Dalston Mill

Dalston Mill - 2009 © Exyzt collective

Passing the threshold of the Mill provokes an instant sense of peace and loss of urban time (click for photos).
It was built by Exyzt to re-stage Agnes Denes's Weatfield and was shown as part of Radical nature at the Barbican centre.  
The Mill is a busy hive for the people of Dalston : a DJ passes-by to use the sound system, a designer cycled with her mobile kitchen to help baking cakes, pizzas are being cooked by Exyzt's architects and parents chill out on Southwark Lido deck chairs while their children run up and down the garden's alleys. 
Hidden from the city's surveillance, the Mill is a shelter against the noise and pollution of Dalston junction, reclaiming the land has common space. 

© Analucia Feracci

It isn't an escapist hideout but an invitation to make things happen : a city within the city, with bakery, workshops, bar, sound system and its own currency, the Dalston slice, baked and traded for goods and services to link with local traders - an experiment by the Collaborators guide.
The Mill is hanted by the reggae scene of the Four Aces Club from the 60's, now demolished by promoters, a context which reinforces the need for a social hang-out.

 


© Exyzt collective flickr

The Mill is made of a succession of scafoldings to mirror the building site opposite its entrance. The an-architectural form has turned into a living space with tents and showers for the architects of Exyzt.
The site exists above a disused train track : a line of gravel delimits the area that belongs to the City Council while the wheatfield draws the part that belongs to the owner of the adjacent superstore. Sandwiched between abandoned buildings and a car park, that space is yet too narrow to attract developers.


© Exyzt collective flickr

The Mill also functions in an organic manner : the turbines produce electricity for the bar/ sound system, distributing wind energy in a stable manner, bringing nothing between the natural source of energy and the process of grinding. Like Tibo from Exyzt points out 'no need to use solar panels on a house roof if we use hot running water pipes - why rely on electricity always ?'.
In the context of Radical Nature, which explores the relationships between man and the environment, the Mill gives local people a temporary autonomous space to celebrate human interaction and urban life. 


Thanks to Tibo Labat and Nicolas Henninger

Spaceship Earth and the designer Guru

© Buckminster Fuller Institute / Director unknown

Buckminster Fuller meets the Hippies is a rare footage showing the architect in conversation with a group of Hippies from the west coast. It was projected at the Barbican centre as Part of Radical Nature thanks to Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow's Thoughts Today. 
The film which refers to design, geodesic structures or spatial agency becomes an insightful and captivating journey about metaphysics and the purpose of man on earth.




















Dome over Manahattan - 1960 © Buckminster Fuller Institute/ Shoji Sadao

The assumption that we are on earth not to consume but to learn becomes in Buckminster's fashion the vision that humans are astronauts and earth the spaceship; technologies are tools to drive the spaceship and not instruments of fear.


Drop city

LA Dome village - 1994 © Dome village/ photo © Craig Chamberlain © Ronda Flanzbaum

His faith in (utopian) technology is celebrated with the geodesic domes that can be erected as high as needed : lightweight and low cost, they are put to the test by the hippie commune of Drop city. 
The geodesic dome will then inspire the radical LA Dome village which shelters homeless people.

Counter communities - 2003 © Croy & Elser

A second footage, Counter communities by Croy & Elser which exemplifies the influence of utopian architecture with more counter-cultural experiments - Arcosanti, Nader khalili's earth shelters -, mostly concentrates on Michael Reynolds's earthships. 
Challenged by the californian building legislation, Reynolds brings the concept of his earthships (build in situ from recycled, natural, local material) to tsunami's inflected areas in India, to show locals how to erect emergency shelters.


Once upon an island : utopian cowboys, guru astronauts ...

Beezome

Beezome - 2008 © Analucia Feracci - plant based pigments, sourdough starter, fur, wooden sticks, Epping Forest clay @ The Hornbeam Permaculture centre/ wall installation dedicated to Organiclea

Beezome shows underground threads linking independent communities in East London. 
It works as a mind mapping system of Temporary spaces and Pirate Autonomous Zones(TAZ/PAZ) in this specific area of London.
It visually highlights a rich and detailed network of people, from Permaculture activists to unschooling families, and how underground communities exchange skills creatively, in a non hierarchically manner. 
It also works as metaphor for the bee pollinating the flower : a bee that drinks the nectar of the flower is no longer a bee but 'a bee-becoming-flower', while the flower in return, by disgesting a system of vital information, becomes the bee.