http://www.festival-urbanism.info/

Official Burning Man Website

“Ten Principles
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.”

As existing, Burning Man is removed from society and exists as a space to create art, a city, and a community upon a “blank canvas”. It exists in opposition to the normal, the everyday. But what if Burning Man was stripped of its “black canvas” and forced to exist within the spaces of our everyday lives? What can art/architecture become without starting with a “blank canvas” but rather an underlay? Re-locating the festival in Lower Manhattan will impose on the event an existing set of conditions, infrastructures, and systems in which it must simultaneously respond to, engage with, disengage from, paint over, or leave untouched. This absurd juxtaposition will reconstruct the ideals of the festival to produce change in our existing environments.

A New Edge Condition for Manhattan

The questions I am currently dissecting are:
How will Burning Man be transformed to exist within Lower Manhattan?
How will Lower Manhattan react to and be transformed by this temporal festival?

“The evolution of individual cities into a city system, which [Jeb Brugmann] calls the City, has radically changed the relationship between local and global affairs. Through the City, local conditions and events…are amplified into global events and accelerated into global trends…” (5).

It provides an overview of understanding cities and systems while looking at examples of how to develop the increasingly urbanized world. The Crisis City manifesto aligns well with Brugmann’s ideas of bottom-up activism, the increasing value of urban environments, the need to design for and with local environments, and architecture relating to (not dismissing) social, political, and environmental conditions.

Poster for The Front at PARK(ing) DAY

Please come and visit us Friday September 17th @ 320 S. Clinton Street!!

View the map below for more details!


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T-Shirt Design by Maki Kawaguchi

What is COLAB?

“COLAB is an interdisciplinary initiative based in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts that brings students, community and corporate together, to bridge gaps and create opportunities. COLAB creates these connections by being facilitators in the exercise of visual thinking and collaborative practices. We see ourselves as the hallway where you stop to talk and great ideas emerge; a hub to connect students to each other, the community and corporations; a starting point for the community and corporations to connect with students.”

What is The Front?

“The Front is a student-run initiative of the American Institute of Architecture Students at Syracuse University.  Its core mission is to bridge the gap between students at the School of Architecture, and the broader community of Syracuse, through organizing exhibitions, educational events, and other forms of public outreach.  The Front works to establish, and continually develop, a physical presence in Downtown Syracuse, deploying the skills, expertise, and effort of architecture students where it is needed most.  Through a dynamic presence The Front provides a catalytic force in the urban revitalization of Downtown Syracuse’s abundant supply of vacant storefronts.  Operating on a single space at a time, The Front will occupy, rehabilitate, and ‘activate’ previously unused spaces, working with investors and owners to produce a real estate market that is more desirable.  At the same time, The Front will also serve as a think-tank and repository for transdisciplinary student work and professional engagement, offering a proof-of-concept in the effort to create a vital, lively, urban Syracuse.”

What is PARK(ing) Day?

“Parking Day is an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultaneously transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces to create temporary public parks.”

COLAB has given the opportunity for students and community members to transform Syracuse’s parking spots. We see PARK(ing) Day as an opportunity to engage with the local community and transform pockets of Syracuse into pedestrian friendly social environments. Our proposal envisions an environment where shops, stores and programmed buildings are not confined to their built interiors but rather their interior environments spill out into the city. Some food programmed stores already have outdoor eating areas, but how can our public park become an interactive space of informal and unplanned dialogue? Our environment will be located outside of an existing café/restaurant and will provide the community a chance to interact with other locals and bring their dining experience into this temporary park. The space will be transformed into a sitting and relaxing consisting of a set of benches/tables which can be reconfigured to the user’s needs. Yesterday construction on our park began.

Check back to see where we will be located Friday September 17^th.

A street festival, an international picnic, “…a place to walk, bike, play, paint, have lunch or perform.” On July 18th, 2010 the A40, the Ruhr Metropolis’ main connection artery, was transformed from an automotive to a pedestrian-friendly environment. A highway, a public road especially a major road connecting two or more destinations, metamorphosed into a space of activity and excitement.

RUHR.2010 hosted the Still-Life A40/B1 Project as a Festival of Cultures to help strengthen the Ruhr Metropolis’ identity as the 2010 European Capital of Culture. The concept was,

“..to create a meeting place for different cultures, generations and nations.”

This example of a street festival demonstrates the interconnectivity of our world’s culture. While certain events are programmed for specific cities, transforming a highway into an urban public park drew crowds (of about 3 million people) both nationally and internationally. Did the participants even feel as though they where in Germany? Or perhaps the A40 become a transnational space where cultures from around the globe became blurred.

What made this event so popular was the chance it gave to the public to partake in an event never before done and completely out of the ordinary. Who wouldn’t want to participate? It shows that people are drawn to the idea of challenging preconceived notions of space, whether consciously or subconsciously.

Festival de Cannes (The Cannes Film Festival)

Arguably the most prestigious film festival in the world occurs annually in the city of Cannes, France. Attended by international directors, actors, critics and of course photographers and the press the small resort town in the south of France is consumed and morphed into a city of film for 12 days. This private event is attended to gain fame and glory, to learn and/or to critic new films. Currently most of the screenings occur indoors and it is my belief that the city is engrossed in film resulting from the buzzing of new ideas in the film industry. But how can the architecture/infrastructure of the city be developed to enhance the viewing of films, the communication of ideas and the idea that a city can be transformed, almost as if a set, to showcase new advancements in cinematography? Is Cannes transformed for only 12 days a year? Do the events and effects of the festival leave a mark in the city after the festival and for the rest of the year? Does the event remain a private festival? Or does it become open to the public (or is the public only allowed access to the impressions left behind?)

Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica (The Venice Film Festival)

Basically the same idea of Cannes, rather dealing with a difference contextual situation. The Lido Island of Venice, Italy is home to the oldest film festival in the world. The film festival occurs in conjunction with the Venice Biennale (a festival and exhibition of contemporary film, art, dance, architecture, music and theatre). Again the festival is contained into the Palazzo del Cinema but how can film, the screening and the ideas spill out to the public space of the streets, the facades and the water of the Lido?

The Festival City

What if one city became the backdrop for all festivals? As a man-made city, and one of the most beautiful, Venice is arguably in a constant state of festive. (Festivals including: Carnevale, Vogalonga, Serenissima, Venezia Biennale, Festa del Rendentore, Opera Festival, Shakespeare Festival, local village festivals…). With the chance of sinking and a decreasing population could Venice transform itself from a city of living into a city of festive where temporary groups inhabit the city for a brief period of time. Can an existing city reconfigure itself to be a city of temporary architectures? Could the existing architecture be mutated to become the home of festival? Rather than traveling to Venice as a tourist destination do people gather for temporary religious, cultural or educational events?