-Jan 2022-
BIO27 Production Platform, which sees three interdisciplinary teams along with an esteemed design and architecture mentors developing new works by responding to three themes and šressing issues within them, welcomes two new teams to broaden the explored field of themes. The two teams joing Pjorkkala, Robida+ and Garnitura are Futuring and Krater.
KRATER
Members: Rok Oblak, Gaja Mežnarić Osole, Altan Jurca Avci, Andrej Koruza, Sebastjan Kovač, Primož Turnšek, Anamari Hrup, Eva Jera Hanžek
Mentor: Atelier LUMA & BC Materials
Topic: Raising Earth
More on Krater.
In the spring of 2020, a 25-year-old construction site near the city center of Ljubljana became the setting for the first community-led bio-laboratory in the country. It grew on an impoverished piece of land overgrown with invasive and other feral plants. Mobile production stations (a papermaking workshop, a wood workshop and a myco-design lab) installed at the location enable the exploration of on-site production methods and regenerative material cultures. Despite the successful reception of the project’s outcomes, we cannot overlook the fact that the economy of bio-materials in Slovenia is still greatly challenged by a lack of certification and legal frameworks, preventing local resources from being applied in real-life contexts. Most of the ecological materials used for construction or crafts, are currently imported from both nearby and faraway countries, creating an unsustainable detour even for national economies. As the legislation currently stands, national ‘material’ landscapes seem to appear as forbidden vernaculars. What if the construction site Bežigrajski krater were to become a landscape-based forum for discussing the accessibility of regional matter? By exploring the resourcefulness of the abandoned construction site, the group will look into dilemmas and possibilities for the implementation of locally acquired clay, plants, and minerals in the vernacular design and architecture. The project’s findings will be shared with visitors of the biennale at a series of facilitated gatherings, hosting collective discussions of the legal, social and ecological implications of designing with local materials. At a site-specific earth pavilion, invited guests (decision-makers, entrepreneurs, residents, designers and architects) will be invited to take part in convivial conversations as they are served herbal tea in wild clay tableware, sourced from the urban site.
The interdisciplinary group of creatives and ecologists is an extended collective of the creative laboratory Krater Users (Trajna, the Slovenian Association of Permaculture Practitioners, the Abandoned Plants Sanctuary, Agrodivizija and other creative individuals) collectively working towards enlivening the forgotten construction site. By mobilising expertise ranging from conceptual and critical thinking, product design, production, permaculture, ecology, journalism, art and architecture, each of the group’s members is contributing to the project with a particular set of scholarly experience and practical skills, which create a unique work setting and allow a holistic approach of the project’s outcomes.
FUTURING
Members: Žan Kobal, Tamara Lašič Jurković, Barbara Predan
Mentor: Sophie Thomas
Topic: Sustainable cultural production
More on Pekinpah, producer of Futuring.
Futuring is the field of using a systematic process for thinking about and planning for the future; to picture possible outcomes. Or as Tony Fry explained, “Design Futuring argues that responding to ethical, political, social and ecological concerns requires a new type of practice which recognises design's importance in overcoming a world made unsustainable.”