(Via Museum of Vancouver)
Help transform Granville Street on Saturday, July 13, 2013!
Upcycled Urbanism is a participatory project that invites students, artists, designers, makers, and anyone with a even a smidgen of creativity to re-imagine and rebuild parts of Vancouver’s public realm.
Working together, teams of participants have designed and built prototypes using modular blocks of expanded polystyrene containing material salvaged from the construction of the Port Mann Bridge and other sites by Mansonville Plastics. First, students from the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture created building block prototypes. Then, at a series of workshops in March and May, 2013, teams brainstormed, sketched, and modelled how to use these blocks for new public design ideas with the help of design experts from our partner organizations.
The big build:Teams will come together again to actually build their creations at an outdoor design/build spectacle on the 700 Block of Granville Street in Downtown Vancouver on July 13. Everyone is invited to help, critique, encourage the builders, and occupy their creations. Think of it as a combination workshop/street celebration/public art unveiling!
Materials will then be re-recycled for industrial use.
Who can get involved?
Excited? There’s still time to join a build team by emailing us at upcycledurbanism@museumofvancouver.ca. And on July 13th everyone is invited to watch, encourage builders and engage with this interactive landscape between 10:00am and 8:00pm. They’ll be creating spectacular styro-interventions at VIVA Vancouver on the 700 Block Granville Street, between Georgia and Robson.
Why are we doing it?
By inviting people to re-imagine public art and street amenities, we hope that Upcycled Urbanism will provoke conversations about public realms and design culture in Vancouver, foster collaboration and connection between people of diverse backgrounds and talents, and give participants a greater sense of ownership over the public places they share.
It will also viscerally explore issues of sustainability by removing polystyrene from the waste stream, empowering people to build with it in a large-scale public spectacle, and finally returning the material for further recycling.
About Upcycled Urbanism
Upcycled Urbanism is a Museum of Vancouver initiatve in partnership with the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) at the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver Public Space Network, Maker Faire Vancouver, and Spacing Magazine, with generous additional support from SALA, Mansonville Plastics and the Vancouver Foundation.
How did Upcycled get started?
Upcycled Urbanism began as an idea and grew into a collaborative community effort.
Back in the summer of 2012, we mentioned MOV’s participatory design aspirations to Erick Villagomez, editor of Spacing Vancouver, and he suggested the perfect medium to make this dream come true: expanded polystyrene, or EPS. This material, sometimes incorrectly mistaken for Styrofoam, is super-light and easy to cut into shapes.
Best of all, said Erick, we have a local, green source for it! Langley-based Mansonville Plastics actually diverts blocks of used EPS bound for the landfill and grinds the stuff down in order to produce entirely new, usable blocks. (In 2012, Mansonville supplied the EPS filling for the wondrous Pop Rocks installation at Robson Square.)
Mansonville generously offered to fabricate a mountain of blocks for the project. Then Spacing, Maker Faire Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Space Network, and UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) all came on board as partners.
SALA’s Bill Pechet offered to put his design studio students to work creating EPS building block prototypes. Then, with a small grant from the Vancouver Foundation, we were off and running.
