Issue 2 Notes on Migration

RE:SITE

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Notes on Migration

To the Reader:

On March 24th, 2011 Onsite magazine was invited to the CCA to give a talk on its latest issue Migration. During the discussion that ensued after the presentation it became clear that their was a disconnect between those who think about migration and those who experience it.

- a battle between the necessity to constantly solve problems (the curse of architecture) and those brave enough to observe and admit that something needed to change but what that change was is still unclear. This is a perfect departure point for this issue of RE:SITE.

There is although a need for solutions. A complex organism such as migration is maybe better informed by taking a step back and questioning exactly what it is and what it means, then to spend countless hours creating obsolete solutions. The point being that migration in the context of the contemporary world can not be generalized because it is such a personal experience; and with 191 million migrants world wide one has to wonder, what is the starting point?

The responses in this issue of RE:SITE leave the reader with more questions then they do solutions (slowly there?). The best way to think of both Onsite 24 and RE:SITE 2 is that they act as a compendium of micro researches, situations, and experiences on a subject that is very much macro, but have answers (in most cases) that can only be revealed at the level of the personal.

Sincerely,

DoUC

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Also in this ISSUE

Migration Stories

This issue of migration features vignettes involving Ferdinand Magellan (Credited with leading the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe), a Blue Whale, and finally an ISO Certified Shipping Container.

These sometimes real, sometimes fictitious accounts of migration highlight the inevitable struggles and triumphs associated with migration. Accompanying these are small facts taken from the book Global Design: International Perspectives and Individual Concepts by Lars Müller Publishers, which express the heaviness associated with contemporary movement.

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In the year 1480 Ferdinand Magellan is born in Sabrosa, Portugal. He would go on to serve King Charles V of Spain in his quest for a westward route to the “spice islands.” This voyage would lead to the first ever circumnavigation of the earth by the human race, taking just under 3 years to complete.

Ferdinand Magellan

The Latvian cultural compound in Milton, Ontario, described by Zile Liepins, reminded me of an organization dear to my heart, the Taiwanese American Foundation (TAF). My parents emigrated from Taiwan to Canada in the 1970s, and I grew up in a suburb of Toronto. I first attended TAF’s annual summer conference in 1993.

Unlike the mini-Latvian city, TAF’s annual conference is hosted at a small college campus in the midwestern United States (first Calvin College in East Lansing, Michigan, then Manchester College, in Fort Wayne, Indiana). The two colleges are similar: they are small discreet campuses located adjacent to small towns with easy accessibility to an airport.

While vastly different in their physical locations, the common ground of this Latvian camp and this Taiwanese conference is the idea of a ‘retreat’ – a physical departure from the everyday world. The goal of a retreat is to fully submerse oneself in another world. In other words, one needs to sever a connection with the new country in order to reconnect with the old country.

From: Christine LeuRe: Those That Left, by Zile Liepins

The Children of Others Who Left

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191 Million - Migrants World Wide

The Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the world’s largest animal with a length of over 33 metres and 180 metric tons. Blue Whales migrate from tropical to temperate waters during winter months to mate and give birth to calves. They can feed throughout their range, in polar, temperate, or even tropical waters.

A Blue Whale

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The standard shipping container finds its roots in the 1950s when both commercial shipping operators and the United States Military began to develop it. In 1972 the Inter-governmental Maritime Consultative Organization decrees that every container travelling internationally have a “CSC plate” (Convention for Safe Containers)

A Shipping Container

“Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind and must be awaited upon arrival, like lost luggage.” - William Gibson -

After seeing the set of photos of people sleeping in the Frankfurt airport by Reza Aliabadi in Neglected Moments, it came to my mind something a friend told me: “When I travel by airplane, especially for long distances, I have the sensation that my body lands prior to my soul. I need a certain time to adjust and feel comfortable to the place I arrive to.”

For the most part, we have shortened distance; as John Kotkn put it better: “The awesome technological destruction of distance.” We live in times where technology goes faster than our body’s capacities. In other words, as human beings, we can only handle a certain displacement. Once we pass a certain boundary, we become overwhelmed.

In my imagination I see the people sleeping in the airport as bodies tired of moving and taking the time to restore themselves. Those images are a reflection of our contemporary état; a society tired of running. Our human condition today is just insane. We are crying for the need to have enough time to rest, to not move. “I sometimes entertain the idea of remaining in one place and refusing all movement, de-territorializing from the comforts of home, like Gilles Deleuze did. But frankly that is also a freedom. People write about mobility being a privilege and this is absolutely true but so is the choice to remain in one place.” (1)

From: Enrique EnriquezRe: Neglected Moments by Reza

Aliabadi

Airports & Other Matters

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Migration StoriesThe trials and tribulations of migration are many- nothing that migrates is immune. The following are the sometimes real, sometimes fictious stories of Magellan, a blue whale, and an ISO certified shipping container.

