City Life – Emergent Scenario and Reflection

This post comes up with an investigation that I insist on keep working on it and trying to understand and generate hypothetic scenarios and critical manifestos to compromise these urban questions into an analytical field of research.

These Urban Voids as I might assign, and their new meaning, are not just one of the fundamental clues to develop a sustainable and contemporary city fitted to the present and wide to the future

These voids pointed out in a city are now-a-days crucial spots to think of the city as a networking system of flows, needing some equilibrium slowing down these flows through city weirs assuming formally its shape by green spaces, parks, squares, media/recreation/arts centre, etc. These voids can offer a plot for those smooth places.

To be continued!…

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There has been tough to find out what is Multy-story.

Difficult to know the team as well.

Difficult to contact them.

Is there anyway, a simple email I could send in order to check the status of Multi-story development and find out which objectives are proposed, which ones could be proposed and point out several aims and initiatives we could organize to promote architecture, students’ work o this issue and other fields might be interesting approach(?)!

I’ll be in touch, I will be interested, first, to know more about Multi-story.

I have no doubts in order to improve and innovate on this matter, UCA will help me get through and move on or come up  with new proposal!

As far as I know, Canterbury is a small city, although full of life and young people. Never guessed that besides all of that  youth, there are no places proper to those people. There is no a high range of different places to go out, to drink a good coffee in an amasing place, to enjoy an afternoon or evening with friends, with good music, with good athmosphere, good style, trendy, full of creativity and inovation on the concept.

Feeling the city so friendly and young as well, people shopping in those hundreds of trendy department stores we are used to see everywhere, some others really proper to those we find in big cities, what is the reason there are no nice places that can match culture, good food/drinks, performance an attitude. I am not talking about this issue assuming this different spaces to going out with an arrogant posture, I am truly talking about spaces we can definitely find close to young people, living in 21st century and with will and open minded, with their aims connected to the world surrounded, to the world of music, cinema, theatre, art and performance, ways to express feelings, wills and specially have fun with friends.

Though I enjoy a lot those steaks and pints in weatherspoon’s, that is nothing to do with those places I used to be in friends all the time in Lisbon. From outside deck cafés and bars and clubs, to cinema and alternative cinema, outside live cinema, documentary cinema festival, exhibitions, art performances, concerts, architecture exhibitions, always architecture lectures and events, well attended bars, clubs, with great sound, further from reggaeton and hiphop/RnB style I just can find in Canterbury, as far as I know. There is some different places in canterbury that avoid these ones, although they are not still very open minded and enabling people learn and teach there, learning and teaching new style of music, new music approaches, new athmospheres, new urban interactions, as many as we so well speak in our Graduate Diploma Architecture, and definitely ad unfortunately I cannot find in this city.

Where are those amazing places in Canterbury? Having so many students as all of us dare know, from sciences to law and arts, where are those places designed for young people (this young people open range to adults, who want more that pints and traditional pubs), the diversity? Instead some peculiar places I can find some effort towards to that open minded (coffe&corks, boho).. why most of students just limitates their going out to pubs? Is this just an old custom or am I being too much demanding? Are Europe, particularly Lisbon such a different place where I just can find these places in Capitals and really big cities?

Might being inconvenient and misfit for the issue, definitely I have a pertinent viewpoint and definitely not the first one questioning and leaving the clue!

Carpet

There is an evident comment I must do that refers to some strange habit which probably made sense some years ago but now is something unbelievable in 21st century. The use of carpet in every single room of every single house. Traditionally in Portugal we normally don’t use fixed carpet on the floor in houses. Some people do use but just a few. Became fashionable specially on the 80’s and 90’s. Not now.

Once I arrived UK, I noticed in many houses, as my actual house, carpet in every single square meter of the house, acting like a virus that conquered the floor spreading for the whole house. Just bathroom and kitchen escaped. Even the toilet is full of hard fluffy carpet.

There is a reason that everybody tells me in a second, when I ask!.      ” carpet is to give a warm climate and collect the hot coming from the heating”.

The term “carpet” derives from Armenian “karpet” (կարպետ), “kar” meaning a “knot” or “stitch”. Sometimes the term “carpet” is used interchangeably with the term “rug”. The hand-knotted pile carpet probably originated in the Caucasus between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Cilician Armenia which had intensive trade relations with Venice, brought carpets to all of Europe, where they were primarily hung on walls or used on tables. Only with the opening of trade routes in the 17th century were significant numbers of Persian rugs introduced to Western Europe. Historically the word was also used for table and wall coverings, as carpets were not commonly used on the floor in European interiors until the 18th century.

In that sense carpets covering the floor were introduced on european houses since the industrial revolution, until the last century where the only way people had to keep the house warm was by the fireplace and by the materials and techniques used for the construction itself. Besides that carpet is soft and confortable allowing people walking barefoot by the house. Now-a-days, as technology and society became exponentially demanding, many kinds of heating equipment were invented to bring better comfort and life quality to house inhabitants.

Although comfort it has for sure an important role on saving energy , through heating, which is definitely a positive point. Reduces the energy spent on heating and consequently carbon emissions for the environment. Though currently is not affordable, there are many  other alternatives to reduce lost of energy and are more hygienic and easy to clean as well. There are several techniques and materials adapted to save the temperature on the inside.

These alternative options have a lot to do with the construction of the houses. Traditional houses besides the strong brick covering the facades of the houses, the wooden inside is not properly covered with isolated material, as wallmate, roofmate, foam or glass wool.

After some research about it I realized there are not really much explanation about the use of carpet on the floor now-a-days. I definitely didn’t understand why is still used in the british houses, as I found thousands of companies selling 1001 kinds of carpet flooring. Tradition? or an overpast reality?

as previously said, next posts will be related with happenings and readings that were realised before the date of publishing.

arrival to UK   –   multiple shocks, total changing

Overview portuguese life style till “The change”:

living in a wonderful flat with more 2 students in one of the best locations in hot sunny Lisbon city with a wonderful river and down town view from my bedroom window: 5min walking from creative and night life district, 10min walking from fashion and night life district, in front of the best garden in Lisbon, 7min driving to university.

Fortunately big wonderful group of friends always working for design studio project, sharing ideas and tasting different kinds of food over thousands of restaurants over the whole great city of Lisbon, enjoying the best drinks and cocktails over the river on the most trendy bars and clubs fulfilled with such beautiful people, traveling north to south of portugal and abroad.

Great lovely family supporting me and sharing great moments together.

Arriving UK:

great travel to airport

besides cheated by national express for 18 pound from Heathrow airport to London, arrived London with such a nice sun, lovely

Arrived Canterbury was very well received by some portuguese guys who had the mistake to know me and letting me rest on their comfortable living room and organize myself until get a house. Besides all this fortune, hard times! The Change had finally make totally sense!!

Without internet and forced to be part of the family of common visitor of free wireless internet Pubs, tried to maintain connected to the world, without success. Too late, wrong timing.

Got house and went to Rotterdam Bienniale of Architecture. Besides biennale, was inevitable to know people and settle some friendships and training my english.

After 1 week of cleaning tasks and trying to give the new room some identity, got availability and time to write this first post and in an unhappy way, tell my story and share my first contact with this new reality, full of new habits, experiences and teachings.