tag_ by Monika Kanokova

a magazine on urban issues issuu.com/kathmography

OCCUPY LINDENGASSE VIENNA INTERVIEW WITH NICOLA TWILLEY BOAT LIFE IN LONDON SALON DE LA RUE tag_ / Issue #1 / Winter 2011

issue #1 / winter 2011

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365 tag_ / Issue #1 / Winter 2011

visit 365thefoxhouse.at

4 From the global village for and about local movements Living in an age, where public space is being discussed as an online phenomenon, It’s about time to take a closer look at the use of physical public spaces and how we interact with them. Considering rules and restrictions being continuously sharpened, it seems easier to act out our passions in the www-spheres where the freedom of creativity seems to be endless. Furthermore, giving the example of banning smoking from public spaces, street art from all the grey walls or even the comprehensive CCTV monitoring it seems like the Internet became the only space we can do almost anything. Thus, the main focus of this magazine lies on the diverse use of public spaces. We don’t only want to show an onesided view of street art and street style, as this would be far too alternative but we would much more like to introduce some techniques used by global brands and also show some trend insights which are characteristic for our time. In the following pages, you can find a choice of articles written by interesting personalities who were fully engaged and enthusiastic to participate. I would like to thank everyone, who decided to be a part of tag_. Some people I’ve known for quite a while and also some, I’ve never met in my life. The following pages are filled with articles written by people living around the world building a public space on their own – a global one. _ Monika Kanokova

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04 06 08 26 40 44 46 48 60 72 86 88 90 98 100

EDITORIAL From the global village for and about local movements

POLITICAL There will be blood

REVOLUTIONARY We are Change, We are Future, We are Here

UNUSED Empty playgrounds

DIGITAL Join the game parade

CRITICAL A farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manual of typography

FASHIONABLE Street style photography - Is it about going over the top?

LIVING Boat life in London

TRENDING The Pop-up stores phenomenon

ARTISTIC Salon de la Rue

CONVERSATIONAL Food and the city: The foodprint project

GRIDLESS Bitter salad helping the world to be a better place?

EXPERIENTIAL Dine with strangers

ECOLOGICAL Making our carbon footprint visible

CONTRIBUTORS And links

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THERE WILL BE BLOOD / words by Stefan Urschler

“Arabian Spring”, “Occupy Movement”, “Global Economic Crises” are just a few events that caused a loss of trust towards our political systems. That’s the status quo of our world in 2011, on the verge of 2012. So where is the light at the end of this tunnel? Well, that’s a tough question. What we’ve seen in 2011 is, that people may stand up for their rights and demonstrate their opinions across the globe. The recent “Occupy Movement”, which was initiated by the Canadian magazine “Adbusters” a few months ago, is just the expression of people who are rather frustrated with the whole capitalist system. A system that got the whole world into its claws, is finally resulting in a global riot. What started in New York three months ago became a global movement within weeks. London, Berlin, Paris and many more cities got occupied by protesters. In Austria, the Occupy organization had around 7000 Facebook fans within few weeks, which simultaneously means that they had more fans than the current chancellor of Austria (big issue in the local media right now). Facebook was an indicator of the global movement, which suggests a clear assumption that the time for a protest has come. The Arab revolution is currently on the cutting edge, due to the Egyptian Armed Forces are interested to deliver their power to the people. It doesn’t seem unusual that the mood of the protesters in the Middle East is rather a violent one, which would be a new situation for most of the Western States, apart of course, for the riots in the United Kingdom. A radicalization is imminent, because of the big gap between rich and poor, financial markets specified bailouts and the huge debt of Western countries in general. Occupy everything. From Wall Street to governments. Direct democracy in a usable form is a possible way out, but if those who are in charge do not respond to the growing protest, we can be sure that there will be blood on the streets and everywhere else. Editors tip: Inside Out

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Lifestyle on the Cutting Edge.

skir.at tag_ / Issue #1 / Winter 2011

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WE ARE CHANGE WE ARE FUTURE WE ARE HERE / photos by Toni Tramezzini

In October a house in a boho district in Vienna was occupied for three weeks. In the middle of a highly structured society, this was a try to get a piece of freedom back. A place no one uses anyway. Failed. Again. http://wearechangeaustria.wordpress.com/

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EMPTY PLAYGROUNDS / photos by Jack Huang

Do you remember the times when you went out to meet your friends at the playground? Our friend Jack walked around his hometown Budapest to capture some impressions of spaces dedicated to our children. What he found was stunning. The places were left behind. The question is, where is everyone?

