Wk 6 Individual Project One Statement

It’s 2112. Woodfordia and the Woodford Folk Festival still provide the opportunity for people to come together to escape the everyday. The 6 day festival still attracts an aggregate audience of 120000, 70% of which are return visitors.

However, there are growing issues within the Woodfordia site that are threatening its future sustainability including:

• Power bill costs & associated carbon emissions
• The spiraling cost of the festival
• The sensitivity of WFF’s financial position to extreme weather events (which are increasing in frequency due to climate change) & associated land degradation
• The increasing amount of waste produced during the festival (even though some of this waste is recycled & still has high associated carbon emissions) 

The festival is thriving in social, spiritual and cultural terms however it’s not sustainable economically and environmentally.

A number of broader issues in Queensland, Australia and beyond are calling for Woodfordia’s role as a spiritual, cultural and learning hub, centred on self-actualisation, social connection and self-expression, to be strengthened and expanded.

A diverse program of spiritual, cultural and learning activities including the festival will run throughout the year, revitalizing the site and providing a community hub for the people from the local area (which is now suburban due to population growth and sprawl) and beyond. Seemingly disparate people including retirees, lonely & disenchanted urban dwellers, spiritual leaders, artists, farmers, students and techies, will connect and learn from each other through the activities and the site.

The spiritual, cultural and learning activities will be centred on connection to and understanding of the environment and will generate income that will be invested into turning the site into a self-sufficient community with renewable energy production and permanent residents who will live on site and maintain food production and planting. They will oversee the activities in conjunction with Traditional Owners, staff and other specialists.  Waste from activities such as the festival will be turned into building materials and other installations which will be used in the learning activities. 

Wk 6 Final Panels

Final panels presented at the tute.

We weren't provided with much feedback as we were the 2nd last group and we only had a short time to present.

Wk 6 Panel Development...Issues & Visions

Due to time constraints, we had to divide and conquer, and each focus on an individual panel. This is my panel in development. The original concept was to have the floating island diagram as the main focus, but then to link it with maslow's hierarchy/ maslow rewired via colour classification or some other technique. 

The island represents woodfordia as an isolated 'escape'. However, issues are growing within the site, storm clouds are on the horizon, and issues in QLD, Australia and beyond are hovering on the periphery.

Wk 5 Project Development...Representation, The Story & Specifics

After going around in circles a bit with issues and approaches to the project, Cassie mapped out how we could lay out the panels (pictured above) and we developed the story and the people & roles. She also attended the site visit and so we discussed some of the practical issues the WFF people have with the site and how they don't necessarily want to buy back the land. Together with the research we had collated, we came to the conclusion that although it is successful in terms of social connection and self-actualisation, there are issues such as waste, power cost, overall festival cost, risk of weather events, etc. In terms of representation, we also decided to attempt a more illustrative approach as a reference to some of the festival artwork.

Wk 5 Project Development...Issue Summary

http://www.socialinclusion.gov.au/what-social-inclusion/social-inclusion-principles

http://www.woodfordfolkfestival.com/main/index.php?cID=2178&menuID=470&apply=&webpage=friends_of_woodford_2009

Wk 5 Research...Issues in QLD & Beyond

Images: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/1020492cfcd63696ca2568a1002477b5/fa58e975c470b73cca256e9e00296645!OpenDocument

Following on from the discussion our team had in the week 4 tutorial, we each did further research to inform our future scenario. The above ABS graphs show historical trends in religion in Australia. 

Another important source of information was the Woodford Folk Festival Media Fact Sheet. Some stats from this document included...

