Center vs place

This sketch shows a important development in my process. A center is introvert, it concentrates some action and people interested in this action, but at the same time excludes other activities/flexibility/people. Place is a more open place, and I see it as extrovert. Instead of making one thing I will suggest several. I will work on different locations in town where every place will work on integration of spaces/places/people/actions. This post should probably have come before that of the bath at Nøstet, because it is because of this decision that I got the idea of the bath. I will start working on the bath idea now that I have many ideas about it. Then adding with other programs on the other locations that I have looked at. I will work on the different locations at different depth, some will be more finished projects for my diploma.

Development plans Vågsbunnen

At the pages of the municipality I found these questions answered about Vågsbunnen, where the void between Domkirkegaten and Skostredet is located. Sorry, only Norwegian. I will try to get a meeting with the owners of the land - Pallas Eiendom.

45. Fra Ruth Grung (A):

”Status vedrørende Vågsbunnen som byutviklingsområde

Vågen er en sentral del av både det gamle og nye Bergen. Området er sammensatt. Vågen representerer mye av vår historie men samtidig etableres det nye aktiviteter som har stor betydning for et levende sentrum. Skostredet er et eksempel på slik ny aktivitet som er med å gi ny identitet. Bymisjonen sin aktivitet har også skapt nytt liv og fellesrom er blitt pusset opp. Samtidig registrer vi at tomter ligger brakk og at private har kjøpt opp flere eiendommer. Fana Sparebank sin karakteristiske bygning fikk hard medfart i en av de mange brannene som har rammet byen. Gårdeier har gjennom media sagt at fasaden skal bestå. Tanks videregående skole blir lagt ned når den nye skolen på Nygårdstangen er bygget. Trafikk og parkering er også en utfordring.

Spørsmål:

Hvilke byutviklings planer har byrådet for Vågen? Er det samarbeid med private eller andre aktører for utvikling av større deler av Vågen? Hvilke mulighet har kommunen for at slike unike gatemiljø som Skostredet er blitt kan få videreutvikle seg?”

Understanding ideologies

I made this sketch of some predominant ideologies, how they take shape and manifest. It is related to the last post. They describe hierarchies, political systems and power. Architecture has been used to strengthen political ideas. When we die, our opinions remain in the architecture. Architecture can be mountains, but they can also be more organic and flexible to change. You need dynamite to blow up a mountain, but flowers and other plants grow on the mountain, slowly transforming its shape. When on the mountain side the mountain is not so powerfully present; you experience the plants, the trees, the flowers, the small mushrooms, hear birds, see the sun or the rain, listen to water running...

Seeing Øvre Skostredet

The plot is behind those trees. In between this white building and the peach one in the back of the image.
Looking into Øvre Skostredet towards Skostredet.
The plot behind the fence. And below in between houses, seen from Skostredet.
These are images that GoogleEarth took last summer looking into Øvre Skostredet and they are interesting because the GoogleEarth car can only move along streets, much like pedestrians are led by visual signs in the city, a car is led by signs and guided by surfaces. Many people probably don't know that this place exists, because there is "nothing there", however it is located in a quiet but popular area that has flourished the last years with art, culture and café-life. It is a place in town which is in-between areas, the powerful line of municipal buildings has cut the harbor area away from the Marken area. Also busy roads following the Bergen mountainside grid the city up in areas, and areas between these roads become one identity.

Migration

World map of human migrations, with the North Pole at center. Africa, harboring the start of the migration, is at the top left and South America at the far right. Migration patterns are based on studies of mitochondrial (matrilinear) DNA.

Numbers represent thousand years before present.

The blue line represents area covered in ice or tundra during the last great ice age.

The letters are the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (pure motherly lineages); Haplogroups can be used to define genetic populations and are often geographically oriented.
(wikipedia)

Assimilation vs integration

Assimilation cartoon from HarmonyStorm.com.

Assimilation: similar - the same. To become similar to something. Sameness. (by extension) The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure. The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture. (wiktionary

Cultural assimilation is a political response to the demographic fact of multi-ethnicity which encourages absorption of the minority into the dominant culture. It is opposed to affirmative philosophy (for example, multiculturalism) which recognizes and seeks to maintain differences.