(1) Report (non announcement) Transitory report on the state of mobility at the beginning of the 21st century, BAK, (basis voor actuele kust), Revolver, Archiv für aktuelle, 2006

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Magellan’s expedition is outfitted with five ships and leaves Seville, Spain on August 10th, 1519. They descend along the Guadalquivir River to Sanlucar de Barameda where they do not move for 5 weeks. On September 20th, 1519 the expedition sets sail. King Manuel I of Portugal sends a naval detachment to follow Magellan. He avoids them.

Trinidad (Flagship)Commanded by Magellan(110 tons, Crew 55)

There are words that seem too intense to use. Exile is one of them. However, in channeling Yourcenar, Enrique has managed to touch a fundamental part of me that I have been struggling to describe. As an immigrant and a woman, I am constantly the “other”, looking in from the outside. The spatial construct of being in exile has no plan. Yet it is precisely in the fact that it has no plan that fresh perspectives can be concocted. I look forward to seeing the built environment that our generation of “architects-in-exile” will mould in the next decades. May we all embrace our exiles.

From: Joanne LamRe: Being Little Mermaid by Enrique

Enriquez

Other

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San AntonioCommanded by Cartegna(120 tons, Crew 60)

ConcepcionCommanded by Quesada(90 tons, Crew 45)

SantiagoCommanded by Serrano(75 tons, Crew 32)

VictoriaCommanded by Quesada85 tons, Crew 43)

Named after the church where Magellan took an oath to Charles V.

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From: Kasia MychajlowyczRe: Farming Translated by Christine

Leu

I wonder what the Tongs, who work so hard on the free lots and yards of their neighbourhood, moulding what should look like a front yard—with grass, some perennials, maybe a rock garden—into a simulation of the fields of their Chinese homeland, think of all the grants and media space that has been given to the urban farmer, learning to eat what she has grown for the first time, and holding fundraisers and forming non-profits. Would they be encouraging, and feel proud? I think so—they seem like nice people. But still, it seems unlikely they’d take a grant themselves, though I’m sure they qualify. The image Leu brings to us of a Tong grandchild walking by “the farm” after school to pick his own snack of small tomatoes, seems to me more the kind of reward the Tongs toil towards.

Farming the Homeland

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42 Million - RefugeesWorld Wide

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The Blue Whale is an endangered species. Through adaptation it has developed the ability to take the shape of many different things to avoid problematic situations. This is especially helpful when it just feels like sleeping in.

“Only some can go everywhere, but I prefer to go nowhere.” - Marina Gržinić -

In the book The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield tries endlessly to migrate from his world unsuccessfully. I don’t know if Salinger wanted to predict the incapability of the modern man to move to other places (because at the end we carry the world we come from). Even if Holden can’t stand his world he can’t do the move to escape from it; comfort and safety inhibited him to make the move.

After reading the 24th edition On Site magazine about Migration, I can’t stop thinking about how migration is in today’s society. We believe that we are all inherently migratory, but are we? The number of persons moving today is enormous as never before. But it is also true that there is a considerable amount of individuals who don’t move and will never do so. I suspect that with the new religion of information, the idea of moving, is reinforced and dangerously glorified, (technology always goes hand in hand with the idea of movement).

We live more in our own heads than any society has at anytime, and for some people now the only reality that exists is the one inside their heads.(1) What’s the point of moving if we rest in our heads? What I really see more often is people sitting in front of a screen “surfing” (!?), believing that they move or as the artist Ralph Lemon put it humorously,”How can you stay in the house all day and not go anywhere?”. We have the “impression” that we move.

From: Enrique EnriquezRe: On Site 24

Information / Religion

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Recreate LOGO

A Mountain RangePerfect for a lazy Sunday

A Shipping BargePerfect to manipulate human goods movement.

A SharkPerfect for speed, or when it just wants to be left alone.

Maybe a future topic for On Site to discuss about migration could be: the illusion of migration.

