imagining the unimaginable
A blog on designing for sustainable lifestyles by Jesper Pagh.
I am an architect and designer living in Copenhagen. I write, talk and do consulting focused on the interaction between design, shape and space, sustainability, technology and human behavior.
I work as technology editor at the Danish journal on architecture, Arkitekten, and as an external lecturer at Roskilde University and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.
This is my personal blog / scrapbook / pile of stuff that I find interesting / care about / get inspired by.
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Nice set of icons of modern design icons. Not sure who made these? Similar to this.
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Ha hah. Party Photos with new the new ‘Instant Designer Glasses’ photopaddle accessory - Core77. Designed by Steven Haulenbeek and just premiered...
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Damn there’s some nice stuff in this Dieter Rams photo pool on Flickr. (photo by Marcos Dopico)
We just joined Copenhagen Food Corporation (Københavns Fødevarefællesskab) and this is the content of this weeks bag with fresh, locally produced, organic vegetables. It’s DKK 100 (€14) a week for the bag with 6-8 kg and pure logic: Supermarkets are making money on offering out-of-season-tasteless fruits and vegetables transported from polluting and destructive farming industries all over the world. Why not set up a corporation of people who want to do it differently, buy our groceries directly from local organic farmers and distribute it ourselves? Copenhagen Food Corporation is inspired by Park Slope Food Coop (which I visited myself a couple of years ago) and in three years has grown from 15 people to more than 2000.
To take care of the practical matters, apart from paying for your groceries, you have to work 3 hours a month in your local department of the corporation, which adds to the logic that it is actually creating new communities around food, work and sustainable living in the city. The economical logic in this makes sense too, as you actually pay for the products with money and contribute to the practical matters with your own work which gives you absolute transparency in the transactions and illustrates how local, personal actions can have an effect when they take place within systems and economies of scale.
Jeremy Rifkin on the empathetic civilisation. How does consciouses change in history? Is it possible that we can actually extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family? And to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family? And to the biosphere as our common community?
(via environminimalist)
Just around the corner from where we live lies Prags Have (Prag’s Garden) – a temporary urban garden started by a couple of young social entrepreneurs. The garden is one of many projects on Prags Boulevard 43 hosted by Givrum.nu, and every Wednesday the neighborhood is invited for communal eating. For DKK 10 (EUR 1,5) you can have a taste of their great vegetarian dishes and enjoy the garden in it’s chaotic blooming beauty. We went there tonight before having an early night swim in Øresund.
John Thackara writes about Future Perfect on Doors of Perception
At the Future Perfect festival in Sweden last weekend I spoke at a seminar on architecture and sustainability together with John Manoochehri, Alex Haw and Oliver Marlow. Among other things we discussed the shifting role of the architect throughout the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, and I stressed the point that one of the main problems I see for architects to contribute to the future development of sustainable communities is that their focus in general terms have shifted from serving the community to offering services to the market.
Kjeld Vindum raises the same point in this lecture at the Danish Architecture Center from 2010 (in Danish). While Kjeld uses building examples to illustrate his point, I would like to bring forward a contemporary example from the world of planning that I use as an example when I lecture at Plan, City and Process: Loop City (2010) vs. The Finger Plan (1947).
Both plans address the challenges of further development of the capital of Denmark and its suburbs, but while The Finger Plan was the brainchild of Steen Eiler Rasmussen at the Danish Town Planning Institute and further developed by the technical office for the committee for planning in the Copenhagen area, Loop City is developed by private consultants (BIG, Red Associates, Arup and Tom Nielsen) commissioned by a private foundation (Realdania) and the ten municipalities it involves ( Lyngby-Taarbæk, Gladsaxe, Herlev, Rødovre, Albertslund, Glostrup, Vallensbæk, Ishøj, Brøndby and Hvidovre).
The project consists of much more than the video here (which was screened in the Danish pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale) but what I find interesting when comparing with the Finger Plan (and what we discuss in class) is who the project and the visualizations of it are intended for: what visions are brought forward and to what extent do they serve the public good, the commissioners, local politicians or others? What possibilities and limitations lies within this form of public-private planning?
Will we be able to provide a framework for sustainable lifestyles through this kind of planning initiated by local stakeholders and projecting existing patterns of dwelling, working and transportation into the future?
At the Future Perfect Festival last weekend at Ängsbacka Kursgård in Molkom north of Karlstad in Sweden we all had the pleasure of enjoying the most fantastic vegetarian dishes. One of the reasons for this is the permaculture that Olle Karlsson and David Göransson and their Flow Food Corporation keeps at Ängsbacka. Sunday morning I joined a tour of the garden to hear their story and learn a little about the principles of permaculture – and not at least have a close look at their beautiful garden. In this short video they present how they ‘surf their project and the opportunities”.
The Hill is “a dreamy documentary capturing the spirit of Nørrebro through the stories of its inhabitants”. With the manmade hill in the courtyard formed by Korsgade, Gartnergade, Blågardsgade and Rantzausgade as a focal point for the story and actual place for the event, Italian collective ZimmerFrei is screening the documentary on Thursday and Friday at 10 pm as one of 19 productions that make the Metropolis Biennale 2011 in Copenhagen this week.
Let’s make the future perfect
The Futureperfect Festival in Molkom, Sweden kicked off yesterday with a double rainbow over Ängsbacka, great food, art performances, Norwegian electro-pop and two interesting discussions on systems and civilization. Perhaps it was actually only one long discussion as the two announced forums merged into each other as we went along. An important part of this ‘adventure in living well’ as founder and main facilitator John Manoochehri has described the festival is to engage in conversations and discussions beyond the ‘one expert talk to the crowd’ concept, and yesterdays first encounter showed how well this can work when well facilitated.
