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14 Nov 2011
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The Community Cooker: Jiko Ya Jamii. A project turning waste into hot meal through community. As all the text is worth reading I’ve copied it below: “In many developing countries Local Authority refuse collection and responsible disposal has ceased. Where refuse collection continues it is generally in the hands of private companies who charge for their services. These collection costs are far beyond the budgets of lower income communities, and so in these very vulnerable areas refuse piles up in heaps, along pathways and roadsides, on open ground and in storm water drains and rots, where it is biodegradable. The rest is forever a blight on the landscape polluting the air and the ground water, and being picked over by cows, chickens and goats, which ultimately are food for their lower income owners. Where refuse collection is in the hands of commercial refuse collection organizations it is very often disposed of irresponsibly. Dumped over open green hillsides where it slides down into the valleys and so into our fresh water systems. Where refuse is still, on very rare occasions, collected by Local Authorities it is usually carted to massive refuse dump sites, where crude recycling is a dirty and risky business, often in the hands of cartels. What is left at the end of this process either rots, and oozes into the ground, polluting the ground water or cannot decompose, and so it is there forever. This is known as Civilization! “Civilization” has, also, produced massive refuse incinerators that can provide heat and power – but at huge expense – way beyond the budgets of towns and cities in the developing world, let alone villages and informal slums. In addition these incinerators create problems of their own in terms of refuse vehicles and their disposal queues, and the build up of unprocessed refuse at incinerator plants. These problems, overtime, can and will be overcome, but massive incinerators at 50 million dollars each are not commercially realistic for our lower income world, and the years of “subsidy” for the financially disadvantaged seem to be long ago over. Low income people today in both urban and rural areas are increasingly going without cooked food. Many have never ever washed in hot water! Traditional fuels of wood and charcoal are scarce and expensive, whilst paraffin and gas are financially out of reach. Those at the bottom of the income scale suffer in silence. There is a solution: The Community Cooker. These very simple cost effective units are built and operated by local communities for their own benefit, and to their own advantage. Based on the principles that nobody will do anything worth while for nothing, and that money is so often badly managed, the Community Cooker operates on a zero cash system. The prototype Community Cooker is now operational at Laini Saba in Kibera, located in the capital city of Kenya- Nairobi. The operational basics are as follows:- • Most refuse can be converted into heat. • If lower income people see a pile of rubbish as a cash free way to cooking a meal and/or heating water they will be motivated to collect that rubbish and carrying it to their local Community Cooker. • At the Community Cooker they swap their bag or sack of rubbish for a plastic token. This token they then take to the other end of the Community Cooker where that token provides them with “X” amount of cooking or water heating time at zero cash cost, only the effort required to collect and cart the rubbish. (People are, already, beginning to look on piles of rubbish as a valued commodity!). • At the refuse collection end of the Community Cooker the refuse is manually sorted, and recyclable materials are put into bins for collection. The rest is manually stacked, with spades and forks, onto a series of drying racks. This process is deliberately labour intensive in order to create work. • Dry and/or semi dry refuse is then shoveled into a refuse chute, where it slides down towards the fire box. Here it is combined in a very simple process where discarded sump oil (another polluting waste product) is combined with vaporized water in minute (droplet) amounts to raise the heat within the fire box to a point where all incoming refuse burns very efficiently, (so efficiently that the steel fire boxes have had to be lined with kiln quality fire bricks to prevent the steel from melting!). One must note that the heat is high enough to burn most of the toxins before emission. • The end products are:- • Zero cash cooking Frying. Boiling. Baking. Roasting. • Water heated cash free. • Water boiled cash free. • Motivated local Community Cooker operators will operate these Cookers free of charge for their local community between the hours of (say) 6.00a.m to midnight and operate from midnight to 6.00a.m., when they will bake bread, cakes and pies and heat water for sale, for their own financial benefit. Everyone wins!” More info here and  here (via World Buildings Directory - Community Cooker/ Jiko ya Jamii)
17 Oct 2011
52 notes

Weird, Wonderful Culinary Gadgets - Photo Gallery - LIFE

Now everyone can cook, so no one takes the blame.
17 Oct 2011
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17 Jan 2011
90 notes
30 Dec 2010
3 notes

Once again the home, the Greek Oikos, is the workshop where economic and ecologic innovation happens – not only in the labs of the industrial expertise. After decades of outsourcing the new modes of production are in the hands of the layperson. It is here, among the professional-amateurs, the Pro-Ams, we can see the seeds for new forms of practice and where craftsmanship is developed into innovative and high standards – parallel to the dominant industrial or knowledge economy. Here, the division of labour between producer and consumer, expert and dilettante, work and hobby have been blurred and once again the love of the amateur (from the French root Amare – to love) is the driving work ethic. Craft and activism merges into craftivism and the politics of the future are shaped hands-on by the kitchen table. This is where micro-utopias are formed through new shared and distributed household tactics. Welcome to Craftwerk 2.0.

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Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts

Jönköpings läns museum
30 Dec 2010
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The concept was dreamed up as a project between University of Central Lancashire and online supermarket Ocado, a UK-based grocery with a mind for the planet. In fact, their tag line is “Quality groceries that won’t cost the earth.” A significant part of minimizing the eco-impact of food is minimizing waste — and that is a primary purpose of this concept fridge. According to the Daily Mail, the fridge scans its contents and comes up with recipes you can make from whatever you have in there, including your leftovers. This helps to ensure that you never waste food by forgetting about it and letting it go bad, or never figuring out what to cook with it before it expires. (via Self-Cleaning Fridge Concept Makes Meals, Saves Money : TreeHugger)
28 Dec 2010
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La sociedad contra-sexual establecerá los principios de una arquitectura contra-sexual. La concepción y la creación de espacios contra-sexuales estarán basadas en la deconstrucción y en una re-negociación de la frontera de la esfera pública y la esfera privada. Esta tarea implica deconstruir la casa como espacio privativo de producción y reproducción heterocentrada

 — Beatriz Preciado. “Manifiesto contra-sexual”. Editorial Opera Prima (p.35)

(Source: periferiadomestica)
25 Sep 2010
1 note
Chaturvedi -Colmenares - S Mundim We selected knitting as the technique to effectively generate architectural structures and used a household knitting machine to understand procedural aspects. The ‘hacking’ of this machine has allowed for the speculation on the programmability of the patterns produced; projections through material experiments and digital simulations assist in envisioning the expansive topological and tectonic opportunities that emerge from this fabrication process.  (via Projects Review 2010 - DRL MArch - Chaturvedi -Colmenares - S Mundim )
13 Sep 2010
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