(1) Against the machine, being human in the age of the electronic mob, Lee Siegel, Spiegel and Grau, N.Y., 2008

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From: Paul WhelanRe: Farming Translated by Christine

Leu

Archaeological Futures

I used to worry about Toronto’s archaeological legacy. Would future researchers, excavating by the great dried-out lake bed, stumble across the remains of a large city with traces of truly amazing spaces and buildings? Would they ponder about the fate of the culture that briefly flourished here? My worry has always been that this future site would be a disappointment and that Toronto would not make the world class grade. Thanks to Christine Leu’s “Farming Translated” I can put aside my worries. The city’s archaeological legacy will not be found in its buildings. Long after the city of bricks has dissolved into clay, the seed and pollen record will live on. However the story will be different. There will be no monographs written about a flourishing civic culture. Instead there will be a puzzling record of a botanical cornucopia. Researchers will scratch their heads over evidence of plants originating from vastly diverse climatic and geographic locations. There may be heated debate about the micro-climate. Models will be constructed to understand the potential impact of the great fresh-water sea to the south of the city.

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Perhaps at some point in all the discussion, some researcher will suggest that the city was a destination point for a global seed diaspora. Were the plants actively cultivated as part of a vast botanic-cultural experiment? In the end, the brick city will be revealed as an urban agrariana in which farmers from around the world were enticed (or induced) to plant, grow and harvest. Maybe the careful excavation of minutely calibrated pollen layers would show subtle changes as potatoes and cabbage were supplanted by tomatoes and bok choi.

Fittingly, the city’s archaeological legacy will speak to the minutiae of everyday life scattered across countless tiny farms.

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This particular Shipping Container has been loaded in Hong Kong with grade A fake luxury hand bags, suits, and other precious things. Its ultimate destination is some generic western capital. Along the way it will have many adventures- you will not be aware of many of them.

In a lengthy walk from the Parco Degli Acquedotti located in the southeast of Rome back into the city centre, layers of history and of lives are subtly displayed along the aqueducts. The arches of the aqueducts formerly acted as a home to scattered illegal gypsy camps.

In the continuing battle to ‘clean’ European cities from illegal immigrant camps, thousands of people have been displaced. Roman city officials have demolished homes throughout the Italian capital forcing their inhabitants to vacate.

The remnants of these homes that stood their ground as their neighbouring walls and floors were bulldozed to the ground add another layer of history to the ancient infrastructure. Traces of their parasitic lifestyles are left behind. Tubes penetrating the aqueduct as a source of water, doors hinged within the arches, remnants of tiled kitchen walls fused to the brickwork of the ancient infrastructure tells us of the lives that once made these places home.

In Zile Liepins’ article entitled “Those That Stayed”, her powerful photographs document the former apartments of displaced tenants in Riga, Latvia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Where Zile’s photos capture an intimate portrayal of this displacement (her photos, after all, are a product of the privilege of having access to privately owned former homes) the markings left along the aqueducts ancient walls are part of the public register of the city.

Those That Left BehindFrom: Marianna de Cola and Michael

PanacciRe: Those That Stayed by Zile Liepins

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922 Million - ArrivalsWorld Wide

Walls that once separated the intimacy of home from the urban environment obliterated to create glimpses into former lives. Both situations arise out of a forced migration, a displacement, but where the Latvian displacement is kept behind walls, in Rome the displacement is public, facing the street for all to see.

The walls of Rome carry its history, displaying traces of its inhabitants from antiquity to present day, from the emperors who built the aqueducts to its illegal residents who made these structures their homes hundreds of years later.

As Zile notes in her article “…everything had been taken, but you can’t take the walls, and these yielded much information.”(p. 9) Zile’s photos capture a moment, the humanity of the displaced residents forever remembered through photos, but the walls in those apartments have been painted over by now and the traces of former tenants destroyed. The walls of the aqueducts in Rome however, will forever serve as a public reminder of the ugly practice of forced migration.

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The New Citizens:A Group of Temporary Migrants Prologue

Back in 2006 four individuals (An Interior / Landscape Architect, an Industrial Designer, an Anthropologist, and urban planner) from four different countries (Turkey, Mexico, Italy, and Canada) found themselves attending the same post graduate institution in Milano, Italy. They immediately forged an alliance based on their mutual frustration with everything and everyone.

They made two projects. The first provoked the ideals around public monuments and questioned the lack of pop culture icons in our public space. Their investigation proved fruitful for their own work and idealogy, but was never recognized by the political elite based in Ljubljana.

Their second project was a series of tree houses which would act as protected spaces for the subcultures of the city of Castlmaggiore and be placed alongside the shores of the Poe River. This was the first and only award for The New Citizens.

At the end of 2006 The New Citizens went back to their respected homes. They still keep in touch.

Right Now

For this issue of Re:Site The New Citizens have each given an individual response to the same article- Transitioning Towns by Lauren Abrahams. A chance to work together again, separate from each other, different from what they were used to.

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On September 26th, 1519 Magellan reaches the Canary Islands and then moves on to Cape Verde. He sets sail for South America. On November 27th Magellan crosses the Equator and on December 6th, South America appears in the distance.

