Get the vault out:
Vote for la Voute!
October 6, 2006
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
What does nubian vaulted architecture have to do with food culture? It’s a stretch, but suffice it to say that good cookin’ and eatin’ requires stable communities and a stable kitchens requires a stable roof. My buddies at La Voute Nubienne are among the 13 finalists of the Ashoka-Changemakers Competition on “How to Provide Affordable Housing.” Vaulted homes are an ancient architectural technique, traditionally used in Sudan and central Asia, but until now unknown in West Africa, can accelerate appropriate house-building in the Sahel. The Nubian Vault (“la Voute Nubienne” or VN) technique uses basic, readily available local materials and simple, easily learned procedures. The only major cost is labour, which is great - cash stays in the local economy. Raw materials, are all locally available and more importantly, ecologically sound. In Burkina Faso, trained VN builders are becoming independent entrepreneurs. A voute may be different from a yurt, but voute entrepreneurs get my vote any day.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
La Voute Nubienne initiative has been shortlisted by a panel of five distinguished judges. Now it’s over to us, the online community to vote for three winners. Each voter is required to cast three votes, otherwise your vote will be rendered invalid. This, to ensure fairplay, it’s a prestigious award. The deadline for voting is October 16, 2006. The Changemakers Innovation Award winners will be announced on October 17, 2006.
Cast your vote for La Voute Nubienne and two others right here.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
What’s so special about the VN technique?
- the only raw material used is earth, for making both mortar, and mud bricks dried in the sun
- timber shuttering is not needed to support the vault during construction
the traditional methods have been simplified, and adapted to provide protection during the short but heavy rainy seasons of sub-Saharan Africa.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
debra at 8:13 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us
Meat meeting tonight
October 5, 2006
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Image of First Nations Sioux ladies drying meat used entirely without permission.
That should read meat fight tonight! If you’re interested in the meat industry and are currently in Amsterdam, you’re not going to want to miss tonight’s Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global Meat Industry at Felix Meritus on the Keizersgracht. Specifically the event promises to address the environmental impact of raising livestock and eating animal protein. culiblog has an inside scoop that there will be audience members present that are heading the teams cooking up meat in the laboratory using animal and/or vegetable protein and not involving any actual livestock at all. Let the wingflapping begin.
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Image from the Tissue Culture and Art website showing an attempt at growing frog muscle tissue used entirely without permission.
Indeed, it seems there are two camps in this crazy mixed-up world that refuse to believe in rice and beans like the rest of us. One of the camps is animal and one is vegetable. Just for the sake of poetry, it would be nice if at tonight’s lecture there was also a representative from the mineral camp, but we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone from the oil industry shows up to defend themselves (and all that other foul off-subject stuff they’re doing). I’ll be the one sitting in-between the esteemed gentlemen catching all the spit. I was thinking of wearing a skirt.
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Microscope image of muscle tissue from the Pruned landscape architecture weblog used entirely without permission.
I would like to take this opportunity to dispel a myth. This week I have spoken to the heads of both Dutch research teams working to be the first to produce an alternative to livestock grown meat. For clarity’s sake I would like to announce right here and now that I have spoken to Professor Haagsman (Meat Scientist!) who told me that ‘lab meat’ does not yet exist and that we will have to wait at least six years if not fifteen to taste this product. I know a lot of media suggests that this product exists, but this is apparently 100% not true.
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Image of rectangular cuts of perfectly marbled beef from the E-meat website (in Japanese language only) and used entirely without permission.
- Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global Meat Industry at Felix Meritus, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam
Thursday Oct 5, 2006 at 20.00h
Entrance: € 10,- / € 7,50 (student) discount)
Reserve: +31 (0)20 623 13 11
Email: receptie@felix.meritis.nl - The artist initative Tissue Culture and Art
- Tissue Culture and Art, Disembodied Meat
- Pruned landscape architecture blog only shows the prettiest of pictures
- Why does this Japanese company call itself E-meat?
Shouldn’t that be iMeat? - Comprehensive article about lab-grown meat in the AnimalRighter - iMeat: How Lab-Grown Meat Could Revolutionize Vegetarianism and the World
debra at 13:37 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us
Party heartily in the street. Got more street party typologies?
October 4, 2006
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Image showing a 1977 street party commemorating Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee from the Westbank Heritage website and used entirely without permission.
Since May I have been working as part of the Dott 07 City Farming team, developing an urban agriculture project in the North East of England. We’ve been forming good working relationships with a large number of organisations already quite present in the region in order to see if we can help eachother by getting this project to fly; allotment organisations, primary schools, community farms, a catering college, local cafĂ©s, women’s groups, and local farmers. Our plan is to set up a goodly number of small, medium and large mobile gardening containers to create ‘grow zones’ in the city and through the course of spring and summer, grow enough food, and generate enough recipes to self-host a town meal, a harvest feast cum street party at the end of the summer.
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Another silver jubilee street party Westbank Heritage website copyright Rex Features Limited 2005. Image used entirely without permission.
Urban greening projects may be a dime a dozen, but we want to experiment with connecting small community kitchens to the gardens, a holistic approach to food production. And by ‘holistic approach’ I mean an approach that includes some partying.
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Yet another silver jubilee street party from the Totnes Image Bank and used entirely without permission.
These are some of the images that I found online of entire streets eating together, mostly on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in 1977 and one of a VE party in 1945 in Devon. I am looking to increase the number of street party typologies in my archive of people eating together, entire neighbourhoods, eating at tables set out on the street. I especially would like images that are less homogenous and less Queen-related than the ones pictured here.
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An image of a Devonshire VE street party in 1945 used entirely without permission.
Do you have any old pictures of street parties that give an indication of the variety of food served or that veer from the message that these images give? If so, please help me get in touch with you.
debra at 10:53 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
