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The Project

The Institute of Placemaking is a knowledge exchange center and public institution that gives spatial possibilities to people who desire a place for new ideas and new encounters within the city.

Its main elements are:

The Institute

The Structure

The Workshops

The Institute is a collaborative project initiated by Pieterjan Grandry, Jia Gu, Valentina Karga and Rosario Talevi. We are four young designers currently working at the intersection of art and architecture. 

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For Eme3 Festival of Architecture, we propose re-using the city as a resource, whose products, people and places are all part of a larger cycle of production. THE WORKSHOPS STEP 0 : BUILDING THE INSTITUTEJune 20 – June 26 Construction of the Institute begins one week before Eme3 starts! An open call to citizens, local designers, architecture, art and design students to help us build this temporary and transformable architecture that becomes the setting for the workshops! STEP 1 : REMAKE FURNITURE WORKSHOPJune 26 & 27 | 11am – 5pmIs your chair missing a leg or does your cabinet have one too many shelves? Bring it to us!Materials donated from locals will be re-appropriated to create special furniture for the Institute! Its previous owners are invited to give us their unwanted furnitures (chairs, tables, stools, boxes, dressers) in any condition, and we will remake it with workshop participants. Drop in workshop STEP 2 : THE SUPER SOLAR COOK-OFFJune 28 | 10:30am – 6pmCook with the sun! Learn to make your own parabolic solar cooker with simple materials. Participants will cook their first solar cooked meal, while local chefs will judge the dishes. There is gonna be a prize for the best solar cooked dish! STEP 3 : FRUIT JAMMING WITH GRANDMAJune 28 | 3pm – 7pmJam making wih local grandmothers ! Learn how to make jam from market leftovers ! STEP 4 : CHEESE OPERAFriday, June 29 | 4pm – 7pm Learn how to make cheese by yourself from fresh milk! ARTIST LED BARFriday, June 29 | 7pm – 10pm In the evening, the Institute transforms into an artist bar. EME3 artists and participants are invited to organize and host a bar for one evening to celebrate! STEP 5 : THE BIG LUNCHSaturday, June 3012am – 6pm Cooking5pm – 6pm Projection of the Documentary “Homage a Catalonia II” The public, local residents, visitors and festival participants are invited to join us in a collective dinner! A big lunch with local food collected from market leftover, grocers or neighbhorhood gardens. All the results of previous workshops culminate with the big lunch; market food is cooked in the DIY solar cookers, grandma’s fruit jam becomes dessert; we wash the dishes with the soap from Soap Opera, and all the food waste goes to the compost pile which will make the soil for the community to start their own garden there. Dinner guests can come to cook or bring their own special dishes to be shared in a collective dinner. In the evening, we will have a special film screening and discussions (content to be determined..) more info and subscription by email at coordinacion@eme3.org
THE STRUCTURE It begins with a simple, transformable structure constructed from recovered materials (doors, windows, cabinets etc) that can be taken apart to make workshops with. This structure, the office-cabin and a table, are the the simple architectural elements around which happenings, dinners and collective gatherings happen. The Institute then acts as an infrastructure that ‘grows’ through a series of curated workshops dealing with public action and experimentation with do-it-yourself methods of production, which extends to building, making, cooking, using and re-using. Over time, individuals and organizations in the neighborhood can plug into this structure, and begin to propose their own spatial interventions or knowledge exchanges. Dinners and artist-led bars will play a catalytic role in getting to know the neighbors and facilitating new encounters… The Institute is forever under construction.
THE INSTITUTE The Institute of Placemaking is a knowledge exchange center and public institution that gives spatial possibilities to people who desire a place for new ideas and new encounters within the city. The Institute is not permanent. It is nomadic and changing. It opens, closes, travels, hides and grows. It is always improvising and improving. The Institute is forever under construction The Institute is not about autonomous art or autonomous architecture. Instead, we want to contribute to the idea that a place is more than the sum of its buildings, and that architecture is a tool for giving form and potential to these shared spaces. But we are not deterministic: we want to design a space of possibilities. We provide the ingredients, you can make the meal.
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Ivan! We don’t know where you are in the world these days, but we had hoped to meet you in our workshops. In the end you are a mysterious patron we did not have the privilege to thank personally - so please accept a virtual one!  The festival was absolutely amazing and we had a truly transformative time, meeting new people in the neighborhood and the city and making contact with some remarkable collaborators including Pez Estudio, raumlaborberlin and Re-Cooperar!  In this photo you find the survivors of the last days of the festival, along with our friends at Eme3! From top left, there is Javier Planas (director of Eme3), Rosita (our Berlin-Argentine contributor), Pieter, Jia, Andreas Sollazzo and Louisa Vermoere (from Brussells!). Bottom left is Charlotte Debarle (co-director), Valentina and our amazing Barcelona contributor Laura Torello! We send you greetings!! cheers the Institute of PM
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Dear Philippe,  Thank you for supporting our project!! In the end, the Institute found a second home with the group Idensitat, who will dismantle the structure from the site in Raval and reconstruct it for use in their workshops. For four days, Idensitat will undertake the construction of mobile devies that give visibility to the demands of Cruilles Recreant, working for the reappropriation of the area Germanetes, to enable a temporary intervention within its public spaces! We’ll update you as we hear more ourselves.  Meanwhile, enjoy this image of the Institute’s birth - here is Pieter and our two local team mates Marina and Juan Ramon setting up the walls of the Institute in the first week!  Thanks again, we hope you can join us in the next workshops! cheers the Institute of PM