Friday, 28 January 2011

Isolating the detail

Through our first visit at those areas we documented various elements and materials that are adapted to the social and urban texture of the sites. It is quite obvious that the actual method the inhabitants use to produce space, to decorate the existing space and to enhance public space is giving different uses and social meanings to local, cheap everyday elements. This is part of the amazing mobility and constant interaction between the inhabitants, which characterizes both areas and which is one of the things we aim to maintain and promote. For example, people just used a wooden fruit box, facing backwards to create a coffee table or a combination of tires, canvas sacks and barrels to make stands for the street markets. Even the hanging baskets that can be found at the streets of those areas nave a meaning, it’s a local media of connection between the balconies as the locals use them to exchange various things without moving out of their houses. Those are just a few examples of the urban informality those people are experiencing, which is an extension of their culture and their reality. Both sites own much of their vibrancy and heterogeneity to those unprogrammed spaces, they create a blank canvas for the citizens and their activities. They give the neighborhood an enviable diversity and a characteristic locality through the many unplanned, temporary meeting places for a rich mix of social and ethnic groups.





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