Broken City Lab: Micro-Residencies

Broken City Lab: Micro-Residency

We’ll give you a place to stay and resources for 72 hours. You’ll help us fix the city.

For the last year, we’ve been working away on a number of initiatives that have come out of our very specific examinations of Windsor, Ontario. The ways in which we see, experience, and move through the city have defined our tactical investigations and have, by design, been based on our deeply embedded concerns about our city.

We’re now looking to expand our research and our understanding of our city by inviting other artists, designers, writers, curators, architects, filmmakers, philosophers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and students to come stay with us for 72 hours. We’re looking for collaborators who are generous, energetic, and interested in understanding Windsor. We’re not necessarily looking for completed ideas, but rather general concerns you would like to investigate and workshop over three days.

We can’t offer any money, but we can offer a bed.

We  won’t do anything illegal, but we will give you our energy and ideas.

If you can get to Windsor, we can make this happen.

Should this opportunity interest you, please apply using the Micro-Residency Submission Form.

Oh, Paperwork in the New HQ

working at night

We spent the better part of the evening at our new headquarters located at the edge of campus. It’s exceptionally great to be in a place that we can use as a work space / office space that we’ll be able to leave setup. Working in Lebel for the past year was good for a number of reasons, but was also difficult as we shared the space with the Green Corridor class, so we always had to pack up everything at the end of the night. Now, we’ll be able to spread out and have a better space to work together.

Continue reading “Oh, Paperwork in the New HQ”

New Broken City Lab Headquarters!

Green Corridor’s ecohouse recently moved to 362-372 California from it’s original Sunset Ave. location, providing multiple new opportunities for research and community collaboration.  Located in the 362 California house is a small office room that BCL has taken over!

BCL room

We started moving in Thursday evening and had quite a bit of trouble maneuvering those two desks between the narrow halls and small door ways, but we made it happen!  The room is quite bare right now, but our office space is sure to be decked out in no time.  Next week we’ll start installing some bulletin boards, maybe a light fixture, and see where that takes us.  We also have access to the basement which will be great for workshops and the like.

Refining and Reworking the Planters

IMG_2949

Another week and another day in 406 Pelissier, which as it continues is now part of Windsor’s Visual Fringe. It’s tough to find time to get down there, but I think we made the best of a few hours last Tuesday. We’re continuing work with the planters, which is (as they always seems to be) another fairly long-term research and development type of project. However, we made some great progress and some new strategies for designing the planters, and did a couple more test transplants.

Continue reading “Refining and Reworking the Planters”

Making the Signs for Naturalized Areas

signs

We recently decided to demarcate some of many accidental meadows across Windsor with these Naturalized Area signs. In hopes that these signs might momentarily allow residents of Windsor to look at these naturalized spaces for what they are—that is, wonderful additions to our urban landscape—instead of the result of a politically-charged issue, we spent the earlier part of this week designing the signs, getting them printed, drilling holes, and installing them.

Continue reading “Making the Signs for Naturalized Areas”

Naturalized Area: Accidental Meadow

Naturalized Area

Installed across the road from the University of Windsor‘s Naturalized Area, our sign highlights one of the many wonderful accidental meadows, created by the ongoing city workers strike.

These naturalized areas allow for a moment in which one might be able to mistakenly believe that Windsor is a progressive city, a place where this type of naturalization is encouraged for its beauty, for its potential to attract wildlife, and for the stories our landscape is capable of telling.

With rumours circulating about a potential 30% of the newly naturalized areas across the city remaining in their naturalized states even after the strike is over, there is the potential for being able to believe that there is hope for Windsor.

Designed with the help of Steven and printed exceptionally fast at FastSigns, these signs will pop up over the coming days in other particularly wonderful locations most suitable for advocating the maintenance of their naturalized state.