A Crash Course in Crafting Biodiversity

Radical Observation and Feral Cartographies
10 September 2024, 13.00–18.00, at Creative Laboratory Krater

Debra Solomon (infrastructure activist and artist) and Trajna / Krater collective (interdisciplinary collective of architects, designers and ecologists)

Radical Observation is a methodology developed by Solomon/Urbaniahoeve to teach natural world awareness towards ecosystem stewardship. It serves as a foundation for individuals and groups preparing to ask design questions and reach decisions about their upcoming ecological interventions. Individually performed exercises prepare group members in consolidating their vision. Through regular practice of radical observation, individuals come to understand the patterns and rhythms of the ecosystem, and experience the self as its part, gradually becoming a knowledgeable steward. Practitioners of radical observation exercises assume observation postures for periods ranging from 10 minutes to an hour and even a month, incorporating specific perspectives towards the ongoing natural world processes and entropy. Developed over years of teaching, the technique focuses attention on processes occurring over time, i.e. plants growing throughout seasons, plant communities wandering through space, and habitats accommodating ever more plant and animal life.

Using the radical observation method combined with Feral Cartographies, a mapping method developed by Krater collective, the workshop incorporates a discussion on three urban typologies in Ljubljana, and the design of an intervention aimed at improving their biodiversity. The participants are invited to come by bike.

Spatial Analysis and Mapping with Public Spatial Data
11 September 2024, 13:00 – 18:00, Creative Laboratory Krater

Urška Škerl (landscape architect and visual artist) and Alen Mangafić (geodesist and researcher, Geodetic Institute of Slovenia)

Using public spatial data we will analyse the situation of the location and its expected spatial development in order to better understand the big picture of spatial development and possible interventions. The results will be analysed and processed using open-source software and tools for geodetic information systems, such as QGIS, QField and Openstreetmap (OSM). By overlaying the visualized data, such as intended land use, applicable and anticipated planning documents (municipal spatial plan and detailed spatial plan), public areas, infrastructure, and others, we will analyse the intersections, and draw a map of potential programmatic synchronicities within a space and the connectivity of presently dispersed areas. The input data will be processed using QGIS and the output data (maps of added contents developed at the workshop) uploaded on the free OSM portal, which supports international exchange. We will be introduced to tools that can be used in critical mapping and counter-cartography.

Crafting Biodiversity

The Crash Course in Crafting Biodiversity is the last in the series within the research residency programme with visiting artist Debra Solomon, which takes place from 28 August through 12 September 2024 in the framework of the Crafting Biodiversity project. In addition to the residency programme, the project includes a symposium and the closing exhibition, which are to take place at the Museum of Architecture and Design in this and the coming year.

Crafting Biodiversity is a research project developed by the Trajna association to position craft as a reparatory land practice. The project focuses on designing critical methodologies, imageries, and administrative and spatial interventions that contribute to reducing urban land fragmentation and enhance the connectivity of species to achieve biodiversity, while advocating for the right of all species to a healthy urban environment.

About the designers:

Trajna / Krater collective
Led by designers and architects Gaja Mežnarić Osole, Andrej Koruza and Danica Sretenović, Trajna is a cultural association dedicated to cultivating and grounding eco-social approaches for the management and protection of urban nature in the face of climate change and biodiversity crisis. Trajna pioneered innovative strategies for invasive species management and launched the Notweed paper brand, which turned the invasive alien knotweed into paper, and engaged the City of Ljubljana in creating new circular economies. In 2020, the association launched the Creative Laboratory Krater, which aims to revive and maintain a pioneer system of 18,000 m² that emerged from an abandoned construction site, and facilitate (trans)local collaborations between eco-social practitioners and collectives. Within Krater, Trajna focuses on projects that intertwine regenerative material cultures, critical spatial and cultural practices, community economies and urgent pedagogical work, engaging in the cause the wider Krater collective, which includes microbiologist Primož Turnšek, ecologist Sebastjan Kovač, landscape architect Urška Škerl, designer Rok Oblak, and the multispecies community on the site. Krater was a finalist of the New European Bauhaus Prizes in 2022, and received the prestigious Plečnik Award for public space in 2023.

Debra Solomon (NL) is an artist and infrastructure activist with more than 25 years’ experience producing projects concerning public space. Her work combines art and infrastructure activism, focusing on biodiversity, the climate crisis, the multispecies’ right to the city, and the subsequent right to urban metabolism. In 2019, Solomon coined the term multispecies urbanism* and showcased the concept in the Dutch Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial. Currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Amsterdam Solomon is also the founder of  Urbaniahoeve – Social Design Lab for Urban Agriculture. Since 2010, Urbaniahoeve has been involved in critical spatial practices centred on interspecies care relations and biodiversity production. Urbaniahoeve’s current project is the 56-hectare Amsterdam Zuidoost Urban Food Forest (VBAZO) in Amsterdam Zuidoost. VBAZO is produced by the Urbaniahoeve collective (Debra Solomon and Renate Nollen) with local human and more-than-human communities.
*Multispecies urbanism is a synonym for equitable urban development and a spatial practice shaped by mutual relationships between human and other-than-human beings.

Urška Škerl (SI) is a landscape architect, writer, and artist, an associate of the IEM institute for polymedia arts, and editor of the international landscape architecture platform Landezine. She pursues her various interests through art projects (STAL, Sejalec, People?) and texts for the Radio Student programme Tipologije prostora (Typologies of Space).

Alen Mangafić (HR/SI) works at the Geodetic Institute of Slovenia on many different projects as a Remote Sensing Analyst, GIS coordinator, specialist and programmer. He is a PhD candidate of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme Environmental Protection at the University of Ljubljana, where he is developing a synergy between hyperspectral remote sensing, machine learning and chemical analysis for soil contamination detection/monitoring. He is an open-source, Linux, cats, dogs, music, philosophy, comics, and tofu enthusiast.