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JOIN THE GAME PARADE / words by Bianca Stockreiter I was always convinced that there are some tasks that couldn’t be fun to do by any chance. At some point we all accepted that putting out the garbage is obligatory and that when your alarm scares you out of bed every morning, it sucks, but well, it is inevitable. Now, what would you say, if I told you that there is a concept in town that provides remedy for our aversions once and for all? How? By adding some sugar to unpleasant tasks. Say hi to the Gamification and find out what it can do for you. Gamification as a term has been buzzing around the web since 2010. Concisely, it means the integration of game principles into everyday life. Admittedly, playing is not all that new. What is new are the contexts of playing: A game becomes a means to an end. It motivates us to do unpleasant routines and tasks. GETTING UP AND THINGS DONE A mobile app called „Mission: Alarm clock“ from the Seoul-based mobile software developer podotree turns the alarm clock into a game. The wake-up time can be set directly in the app and when the alarm sounds, the user has to complete a variety of tasks before the alarm can be switched off. This app will make it impossible for you to snooze or oversleep and ensure that you will always be on time – jackpot! Another savvy tool is „0boxer“. It is an e-mail plug-in that awards Gmail users points for organising their accounts. For example, those who archive their e-mails in an orderly manner and answer them receive points. The more thoroughly and frequently users do this, the more points they are awarded. To fuel ambition, competitions against colleagues and other Gmail users are held. The aim of the game is to become the e-mail king. Hear, hear! (http://www.0boxer.com) ON THE HUNT FOR HIGH SCORES Gamification is a child of the digital age, yet it manages to affect our offline lives in a positive way. Let’s discuss another great and early example of the ongoing Gamification: Foursquare. It was one of the first apps that turned something as simple as your whereabouts into an adventure of collecting points and earning badges. Smartphones were a big promoter for a new ubiquity of games. Mobile games, micro games and casual games are just a few examples of the va-

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42 rious possibilities of killing time the case of upcoming micro boredom. “EpicMix” is a very handy app for the approaching winter season. With „EpicMix“, users can capture and access their vertical feet, the number of days already spent skiing and the very latest weather and snow conditions. By accumulating points and pins by skiing, users get a chance to get to the top of the leader board, or just ahead of friends and family. (http://www. epicmix.com)

Jumping on the bandwagon, Volkswagen Sweden launched their campaign “The Fun Theory”, which became a huge viral hit on the internet. One of their out-of-home implementations was the “Bottle Bank Arcade”, which turned disposing of empty bottles into an arcade game. With every bottle thrown into the bottle bank, people were earning points and the bottle bank became a blinking and sound-making machine. Rumour has it that people went back home to get more empty bottles just to continue playing.

Staying on the sports topic, are you into jogging? Theoretically, I am. Not so much practically. Maybe I should start using “Zombies, Run!” It’s an app that combines online video gaming with jogging. Through running, users can help rebuild a civilisation destroyed by zombies. Players have to enter the starting and finishing points of their routes, which appear in Google Maps, and then receive their mission. They receive instructions and tips via their headphones. While jogging, they have to avoid virtual zombies and collect medicine and other objects. At the end of the run, they can check their progress and see how much of the destroyed civilisation they have managed to rebuild. The longer the player jogs, the more successful he is in the game. Sounds fun, eh? Of course I would first have to outrun my fear of zombies. (http://www.zombiesrungame.com/).

We can see that, almost unnoticed, gaming has sneaked into the source code of the everyday culture. It is becoming a dominant paradigm that affects all generations and all spheres of life!

