No Place Like Home: Temporary Urban Garden - Teasing Adonis

Responding to an international call for the Un-built 2008 international architecture research events[1] The Temporary Urban Garden-Teasing Adonis was an original installation project that questioned the public space boundaries for marginalized social groups. Exploring how such spatial relationships could be understood, negotiated and represented in European cities was extended to London (2009) through No Place Like Home[2] public exhibition events and debates. The ancient myth of Adonis revealed the role of women and other marginalized groupings in Greek polis. Using the examples of the short-lived gardens that Athenian women planted in mockery of Adonis's festival, and exploring the function of vegetation through spices like mint, myrrh, and cinnamon the installation systematically explored how historical knowledge could become a tool for critical practice. Utilizing tacit knowledge the installation project drew parallels between exclusion of women in ancient times through smells, objects and animations to current exclusion of public from dominant developments in public spaces by producing particular demarcations. Archival images were transformed through novel programming and time-based animation coupled with gentle obstructions of movement so the history of exclusion could be experienced and critically brought back to everyday life. The installation was displayed to experts and wider public in Athens Museum and later in London for No Place Like Home series of installations in four European cities setting challenging debates between academia and practice by revealing, re-creating and questioning lines of previously unknown contested demarcations present in four European cities and was published in Blueprint 2010[3]. The project sets a significant challenge to audiences in profession and public demonstrating how alternatives like gentle resistant practices may provoke debate and new ways of thinking to how contemporary city may be re-planned in terms of small scale interventions in which the margins of society may have spatial and political role to play. [1] http://www.byzantinemuseum.gr/unbuilt/pdf%20protaseis/59_wingham.pdf [2]http://www.scottbrownrigg.com/design_research_unit/research_activities/no_place_like_home/ [3] http://www.designcurial.com/aboutus/blueprint-home-page.html#subscribe; Blueprint January 2010, 25 who will change architecture and design in 2010