King's Cross, Urban Pioneers

Design with Anthony at Public Works.

At The Camden Art Centre, Anthony and I meet Andreas from Public Works, an art, design, and architectural practice. We were shown around their latest exhibition, where they used a milk float to capture 'community spirit'. The main purpose of this was to challenge the conventions of regeneration projects, by encouraging the community to self-regenerate their area, if that makes sense. I thought the idea was great! They had spent time talking and working with people from the community, creating posters that inspire and call upon the community to help themselves. They were then going to fly post these posters around the area. Love it!

That was just one example and there are may more of how Public works are able to challenge people's conventions and create new outlooks on things, such as a Museum that they were commissioned to build. Instead of a building that would house the history of the area, they use this iconic milk float again. They created a portable time capsule/ display hub. They even produced 2D paper frames that people could used to display their historical possesions with throughout the town. I think this was such an inventive idea, but I’m not sure if my descriptions are doing it any justice. By taking this approach, they were able to create something more than a museum; it was more personal because the town was able to take an active role in the development of the museum. Then came our turn to put all of out experience to the test…the assignment, set by Andreas, was to come up with a event within King Cross, for the public. Antony agrees, I was the competitive one, and so this seemingly friendly assignment, turned into a full on competition.

In the end, Antony came up with a community food market, which would replace the old Charlton Market, beyond it former glory. As this one pulls on all of the community to take an involvements, food that was grow and produced locally and cooking session, where people are able to teach the next generation to cook, whilst creating a closer sense of unity. His slogan was 'Culture through cooking'. In all honest I thought this was a winner.

My idea (in as little detail as possible) was to create an annual, one week event were college graduates were able to exhibit there works on the street corners of Kings Cross. Which would build the exhibitors confidence and could result in design based jobs for them, which as a result, could lead to an alternative future to university. Whilst being be a great tourist attraction for the area. This street exhibition week would not just be art based, it would take on a festival vibe, as during the night there would be live music, food, students, and dancing. In the end, there was no real winner as Andres chose my idea and Ruby chose Ant's, soo Diplomatic! In all fairness, both ideas were great and it was a fantastic day!

Right, Friday 12th event planning at Jefferson Communications and Saturday 13th March with andreas (public works) doing something completely different. Well, event planning at Jefferson Communication was interesting, it was a good, sit down, cuppa tea chat with Ian, Martha and David who we talked with and helped us to plan the event on the 30th.

It crossed none of our minds to ask about the name Jeffersons, and it was inspired from Thomas Jefferson who was the author of the Declaration of Indepentence, thats all we knew anyway. Clearly the name had significance and is important to the company. Ian was the man in the middle, "Whai is your position in the company Ian?" asked Naomi I think, and David answered "Well, Ian is the co-founder, but made your cups of tea" And i thought that summed up Jeffersons pretty well, it's an inimate practice so it felt kinda relaxed but they handle some serious cases. At the beginning, yes it was like what do do for the final event? Any tips for it? Then it gradually progressed more into a chat and talking more about architecture, after all, they are placed near Liverpoll street with a view of the Gherkin from their window. Anyway, they helped us out tremendously and gave us lot ideas that we never thought of. A pleasent afternoon i thought. Those of you who are attending the final event are in for a treat.

And today at the Camden Arts Centre was fun. We met Andreas from Public works, who do amazing events and interventions in the public realm. The things he can do with a milk float are amazing. He's a cool guy but he challenged quite a bit. Well 'us' is to say Holly and I because of the horrid travel situation and all that unfortunate stuff. And our loose brief was to do for the pubic something in the public realm, not art or sculpture-based but an event, say a festival or a walk.

Holly and I were asked to develop them seperately, so the competition was on, Holly was more competive than me so I was a bit reluctant. But nevertheless we created some good stuff. I planned a cooking food market where people from all over can cook and eat. It would strech the whole of Charlton Market and hopefully bring back the spirit that the market bought there before. Holly's idea was to have public area where students after graduating from A levels and possibly before had the chance to exhibit teir work, the idea was to generate interest from prospective employers and universities. Look out for her blog for more on that idea. Andreas liked the orginality in Holly's, and so did i, and chose it to be the winner, Ruby chose me out of fairness and that was always going to be the result.

All in all, it was a good, fun, exhusting, interesting couple of days  and looking forward to few days that we have.

Antony

On Saturday 13 March, The Urban Pioneers met Andreas Lang from Public Works, who talked to them about how the practice engages communities in public realm projects. The Urban Pioneers then had to design a structure to facilitate a temporary event.

That was a busy week (some time ago, my blog is late..)We brought down mountains, fought wars and slated dragons. Oh yeah, we did get some King’s X things done too. We started off the week by a failed trip to Lille. Not a bad start in my opinion. On Wednesday we had much more success. We met people behind a vey interesting project, which captures people’s voices around King’s Cross. This way, the memoies and experiences will never be lost. Unless ‘Windows’ crash and all data is lost. Stupid Microsoft. Anyway, we got a chance to interview and record some vey interesting people ourselves and that was great. Also, it was good to have someone to have on board with us who knows the whole area and is an inspiring figure himself - Alan Dein. His personal project of interviewing random people in phone booths has actually inspired me a lot and I think that poject was absolutely epic.

The next day we went to a large corporation BDP. They gave us a tour around their offices and ended the day by talking and showing how CAD works in reality. What struck me the most was that “it doesn’t matter what program you use and how you get to the final thing, the final thing is what matters”. This means there’s no need to show off with fancy programs if you can get you thing done right easily on SketchUp or something “amateur” as that. After that, they gave us a USB with their propaganda, i mean logo, and kicked us out.  Straight after, we had a huge contrast. We met Adam Khan who designed a youth centre by himself alone, which contrasts heavily with BDP work as they employ a lot of people working towards the same project.

And for the finale on Friday, we went to Squire and partner where we got a task to do. Without visiting the site itself, only by looking at the pictures, we had to design a tram shed into something awesome. And we did, a nightclub for the masses! The model wasn’t so awesome, it was bit embarrassing showing it off to all the big people, because of how bad it was. I mean, the roof didn’t hold itself on properly. Epic Fail. However, we did get the closest thing done, because a bar/club was actually built in that place. So Epic Win for us. It was interesting to see even the chairman coming down to see what we had to present, but I think we got a bit too carried away with the arguing. Some people did anyways. All good though, more bloggingness to come later. Peace. 

Who is this film lady who calls herself Harriet Fleuriot? Actually a pretty cool film maker who tried to teach us how to make a short film in just about an hour, a herculean task but she pulled it off rather nicely I thought. Nevertheless the task for us was to create and direct a short film about King's X, easy, and we had the reasonable freedom to do whatever we wanted, and watching Harriet's videos, that was no problem. For me, as a complete noob to the art of film making, it was a tricky task, creating the logo was a breeze but this task was something different. In the end, after many times of revising the idea, I chose used the King's cross voices and put some film on top to that to make my short video. A humble and simple video I think, which is what I wanted so I'm pleased with it. Working with Benas was heplful because he had alot more knowledge about film making than me so I trusted him with the shots etc. And I'm not sure about the other videos that the others in the group are making, I suppose I'll just have to leave that one a surprise. I guess the reason for that perhaps was the fact that planning, location finding and filming took alot out of us and we spent little time together as group except in the begginning where Harriet was showing off. Plus I had to leave early so I don't know much about the films. So I'll be as surpirsed as the guests on the final night when they screen the films. But on the whole it an enjoyable day, tiring but looking to forward to how all the footage is put together.

Antony