PRIVATE FUN FOR PUBLIC WELFARE Gamification does not only bring fun and excitement into our private lives, we can even do something good by the way. For instance, the National Library of Finland and the software company Microtask have developed two video games which draw on players‘ help to index old archive material for the internet. The „Digitalkoot“ project invited Finns to help digitalise old newspapers, magazines and books. Words are displayed in Gothic print, which have to be recognised by players as quickly as possible and re-entered in modern Finnish. Each correct entry earns a reward: the word is used to help build a bridge that smoothes the way for the player. What an efficient and proactive way to save cultural heritage! (http://www.digitalkoot. fi/en/splash) BIG GAMES + MORE PARTICIPANTS = EVEN MORE FUN! So called Big Games bring games on the street into the public space and try to involve a large number of participants. To illustrate this concept, let me share with you another example: Deutsche Telekom recently joined forces with the London-based agency Saatchi & Saatchi to launch a marketing campaign for the popular game „Angry Birds“ by bringing the short-tempered birds into the real world, namely, to Plaça Nova in Terrassa, near Barcelona. For this flashmob-style event, a backdrop of Angry Birds was set, together with life-size versions of the figures from the game. Onlookers were encouraged to use their phones as catapults and take aim at the birds and green pigs, which exploded after being hit.

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Just like Mary Poppins puts it:

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way. (listen to it here, I know you want to.) Photo by Monika Kanokova

HAVEÊYOUÊEVERÊTRAVELLEDÊ WITHÊYOURÊSOULMATE?

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A FARMER’S MANUAL OF TYPOGRAPHY / by Maximilian Mauracher

Good typography is invisible. Bad typography is everywhere. But who clarifies what good or bad stands for? Those with little expertise would say: ‚Good typography is everything, that simply looks nice.’ Another undefined word. As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s just impossible to come up with an ultra-overwhelming-and-extremely-convincing explanation of what GOOD typography is. Bad typography can be identified easily: It contains ubiquitous and hackneyed fonts and a poor layout. Just imagine: If you take a look at one of those rather mind-dulling than educational daily newspapers trying out something completely ‚new’ – nobody can promise, that you won’t vomit. Let’s stick to this example: Newspapers want to be suggestive of being modern and innovative, but still emphasize beeing keen on their traditions. The problem: These two aims are contradictory – both can’t be achieved, those in power have to make a decision. Typography doesn’t allow any compromises. It can’t express avantgardism and a close affinity to nature at the same time. Especially companies and brands are affected by that. Global players like McDonald’s wouldn’t open a subsidiary in a small village. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be profitable, but on the other hand it’s clear, that the glaring yellow M would be too striking between trees and farm houses. Typography is a pretty modern way to express a certain message. It has to address the target audience, has to fit in its environment and should be well-wrought, but - please, dear graphic designers not too experimental. Due to this short manual – remember: the exception proves the rule – a traditional restaurant, like it’s existing thousandfold in Austria, should make use of a traditional font like the well-known Times New Roman or another rural one, but definetely with serifs. Put some sophisticated twirls around it and everything’s fine. Old people like traditional restaurants. As they can’t read well anymore, make everything a little bit bigger than normal. Like McDonald’s does to catch at least kids’ attention. Your products are

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organic? Then replace the dot on the “i” with a leaf and everybody will think that you respect the environment as much as your employees wages (honestly: not at all). And don’t forget to color everything bluish, greenish or brownish – everybody loves adventurous color schemes. Without having any source of information for this, It surely can be said, that 75 % of cities around the world use the same font for their “corporate identity”. That’s a real pity because there would be so many typefaces perfectly fitting multicultural cities like New York, Melbourne, London, Cape Town or Beijing. Or think of the national situation: The EU-standardized font ‘TERN’ is – slowly but surely – replacing the ‘Austria’, a font especially created for Austrian road signs, though just a modification of the German one. Those who are responsible for this globalized boredom shouldn’t be that shy. Grab a typeface without serifs, write your text and then think about it once again. The easiest way to make it even more perfect would be to adjust it – not. Drag and drop here and a little bit there, of course, only to attract attention. Who needs regularity – Long live the chaos! There are some fonts that shouldn’t be used under any circumstances, like the Comic Sans. You’re advertising fancy dresses? Awesome. You’d like to inform your staff about the upcoming mass layoff? No way. First, remember, what you want to express with it. Then compare your ideas with other, already existing and successful ideas to make sure to not ape them. That would be senseless, except you’re working on a concept for a shabby motel – then stick to the cheap look of its competitors. Nobody has ever said that typography would be easy. Creating an appealing typography is like cooking a soufflé. It could collapse like a house of cards.

