Tuesday 29 October 2013

Urban Exploring

Design School Talks monday 28th of October.
Edinburgh College of Art

Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City

Breathtaking and brilliantly illustrated—reclaiming the city with extreme urban explorations
It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us—the cities we live in—that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city’s edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis? Explore Everything reclaims the city, recasting it as a place for endless adventure.

Plotting expeditions from London, Paris, Berlin, Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Bradley L. Garrett has evaded urban security in order to experience the city in ways beyond the boundaries of conventional life. He calls it ‘place hacking’: the recoding of closed, secret, hidden and forgotten urban space to make them realms of opportunity.

Explore Everything is an account of the author’s escapades with the London Consolidation Crew, an urban exploration collective.

The book is also a manifesto, combining philosophy, politics and adventure, on our rights to the city and how to understand the twenty-first century metropolis.


Source: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1473-explore-everything

Yesterday I went to this talk by Bradley L. Garrett who is doing his Phd on Urban Exploring and he was talking us through his book called "Exploring Everything: Place Hacking the City". This is about exploring places that are hidden from the public, places that aren't really legal to enter, but they are accessible for those who manage to climb into them and maybe they could be used for something rather than being "hidden".
This was a very interesting talk and the pictures from the book were amazing, the idea of exploring these spaces that are forgotten is quite intriguing.

Here are a couple of pictures from the lecture theatre:


A few more pictures from the book:




If you find this idea interesting, google "urban exploring" and you will see a lot of interesting images. 
You can also read a bit more about "Explore everything: Place-Hacking the City" here: 

http://www.placehacking.co.uk/book/

Enjoy and be amazed!






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