Homeless shelter/Street Nomads/Shelter as Weapon of Consciousness/City Living/A shopping cart mobile shelter
From Rachel Carley's article on Homelessness in the New Zealand mag, Pander:
In 1988, New York based artist, Krzysztof Wodiczko designed a vehicle for use by the nomadic urban homeless – in particular the ‘scavenger’ that makes their living by collecting used cans and selling them to be recycled. The vehicle was designed to ameliorate living conditions for this particular group, and made provision for the storage of personal belongings, can collecting, and also a space for sleeping. The vehicle gives the homeless a vernacular presence within the city – to echo the quotidian objects of consumption and merchandising – the street vendor, in attempts to establish an empathy between these landless individuals and their observers.
2 Comments:
pretty cool stuff, its good to see artists and designers/architects working towards solutions to real problems, not just how to make a space look pretty or how to make the latest celebrity-scale monument to their ego (nothing against Frank Gehry's work, just wish he would put his skills to work on a project like this). What happened to Buckminister Fuller's idea's? we dropped that vision long time ago, and today it barely scrapes by on the radical fringes of architecture and design. we need more xeriscaping, more permiculture, more artist/designers making recycled homes for the recyclers. Check out Dan Peterman, a chicago artist working in recycled materials and building pretty ingenious shelters.
http://www.mcachicago.org/MCA/Exhibit/past/peterman.html
follow the link to "more about dan peterman" and watch the flash movie, then click on "selected projects" to see more of his work. (it may take a second to get past the cheesy graphic of the house.
Oh yeah, and stupidly enough, I forgot to include the link to
www.misprintedtype.com
yeah, gabe - very interesting and inspiring work of peterman's. He has a good sense of humor, something i think is important for artists to remember. especially when working on serious social change art. anyway, i particularly like his Eau Claire (the machine that distills clean water from Dr. Pepper) and the street chairs from shopping carts. great ideas. and it's good to see them becoming reality.
oh i also like dthe photos on his bio page -- the last one. I think it was #9 -- looks like a great studio space.
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