From: Alessandro FrodiRe: Transitioning Towns by Lauren

Abrahams

The First

The story of the deserted mountain village of Colletta di Castelbianco mobilized in Lauren Abraham’s article tells us a story about abandonment and restoration in an Italian village. This account questions the meaning of architectural and technological intervention and introduces the issue of connectivity as central for rethinking places.

What happen when one place is “abandoned”? How can we make sense and engage creatively with one place again after its “ruination”?

The story of Colletta di Castelbianco showed not only the centrality of connectivity in the shaping of local and global interests. Detachment with place as well as connectivity can be thought as a creative practice. Which instruments and knowledge can we use to engage with this loss and disconnection?

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When something is dead, it is dead. There maybe some remnants but it doesn’t change the reality that it is dead. Which also means it is done with its usage. It is not possible and necessary to try to connect historical mortes with todays improvement which is more intangible. They are as good as they are to be nice historical memorials. These trials are good to be trying something but doesn’t change we have todays own challenges in its own nature and surroundings. Also it is not something that bad our day and its conditions.

If anybody wants to grow plants and read books in candle light may go and bring some life back there. But if you want to be part of this life full of technology and virtual communication, you should stay where you are, and if you have problems with todays daily life, one should try to solve it wherever they are.

From: Canan TasciRe: Transitioning Town by Lauren

Abrahams

The Second

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United States of America

Canada

3 - Classic Immigration Countries

Australia

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The Blue Whale is believed to have a life span of about 80 years. It has also been discovered that as Blue Whales age their migration pattern drastically changes. They no longer want to traverse great distances and instead become highly localized creatures that care very little about reproduction and other blue whales.

From: Victor GarciaRe: Transitioning Town by Lauren

Abrahams

When noticing neglected spaces in our neighborhoods, disillusionment can come to the surface, even outrage. It is hilarious to think of urban planners and authorities attempting to resuscitate an already dead public square, Olympic stadium or even an entire village – they are not corpses anymore, they became dust. Try picturing perpetual re-enactment of ancient daily life as if you were trapped in a tacky Mayan-styled shopping mall – it just doesn’t feel right and is way different from preserving traditions.

Perhaps the beauty of ageing resides precisely in getting old gracefully (not by pumping Botox into your buttocks) and in following vocation: that little voice which tells you the nature of that space might just have changed.

On the other hand, it seems that connectivity can be useful to attract tourism to long-ago forgotten towns (by municipalities, perhaps?) and to, arguably, streamline the trading of some agricultural and artisanal products. Nonetheless, the price of ‘modernity’ – please allow me to use such versatile, and perhaps never existent term – could be high, as the symbolic extirpation of charm from a rural town. Blowing it up, tastes like Pinocchio hanging out with gambling kids who smoke cigars and have hallucinations after two sips of cheap booze. Shortly afterwards, Pinocchio has lost his innocence.

The Third

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Young Whale

Old Whale

Distance Travelled in Km’s Distance Travelled in Km’s

Should small towns full of color and folklore be exposed to the global and to picky managerial individuals dressed in suits complaining about the lack of urban taste and ‘blackberrying’ all the time? That’s your call either if you are advocate of alter-globalization or not; the truth is all of us should be offered the same choices so we can responsibly make our minds towards leaving ‘technological obscurantism’ behind and building infrastructure or resisting Eve’s tempter and enjoy the countryside. In any case, government alone is unlikely to make it happen.

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No Touch City or Citta non Toccarre

I remember walking through the more delicate or useless markets in Italy. The ones usually close to some large monument that was probably undergoing some kind of restoration. The most vivid memory I have of these markets is a small sign that almost every vendor would poses- non toccare or do not touch.

Pondering this I now wonder about a new type of city- No Touch City or Citta non Toccarre. No Touch City is an impossible place where people are prohibited from touching everything except for each other. These conditions have created a kind of fog over the city where the citizens no longer see any of the buildings because there is no reason for them to be there- no touch, no point?

The buildings in No Touch City are estimated to be roughly 2000 years old but are in pristine condition because they have never been used, and more importantly, they will never be used. The Citizens of No Touch City understand that a city like any object is only as valuable as its condition- old and pristine makes for a very profitable combination.

The point of No Touch City is that one day visitors will come and look at what the citizens have created or more accurately what they have preserved. They will ask the citizens how this is possible and ask about the history they obviously cannot see. The citizens, filled with joy and pride over what the outsiders think will respond in chorus...Non Toccarre!

The Fourth

From: Christopher PandolfiRe: Transitioning Town by Lauren

Abrahams

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On its way to the port of Los Angeles the container makes a stop in Singapore. It collects some additional cargo. Crisis in near by Sri Lanka may have something to do with it.