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STREET STYLE PHOTOGRAPHY: IS IT ABOUT GOING OVER THE TOP? / words by Pia Birk What seemed like a little revolution in the fashion world a couple of years ago has become one of the most important sources of style inspiration for fashion minded people. Street style – nowadays, almost every fashion magazine has its own rubric and there are several street style blogs popping up everywhere you click. More and more street style photographers go out on a daily hunt, looking for the most stylish people in the streets of London, New York, Berlin and Paris. It is a trend, which clearly reflects the current emphasis upon individualism. Real people in real outfits, radiating effortless chic, wearing easily accessible fashion – this is how both, photographers and fans, often describe street style.

But these street style images, that we see everywhere in all kinds of magazines and in the World Wide Web, do they still have anything to do with the original idea of street style? Until the Mid-20th Century street style was mostly considered as a type of fashion that was inspired by different subcultures. Rockers, Mods, Punks, Goths, Hippies, Skinheads, Surfers and many other subcultures always used a distinctive style of clothes to draw a line between themselves and the rest of the society. The first magazine that ventured to document the styles of different subcultural tribes in it’s own section was the British fashion magazine “I-D” in 1980. The simple and minimalistic kept images of punks and new wave-kids in the streets of London back then were a strong contrast to fashion editorials in other glossy magazines at that time. When a couple of magazines followed I-D’s lead with bringing in similar rubrics, the street style trend was born.

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With Vogue, Elle and Jalouse jumping on the band waggon by producing their own street style sections about ten years later, the phenomena of street fashion became a mainstream idea of fashion journalism. People started to steal styling ideas from the featured images and suddenly, clothes were worn without any reference to their original subcultural meaning. It seems that in this process of commercialisation the primary idea of street style got lost and with it any kind of authenticity. When you flick through photographs of today’s most famous street style blogs, you will find quite similar images. The typical image displays a young girl wearing a white fur, a snakeskin skirt, six-inch heels and a tiny clutch – you know, the most practical outfit for a day in the streets. What makes the whole look a little more “real” and what gives it the urban atmosphere, is the takeaway coffee or the daily newspaper in her hand; and when there is neither a newspaper nor a coffee the photographer simply places her in front of the next graffiti wall or the next park to express the genuine street feeling. And there we go: another perfect street style photo, which might inspire thousands of style seeking people, has been created. If you want to get snapped by Scott Schuhman, Tommy Ton, Yvan Rodic or any other of the legendary street style photographers, there are a few rules you should follow; Well, besides the heels, the animal print and the fur, every piece of jewellery increases the chance to catch a photographer’s attention. Furthermore, you should never forget to add at least one designer and one vintage piece to your outfit! But to be honest, there is only one rule, that’s actually really important: The one and only way to get noticed is to go over the top! So break all the fashion rules you’ve ever heard of and mix up all the trends

you can think of. Combine all kinds of colours, patterns and fabrics! The only fashion ‘No-Go’ nowadays seems to be looking identical to others. The wannabe style icons that are dying to get photographed, know these rules by heart. The street became their catwalk, but not necessarily in a good way. The unselfconsciousness and the naturalness that once made street fashion so interesting, so fresh and therefore so authentic, seems to be totally gone. Finally, what’s disturbing about those images is that street style photographers create a more and more wrong picture of what is really happening in the streets. They simulate to show the “fashion from below” that is completely free from any dictates of the fashion world.

