Urban Ecology - making the living city
Within the Urban Ecology pilot we, the T-factor team of Make, explore the different ways in which we can renew our relationship to nature in the urban context of the Amterdam Science Park.
Starting with the theme of the ‘ecological niche’ we will explore, inquire and experience the different ways in which specific species interact with their environmental conditions and resources - and the ways in which their behavior, response-ability and intra-action shape these niches in return.
In doing so we - artist, researchers, neighbors and visitors - together with the non-human, non/living world will come to a collaborative counter mapping, noticing and cartographing practice that bring together a multi-voiced perspective of the locality of the Amsterdam Science Park.
With the aim to bring forth (and amplify) the (meanwhile) uses already present in this area.
~ A storytelling by listing-in ~
Role: Local Coalitions Lead & Concept developer
With team: Floortje Vermeer, Chris Julien, Tanja, Thieu, Tonya, Miha, Lucas, Lotte
For: Waag
Transforming cities in uncertain times
The Amsterdam Science Park has undergone vast developments over the last decennia. Going from water, to polder, to farmland - all for the needs of the human animals living on site. From the perspective of the Masterplan, you could say that the area - now home to a lively science, education and innovation community - is almost coming to completion. But when is an area ever finished anyway? Aren’t we all always living in a certain form of meanwhile? Leaking from one developmental area into the next?
T-factor
The T-factor project, finds its origin in the call for cities to become more adept to changes of uncertain nature. The extreme weather events, coming with our current climate catastrophe, the loss of biodiversity and extreme health hazards - such as the recent pandemic - all demonstrate that we should reconsider how, with whom, under what conditions and through what way of ‘being-in-relation’ we want to live in. We are all of equal stuff. And if we want to keep on living in this world of mutual dependencies we have to start to build relationships of attunement and care.
Meanwhile
The ‘meanwhile’ - as a placemaking term - provides potential breeding ground for experimentation with these new forms of city-ing. Within the context of the formal masterplan the meanwhile can described as the time and place that lies between the drawing up of the masterplan - until completion. A development area and planning exersize that usually takes multiple decennia to complete. And you could argue that it is prececely this unfinished state of such an area that opens it up for temporal, meanwhile experimentation on site.
Urban Ecology in the meanwhile of the Science Park
Within the Urban Ecology pilot we view the city as a living space. A dynamic system wherein a multitude of entities, materials and flows are constantly working and re-working each other, being made, and unmade. The UEL underscores that within this complex web of social-ecological networks it is of vital importance to take a humble approach to 'getting-to-know-what's-there' so that we can start to include the plural perspectives of more-than-humans, materials, histories and future generations in our (re)making of this world.
In doing so the Urban ecology pilot functions as a situated lab ~ in practice ~, which starts from the our engagement with the physical world and field and uses of noticing to expose and amplify the perspectives, suppositions, values and troubles of human and more-than-human life.
image by florian Geerken
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Update - 2021/2022
Having completed a year of inquiry, research, ideation and co-creation with the local communities on site we are now ready to further develop activities, interventions and practices on site. Mainly focussing on Do it together Eco-practices.
With eco-practices we mean our growing instrumentarium of methodologies, tools, methods and principles that we use within the local contexts. These are actions, preferable developed though co-creative processes that are 1. situated - taking place in the field, 2. open-ended and process-based - allowing for alteration, 3. community centered and 4. embodied - meaning that you are invited to use your hands, body and senses in this form learning and making by doing. All with the 5. aim to first explore, then rethink and finally to renew the relationship between organisms, amongst themselves, and with the physical environment. Where it is important to note that eco, here is meant as short for ecology, and not ‘eco’ which usually means do no harm.
While the arts of noticing and fieldnote taking can in themselves be seen as a form of eco-practices they form just a foundational layer of this body of actions. Where the arts of nociting are more about ‘other ways of knowing’, fieldnotes are oriented towards ‘other ways of telling’ and we now have to start to develop ‘other ways of relating, care and regeneration’ in order to contribute to eco-systemic change in a city and climate in transition.
When we fully start to understand that trees, bacteria, bats, birds, rain and wind can be equal partners in the (un)making the city, this shifts our perspective on who and how we can work and make wíth. And thus we aim to propose city-making as something that can and should be done wíth the more-than-human world.
image by florian geerken - work made by pupil during the workshop ‘ Building like a beast’ which was co-organised by Waag’s T-factor team and Esmee Geerken.
Learn more:
Fieldnote #1 - the niches of the science park
Fieldnote #2 - art of noticing, street interviews
Fieldnote #3 - lichen, soil and deep time
With contribution from local organisations: Anna’s Tuin & Ruigte, Jeugdland, UVA, Amsterdam University College, Amsterdam Green Campus, Startup Village
Invited artists: Esmee Geerken, Adriana Knouf, De on kruidenier.
This project has received funding from the European Commission under the H2020-SC5-20-2019 call under Grant Agreement number 868887.
2019