Center for Urban Pedagogy

CUP is an education organization that works with youth to answer big questions about environment and places. They work with professional artists, researchers, and designers to gain information and research about the specific projects that they facilitate.

The project, Chew On This, 2006, asks "Where in the world does our food actually come from? How does its journey to our plate affect our environment and quality of life?"
"Students in four environmental science classes at the Heritage School worked in spring 2006 with CUP Teaching Artist Amanda Matles to explore the global flows of food. The class investigated the sources of their favorite snacks and the resources required to bring them to East Harlem. Other activities included a blind taste test with organic and regular foods, a visit to a local farmers' market, and a foraging expedition in Central Park. Finally, the students produced a 48" x 72" poster to introduce others to the edible environment."

http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/41

Aviva Rahmani - Ecological Artist

Photo by Ben Magro

"Aviva Rahmani purchased the site of a former coastal town dump on a fishing island, in the Gulf of Maine for Ghost Nets (1990-1991). The project restored 2.5 acres of habitat in the middle of an Atlantic seabird Class A Fly Zone, to a flourishing wetlands system and personal residence. Rahmani designed a passive solar home on the site, with Steve Robinson, AIA and created a complex uplands riparian zone garden and water buffer zones. The project was divided into three parts; 1) the Trigger Point Garden, 2) KindWind, 3) Traffic Dance. Each part was performative, transformative and explored another aspect of soil to land for the site work conceptually and practically" - Aviva Rahmani,
http://www.ghostnets.com/ghostnets.html

"The premise is that an artist's skills can be applied to observe, analyze, interpret and catalyze very small ecological "patches" in an environmentally degraded landscape "mosaic" as environmental triage."
Retrieved from: http://www.z-node.net/cms/pages/aviva_rahmani.html

Vertical Farms

"A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming."
Retrieved from: http://www.verticalfarm.com/more

Yuken Teruya

T.P Rolls and Tiffany's Bag


In his "work, Teruya tries to regenerate the spirit of trees. He is inspired by Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that regards the development of potentiality to actuality as one of the most important aspects to learn from nature. An example of this is when an acorn, which is a seed of an oak tree, begins to grow up, it already has within it the potentiality of an oak tree. Similarly a full grown oak tree is proof of the potentiality of the acorn. Teruya tries to give rebirth to the spirit of the trees by his technique using these paper products, since he believes that there is a spirit of the tree which is contained on the surface of these paper products which originally comes from trees." - Shinya Watanabe, http://spikyart.org/anotherexpo/yukenteruyaintroductione.htm

What will NYC look like underwater?

Artist, Eve Mosher tackles an effect of climate change (a rising water line) in her public art project High Water Line.
"Mosher is drawing (by-hand or pushcart) a white chalk line through the waterfront communities of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan in order to illustrate the 10-feet above sea level mark that potentially threatens unsuspecting neighborhoods, commercial zones, city streets, and private residences."-Abigail Doan

http://inhabitat.com/2007/08/04/the-high-water-line-public-art-in-nyc/eve-mosher/

The Pothole Gardener

The Pothole Gardener puts plants in unsuspecting places bringing nature and beauty to otherwise overlooked cracks & potholes.
"I don’t and never have claimed to be the first Guerrilla Gardner, or even the first pothole gardener for that matter – there are loads of examples of similar projects on the Guerrilla Gardening website, pothole gardening seems to date back to a school group in the USA four years ago and there have been various other similar projects."-p.g.

http://bit.ly/b6Xluq

Right to know..

..where fruit comes from. A project where artists use wrappers to share information about food, like the entire life of an orange. Check out the site to download your own wrapper.

http://www.free-soil.org/fruit/wrappers.html

seeding the city a plan for greening the urban expanse

"This is a public art project that asks, why have just one roof with 1,000 square feet of green, when you can have 1,000 roofs with 1 square foot of green? (Or in this case, about 4 square feet and a flag!)

The project uses neighbor to neighbor referrals for siting small green roof modules. It builds a community of people interested in environmental issues and educated about urban environmental issues and remediation. It also plants the seed of the idea of creating green (roof) space in New York city (and beyond!).

The project is about POTENTIAL. These are small modules (remember, less than 4 square feet) but they get people thinking about environmental issues and the role that we can each play in creating a more sustainable & hospitable environment. Each installation is a seed of potential – potential for community action, potential for more green roof, potential for change!"
Retrieved from: http://seedingthecity.org/

Maize

"MAIZE FIELD is a project to plant northeastern varieties of corn in areas of Brooklyn where Native Americans historically cultivated their corn fields." proposed by Christina Kelly!

http://www.discobikini.com/portfolio/maizenew.html

"Greenaid Fosters Johnny Appleseeds for the 21st-Century" -FastCompany.com

http://thecommonstudio.com/index.php?/project/greenaid/

Rent your own Greenaid machine..kind of like a gumball machine, but better.
"Made from a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds, "seedbombs" are becoming an increasingly popular means combating the many forgotten grey spaces we encounter everyday-from sidewalk cracks to vacant lots and parking medians. They can be thrown anonymously into these derelict urban sites to temporarily reclaim and transform them into places worth looking at and caring for. The Greenaid dispensary simply makes these guerilla gardening efforts more accessible to all by appropriating the existing distribution system of the quarter operated candy machine. Using just the loose coins in your pocket, you can make a small but meaningful contribution to the beautification of your city!"

Corn Rows - seen on 6th Ave & Spring, NY

This anonymous street artist created an image of corn fields in an empty lot, which reminds the viewer of what was possibly there before all the buildings and concrete went up.

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