1. OLD OBJECTS
NEW SPACES
By ARCHIVIE team
15 November 2011

2. WE LIVE IN A WORLD FULL OF PROBLEMS...

3. PROBLEMS ON A GLOBAL LEVEL...

4. That began 200 years ago with the industrial revolution
When machineries replaced human labor and fossil fuels became our
main production source
This made us able to produce more … And be able to easily
in a shorter amount of time satisfy our daily needs
Which had a major effect on human population growth, resource
consumption and waste production

5. How big are these effects on our planet’s scale???
Human consumption has doubled in the The average American produces about 2kg of
last 30 years and continues waste a day, 13 kg a week and 726 kg a year.
to accelerate with 1.5 percent per year.
Each year in the European Union
Between 1990 and 1995, the alone we throw away 1.3 billion
amount of tones of waste. This amounts to
waste generated in Europe about 3.5 tones of solid waste for
increased by 10% every man, woman and child.
1 billion people in 1804
6 billion people in 1999 In the past three decades 1/3 of
7 billion people in 2010 the planet’s resources has been
And with a growth of consumed.
75 million people/year
we will reach
9 billion people by 2046 Humanity ecological footprint has
increased to 125% of global carrying
capacity and could rise to 170% by 2040.
Sources: the United Nations, Population Division; the World Wildlife Fund (WWF); the Environmental Protection Agency;
European Commission focus on waste management; Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism

6. We produce a lot of waste…but how much we recycle?
We recycle over half of our aluminum. Making a new aluminum
can out of an old one saves of the energy used to make the can
from bauxite ore. It also prevents nearly all the industrial waste and
pollution caused by mining new ore. New cans are back in the store
in as little as 6 weeks.
We recycle about 38% of all paper. Paper fibers can be recycled
several times before they become too weak and must be discarded.
Using recycled paper to make new paper saves much of the energy
and resources consumed by making paper from logs.
We recycle about 20% of our glass. Making recycled glass uses less
energy and makes less than making new glass because crushed
recycled glass melts at a lower temperature than the virgin
components of glass.
We recycle only 5% of all plastic, but 45% of the type of plastic
used to make soda bottles. Although some plastics look alike, they
can be made of different ingredients. They must be carefully
separated because one small piece of one kind can ruin a whole
truckload of another kind.
Recycling won't solve all our garbage problems. Reducing our
consumption is still the best option.
The rotten truth website: http://www.astc.org/exhibitions/rotten/howmuch.htm

7. PROBLEMS ON THE COMMUNITY LEVEL...

8. Our needs are satisfied within different types of buildings…

9. Our daily schedule is spent inside different buildings…
Our destination is always a building…

10. And what happens between?
We are so hurried to reach our destination that:
We don’t know who are our neighbours anymore.
We don’t have time to spend with our families.
We forgot about the planet we live in.
We know just how to move and we forgot the joy of life.
Between our departing point and our destination we see the
same landscape everyday, so we don’t stop anymore…we
just pass by.

11. HOW CAN WE CUT THIS CHAIN
AND MAKE PEOPLE STOP FOR A WHILE?

12. By attracting their attention…
towards the public space

13. A public space that can change it’s appearance
when people want it
WHO WILL START THIS?
An artist/craftman who knows how to give SCULPTURES
a new life to apparently useless obects URBAN FURNITURE
TRASH
DECORATION OBJECTS
GARBAGE RECYCLING REUSE
INVENTIONS
USED OBJECTS
TOYS AND GAMES FOR
HOW? By helding lectures,
public debates, workshops, THE CHILDREN
expositions, demonstrations...
WHEN? During the weekends,
in the afternoon or evening
TO WHOM? To all the
interested persons
(inhabitants of a
neighbourhood,
passers-by or tourists)

14. Who is involved in this change and how?
•By interacting with the inhabitants
•By collecting their waste and old and knowing their thoughts and
objects needs
•By providing the authorizations •By mediating the relationship
•By sharing tools and objects with
the community needed to allow the activities inhabitants – local authorities
happen in the public space
•By participating in the workshops
•By promoting the events
•By creating new objects
•By organizing competitions between
the neighbourhoods
NGO’S
INHABITANTS LOCAL
AUTHORITIES
ARTISTS
•By holding exhibitions in the SPONSORS
neighbourhood’s public space
•By coordinating free recycling
workshops in the neighbourhood
•By coordinating debates about new
ways of recycling/reuse our trash •By donating tools and materials
necessary for this workshop
•By promoting the events

15. What could go wrong? And possible sollutions...
- The authorities can refuse our project. This would mean that we have to reformulate
the project and make it more appealing to the authorities. Explaining the benefits this
project could bring to the city: local publicity in the papers and local radio stations,
less money spent on garbage collectors, less money spent to arrange the spaces near
the buildings and also a low maintenance cost.
- The artist can refuse our proposal because he doesn’t have the time to work for
free. We can explain him the indirect benefits he would have after this project: more
people will know his work, more people will be aware of the benefits of buying a
recycled object and more people will visit his work place in search of “new releases”.
- The people can dislike the idea of using their waste or find it dirty. This can be
prevented by having meetings with them and presenting/explaining how will be done,
giving them real examples of recycled objects that artists make and that are neither
dirty nor ugly.
- The inhabitants may not have the time to attend the discussions, workshops, etc.
We can inform them by email or by a little brochure what happened that month in
their neighbourhood and what are the future events. The idea is not to have all the
people to the workshops, but to have a constant number of participants in all the
events.
- The neighbours may argue about the quality/beauty/solidity of a created object.
The solution is understanding and equity… and we must not forget that recycled
objects don’t have a long life, so we must be understanding and give people the
chance to express themselves and their creativity.

16. ? HOW WILL WE DO THIS ?

17. WE PUT A BOX ON A BIKE…

18. WE FILL THE BOX WITH TOOLS AND MATERIALS…
Possible MATERIALS: glue, paint, nails, rope, cables, tapes etc.
and TOOLS: saws, drill presses, hammers etc.

19. AND WE WILL HAVE… A “COMMUNITY” BOX
MOBILE, SUSTAINABLE (NO ENERGY CONSUMPTION, NO CO2 EMISSIONS,
REUSED MATERIALS – WOOD, IRON ETC.), HUMAN POWERED, LIGHT
WEIGHT, RELATIVELY FAST, INDEPENDENT OF TRAFFIC JAMS

20. A “COMMUNITY” BOX THAT
CAN GO WHEREVER YOU NEED IT

21. OUR PURPOSE IS A BIG ONE, SO
A “COMMUNITY” BOX THAT
CAN GO WHENEVER YOU NEED IT

22. What will people experience by participating to these
activities?
The FUN of spending free time with family and friends.
The joy of CREATING an object with one’s own hands.
The sense of PRESERVING our environment.
The pleasure of WORKING together.
The act of DISCOVERING news ways of recycling.
The benefits of informal LEARNING.
A new way of VOLUNTEERING and creating a social network.

23. What are the long therm benefits?
-a cleaner planet and a better environment to live
-a new type of urban space where the community decides the activities and
the arrangements they can have
-good publicity for the city, in terms of tourism
-a better development of the city, focused on an ecological approach
-new investors that want to invest in the city/neighbourhood because of its
ecological view

24. LET’S BE IMAGINATIVE
AND
START CREATING OUR PUBLIC SPACES
LIKE WE DO WITH OUR PRIVATE ONES
!!!
THANK YOU FOR WATCHING!