cyberGARDENing the City - AA Visiting School

Marco Poletto and Claudia Pasquero on behalf of the Architectural Association in Milano are proud to launch the second spring/summer season with a renewed program of lectures and events leading to our International Summer School focused on the topic of alternative FOOD and renewable ENERGY for the Urban Environment. In the end of March we will launch our first lecture series in Milano. The AA MILANO Spring Lecture Series is part of the AA Public Program, one of the most diverse and prestigious open lectures series in the world, and it will be stages in 3 different venues across the city: the Polytechnic, the NIL28 and the Stecca degli Artigiani. This first round of talks will end with a dedicated exhibition in the Gallery SpazioFMGperl'architecttura, opening on the 23rd of May. For updates visit: cybergardens2013.aaschool.ac.uk Matteo Pasquinelli, a young Italian philosopher, will open the series with his Manifesto on Urban Cannibalism, setting the stage for the debate that will inform the main Summer School, the experimental design workshop taking place between the 6th and the 16th of July and involving international participants working on the theme of cyber-gardening the city; this year each team taking part to the design experiment will breed alternative urban food supply chains and renewable energy networks of algae, bacteria and urban insects; the key design instruments will be direct field work and a custom design twitter based real-time digital interface. Applications are now welcome. Summer School Brief As the world’s population grows at an ever faster pace and the effects of global warming threaten crops worldwide, the global reserve of food is reaching an historic low. Global metropolis like Milan will soon find themselves in a condition of shortage, perhaps not dissimilar to the one experienced in the past in periods of war or siege, where food and energy were either absent or unaffordable to the majority. Philosopher Matteo Pasquinelli claims that it is in this periods that the culinary art has demonstrated its ability to expand the horizons of edibility by reinventing the urban landscape as a potentially productive one; in periods of shortages the art of cultivating the nutritious potentials of what Gilles Clement calls the “third landscape” elevated itself to a gastro-political art of resistance towards the enemy and of building a new collective identity. Such practice posses a radical attitude that goes far beyond the current fashion for urban allotment and farmer markets in the sense that has the capability to reinvent our perception of those interstitial ecologies that are ubiquitous in our metropolis but that escape categorisations, as they are not part of the urban techno-sphere nor they belong to the agricultural layer; they exist within out of control, invisible or neglected strata where nature escapes human control and proliferates unchecked. This year the AA Milan will set up its urban Lab in the Milanese borough of Nil28 and will embrace this radical attitude to propose scenarios of gastro-political resistance towards the tyranny of large multinational food distributions, the classism of organic gourmet food and the threat of global supply shortage. Studio Structure The teaching model of the AA Summer School in Milan is grounded on the experimental tradition of the Architectural Association and on the design philosophy of ecoLogicStudio, that will curate the event and run the design workshop. In the first 3 days of workshop our explorations will take us on a trip across unnoticed landscapes of urban algae blooming on the Milanese Navigli, of mosquito hunting in Novara and of bacteria fermentations in Gorgonzola. The design studio will than take its base in the Nil28 neighbourhood where the aspiring cyber-gardeners will be able to explore and invent new urban cultivation practices by combining Applets design and real-time urban mapping with 1:1 scale prototyping. Dedicated real-time mapping and prototyping design clusters will be interfaced and interrelated during the workshop giving to all participants the opportunity to experiment with multiple techniques and challenge different aspects of the brief. The final outcome will be an urban cultivation digital interface involving the participation of the neighbourhood and a series of speculative prototypes testing novel cultivation practices or urban recipes. The 10 days workshop will be supported by a series of seminars with invited specialists and dedicated algorithmic design and prototyping tutorials. The seminars will be held in the evening and will feature guests from the world of digital design and prototyping, agronomy and food science, landscape design and computational design, journalism and curatorial practices. Enrollment The deadline for applications is 30th June 2013. All participants travelling from abroad are responsible for securing any visa required. After payment of fees, the AA can provide a letter confirming participation in the workshop. The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £695 per participant, which includes a £60 visiting Student Membership. If you are already a member, the total fee will be reduced automatically by £60 by the online payment system. Early enrollment and group discounts apply. for more info please visit our website: cybergardens2013.aaschool.ac.uk Team AA Milan Directors: Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto Scientific committee: Luca Molinari and Simona Galateo Computational Design Tutor: Andrea Bugli