Fifteen minutes with no traffic. Forty-five at Christmas time. Such was the amount of time I could expect to spend in my father’s white Ford Econoline Van, circa 1990, on our way to the CBD of West Edmonton. Malls were not just a part of my childhood, The Mall was.

There is something intrinsically isolating about such an experience, and invariably it takes a dichotomous experience to illuminate exactly why.

Not only do these malls disengage us from our past, they also keep us disengaged from the present. Joanne Lam laments the built form of Toronto’s exurbia, her adopted home. But she could be speaking of Greater Anchorage or Tallahassee. Of course, Toronto is not Tallahassee, and nor should it reflect that morphology any more than we would hope for New Kowloon to sprout up off the 404.

We have one great advantage building in Toronto. The collective desire of multiple diasporas to, as Lam describes, meander. How we accomplish this as planners, designers, and architects depends on how well we harness that collective will and allow it to lead design. Design of adapted malls, certainly, but also but of our evolving relationship with transit, energy, and food.

From: Chris AltonRe: Malls and my Soul by Joanne Lam

The Malaise of Malls

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Sri Lanka

Singapore

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I read two articles “Migration Intersects” by Infranet Lab and “Shift” by Marianna de Cola as companion pieces in support of a greater architectural thesis. The authors have proposed an architecture that can ‘make good’ human environmentally damaging behaviour. This thesis goes well beyond do no harm in its ambition. Both projects suggest that restorative architecture can create localized amelioration of larger scale damage; in effect an undo harm strategy. This strategy raises complex issues. The first is our desire to build solutions. An alternate strategy for both projects would be to fight global climate change or trawling the ocean floor. But this approach would deny their impulse. Instead their strategy is to piggyback the restorative on a primary project – either a wave generation apparatus or an arctic research station. The stealth approach of subverting the intent of the primary building is clever. I wonder if the ultimate stealth would be to present the projects as what they primarily are. Only under questioning would the subversion emerge. While intellectually interesting, the audience might be reduced to a small handful.

Cod & Caribou

From: Paul WhelanRe: Migration Intersects by Infranet

Lab and Shift by Marianna de Cola

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A second concern is the potential for creating environmental dependence. This is an interesting concern, particularly for the caribou. While the article explains how this is not the same as dumping bales of forage, it is a very fine distinction. What happens to the migrating caribou if the gantry malfunctions and needs a part to be flown in? I realize this is a very petty way of looking at this, but sadly it is hard to permanently undo harm. However I do ultimately accept the argument in the same way I accept Robert Smithson’s definition of all landscape as a human construct. Given that the entire planet is a human created landscape and everything we do has an enormous ripple, we do need to create an architecture that picks up after itself.

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On December 13th, Magellan’s crew drops anchor near what is now present day Rio de Janeiro. They stock up on supplies but are delayed by bad weather. After the delay they continue south along the coast and on March 30th, 1520 the crew establishes a settlement at Puerto San Julian. On April 3 there is a mutiny. It does not last long. The crew are loyal and the perpetrators punished.

Exile is the experience of being The Other; l’Étranger; Gaikokujin. Being both a woman and being an exile, one has to equally build one’s entourage from an alien perspective. Reconcile the body, and rebuilding one’s own points of reference and boundaries anew. Subsequent distortions arise, but this unfamiliarity nurtures humility. Enrique Enriquez is calling for a humility in architecture, and in doing so asks architects to go into self-exile, their experience undoubtedly affected by this recalibration.

Such was the work, so intricate the place,That scarce the workman all its turns cou’d trace; and Daedalus was puzzled how to find The secret ways of what himself design’d. (1)

Of course, Daedalus, banished to Crete, the architect of a labyrinth (the ultimate spatial metaphor) and his son Icarus (synonymous with male bravado) is another treatment of the experience of the exiled. The ease at which one exile loses (him)self; in space and in body, manifests in Beijing’s CCTV building.

1 Metamorphoses By Ovid, Book 8. “The Labrynth” lines 27-30

From: Chris AltonRe: Being Little Mermaid by Enrique

Enriquez

The Banishment of Daedalus

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Christine Leu’s article describing her neighbours’ food production/urban farming methods immediately brings me to my own subjective experiences. It also may have/will lead you to your own perceived patterns and subjective experiences.

