Overview #

During the first week of HTMAA, I tried to get my bearings and figure and think through a final project. This course is about how to make almost anything, and although it seems this class has the tendency to focus on small objects, I’ve been wondering how ‘making’ can apply to a larger scale. As in, how to make a city?

What parts of a city can still be ‘made’? How can elements of the city be designed in such as way so that they can be tinkered with? How might a city be more modular so that people can actively engage with their surroundings and leave their mark? How can cities be How might ‘making’ the city help me to feel closer to it and more empowered? Who gets to make the city and how could this be expanded?

Are there systems that might allow for these changes? Could there be an City Department of Beauty and Maintenance so that there are people dedicated to making subtle but important improvement? How could our set of values shift to really see beauty as important, and connected to our health.

I’ve also been wondering at what point a thing becomes a place. Is a city a thing, or is it a place? Does a collection of things make a place? How can I reimagine this class as how to make almost anywhere?

Based on some of these questions, I am thinking that for my final project I would like to build a street brick with embedded electronics. Ideally, this false brick will be able to replace sidewalk bricks/paver, and with an e-ink display, will provide information. I don’t know exactly what I want the brick to show but I like the idea of it either being useful or playful information. I’ve also been thinking it would be cool to build a brick that has a pressure or motion sensor so that it lights when you step on it or get close.

Inspiration: #

My desire to build a street brick is informed by many things. One source of inspiration is that I often find myself frustrated by the quality of the surfaces for those who are living life outside of a car. As a cyclist or pedestrians, I’m sensitive to minor changes that a truck wouldnt even notice, and without the distraction of a heated seat, the noise of surround sound speakers, or the thrill of spead, and I’m sensitive to the quality of the environment itself. All too often, I find myself noticing just how ugly things are. Asphalt is smeared everywhere and concrete is loose and broken. Why is this the case? Not to mention, these impervious surfaces are bad for the environment because it prevents infiltration, increases surface runoff that mostly likely ends up in a CSO and heats up water.

In contrast to the questionable streets of Cambridge, I was absolutely dazzled by the brick-laden streets of the Netherlands this summer. Most of the streets I biked on were paved with street bricks and often times these bricks had noticable vegetation growing through them. When work occured, such as changing utilities or putting in a new intersection, these bricks were lifted up, stacked, and ultimately laid back down. No smelly asphalt and loud paving trucks. This process to me was mind blowing. Prior to living in the Netherlands, I had also learned of a [Dutch practice called ’tile whipping’](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04 we-need-to-accept-the-weeds-dutch-towns-compete-to-remove-the-most-garden-paving). This is essentially when tile or bricks are lifted up on the street and replaced with plants. I can attest to the fact that the outcome of these actions are quite beautiful. You end up with greener sidewalks that are at times wild and unkempt, and other times well-manicured.

Another source of inspiration for this project is tactical Urbanism Guide and guerilla urbanism. These are processes by which low cost, temporary intervections are made to reshape urbanism spaces. The key difference is that guerilla urbanism activities typically ask forgiveness and not permission, and are in response to a lack of gov’t action or privatization. I’ve had my had at two low-key urbanism interventions - one in which I built a woodem swing over a pond that was prompty cut down and another in which I created an art project about a culverted brook. This was also promptly taken down. My hope is to have a longer lasting intervention, and I’m thinking this class will be an opportunity to explore new ideas.

A final source of inspiration is something I stumbled across while in Paris this summer. While walking through the streets, I noticed a small corned of conrete that had been beautifully repaired with tiles and on the repaired section read “FLACKING.” Curious, I took a photo and eventually looked it up. It turns out an artist named Ememem has created a practice known as flacking, in which they “heal the streets” by creating gorgeous tile mosaics. This beautiful way to heal and repair the streets is something I’ve never encountered before and provided a wonderful precendent for how to relate to our surroundings.

Notes from class: #

Git = version control and helps to avoid renaming files a bunch of times, which im am quite guilty of

–> they keep using an acronym called GUI (which i looked up and it means graphical user interface) and it made me think of society of spectacle. Are we also living vicariously through GUIs?

Additional precedents: #