But honestly - doesn’t the imperative of constantly having to stand out from the crowd make the whole street style thing absolutely contrived? Do we really want those type of street style photographs become the defining fashion image of our decade? Street style is a good thing but it seems that it has gone way too far. In order to save the original idea of street style, it would just take a few good photographers to go back to the actual streets and take photos of the kids strolling around who are inspired by underground musicians, the girls in the fifties look or the grandpa in the yellow suit which he has owned for 50 years. Ordinary people with their individual look - interesting, unique sometimes quirky but always authentic - that’s street style! Photo by Kent Jeffrey

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BOAT LIFE IN LONDON / by Aurelia Seidlhofer A life closer to nature and a more sustainable and less carbon-greedy lifestyle draws many people to a life afloat. In a notoriously expensive city like London, the lower living costs and an escape from the bustling city life are an attractive alternative to expensive flats. But despite the romantic notion of gently rocking on the waves, life on a boat can be quite difficult and without a genuine love for the water it’s hard to put up with the inconveniences. David, Annie and Ceilidh are happy with their address being Boat Luna in Deptford Creek, a tribute stream to the Thames in London. Their home consists of two boats: Luna, a 65 year-old former coal and dry goods carrier, which was converted by David to a 4 bedroom houseboat with one big living room with a kitchen and Humbug, a small boat at Luna’s side, which works as Ceilidh’s bedroom. They work in London and have a permanent mooring license for the small community of boat-owners in Deptford Creek. The boat is reached by a long ladder from the docks and entered via a small door that leads to a platform with a fireplace inside the boat. The living room in Luna’s steel stomach is reached by another ladder. “Living on a boat definitely keeps you fit.” says Ceilidh about the daily climbing exercise. It also exposes you much more to nature, the seasons and the weather, “The winters can be quite hard. Heating the common room in Luna would be like trying to heat the Thames. Unless you put isolation all over, you just have to put on an extra jumper” David tells me as he shows me around their living room. The bedrooms are thickly isolated and heated by little electrical generators. In their common room they gather around the fireplace when it get’s chilly. But there are many advantages to living on a boat as well. Annie, who used to share an apartment with a friend decided that “this kind of lifestyle was just not her’s. It’s a very small community, a very small world of people living on boats. It’s almost like if you can’t live on land, you live on the water. “ David likes the idea of efficiency on a boat. Despite having little more experience than putting up a few IKEA shelves he decided to build a house boat one year and half ago. “I don’t like the idea of ‘green’, it is more the idea of being very efficient and totally independent that appeals to me.” He plans on installing solar panels on Luna at some point and he’d also like to imagine a floating garden to grow his own vegetables.

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Boat Owners feel different about their homes than house or flat owners. David “literally sweated blood and tears for this boat” and “could never give up Luna after all they’ve been through”. There is also always the “Boat-Owner-Worry” a term coined by the boat-community. “You don’t want to leave your boat for too long. It could sink or drift down the river while you’re away” says Ceilidh. Long vacations are not really an option –unless it is with the boat, which is another nice extra to being a Houseboat-Owner. There are 4,000 miles of waterways to explore in the UK. Some business men even use their boat to go to City Airport, a much shorter journey on the water than in traffic.

I don’t like the idea of ‘green’, it is more the idea of being very efficient and totally independent that appeals to me Boats also require a lot of repairing and maintaining, which is usually the owner’s responsibility. Basics like the sewage system and electricity have to be organised as well as modern conveniences like a phone connection and Internet, which comes down on a rope in Luna’s case. For Ceilidh it took some time to settle in after she bought Humbug about a year ago: “I had to get used to the noises, movements and to the limited space in my boat”, she recalls. The Tide of the Thames comes in every 13-14 hours, raising the boats up 3 to 4 meters and leaving it on the ground as the creek empties. This means that the boat starts to come afloat in the middle of the night. Right now she likes living on her boat and is even thinking about taking it to travel somewhere during the summer but she’s not sure if she wants to keep up that lifestyle forever. “It is definitely not a holiday to live on a boat”. The Mooring is at 130 pounds a month for a small boat very affordable for London and as boats are usually a lot smaller than houses electricity and water bills are usually moderate. The city can be reached via the DLR (an over-ground train in London) in 7 minutes. Boats on the banks of the Thames are even closer to the city centre. But be aware, as demand has always outstripped demand and mooring licenses are quite difficult to get.

