This Wednesday concluded the Open Lecture Series for this semester, with CJ Lim coming to talk about his and Ed Liu's book Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-Warriors.
Poster for the lecture
This lecture was a fantastic insight into CJ Lim's work and the notion of the smartcity, of which I had little knowledge before. Not only did the topics and the projects which he spoke about resonate with some of the architectural issues which interest me in general, they also related with my project work, as is demonstrated by the definition of a smartcity below:
Smartcity (noun): "The establishment of ecological symbiosis between nature and built form to cultivate urban agriculture and food production."
This balance between built form and nature, and the goal of cultivating urban food production is a large part of the essence of my project. On a related note, CJ Lim also spoke about how food is a shared experience, another theme which is key to my project.
Speaking about nature, Lim noted that as architects, we can create the architecture and the planting, and then further nature beyond our control, including animals, will come and be the 'added value' to the site. Related to this, Lim explained that with many of the projects that he was presenting, they would start off controlled and within a framework, but he knows and welcomes that things will become less regimented over time, as "humans and nature bring the nuance". This demonstrates that these project very much deal with change over time, another issue so central to my project.
"Gardening is an ongoing gradual act, it evokes tomorrow, it is essentially forward looking, it invites plans and ambitions, creativity, and expectation" ––– Carolyn Steel
It feels very fortunate that this lecture occurred when it did, as it means that I have reached a point where I have researched around these themes and have ideas in development to a stage where I gained a lot out of the lecture, without it being too late to benefit from this new large resource of precedents and ideas in terms of inputting into my own work.
As I found the lecture content to be so insightful and compelling, I decided to purchase a copy of the Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-Warriors book, which he was selling at the end of the talk. I got to exchange a few words with him and briefly discuss my project, and he encouraged me to pursue the use of bamboo as a site-grown material within a programme of urban food production. I am now looking forward to dedicating the time to reading the book to find out more about the topic and the precedents which he introduced, and seeing how it will shape my project.
コメント