Desire and the City: A Citizen’s Abandoned-Lot Design Consultancy (Sept. 7th & 14th at Civic Space)

Desire and the City

DESIRE AND THE CITY: A Citizen’s Abandoned-Lot Design Consultancy Led by Kiki Athanassiadis (Register Now!)

September 7th & September 14th, 2013 from 1-4pm – CIVIC Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario) 

Led by recent transplant and guest artist Kiki Athanassiadis, this is Part One of a citizen’s design workshop to imagine, design, build and deploy a non-permanent design solution for an empty lot near you.

Is there an empty lot that’s close to your heart? One that you think is great as is or, conversely, think could be put to much better use?

The aim of this 2-day design consultancy, where you become both client and designer, is to help you articulate via playful means, your desire for civic improvement.

For two Saturday afternoons in September, CIVIC Space will be transformed into your local pop-up design studio & consultancy. We will visit local empty lots, collect data and play with paper & reproductions of the sites and various design elements that each designer can assemble into their civic enhancement solutions.

Day 1: We concentrate on sites around Civic Space.

Day 2: Participants work on sites of specific interest to them – maybe ones located in their own neighbourhood!

This workshop is open to all! No design experience necessary. Please bring your camera if you have one.

For more information, please contact Kiki Athanassiadis here.

Please Register Below:


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A Consultancy Installed

Broken City Lab: A Consultancy

Last night was the opening for a couple of shows connected to the Parking Garage on the corner of Pelissier and Park, including our project, Broken City Lab: A Consultancy. Danielle, Steven, Leesa, and I spent the better part of the afternoon (attempting to dodge the rain) in the space setting up. Along with this wall, Steven set up a Floridian Embassy, and Leesa had a huge number of balloons pushed up against one of the windows and surrounding a small stage.

The work that went into this basically occurred over the last 48 hours. Danielle and I spent Wednesday night drawing, painting, printing, cutting, and gluing, and then Thursday in the space. Thanks to Steven’s bulletin, we had a general idea of how to organize the space, but it was really amazing to spend such a concentrated amount of time working in this way alongside Danielle, Steven and Leesa.

Our projects generally get drawn out, just due to the sheer complexities, unknowns, or relationships that need to be developed to pull them off. In this case, we had the space, we had a rough idea, and we had the support to make it happen.

We’ll plan to be in and out of the space as much as possible over the coming weeks, hopefully adding to the wall, going deeper into brainstorming on the potentials for the entire buildings, as well as just shifting to conduct our general research in the space.

I’ll get some more photos in the daylight soon. In the meantime, you can read a quick one-page statement on the project.

Planning for 406 Pelissier

brainstorming

Danielle and I spent a number of hours last night going through photos of the Parking Garage and starting to imagine new treatments for the infrastructure, space, signage, walls, and streetscape.

We’ll be heading down early this afternoon to start getting all of this visual research up on the walls, with the opening tonight at 8pm, which also features projects from Julie Sando’s Contemporary Visual Culture class in the storefront at 424 Pelissier.

Lots of stuff to hang, plus there will be more throughout the month, as the project continues until June 28th.

Broken City Lab: A Consultancy

a consultancy

We’ll be taking over 406 Pelissier from June 8th-28th and setting up a consultancy to research, investigate, and imagine alternative uses for the entire parking structure located at the corner of Park and Pelissier. Invented studies, statistics, and illustrations will be exhibited and will result in a formal report / action plan for future initiatives in Windsor’s downtown core.

Along with Julie Sando’s Contemporary Visual Culture class show, CVC Citizen Show (running at 424 Pelissier), we’ll have a reception of sorts on June 11th, from 8-11pm in both spaces.

We’ll be working in the space (406 Pelissier) off and on throughout the month.