In order to make some quick prototypes we have a selection of cordless power tools – mostly various Hammer Driver-Drills but also a wonderful cordless Recipro Saw. Our aim is to get the batteries recharged with solar panels in the near future.
Kia from Helsinki built 9 benches for a public meeting in one day!
Amel brought his own tools to speed things up.
The second phase starts with a public meeting where the map shows often conflicting interests or different views on the same place. This is our way of making the dialogue more constructive – to make people know about other peoples views and disagreeing in a civilised way.
We work out the important issues of the community and start seeing some patterns of possibilities. The dialogue and further stories are also taken to the streets in curated walks. People are free to join in and it usually leads to new stories.
A second public meeting is set in a place central to the local community – here it is a garden that used to belong to a old factory. We opened the garden for experiments before the meeting – inviting people to come with their ideas. Being, building and discussing it in the actual space makes the discussion about space more concrete.
For the actual meeting people would discuss new ideas and form networks around these – Or just build something themselves – for themselves.
Out of this second public meeting evolves a number of new localised networks and ideas.
Porosity refers to the existing physical or organisational structures that are open (unfinished) for new improvisations or initiatives. It also refers to the notion of “Spatialising the dialogue about space” or “making space more open for for dialogue” (and new improvisations or initiatives that we also call Offshoots)
One important inspiration for our work with Porosity is the essay of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis on Naples that they wrote together in 1925.
One example on how we worked with Porosity was the Open garden where kids could start building spatial experiments as a way of taking part in the dialogue on the future of that part of the city.
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