Long Live Legacy

June 19th, 2010, 6:55 pm

Six weeks seems so long, but not when the time is short. From assisting a local community garden, to exploring urban gardens, vertical farming, container gardens, and finally signage, the Urban Agriculture group took quite the ride to the end of the six week long Green Corridor course. Our project ideas were ever changing and growing. This week concluded the chaos, with a presentation of our final piece; the signage. The journey of the signage was not easy either. From traditional poster-style-bulletin-boards, to banners, to stencil and lights, the signage evolved to the cedar post bird houses unit that it is now. Through it, we hope to achieve an artistic and aesthetic appeal, as well as to draw our audience to the ‘urban arts community’ – our temporary name for the site located between the ecohouses on California Ave.

The signage was originally modelled with 5 posts of differing heights to represent a hand, on top of which text and items were to be placed. From here the birdhouses concept was borrowed towards the new and final signage. The choice of using no text, but rather birdhouses was to turn heads twice, and have a symbolic meaning. Through the clustering of the birdhouses on the post, we hoped to achieve our initial goal of representing community. The presence of local birds, we hoped would make the piece interesting, eye-catching, and representative of how we felt of the land, Green Corridor, and its surrounding environment.

At the conclusion of our six weeks with Green Corridor, the Urban Agriculture group shared their experiences of frustration, satisfaction, and accomplishment. We built our project on the basis that it would be functional, with or without our presence. We hope for future students of Green Corridor to build upon (and improve) what we have initiated, allowing for this project to be an inspiration to the community for years to come.

Student Blog past week of March, the 25th

March 29th, 2010, 6:50 pm

On Tuesday we had made some list for the scrap metal dealers and contacted them individually with little success. The lists include organizations and some individuals who deal and recycle the steel we need to build the stand for our existence wind turbine at University. We completed the lists of retailers who gave us green signal.
Then we went out for some field work on Thursday 25th March 2010to different scrap metals dealers and retailers for the quotation of the stand for wind turbine we wish to build in summer. Successfully we got the quotation from a metals dealer and he told us that it would cost around $2000/- to completely build and implement this project. Later in coming week we will be heading out again on Tuesday to check for some more scrap materials we wish to seek and in much cheaper price if possible because the initial quote, we believe is a little bit out of reach for everybody.

And we are off to a start!!!

January 30th, 2010, 11:44 pm

First of all, we will like to thank the class for the constructive criticism that we received on Thursday. With the valuable suggestions we are finally getting to the action phase from the planning phase. We contacted Dr. Rupp Carriveau who have granted us the access to the wind turbine currently in the Essex Building. We have also contacted various local manufacturers and now with the specifications of the the turbine, we can now better communicate our requirements towards the manufacturers. Thanks to Ashley for her valuable advice, we now know exactly which components we want.

Now begins the big task – preparing the business plan and presentations for th manufacturers, St. Clair College and finding other potential donors for the parts and most possibly even more turbines.

P.S.  look forward to our business plan presentation in a fortnight. Prospects are definitely looking good. We have indeed done the dreaming and planning, now the time is approaching where our actions truly count. After all, wind turbine group is not just there to talk about the winds, we are here to work with the winds.

HIgh Line elevated urban park

January 24th, 2010, 5:19 pm

An elevated park in the sky built on top of the skeleton of an old rail system? It may have sounded impossible only five years ago, but today, the eagerly awaited High Line elevated urban park officially opens for thousands of New Yorkers looking to escape the hubbub of the city below!

Here at Inhabitat, we have been following the journey of the High Line for the past several years and were super excited to get a sneak peek yesterday of the new park, which was renovated / designed by James Corner Field Operations, Lead Designer, with starchitects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. We were thrilled to get a chance to scope out the High Line yesterday as we’ve been waiting for this for ages!)

source: INHABITAT