Week 10 9 Meals From Anarchy: Nick Ritar

Permaculture: Goal to create a permanent culture.

Milkwood Permaculture- www.milkwood.net
Ritar's lecture was based around the concept of 'whole system design', following permaculture ideals such as; How can we design truly resilient cities? Why aren't we designing urban food production as a fundamental facet of any urban design? Why is the inclusion of food growing in urban planning still largely only seen from a point of view of increasing the design's 'green' credentials or increasing its energy efficiency?


3 Core Values

1. care for the earth
2. care for each other
3. setting limits on consumption of population 

‘Australia’s cities and urban centre’s are hubs for many human needs, but not for food production. Our cities create massive organic waste streams which could be converted into excellent growing mediums, which in turn could produce a large percentage of that city’s food needs, thereby increasing food security, general nutrition and truly sustainable systems.’- Ritar. Ritar believes that it is a large scale not a small scale problem, and there are currently not enough cycles. At the moment our resources aren't moving through a cycle, instead they are in one direction...growth, consumption, waste...Ritar said that we need to complete the cycle and make use of the waste in terms of nutrition during growth of agricultural resources.


In regards to our group's design proposal idea, I found it difficult to draw parallels between it and Ritar's lecture. However, the problem space we are dealing with is part of the built environment and currently is suffering from a poor system from growth to waste, and therefore we have to be mindful of what changes we make to this environment. It is because of this that our group would like to use the existing infrastructure within Kings Cross.


Later in the week Yos spoke to us about 'Sounds as Interaction Modalities' and 'Sonic Interaction'. I found this lesson quite intriguing, as within the sound scape, what we hear is always changing. Sometimes we don't even pay attention to the sounds used for interactive purposes, for example the microwave's "beep" or typewriter's "ping".


Group Work

Rough sketch of possible design proposal

Our group shared ideas we had come up with over the week, and one idea we all liked and thought was appropriate was the concept of incorporating a DJ Booth into our interactive hub. Our goal is to play around with the idea of public projections and the different ways users/passers by can interact with our product. We aim to incorporate a range of movement sensors which may act as triggers to change the projections etc.





Shadow Monsters installation by Phillip Worthington, 2005


>>Our group finds previous work really inspiring when brainstorming possible design proposals.


This week Jo and I took a trip to Kings Cross to explore areas for the installation of our projections. Following on from the Permaculture lecture at the start of the week it has become extremely important to us that we do not distrupt the existing environment or infrastructure.


Below is the area we found and seek to propose to our group over the weekend...

We would like to make some of the central streets of Kings Cross one way to solve congestion issues,
and make our transport hub a more plausible realistic solution.

Area Proposal to present to the rest of the group

Llankelly Place- a pre-existing alleyway connecting Darlinghurst Road to Orwell Street...the perfect setting for our hub!






Orwell Street- the site of our taxi rank/transport hub...takes the people off the main street, through a safe passageway to the transport to take them home.