco, fortezza da basso, Firenze.

Yeeeeeeeehh!!!

In the course of the Symposium “The Future of the Informal” at the 4th International Rotterdam Architecture Biennale (NAI Rotterdam) the winners of the Squatcity-Urbaninform Competition have been announced.

The winning projects and honorable mentions were selected by the Squatcity-Urbaninform Jury out of 60 entries in the categories: DESIGN (Space, Technology and Material), SOCIO-ECONOMICS (Participation and Empowerment) and POLITICS (Good Urban Governance). The Jury was composed of members of the IABR curatorial team: Tim Rieniets (IABR), Fabienne Hoelzl (IABR), Can Altay (IABR-Refuge), Michelle Provoost (IABR-Makable Society), Georgeen Theodore (IABR-Community), Stephen Cairns (IABR-Reciprocity), Bart Goldhoorn (IABR-Collective) and Rainer Hehl (IABR-Squat).

Our project RIKEA (a manual about how to make a free market set with Ikea re-assembled furniture) will take part at the International Architecture Biennale, Rotterdam 25 Sept - 10 Jan 2010. Our participation includes a prototype and a “mini” documentary that will be part of the Urbaninform platform.

How to: destroy the first issue of of Wired Uk and make something with it. They say printed magazine are dead. Wired Unplugged is a proposal to give them a second chance. This project was published on the second issue of Wired UK and the second issue of Wired Italia. If you feel frustrated about the instructions you can watch the how to videos here and here.

They say printed magazines are dead. Wired Unplugged is an “how to” proposal I have made to give them a second chance. The idea is that they can be designed to be transformed into something else. In the second issue of WIRED UK there are five different example of simple things you could do with it. You can see some how to videos in the magazine’s website here and here.

In my opinion this would: a) bring the message of the magazine (and its advertising) in places that would never be reached otherwise [example: make a "fish and chips holder" or a "paper wallet" and go to parties with it]; b) Add symbolic a value on the transformable page [more real estate value for the advertising on a D-I-Y piece of art or design to go]; c) Make mag fetishists buy more copies [one to collect, one to destroy]; d) Allow people to re-use the magazine in a different way than tun on a fire after they’ve read it.

Wired unplugged was taken seriously by wired magazine. One page appeared on the second issue of WIRED ITALIA where I have made instructions about how to make bio-vases and now two pages on the second issue of WIRED UK. If you are willing to do it your self with Wired or with other magazine please post it here!

The story I have wrote for the first issue of Beyond magazine is now published on the online edition of the Italian magazine Abitare. You can read the full story here. Hope you enjoy it.

Last November I was invited to discuss about “urban narrative” in Göteborg, Sweden, an event organized by Squid. I have then wrote some notes in form of manifesto in order to clear what I had to say about it in relation to my practice. My “manifesto” was basically conceived as a platform to start a debate. We went through one or two statement, then the conversation took off in a more spontaneous and fun way. The Squid friends (Katja Aglert, Martijn van Berkum, Janna Holmstedt) decided to publish on their site the transcription of our talk as well as my preliminary manifesto which you find in this post and that you can download here as pdf. Enjoy!

URBAN NARRATIVE: A MANIFESTO

00_ FIAT LUX. Narrative in-forms realities. It gives them a form. So that these can be recognised, narrated, historicized, represented. Narrative stands for any form of representation. The urban condition is a tangible reality that takes form with narrative, here understood as any kind of representation, visual or not.

01_ HOW TO: URBANITY. Narrative is a form of symbolic order. It could take any form in which information is organised: Atlas (as collections of maps, diagrams, cartograms), a guide (manuals, recipes, a game, instructions), archives (database, indexes), but also many other forms of narratives, any form that organize information.

02_ EXFORMATION. Narrative is a form-giving process that discards information: the process of transforming “the world into a map”.

03_ 2BR02B. This is the question. Narrative has an ontological power. It has the power to define what “exists” and what does not. Therefore narrative is a weapon for the affirmation of reality: the urban realm.

04_ CONCRETE. So narrative is not a naïve practice. Narrative is not the “copy”, the transcription, of the urban as a form of reality. On the contrary, the urban is the transcription of a narrative. The physical reality, the urban condition, is the fragmented construction of narratives.

05_ REFLECTIVE DESIGN. Narrative is not just a representation of the urban, but rather an idea of it. An idea about what urban is and how it functions/operates.

06_ SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE. Narrative is a subversive practice. It has the power to imagine and to actually represent, therefore construct, the urban reality according to different kinds of symbolic orders. It is a tool of signification of reality. It could be progressive or reactionary. The urban condition is a storytelling battlefield.

07_ PALIMPSEST. The never ending editing. The only rule in narrative is the inner, self-referential, coherency. There is no truth, but only ideas about “truth”. Narrative is about what we believe is truth, or what we want others to believe as such. The urban condition as narrative battlefield could be therefore contradictory, or tell different “stories” at the same time.

08_ MAPPING AROUND. Narrative shifts symbolic values and shapes information. It gives information a form that could follow poetic or symbolic principles and therefore create a new form of objectivity, new forms of “urbanities”.

09_ PROGRAM. If the urban is the “copy” of a narrative then, if we change the narrative, we are willing to change the latter, exploring and representing new forms of urbanities.

Intervention at Lusso Essenziale: convention/exhibition/concert at MACRO Future, Rome, may 21-22-23, around Low Cost culture. An event organized by Lowcoster.

Starting May 21st, in the spaces of Macro Future in Rome, luxury cultures will meet low cost concepts and mutate towards new, more ethical, sustainable and essential ways of living.

“The Essential Luxury” will showcase a three-day event organized around panel discussions and workshops with world renown designers, sociologists, artists and architects, but most importantly with the human beings behind those titles.

Three days to reflect on the development of everyday life-styles that can be at the same time luxurious and sustainable, affordable as well as socially responsible. A moment of confrontation and dialogue to communicate a new way of luxury: different, yet identical in quality, technology, research, creativity, curiosity and expertise. A chance to understand and experience a new culture of luxury which makes us aware of our conscious side, and puts it in charge.

Participants:
Paola Antonelli, Nello Barile, Davide Bocelli, Mario Cucinella, Brando Crespi, Umberto Croppi, Fabio D’Angelantonio, Orsola De Castro, Dickson Despommier, Maurizio Di Puolo, Paolo Ferrarini, Adriano Franchi, Silvia Gavina, Stephane Hugon, Daniele Kihlgren, Filippo La Mantia, Leonardo Lotti, Michel Maffesoli, Antonio Martino, Mara Memo, Matthew Morozzo, Cristina Morozzi, Sergio Pappalettera, Filippo Ricci, Domenico Sturabotti, Antonio Scarponi, Vincent Susca, Ilaria Venturini Fendi and artists: Aquilanti Andrea, Maurizio Cannavacciuolo Mario Council, Eliseo Mattiacci, Sergio Pappalettera, Julie Polidoro, Andrea Salvino Moderate: Antonio Mancinelli – Piero Negri