13888m2 coverage with tents and venues
1,030,000m2 of land for festival village, camping & cars
2400 volunteers
25000 people per day can be accommodated in temporary village
47 venues (16 for Children’s festival, 11 arts workshop venues)
13 bars, 46 cafes, 160 stalls, doctor’s surgery, 2 general stores, internet cafe
95000 subtropical plants
434 distinct acts - over 2000 artists, performers, presenters
210 working days or 42 working weeks - programmed events run end to end
6.2 million litres of water over 6 days (closed loop water system)
117000 aggregate audience (2010/2011)
31% attendees from management/professional sectors
63% attendees have completed or are currently enrolled in post-secondary education
15% attendees have a post-graduate qualification 
40% aged 18 to 29
20% aged 30 to 39, 
20% aged 40 to 49 
20% aged 50+
52% southeast qld attendees
13% intrastate attendees
32% interstate attendees
2.7% overseas attendees
70.4% repeat visitors
$15m economic impact
$10m festival cost
$220,000+ festival power bill
$0-$536 tickets (toddler-adult season pass at the gate)
programme aims to reflect broad demographic: Young party-goers, music lovers, families, community leaders, educators, students, entrepreneurs, artists, environmentalists, politicians, retired professionals

An interesting quote from WFF Festival Director Bill Hauritz also sheds light on who the people who are attending the festival "We love the hippies that come. It's just that the cheesecloth and Kombi van image of attendees is not accurate and never has been. Our audience is middle-class Australians and their sons and daughters" he says, reeling off the stats (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/sunday-mail/bill-hauritz-the-wizard-of-woodford-folk-festival/story-e6frep2o-1225973208723).

From this point I decided to look at people in the future who could benefit from the Woodfordia site, the self-actualisation and the social connection that the festival currently offers. This led to a look at the most significant trends in population and how people will be living in the future...

Lone Person Households
“Humans are social animals, relationships are critical to our wellbeing. There are worrying signs that isolation and loneliness are increasing in Australia. Data shows that people’s friendships and neighbourhood connections have diminished over the past two decades. Our changing population means these trends could get worse. Already a quarter of Australian households consist of people living by themselves and this is the fastest growing household type. People living on their own are more likely to experience loneliness. Australia is an ageing society, and older people have a higher risk of isolation, as do other groups like sole parents and people with limited English” (Social Cities Report, Kelly 2012, 3).

Population Growth

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3222.0

"Queensland is projected to experience the largest percentage increase in population between 30 June 2007 and 2056, more than doubling the 2007 population of 4.2 million to 8.7 million people by 2056. As a result Queensland is projected to replace Victoria as Australia's second most populous state in 2050."

Aging Population

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3222.0

"The age composition of Australia's population is projected to change considerably as a result of population ageing. By 2056 there will be a greater proportion of people aged 65 years and over than at 30 June 2007, and a lower proportion of people aged under 15 years. In 2007 people aged 65 years and over made up 13% of Australia's population. This proportion is projected to increase to between 23% and 25% in 2056 (Series B and C respectively) and to between 25% and 28% in 2101 (Series B and C). The proportion of people aged under 15 years is projected to decrease from 19% in 2007 to between 15% and 18% in 2056 (Series C and A respectively) and to between 14% and 17% in 2101 (Series C and A)."

Wk 4 Project Development...Regional Theme

In week 4 we continued with the development of the project. Someone found an interesting statistic about the decline of religion in the future. We discussed the role of religion in society and what might be lost (see above record of tutorial discussion). We also discussed Alain de Botton's 'Religion for Atheists' as a possible direction for Woodfordia in the event of a major decline in religion in Australia in the future:

"Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them – because they're packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, Alain  proposes that we should look to religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:

- build a sense of community

- make our relationships last

- overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy

- escape the twenty-four hour media

- go travelling

- get more out of art, architecture and music

- and create new businesses designed to address our emotional needs.

For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing lots of peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. " http://www.alaindebotton.com/Religion.asp

Architectural opportunities from this concept that we discussed included:

• secular temple
• spiritual refuge (reaction to technology)
• a site of pilgrimage for people who want to connect with others and the environment(similar to how people continually return year after year to the Woodford Folk Festival - 70% are return visitors)

More research was needed on the statistics as different religions are following different trends. 

