Re-visioning Utopia - opportunity to participate in a Charrette for artists, architects and academics
15th - 18th July 2009, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria
Re-visioning Utopia will bring together Artists, Architects and Academics in small multi disciplinary teams and offer an intensive series of research field-trips exploring the diversity of Barrow and its Islands followed by good food, studio based discussion, 'model' making, drawing, mapping and text based exploration.
The word charrette refers to any collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem. While the structure of a charrette varies, depending on the design problem and the individuals in the group, charrettes often take place in multiple sessions in which the group divides into sub-groups. Each sub-group then presents its work to the full group as material for future dialogue. Such charrettes serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.
The charrette runs from 4pm, Wednesday 15th July at Art Gene, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria. That evening we will eat together at Stuart Bastik's off-grid, former fisherman's cabin on the coast of Barrow. Over the following 3 days, multi-disciplinary 'research groups' will explore a range of challenging landscape/townscape stimuli.
"Our intention is to move beyond categorical thinking and the stratification of architectural systems and budget-based regeneration models. This will involve a re-examination of hierarchies and the seeking of emergent properties created through re-worked relationships. We want to shift to a perspective that makes transformation possible."
Alison Hand: Art Gene Board of Directors - Head of Business Development, Architype Architects
Discussion Paper (Extract)
There are many Utopias: as many as dreamers prepared to dream them but few are ever articulated, they remain unspoken, an unrealised intent: a reverie lying behind our innate desire to create scuppered in calm seas beyond the turbulence of society.
The current global recession can be seen as warning shot across the bows of a society seemingly hell bent of self destruction. However it has to some degree led to an uncertain breathing space in the field of regeneration and there is more than a suspicion that the failed crop of the past requires the re-seeding of a fundamentally different approach to regeneration to achieve a sustainable future.
Art Gene believes that this is an opportune moment to redefine orthodox working relationships, the constitution of the 'design team', it's working approach and aspirations towards a Re-visioning of Utopia.