retriever and bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways and practices
According to the Macmillan Dictionary, a kitchen is a room where you prepare and cook food, and wash dishes. The role and meaning of kitchens around the world is more varied and complex than this definition would have one believe, however. Ordering space through design is a key way in which diverse meanings are ascribed to nominally similar space. Design defines what a space is and isn’t, and who is…
I spent two and a half months working alongside various initiatives that were part of a larger Transition Brasilândia network while in São Paulo, Brazil. Brasilândia is located in the North East of the city, and a 2 hour and multiple bus ride away from the centre of São Paulo. It is also the only Transition Initative located in a low-income neighbourhood. These 25 images exemplify some of the amazing…
-Rosemary likes sunshine, so we planted it over there where it’ll get lots of it- Interwoven with observations about where the sun rises and sets, -it rises on that side and sets on that other one- an explorations of smells: of soil, of compost, -compost contains dung from a cow or a horse- The fear from knowing that compost is horse’s faeces goes away when the neighbourhood gardener asks, -well…
What is Brasilândia? A many layered thing- literally.A mix of textures, colours, sounds, “lá tudo nublado, aqui tudo colorido” as my host sister put it, The day she took me on a walk Through her colourful neighbourhood.A slice of life all in one short street.Where the church and local pub vie for customers, And airspace- And the tousle keeps you up on a Saturday night-It’s a many flavoured thing: here…
“So how should a city’s waste management options be designed? Labels such as those of UCT’s campus receptacles and Hoan Kiem Lake’s bins would communicate the importance of both recycling and reducing one’s waste. The placement of these ideal designed options would consider where disposer traffic was likely to be highest and what waste would be generated based on activities occurring. The ideal design would also be replicated through a…
“Urban areas concentrate not only economic and social production, but also waste production. Waste that is often addressed at the end of a long chain of actors- manufacturers, retailers, consumers, disposers, municipal councils, collectors, recyclers. And thus waste’s final destination and the impacts of the same are made invisible. The problem of what to do with waste is externalised by actors along the chain of waste production, an externalisation aided…
In front of the Museo do Afrobrasil in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, there is a five tier coloured recycling receptacle with a choice of glass (green), paper (blue), metals (yellow), plastics (red), and organics (brown) bins. The letters of some of the labels have peeled off due to age or wear leaving users to their own imagination, or the guidance of the drawings that are part of the label. The…
Read the English version here A Issa mora em Granja Viana e é uma das representantes do Transition Granja Viana. Ela acha que a feira de troca é o mais grande sucesso do grupo Transition. Ela me contou isso quando estávamos dirigindo pra casa dela num sábado para aproveitar este evento, nomeado Eco Feira, bem cedo na amanhã do domingo. Granja Viana faz parte do metropolitano de São Paulo na…
Banco do Brasil’s messengers carry their missives in these yellow cotton bags marked with the bank’s black logo. When they get old and/or sufficiently dirty, the bank donates them to the women’s group O Grupo Brasilianas that uses recycled material to make bags. These yellow oddly sized bags provide the material for some of the chicest bags these women make. The bags are received every month and are first dismantled…
I arrived in Mexico City about a week ago and I am still settling in. I am staying in an art studio that one of the founders of the place I will be working in: Centro de Artes y Oficios Escuelita Emiliano Zapata, graciously allowed me to stay in (and for free yay!) I am living alone however and not with a family as I did in São Paulo. That…