Square with Four Circles – Felice Varini

ACH_0604_001, originally uploaded by Site Projects New Haven.

This is ‘Square with Four Circles’, the latest piece by swiss artist Felice Varini for New Haven, in the US. It was commissioned by Site Projects and opened in June this year. Check the Site Project Photostream for a full documentation of the piece including the installation.

Landsharing Website

We came accross the Landshare website today and thought it would become handy at some point.  It is is for people who want to either make their garden available for others to grow food on or for people looking for a space to cultivate. We hope we can use this website to attract people to the garden we are thinking of creating in one of the sites ( to be revealed later).

We also hope to be able to use this to advertise the space on our own estate ( the Bemerton Estate in Islington, London) which we want to turn into allotments. There are a lot of dormant green spaces around us!

Anyway here is a clue to our concept for the Urban Fallow programme. We don’t want to reveal it yet as it is first to be officially presented to stakeholders.

The Urban Fallow Garden Bus © Michael Pinsky

Andover’s Theatre Plaza revised application and duck sign

On Friday 7 May, we had a meeting with Test Valley Borough Council officers Jason Owen and Michael Johnson,  Sue Sheppard from the Andover Vision Consortium, and David Gleave from the Town Centre Management.

We met to get an update on the revised plans for Theatre Plaza Scheme in Andover. We are now clearer as to what fallow space we will be working with.

Jason Owen who works in the planning department shed some light on the revised planning application for the Andover site and explained that the planning application would take place in two phases.

It consists of the construction of a 72-bed hotel and a ground floor restaurant as well 38 units of affordable housing. This development will leave a good part of the site fallow.

Here is what Jason drew to describe the first phase. The platform was drawn by Michael as a rough idea to create a walkway through the site.

The first and second phases of the Theatre Plaza

There is a 6 meter level difference between the eastern and western side of the theatre plaza.

The remain of site will be boarded up. Allowing public access to the site during the Urban Fallow programme may be difficult.

We also discussed available funding and ressources. Michael Johnson mentioned that community gardeners may be available to work on the Urban Fallow project.

After the meeting, we looked at the site and were surprised to find it looked quite different from our visit in the winter. The shrubs are now in full bloom and some of the trees are  quite big!

We also took Esmée, our daughter and the Urban Fallow project’s mascot, to see the recently-arrived residents of the banks of the  River Anton. The goslings and ducklings were a real treat for her. The feathered population is growing and car drivers are asked to slow down when they reach their residence. We loved the sign!

Warning about the duck population of River Anton

Skip Gardens and Roof Allotments – King’s Cross, London

Herb, Fruit and Vegetable Roof Garden on the top of office building in King's Cross

Stéphanie and Michael attended a Food Junction event on Saturday 24 April to find out whether the Global Generation urban gardens could be somehow repeated as part of Urban Fallow.

They were guided by Paul Richens, Gardens Manager at Global Generation, through an allotment on top of an office building and through an improvised skip garden next to St Pancras International. Paul, who is an expert on the art of roof allotments explained that gardening on a roof can be challenging as it often involved carrying bags of soil to be carried up long staircases on human’s back!

A hungry 2 year-old picking edible flowers

About Global Generation

Global Generation is dedicated to giving young people opportunities to play a part in creating a sustainable future.

The Skip Garden in King’s Cross is helping to create a bio diverse and social ecology  is supporting young people to play a pivotal role in transforming this part of the city. They are being trained to become social innovators who are building gardens and inspiring others to create a new and sustainable future.

Winchester Friarsgate Carpark in Pictures

On Monday 22 March, Phil Smith and Stéphanie Delcroix visited Friarsgate car park as a potential site for Urban Fallow.  The rooftop which was once part of the facility, hasn’t been in service for a long time. Here and there are the remnants of temporary use by urban nomads such as empty tins. Some of the tarmac is in a state of advanced decomposition. Whilst rotten tarmac looks safe to tread upon, its nature doesn’t fool your steps for long at all:  your feet slip on the viscous matter which is in the process of turning back into oil.

The top floor of the car park is still open but hardly used except from farmers’ market days every second Sunday. Recently the space was transformed by the installations of a group of Winchester University Art Students. In the days following the show,  car park cleaners found heaps of domestic paraphernalia which they believed to be the leftover from the homeless when it fact they were art installations. It is apparently not uncommon for those who go without shelter to try to create a sense of domesticity by installing little shrines. The Roman household spirits would have been flattered by these intentions. So next time you encounter a pile of forlorn objects in a staircase,  you may be about to step over a contemporary version of the altar to the Lares!

Next trips

Stéphanie is off to Andover tomorrow to meet Michael Johnson from Test Valley Borough Council and Sue Sheppard from the Andover Vision Consortium and look around a bit more.

Phil and Stéphanie are visiting Basing View and the Thales roof garden on Monday. There they will meet with Faye Bradley, Cultural Investment Officer, at Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

Green Basing View

Basing View has a fair share of greenery, bits of it are hiding on rooftops and will soon appear on bridges.

We were been told by Simon Hope from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council that the Thales Building had amazing hanging gardens. We will try to arrange a visit next time we are down there.

Part of the landscaping programme for Basing View will include making the footbrigde to Easton Park a Green Bridge like the one in Mile End Park, London.

The Mile End Green Bridge

Basing View still has to make efforts on the green front with 80% of its working force driving to the office.

Web ressources

BBC Local – Hampshire in Pictures

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/in_pictures/photo_galleries/places/

Eastleigh Rail Works

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/image_galleries/eastleigh_rail_gallery.shtml

Hampshire Waterways and The Urban Fallow project

We are interested in how waterways connect in Hampshire and whether or not they can link the four Urban Fallow sites. This idea was inspired by the French contemporary art festival Estuaire, whose third and last programme will take place in 2011. Temporary and permanent artworks have been commissioned around the Loire River from Nantes to the Esturary in St Nazaire. The idea is simple but efficient.

So far we have gathered the following facts:

– The River Itchen connects Winchester to Southampton via Eastleigh. Part of the connection is through a canal now being restored called Itchen Navigation. There were plans to link Basingstoke’s canal to Itchen navigation but these were never realised.

– The Eastleigh borough is bound by water namely Southampton Waters and the River Hamble.

-The river Test, Itchen and Hamble all flow into Southampton Waters. According to the Southampton Entry on Wikipedia,  ‘Southampton Water is classified as a ria, or drowned valley, of the English Channel. It was formed by the rivers Test, Itchen and Hamble which flow in to it, and became an inlet of the sea at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rose, flooding many valleys in the south of England.’

– The River Anton which  flows through Andover is a tributary of the River Test

Facts Gathering: Andover’s ‘Theatre Plaza’

On our visit to Andover on 13 January 2010, the Ford Cottage site lay empty and hoarded. The hoarding itself is in relatively good condition given it is 20 year old. It is intact apart from a small passage through which we all got in, led by Michael Johnson, Senior Arts Officer at Test Valley Borough Council.

The hoarding around the Ford Cottage site

Inside we walked through the snow-covered remains of window frames and car batteries dispersed in a thin mass of shrubs and brambles. Michael Johnson talked about the plans for the site and the vision of Arthur Freeman who clearly saw its potential as a new landmark for the town of Andover.

Michael Johnson, Senior Arts Officer, explaining the plans for the site

We were able to see for ourselves how close the site was to the town centre and The Lights and how it was at the crossing point of major pedestrian routes. However it felt like we were at the back of where the action was: all we could see was the back of waitrose and other buildings. It became  clear to us how the rationale of creating a new gateway as intended by the ‘Theatre Plaza’ scheme came about.