15
Dec 11
Architects Statement in Support of the Occupy Movement
We are architects who reject the limitation of architecture to the design of luxury environments and the creation of real estate profit.
We support the efforts of the Occupy movement to pursue alternative models of society, specifically models of society independent from any system of concentrated wealth. We support the use of direct action in discovering ways to make these alternatives possible and probable.
We oppose all efforts to suppress democratic assembly. We affirm the political and societal significance of public space and public infrastructure.
We extend our support to the envisioning and enactment of a society that fosters equality and environmental responsibility.
We offer our services to the collective imagination of the Occupy movement and its demands for social, economic, and environmental justice. With the tools of architecture, in defiance of the reductive logic of real estate profit maximization, we support the affirmation that “Another world is possible.”
[You may add your name as a signer below]
04
Dec 11
SUPERFRONT’s Lab for Urban Futures presents “Farming: The Right to The City” December 10th 3pm – 5pm at the Queens Museum of Art
SUPERFRONT’s Lab for Urban Futures at the Queens Museum of Art presents “Farming: The Right to the City” a multi-disciplinary panel on urban farming and the post-industrial city. Taking place on International Human Rights Day, the panel considers urban farming as a practice with political, social, and economic significance. Facilitated by SUPERFRONT curators Chloë Bass and Mitch McEwen, the panel invites local urban farmers to discuss their work as relating not only to food and the locavore movement, but also to the intersection of rights and urbanism. Henri Lefebvre’s *Right to the City*provides a framework for articulating “a transformed and renewed access to urban life.” In particular, the event will address the intersection of community organizing and urban farming in both Detroit and New York. Join Lab for Urban Futures: Detroit as we de-romanticize urban farming as a practice, addressing the intersection of urban farming with issues of inner-city food deserts, artist communities and gentrification, labor policy and the contemporary political economy.
Photo courtesy Lee Mandel, Boswyck Farms. Earthworks Urban Farm, Detroit.
Panelists include:
Kubi Ackerman, Urban Design Lab at Columbia University’s Earth Institute
Adrienne Brown, Detroit Food Justice Task Force
Maggie Cheney, Ecostation:NY
Lee Mandell, Boswyck Farms
Zach Pickens, Riverpark
Occupy Wall Street Food Justice/Sustainability Working Group
Karen Washington, La Finca del Sur/South Bronx Farmers