As Leu describes how the Tongs’ transform their North American/Canadian/Torontonian/Victorian- influenced square 10x10 space into a small farm of native Chinese plant life, I cannot help but admire the Tongs. Their bold statement to transform their ‘private’ outdoor spaces from manicured lawns with ornamental flowers or shrubbery into practical, food bearing farms seems to be a layered and complex declaration. ‘The lawn’ has historically been associated with ‘luxury’ and a way of controlling, domesticating and decorating our outdoor spaces into leisurely and unpractical public identity tags. The popularity of the North American lawn seem to almost be a subconscious political gesture. It shows that one is able to purchase food from other sources rather than grow it themselves. This status/class of a family is immediately perceived from the first glace at the facade of the homestead.

However, the beginnings of a huge shift thanks to advances in food/nutrition education, environmentalism, economic uncertainty, DIY trendiness and generational information gaps has made urban agriculture something to be desired. The front yard (or backyard) garden is a new indicator of a new ‘class’ indicating social responsibility and education. Suddenly, the Tongs (in their newer geographical context of North America) are seen as revolutionary pioneers. By “doing what they know” through their skills/knowledge/actions, they

From: Cara SpoonerRe: Farming Translated by Christine

Leu” by Enrique Enriquez

Translating Farm/s/ers

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35 Million - Largest Number of Migrants - China

have altered the ways we Torontonians understand the potential that the front lawn has to offer. They transform what is possible for us to do here in Canada through their actions and knowledge. Are the Tongs reminding us of our own pasts? Do they point to what we North Americans may secretly (and deeply?) desire?

I know I am not alone in my interest in learning to grow the food that I consume. I crave to possess the knowledge that my Grand (and Great Grand) parents once had. I come from a family of farmers and my Great Grandparents immigrated to Canada and brought with them their knowledge of how to raise farm stock, grow vegetables and harvest for winter just as the Tongs have brought their knowledge with upon immigrating to Canada. My parents however, were skipped in this lineage. They did not choose to stay on their farms. They instead moved to cities, bought their food from supermarkets and kept lawns for the luxurious playtime of my brother and I. My own personal interests, politics and education have brought me back to my (literal and metaphorical) roots. An interest in urban farming has lead me to find Toronto-based programs such as YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), Not Far From the Tree (an urban fruit harvesting network), the Toronto Community Gardens Network, the Seedy Sundays seed exchange, Toronto Beekeeping Co-op, The Riverdale Farm Garden Club and WWOOFing. My interest is to go ‘back’; to connect to past generations and their knowledge. As Leu describes in her later paragraphs, there are benefits to urban gardening beyond the most obvious (that being the food and ecosystem elements). The physical exercise/activity associated with gardening is beneficial for individuals of all ages but can especially affect kids and

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In 1956 a representitve of BWWRO (Blue Whale Water Rights Organization) walked out of UNCLOS I (United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea) meetings stating that “the natural rights of Blue Whales and their ability to freely move among the worlds oceans were not being properly respected.” The BWWRO to this day refuse recognize any treaty or agreement that govern the worlds oceans.

the elderly in positive ways. To grow one’s own food is more financially plausible because seeds replenish and multiply each new season. Gardening connects us to our community and aids in developing ownership of place. This then feeds into healthier relationships, respect and a sense of responsibility.

To garden and attempt to learn new skills outside of our current personal knowledge also directly results in a deeper feeling of place identity. To put down roots (literally) makes us feel like we belong. It sounds so simple because it is so simple.

Regardless of if we are first generation immigrants who have nurtured our skills in another country like the Tongs or if we are the Great Granddaughters of immigrant farmer families with the desire to learn the skills that have sustained our families in past generations, to learn and to grow can motivate us to re-configure how we interact with our spaces, with each other and utilize the political weight of our front lawns.

What wisdom will we transfer to our future generations? What in our understanding can be moved new places? What of our practical knowledge is truly portable?

YIMBY : http://thestop.org/yes-in-my-back-yardNot Far from the Tree : http://www.notfarfromthetree.org/TCGN : http://www.tcgn.ca/wiki/wiki.phpSeedy Sundays : http://www.seeds.ca/ev/events.phpTO Beekeeping Co-op : http://www.torontobees.ca/Riverdale Farm : http://www.friendsofriverdalefarm.com/programs.htmWWOOFing : http://www.wwoof.ca/

Translating Farm/s/ers- cont’dFrom: Cara SpoonerRe: Farming Translated by Christine

Leu” by Enrique Enriquez

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Blue Whale Water Rights

Organization

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The container originally enroute to Los Angeles is lost among the mass of containers in Singapore. The container is now re-routed to Vancouver. Upon its arrival it is greeted by Stephen Harper who is eager to act.

I really enjoyed reading the article called “Temporary Permanence” in the migration issue. It really struck a chord with me, as I am currently working with an interdisciplinary team of students to help develop a revitalization plan for a city in Chile, where we are dealing with exactly the same phenomenon of temporary permanence.