Wk 3 Lecture/Reading...A Pattern Language

The lecture introduced A Pattern Language, an approach to architecture and planning developed in the 1970s in response to student unrest at the University of Oregon. A Pattern Language outlines a language for building and planning where "people can plan and build their community in a participatory, democratic manner, even if that community is responsible to a much larger system" http://www.rainmagazine.com/archive/1991-1/the-oregon-experiment-revisited

What is a pattern? In Christopher Alexander's (who developed the language) own words, "... we may define a pattern as any general planning principle, which states a clear problem that may occur repeatedly in the environment, states the range of contexts in which this problem will occur, and gives the general features required by all buildings or plans which will solve this problem." (The Oregon Experiment, p. 101) 

A pattern is an alternative to a fixed-image masterplan.

As described in A Pattern Language "each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice" (Alexander, p.x).

What is there to learn from the actual implementation of A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment? The following outlines some findings...

http://www.rainmagazine.com/archive/1991-1/the-oregon-experiment-revisited

• "the University has mostly put aside the idea of pattern research. This is a major practical difficulty with Alexander’s approach. Such introspection takes valuable time needed for more immediate planning problems."

• "patterns are, by their nature, either dogmatic, incomplete or partly redundant, so drafting them is an unsatisfying task. The solutions seem to beg questions."

• "Unfortunately, Alexander’s pattern 'Independent Regions' (pictured) does not suggest how to achieve decentralized politics when most of the world is already heavily centralized. 'Gaining Independence' is a much tougher problem, and there is no pattern for it in Alexander’s book."

• Piecemeal approach..."Tiny committees working 'within the system' on tiny aspects of major problems have no way of coping with the city without political mandates. Their impotence is directly visible in issues of transportation and housing."

• "The majority of the student body has no idea that the University is carrying out a planning experiment.  The faculty and staff generally understand their rights under The Experiment -- many of the principles of planning are understood by anyone who stays on the campus for very long."

• "The students, however, do not know that they can initiate projects. Certainly schoolwork and play interfere with participation, and their brief stay in town hinders their interest in long-term planning. But they are apathetic in part because no one asks them anything."

• "At the University, a small committee will talk about a problem until they are sick of it, while others who would be keenly interested do not even know that it is being discussed."

• "Wresting control and money from city, county, state and federal government is a problem familiar to most advocates of social change. Although Alexander has no pattern for effecting political change, The Experiment has helped to provide a forum for these issues."

• "The transition from an ideology to a working system of full participation, a genuine community and culture of egalitarianism, would be a great leap at any University. Hierarchical and authoritarian relationships are the norm at schools with the authority of accreditation. This limits equitable discussion."

...and from the University of Oregon's website...
http://uplan.uoregon.edu/faq/FAQPatternLanquage.html

• "Alexander's suggestion to have the user group develop a schematic design before hiring an architect has not been effective. Users still participate in the schematic design process, but it has been much more effective for them to work with the assistance of architects."

• "Another principle that has not been fully implemented is that of 'piecemeal growth.' The idea of piecemeal growth is to distribute funds in a way that allows for incremental improvements across campus through small building projects. This strategy has been difficult to implement because all campus projects must go through the Oregon State Legislature, which tends to favor larger building projects. Small projects are still accomplished, but not to the extent originally envisioned in the Oregon Experiment by the principle of piecemeal growth."

Wk 3 Sustainability Tutorial...Regional Theme + Patterns

The regional theme was introduced with the overarching aim being self sufficiency and the revitalisation of the Woodfordia site.

As a group we then looked at sustainability issues through the lens of principles, contexts and patterns, as discussed in the lecture. We decided to focus on 'self expression', a current value of the Woodford Folk Festival, that could be an issue in the future due to technological advances. Other group members mentioned Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (pictured) which is an interesting way of looking at sustainability issues. Self actualisation is at the peak in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (pictured above) and builds upon other physiological, safety, belonging and self-esteem needs. It might also be said that self-actualisation is an aim of the Woodford Folk Festival. That is, it brings people together to achieve creative fulfilment (self-expression, workshops, artist sharing with audiences, etc). Perhaps what needs to be developed further at Woodford (and to also achieve self-sufficiency), are the basic needs. Perhaps through greater people to people connection, learning activities and a greater focus on self-actualisation, some of the economic and environmental sustainability issues can be addressed (as per the Maslow's rewired diagram above)

The principle (universal) we came up with was:
Community of Self Expression

The context (site specific + everchanging):
Technological advances impinging on connection + expression
Social disconnection in congested cities
Human desire for creative and spiritual refuge

The pattern image (picture above in the centre) can reference:
Macro + micro communities - from the individual to the community as a whole working together
or a less literal pattern is:
maslow's hierarchy of needs where physiological, safety, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs are represented by the small circles which are connected and must be addressed to achieve the community of self expression (big circle).