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/ What about the future - Vienna

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THE POP-UP STORES PHENOMENON / words by Monika Kanokova

Already in 2004 trendwatching.com announced temporary retail stores called as a trending happening. What was sort of underground in 2004, became mainstream around 2009, when the big-name retailers started to experiment with this phenomenon. Maybelline, The Gap and H&M are just a few to name. While the original aim of pop-up stores was to fill up empty retail spaces in high priced locations to eg. keep up the property value and make the rest of the building look good for potential tennants, in 2011 pop-up stores became common for sample sales or to test product lines and new target markets. In the end it’s the best possible way to market products and real estates simultaneously. The phenomen of the popping business model is a combination of event marketing and retail. Coming to town for a few days or maybe weeks, offering hard to find or strictly limited products adds a certain magic to temporary retail models. Pop-up stores are well known for offering a selection of diverse products, ranging between established brands and emerging designers. It’s no wonder that crowds of young people are coming from far away. The popularity of temporary retail seems to come from the profound need to own unique pieces not every other random person is wearing in the streets. The surprising element, accompanied by performances, and a guarantee of exclusivity within a limited timespan attracts people around the world. In this manner it’s a good way for young entrepreneurs to try out, if a business model has got enough potential, due to there is no need for long term leases and it also requires less startup fund. The Viennese mass jeans company “Gebrüder Stitch” started their business with a temporary “Beta-Store” to test, if there is enough potential for rather expensive jeans in a world where we’re used to get denim pairs for around 50 Euros. For other businessmen and –women, it’s not only about testing out business models, but also a great model to live one’s life. Its nomadic approach enables its curators to travel around the world to buy the most unusual pieces to offer something new and unexpected. Sophie Pollak, the curator of We.Bandits opens the door to her temporary happenings every four to eight weeks just for a few hours, which gives her the freedom to act as buyer and seller on her chosen rhythm. Furthermore online stores may use the pop-up model to convince potential customers about the quality of offered merchandise by giving a tactile experience every now and then. To sum it up; there are a few good reasons for setting up a pop-up store. First to spread the word (of mouth) and show off what’s hidden in the dusty storage rooms, to make a big clearance of things in one go, to test new markets and finally, to vet a new business idea. For the big ones, it’s more about the brand awareness, engagement and making an impact by offering the consumer something that adds value in some form. Photos by Mikaela Koeb

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/ Guerilla bakery - Vienna

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/ Guerilla bakery - Vienna

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/ Topshop - Stockholm

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/ Sneakerness - Vienna

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/ Feschmarkt - Vienna

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SALON DE LA RUE / by Gilbert Schibranji Watching artists create art is an exciting experience - always. When Vienna‘s first art gallery for street art INOPERABLE - invited the belgian Graffiti-Wunderkind ROA to ‘spray some of his talent’ on the streets of Vienna - ‘the streets’ got excited. Spread only by the word of mouth the adolescent street art avant-garde gathered instantly to watch ROA do his thing in the quiet and easy corners of the Viennese Naschmarkt on a Sunday morning.

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FOOD AND THE CITY: THE FOOD PRINT PROJECT / interview by Carmen Rueter The Foodprint Project is a series of events exploring the ways food and cities give shape to one another. It’s founded by the U.S.-based urbanists Sarah Rich and Nicola Twilley. Find out more in the following interview between Carmen Rüter and Nicola Twilley.

When did you establish the Foodprint Festival and what was your inspiration? Nicola Twilley: Sarah and I co-founded the Foodprint Project in January 2010. I write a blog called Edible Geography, which looks at landscape, the built environment, and culture through the lens of food. For my New Year’s resolution at the start of 2010, I decided that I wanted to explore some of the kinds of things I write about online in a live, place-specific conversation. I also just wanted the opportunity to collaborate with Sarah, who I knew from her work at Inhabitat, WorldChanging, and Dwell — and fortunately for me, she agreed!

What were the next steps?