I strongly agree with the author’s statement saying, “Attaching a time limit to architecture and planning is a contradiction”. I think that this statement must be considered and followed by those responsible for “temporary” shelters and communities, given that these communities often far outlive their predicted lifespan. I have personally witnessed the negative effects of hastily-erected emergency communities, and it’s frustrating, knowing that just a bit of planning and foresight could have made such a difference in the lives of the residents.

From: Sebastian WhyteRe: Temporary Permanence by Joanne

Lam

LOTA!

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After the small problem of the mutiny the voyage resumed. Magellan sends the Santiago on a scouting mission on the southern Coast - it is destroyed in a storm. After waiting a short time Magellan and the remaining four ships begin to move into the Pacific. He sends the Concepcion and the San Antonio to explore the All Saints Strait (Now the Magellan Strait. The San Antonio instead heads back to Spain and the three remaining ships continue the journey.

Joanne Lam writes about the occupation of a German-themed Country Market in Markham by a Chinese shopping centre which, after a few years of this interesting hybridity expands to become an enormous Chinese Mall, which she photographs across a sea of parking. Joanne finds that for a number of complex reasons Chinese-Canadian development culture has parted ways with her own sense of Chinese-Canadian identity.If cultural, spatial and social migration is characterised by dislocation, how long can one feel dislocated, at extreme odds with your environment, bumping up against uncongenial spatial conditions before becoming either very numb or very angry? Both conditions sap the energy one needs to build a reasonable life.

There are a number of possible ways to consider changing over-extensive suburban development and their anomic service centres connected by commuter infrastructure and infrequent public transport. Let us consider micro-zoning where a zone – RR-1, RM-22, IND, C-N2, C-COR2, etc – is never larger than one block, instead of the 20-40 block areas they generally are. This is different from the autocratic neighbourhood development plan driven by nimbyism and property values. It would mean that each block would contain RR-1, IND, C-N1, RM-10 lots. Even at a medium grain, this would mean RR-1, C-COR-4 would be no larger than single blocks. The size of the zone is drastically reduced from where it typically is now. This is the scale in all the cities we love to visit: Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, Mumbai. It isn’t an absence of zoning, it is a carefully negotiated and accommodated way of using land.

From: Stephanie WhiteRe: Malls and my Soul by Joanne Lam

Micro-Zoning Now!

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40 Million - Largest Number of Immigrants - U.S.A.

San Antonio

Ship Destroyed

Ship Deserts

Concepcion

Victoria

Ship

s th

at C

onti

nue

Santiago Trinidad

Let us consider our systems of land division: plots and lots with proscribed sizes and street frontages that ensure propriety. As Rob Story pointed out, here one leaps from temporary living one can manage on a small amount of money to buying a full house and property and being nailed to that site for the rest of one’s debt-ridden life. There is no incremental way to build our cities or our lives: they expand in abrupt, coarse strokes. Perhaps if all land was considered as more precious, all the interstitial too-small corners of our cities might become precious, and therefore occupied by too-small houses that suit perfectly too-small incomes.

My sense that the suburban house is an agent of assimilation isn’t a complaint, just a fact. It provides shelter and safety, teaching all newcomers the proper Canadian relationship between kitchen and living room, front door and street: courtyards and feng shui fall away as irrelevancies to material progress when it is measured by the materiality of the real estate.

Reza Aliabadi mentioned how his clients don’t want a culturally tailored house – it might affect the resale value. Nonetheless, we are a multicultural country and we do not have a multicultural architecture. We have a multi-purpose architecture and like any sort of multi-purpose room, it satisfies bare requirements but certainly does not feed the soul.

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When the Blue Whale finishes its annual migration there usually is a ritual that both celebrates and mourns the act. In one respect the migration represents new life and on the other hand the sense of a loss of adventure. The celebration / mourning usually lasts one week.

Think homeland, the city in which you were born. Think home, the structure you live in. Early travellers migrated in search of food and water and overtime settled in a land and owned it, developed languages and created a boundary in which they grew the sense of “belonging”. Contemporary humans however, migrate to new lands in search of job opportunities, higher education, social security, financial stability and other modern world concerns. But today’s state of belonging may no longer be associated with ownership. Individuals do not own homelands and quite rarely do we own our homes anymore.

Think immigrants, people who move to a new land in which they do not “belong”. Perhaps to early humans such a concept was unknown, because migration as in “change of residence“ was a constant or in better words “home” did not exist! But whether, for their entire lives, they experienced and observed their surroundings like immigrants do today remains a mystery; regardless, our ancestors lived a lifetime surviving through migration. So why are we today so anxious about the “move”? What changed? Borders developed? Languages advanced? Culture grew? Politics ruled?