The third image on the right pictured above is a similar diagram that is a reworking of Maslow's Hierarchy to show that rather than being a hierarchical pyramid, human needs are symbiotic. Also it positions 'Connection' at the centre as the critical human need. More on this at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positively-media/201111/social-networks-what-maslow-misses-0

Wk 2 Idea Development...Regional Nomadic Personal Ecosystems

2068. Populations are in flux. Major cities have become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels that have inundated coastal areas. Environmental refugees from the asia pacific are seeking refuge in Australia. Meanwhile, drought has devastated much of the rest of the country and key food producing areas around the world. Water and food are scarce. 

People are on the move, seeking out safety, food, shelter and water. Government paralysis on how to respond to the crisis has seen fear and disorder sweep the country. Some cities have been fortified or walled to prevent people from entering. Militia groups are attacking internal and foreign refugee populations.

An industrious group of people sheltering in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, develop a personal ecosystem for nomadic and migratory populations. The ecosystem is designed to cocoon and transport people. It is to be built and distributed at the old Woodford Folk Festival site. It can be plugged in at the site for replenishment and repair. Certain people travelling in the personal ecosystems will then set up other plug in sites around Australia.

The personal ecosystem will incorporate...

food growth, production + storage

water filtering + storage 

seawater condensation system

light + energy systems

protection + health systems

Wk 2 Contexts...Suburban Sustainable Retail Experiences

An article collected about the decline in shopping malls...

"The last time a new indoor shopping mall opened in the US was back in 2006; vacancy rates have doubled in the past 5 years and many are being reinvented as exhibition spaces and community centres"

"Malls in the US were hammered first by the GFC, then by the boom in online retail. But it's thought the decline is also due to something more substantial: a switch back to community-based shopping, as people become turned off by giant buildings and vast parking stations that are divorced from their surrounding"

"Ironically, the man who created the American mall back in the '50s - architect Victor Gruen - saw them as a way of converting suburban shopping centres into family-friendly pedestrian zones" Greg Callaghan.

Microshopping...an alternative to the current retail paradigm ...

Large retail centres in the USA and Australia are declining whilst rising in China, India and Dubai. In Australia, some developers are seeking a new way of designing retail centres. 

“Having smaller community shopping centres and less shops than would traditionally would have had, provides a defence mechanism to the fact that a lot of retail formats that we’re seeing today probably won’t exist in five or 10 years’ time” Michael Quinn, Stockland
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/business/items/201108/s3290623.htm

Wk 2 Contexts Tutorial...Car Free CBD

Image: http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban-planning/1295749-city-no-cars.html

Car free CBDs have been a focus of architects in the past. Think Louis Kahn's 1957 car-less plan for central Philadelphia pictured above.

Firstly, why do people currently drive their cars into the CBD?
- to go to work, shopping, uni
- no public transport linkage direct to their home/work (walking distance) or the route is slow
- dislike for public transport + sharing congested space on train/bus
- cost differential between paid parking + public transport cost 
- uses car as part of work

The context surrounding the car free proposition and a congestion tax is fraught...

political: 
- lack of political will - it would be seen as unpopular + a vote killer (even a car free traffic lane is controversial in qld)
- politicians would also have to fight lobbyists from industry

economic:
- loss of income for car park businesses within car free area
- increased $ in government coffers due to congestion tax which could improve + reduce the cost of public transport
- if the decline in retail continues, how could the nature of the CBD + its relationship to cars change?

social:
- people are attached to their cars - cars historically have a social + cultural role + could be seen as a form of personal expression, especially in australia which is characterised by large distances and open spaces
- opportunity to improve the public transport experience and antisocial environments associated with public transport
- libertarian argument, it would be an impingement on freedom of choice

technological:
- move to electric vehicles where it is projected that 50% of new car sales globally will be electric by 2022
- increasingly work from home arrangements due to NBN could transform the nature of the CBD in the future

environmental:
- lower ghg emmissions
- improved air quality and personal health

Future scenario...