Nicola Twilley: We have since put together three events, exploring the relationship between food and the city in New York, Toronto, and Denver. As much as I love writing about these kinds of ideas on my blog, there’s something incredibly exciting about gathering people together who all work with food and the city, but from very different perspectives, and getting them into a conversation with each other and with a live audience who have all sorts of questions I would never have thought of myself.

Looking at current trends in the city, it`s obvious that there´s a constantly growing interest in food projects. Where do you think, does that interest – from the consumer`s and from the producer`s side – come from? Nicola Twilley: There is very definitely a growing interest in food in contemporary culture. I think it comes from a lot of different forces: for some people, it’s an environmental interest, and a concern with sustainability; for others, it’s a part of a larger movement towards making things by hand and reclaiming artisanal skills that were vanishing in mass consumer culture; for still others, it’s a health question, motivated by concern over rising obesity and diabetes rates. Because food is part of everyone’s daily life, it’s a great way in to talk about these larger issues — the environmental problems of

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monoculture and globalized food chains, the economic importance of small-scale manufacturing in the city, the cultural values and knowledge that are embedded in certain skills, and that would be lost if we stopped making jam or pickles or whisky in traditional ways, and so on. Approaching systemic issues from the point of view of food is more accessible and a lot more fun.

From your opinion: What makes up the relation between food and the city and how do they shape each other?

Nicola Twilley: If we had a short answer to this question, we wouldn’t need to hold any events! I think that at every Foodprint Project conversation so far, we’ve discovered new forces and factors that shape the relationship between food and the city, and new ways in which they shape each other — and, of course, each place brings its own unique physical and cultural variations. At our events, we’ve learned how zoning laws shape what food is available where, but also, for example, how fast food restaurant density is correlated to race, rather than income, and how the spread of cupcake shops can be mapped as a leading indicator of gentrification. We’ve also talked about the spatial legacy of historical food practices on the city — for example, the Meatpacking District in New York, which was left empty following the introduction of refrigerated transportation and thus became an attractive neighborhood for artists, and now is one of the most fashionable and expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan — and we’ve speculated on how future food technologies, such as 3D printing or lab grown meat, will once again change the shape of the city, redesigning everything from kitchens to retail infrastructure. In the end, we think these conversations are important because if we can understand some of the ways that food is shaped by and can shape space, perhaps we can use food consciously as a design tool to improve our cities, and, vice versa, use urban planning as a design tool to improve our food system in the future.

For further information visit the project`s web-site: http://www.foodprintproject. com/

Photo by Carmen Rueter

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BITTER SALAD HELPING THE WORLD TO BE A BETTER PLACE? / by Marah Koeberle While Guerrilla Gardening is on everyone’s lips, its not-so-stylish kinsman, urban agriculture, is slowly coming into the limelight. If you ask Paul, active urban gardener from Berlin, about his motivation, he’ll share his vision of not being dependable on industrially grown vegetables any more, as well as his ‘social’ intention: to get to know new people and to learn about plants, soil and environment in the community garden. Urban Agriculture is a practice that dates at least to the 19th century, mostly in the United States. Introduced to the scientific world in the 1960’s, then taken on and promoted by the United Nations System in the 1990’s, the topic became especially popular with the increased economic difficulties in the last couple of years. Urban Agriculture has become stylish, media coverage can’t only be found in the home and garden section of magazines and newspapers, but also in the fashion and lifestyle sections. Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden at the ground of the White House can be seen as the tip of the iceberg of this trend. While this observation primarily applies to the developed world, urban agriculture often plays a different role in developing countries: as the western world has already left behind the peak of urbanization, many developing countries face rapid urbanization that doesn’t allow planned growth and infrastructural development. Scientists anticipate that by 2025 the world’s urban population will have reached about 5.5 billion, 80% of which will live in urban areas of the developing world. Prognosis of that ilk illustrates the pressing need for concepts and approaches. While the urban farmers in both developed and developing countries face problems like contaminated soil and water, urban agriculture can provide solutions to a multitude of problems cities are facing, like unem-

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ployment of people mainly emigrated from rural areas, organic waste disposal, food security, climate change and the lack of recreational space. More and more specialists therefore urge city planners to consider urban agriculture as savior of urban development. Although Paul expresses his feeling to belong as urban gardener ‘somehow’ to a growing urban movement, he is not aware of this beneficial side of his cool green hobby. In fact he is facing problems of a different cast: his pest-plant-like growing salad, first celebrated as a success of his emerging gardening skills, turned out to be of an inconveniently bitter sort.