Think Toronto, a city in which ethnicities and languages are colonized into small districts while merged with what once was Torontonian and English! Within invisible boundaries of Toronto small “homelands” are struggling for recreation. If you once lived in North York and moved to Little Italy or Chinatown your daily routines would be altered with new food, new street language, new shopping experience, and new culture.

From: Reza Aliabadi and Lailee Soleimani

Re: On Site 24

Think Nomadism

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Days

Results may vary

Leve

l of H

appi

ness

Think a question: what is it exactly that makes us an immigrant? If we once travel from our homeland do we stay an immigrant our entire lives? Or do we stop being an immigrant at some point? Does our definition of migration change along with the changes in our world? In a world in which technology has advanced to help media and communication make invisible boundaries, when does physically moving to another place make us an immigrant? Consciously or not, we are learning from our ancestors to make the word “immigrant” an unknown concept. But are we heading there by making a world in which we all eventually share the same homeland or by building a world of constant nomadism?

Think again.

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After the delay in Vancouver. The container is once again back en route to Los Angeles. Upon the container’s arrival it is greeted by a disillusioned middle class from all across North America who gather around the container. Tired of complaining about job losses to China they all rejoice- their treasures from the east have finally arrived.

From: Simon Rabyniuk Re: On Site 24

The word ‘poor’ is a very miserable word. To have little money is difficult. For young kids, when you want something, sometimes it is frustrating to try and understand why you can’t have it.

- Hilary Weston, Lieutenant Governor ON -

Charity for those poor in material wealth is for the amusement of those who are poor in spirit...their remedies are part of the disease... they try to solve the problem of poverty, by keeping the poor alive ... but this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

Inspired by the soul of man under socialism by Oscar Wilde and Slavoj Zizek’s talk First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

Economic Justice Now

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Body in Transit

From: Reza Aliabadi Re: On Site 24 & Migration

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320 Billion Dollars - Amount Immigrants Send Home

An Iranian Businessman from Tehran heading to Bucharest, applying for a visa at Consulate General of Romania in Montreal, Canada. The headless body, makes me think of our body as an object in constant transit, similar to any other object that circulates round the globe!

Photo by: Reza Aliabadi © atelier rzlbd, Fall 2007

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Magellan and his crew successfully navigate the strait and on February 13th, 1521 the expedition once again crosses the Equator. On March 16th Magellan reached the island of Homonhon in the Philippines. He dies on Mactan after becoming involved in a feud of rival tribes. The crew sailed on, reached the Spice Islands, traded, and returned to Spain. The Victoria was the only ship to return. It took almost three years to circumnavigate the globe.

Pitch Roofs and my Soul From: Samo Pedersen Re: Malls and my Soul by Joanne Lam

Today I went to see Formula 1. I went with my German friend and his girlfriend to cheer for Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes car. The race circuit is just behind of the Volkswagen factory. As it was only qualifiers we got bored and decided to take the metro another three stops to have a walk in the Weimar village, the German New Town of Anting. The weather was beautiful as we strolled around and enjoyed the Goethe+Schiller statue and the notoriously empty Markt Platz.

Still in Anting, tired of walking, we ended the day at the Austrian-German Bierstube enjoying Sauerkraut and Paulaner beer. Oh what a nice day. It was almost as being home. It matters less that I see myself as Dane. Over here a few hundred kilometers seems of no distance. And I am willing to convince myself of my German connection.. At least for the day.It is an interesting topic that Miss Lam raises about China-town-malls and what the criterion is for location-nostalgic-architecture.

Anting is a suburb of Shanghai which has a development initiated almost 10 years ago called Weimar Village. In itself a longer story, but in this context it can be described as an empty ghost town of poor building quality resembling a small German town, a victim of misplaced investment strategy, real estate speculation, missionary architects and negligence of local norms and expectations, resulting in something simply making no sense.

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However today walking among the empty houses with the pitch roofs colored in red and yellow German colors I felt like ‘this is not that bad at all’. Well it is! So the point is that it seems that as long as you can provide candy for nostalgic expats, in this case courtyard houses with pitch roofs, anything goes and the expats would say “oh this is so nice, almost like being home” and that’s why we live with crap Chinatowns in Europe/ Australia/ America and crap German towns in China. Once again developers found a way to earn easy money on the migrant population.

For more about Shanghai’s European New towns see the book “Shanghai New Towns” by Harry den Hartog or have a look at my blog post on the subject on http://popupcity.net/2011/02/one-city-nine-ghost-towns/

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DoUCDepartment of Unusual Certainties

www.departmentofunusualcertainties.com

www.onsitereview.ca