- based on existing electric vehicle hire scheme + similar to Kahn's silos on CBD fringe - electric vehicle hire scheme with automated vehicle stacking cubes placed strategically around CBD; people use swipe cards to check in + out electric vehicles; vehicles are charged whilst in the cube; cubes are installed in new developments, replacing personal vehicle ownership

Wk 2 Contexts Tutorial...Virtual All Regions

The context...

Political:
- government policies currently include virtual strategies 
- generational change will remove backlash against government for policies such as the NBN
- virtual world has contributed to political change eg Arab Spring
- political cost if virtual system fails or is corrupted?

Economic:
- how will the demand for cheap technology to support virtual systems be met in the future if due to economic advancement there are no more third world or 'developing' countries?
- cost savings + efficiency gains with an integrated virtual system (depending on what it is about)

Social: 
- virtual and social worlds are integrated and symbiotic
- there might be a rejection/backlash against the virtual world in the future if it becomes more invasive and privacy is impinged
- virtual world has contributed to social change eg Arab Spring
- how will face to face social interactions evolve over time as virtual systems grow?

Technological:
- will the virtual world replace the human body as we know it?
- will everything exist in the cloud?
- what happens if the technology fails?

Environmental:
- environmental cost of producing (mining, factory ghg emissions) and throwing out technology devices that are used to create, maintain and use virtual systems

Wk 1 Reading...Archigram + Indeterminancy

In the 1960s Archigram were concerned with the idea of indeterminacy. As quoted in Sadler, Archigram's usage of the term referred to "Of varying evaluation. Not one answer. Open-endedness."

Some excerpts from the Sadler reading...
Sadler, S., 2005. Beyond Architecture. In. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp90-138) 

p.94..."it would be simpler to hand the control levers of the environment straight over to society, and let people determine forms and spaces directly. Apart from which, the moment one made a commitment to an architectural program, everything was frozen-the architectural solution (the building) and the social desire that had brought it into being, which might be nothing more than a passing fad. The program was just another sort of idealism. The imperative for Archigram's generation was to create "open ends"...an architecture that expressed its inhabitants' supposed desire for continuous change."

p.95..."As Archigram put it in 1966, 'buildings with no capacity to change can only become slums or ancient monuments:' Programmatic modernism seemed ever less suitable to postwar liberal democracies, and its abandonment helped to rupture ClAM, the guiding body of modern architecture until the 1950s. Thanks in particular to the work of the Smithsons and their colleagues in Team 10, modernists were forced to consider, however superficially, how human communities might actually function, rather than how they should function. Cook's sometime tutor John Voelcker concisely summarized the issue in Team 10's Draft Framework for ClAM in 1956, contrasting the 1920s thinking of Bauhaus director WaIter Gropius with the 1950s thinking of Team 10's Jacob Bakema: "To oversimplify, the idea of 'social responsibility' (Gropius) was directive, 'Moral Function' (Bakema) is libertarian in that the onus placed on the architect is to seek out the existing structure of the community and to allow this structure to develop in positive directions. Induction instead of deduction'"

So has Archigram's concept of indeterminancy been realised in any form in today's world? 

In the virtual world, I would say it definitely has. Structures/frameworks are put in place eg social networks, app products and the power is with the user to creates their own content or apps which then spawn other ideas and technologies which were not originally envisaged. 

Low-cost 3d printing technology could relate to indeterminancy in that it is a form of bottom-up design and manufacturing. Instead of large companies controlling and deciding what is developed and what is right for the consumer, individuals now have the power to create their own objects (albeit rudimentary at the moment).