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DINE WITH STRANGERS / words by Monika Kanokova Last summer Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara of Kollectiv Stadtpark were touring Austria and Liechtenstein with their project “Mobile Gastfreundschaft”. The Mobile Gastfreundschaft, which is German for mobile hospitality, comprises a kitchen unit with sink and gas hob, a sideboard and a long foldable table with ten stools – and of course two enthusiasts driving this project. Kollectiv Stadtpark is a design studio paying attention to an important aspect of modern urban living by raising self initiative in public spaces, which are places that don’t belong to anyone in particular but at the same time belongs to all of us. Due to the fact that normally everyone’s responsibility stops at his own fence, Kollectiv Stadtpark are taking the responsibility on right there – serving food to strangers and trying to make friends. They encourage people randomly passing by to be more open towards each other. It’s all about having fun and sharing it, as Maciej says. The project, supported by Art Design Feldkirch and Tschabrun Wood, was a full success. If you’re interested in buying the mobile kitchen to experience a new way of dining, contact the designers, as the good piece is up for sale! Photos by Kollectiv Stadtpark

/ Bregenz

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/ Feldkirch

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/ Feldkirch

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/ Feldkirch

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VISIBLE CARBON FOOTPRINT / by Martina Mahdavi

This project provides visual feedback to people who would like to reduce their carbon footprint. Normally, people do not receive feedback for such efforts, neither short-term, nor long-term. The idea of the project is as follows: The project participants receive, against a deposit, a GPS device for one month. During this period, paths traveled by each participant are recorded. Such paths can be visualized in terms of a pattern. The pattern can be then printed on T-shirts. In this way, a visible representation of participantsÂ´ actions and decisions is created. It is the participantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responsibility to switch on the GPS device, whenever he/she leaves a place. In case there is no change of location for 10 minutes, the device turns off itself automatically in order to extend the battery life. The GPS device should be turned on, only when covering a distance does not result in carbon dioxide emissions (e.g., when walking or riding a bicycle). Distances traveled using a vehicle that emits carbon dioxide (e.g., cars, street-trams, and motorbikes) shall not be counted. Leaving this responsibility to participants is a didactic method. Each time the GPS-carrier needs to go from point A to point B, he/she will have to decide which medium to choose. This is the point, where the participant has to make a decision for or against producing carbon dioxide. A resulting dense pattern could signal the participantsÂ´ ecological awareness. This project is intended to encourage a learning process for people age 10 to 100. It can be used in many settings, e.g. in schools, urban initiatives, or commercial scenarios.

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CONTRIBUTORS Thanks to all who contributed to the pages of tag_

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Pia Birk Vienna http://www.frock-and-roll.com

Jack Huang Budapest http://jackhuang.tumblr.com

Kent Jeffrey Frankfurt http://www.dudes-and-chicks.com

Monika Kanokova Utrecht http://www.kathmography.com

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Mika Koeb Stockholm http://www.headandheels.com

Marah Koeberle Augsburg

Martina Mahdavi Vienna http://mmworkbook.wordpress.com

Maximilian Mauracher Breitenbach http://afraidofus.blogspot.com

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Carmen Rueter Vienna http://www.carmenrueter.com

A. Rosinke & M. Chmara Vienna http://kollectivstadtpark.blogspot.com

Gilbert Schibranji New York http://www.schibranji.com

Aurelia Seidlhofer London http://smartfashioned.wordpress.com

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Bianca Stockreiter Vienna

Toni Tramezzini Vienna http://www.tonitramezzini.com

Stefan Urschler Graz http://www.stylishkidsinriot.com

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A MAGAZINE ON URBAN ISSUES

CO MI NG OU T ON : issuu.com/kath

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