Researchers have assessed that assimilation exists among immigrants because we can measure assimilation on four primary benchmarks. These core measurable aspects of immigrant assimilation that were formulated to study European immigrants to the United States are still the starting points for understanding current immigrant assimilation. These measurable aspects of assimilation are socioeconomic status, spatial concentration, language attainment, and intermarriage.^[3]

1. Socioeconomic Status is defined by educational attainment, occupation, and income. By measuring socioeconomic status researchers want to find out if immigrants eventually catch up to native-born people in terms of human capital characteristics.
2. Spatial Concentration is defined by geography or residential patterns. The spatial residential model (based on theories of Park) proposed by Massey states that increasing socioeconomic attainment, longer residence in the U.S, and higher generational status lead to decreasing residential concentration for a particular ethnic group.^[8].
3. Language Attainment is defined as the ability to speak English and the loss of the individual's mother tongue. The three-generation model of language assimilation states that the first generation makes some progress in language assimilation but remains dominant in their native tongue, the second generation is bilingual, and the third-generation only speaks English.^[3]
4. Intermarriage is defined by race or ethnicity and occasionally by generation.^[3] High rates of intermarriage are considered to be an indication of social integration because it reveals intimate and profound relations between people of different groups, intermarriage reduces the ability of families to pass on to their children a consistent ethnic culture and thus is an agent of assimilation.^[9] Intermarriage came under particular scrutiny by the Jewish community in the early-mid 20th century as Jewish leaders more and more often turned to social scientists to explain why Judaism was a typically endogamic religion. Although intermarriage was viewed as a firm base from which to begin an argument for assimilation, it was also seen as a way to gradually ease the transition into their new culture. Julius Draschler, a graduate student at Columbia University, believed that as long as people are allowed to maintain some differences, such as the Jewish practice of only marrying another Jew, they will delay the inevitable while simultaneously enriching the nation in the process of their slow assimilation. While Draschler acknowledged that assimilation was the ultimate endpoint for all American groups, he hoped to prove through his intermarriage studies that, the more gradual the process, the better. Such need to justify (or vilify) the intermarriage practice became increasingly important after the 1950's as Jews (as well as other typically endogamic cultures, such as African-Americans) began to engage in more exogamic relationships.^[10] (wikipedia).

Consciousness, art and processes

Photo: from Kurt Johannessens photo series "Flying stones" (2007)

I just came back from a study circle (lesesirkel) hosted by Bergen performance artist Kurt Johannessen. A little less than 20 people with connection to the art environment (mostly artists) in Bergen attended what became a very in depth and interesting discussion on the text "Maxwells meg" ("Maxwells me") - about consciousness, sub consciousness, the thinking me, the sublime me, artistic processes & art, roles and so on (for about three hours).

Waste = Food

Large scale approach to sustainability from Imaginary Foundation blog.

Gypsys also belong here

In the local Bergen newspaper Bergens Tidene there was an article about the US critique of how gypsys are treated in Europe. The Romani prople in Europe have problems with habitat, jobs and schools, and they are risking their lives. This worries the US.

The article tell about a Romano man that was shot and killed outside his house in Hungary, the sole reason being his descendant. In another village fire bombs were thrown into the house of a young family, and the son and the young son were shot down when they ran out of the house. Something similar happened in the Czech Republic where the family of a two year old girl burned inside.

Six people were shot in Hungary before the police managed to arrest four men. A member of the government characterized them as "racist mass murderers". This systematic oppression and abuse happens in calm European villages, and in some areas it is so grave that the UN, Amnesty International and the US are warning European governments.

Space, perception and awareness (social anthropology text)

As a point of departure to my text on social anthropology this is the text I delivered to BAS in January about my diploma project:

“With a critical eye I wish to investigate the way we live, going back to basics - how we sleep, eat, wash ourselves... - and why. How we relate to our surroundings. How we interpret them. Winston Churchill said "We shape our buildings, and then they shape us". The same goes for how the systems/cultures that we create. The established paradigm is constantly changing, whichever form, slowly but surely.

We are in-between yesterday and hyper modernity. We let ourselves be seduced by the offerings of technology, but these objects don't awaken such feelings of recognition as the crocked and worn wooden floor of an old apartment.

Since the Renaissance the Western world has moved more away from the mystical of our nature to the logical and rational. The way we live, how our cities are organized is whether we like that idea or not - form that follows function. And if we don't like that idea, only now is the time to do something about it.

We project ourselves on spaces. In spaces that are new to us we project the image of ourselves and our desires in that situation. New situations trigger our imagination. We tend to travel to be inspired.