something else

From walking around the site today, I find there is something contradictory.

The train station + rail tracks, the canal, and the overpasses (flyovers?) suggest that this area  is all about making connections between places. On the other hand, these supposedly "links" also create major barriers for the local. I mean, it is extremely difficult to walk around the site. Maybe we can build our ideas on "connections" and see who else have done this and the way they did it.

Maybe we can be a practice that sees the obstacles and build projects that either remedy the situation or at least critique it somehow. What do you guys think? 

some thoughts on the ethos

We see things in less obvious ways, through the eyes of all inhabitants on a given site. Eg, butterfly, goose etc

We don't see the site as an isolated place in the present stage. Instead, we make the connection between the site and its surroundings and its connection to the city on a larger scale. We also compare the past to its present and try to come up with an idea the copes with potential future changes (everything is in the process of transformation.)

We learn from the site and try to come up with an idea that is beneficial to all (maybe too broad :(.) We certainly don't want to impose anything without a full understanding. 

****** 

This is definitely too broad.... we still need to figure out what we are doing as a practice.. 

I'm lost but still thinking!

Nice job on all previous postings! keep it up!

Historic maps

maps of site and area around were taken from historic digimap, in order to investigate changes, the present map is coming soon, so stay on line. seams that bigest changes are still coming in King's Cross, with demolition of some buildings, constructing new,
what localities remain, what is their relation to the new?
what futures are already the past in these lands

Lexicon

lexicon made by Goldsmiths colledge students

This year, the ‘Geographies’ course chose to look at St. Pancras Station, the new home of
Eurostar in King’s Cross, as its collective investigative project. We chose this in the mistaken
belief that we would find there a hub of globalisation in all its levels; tourists and business
people streaming back and forth from the European continent and representatives of all the
technologies of control such as police, customs and immigration etc’. We thought that in St.
Pancras the work of architecture and spatial organisation would unfold in front of our eyes
bringing together the manifold layers of a dense urban environment. We thought that the
contradictions between the social complexity of a migrant area in which transience, drugs
and prostitution were some of the major contemporary economies and the glittering new
design for the housing of travel and mobility, would result in a spatial texture that was new
and unfamiliar.

What we actually found was very different. St. Pancras which seemed initially to embody
the dynamics of what is currently Europe’s largest urban regeneration project, a huge
building site that will envelope the entirety of the West side of King’s Cross, found us its
critical investigators, at a loss for words. How to break down its seamless, monolithic logic of
development ? How to see through its opacity and the interwoven density of its control and
surveillance mechanisms ? How to understand the self staging of ideal consumption ? How
to puncture the fantasy of cosmopolitan and privileged travel ? What to do with the context
of another environment that was being effaced as we went about our investigations ?

more on this : http://geographies.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/lexicon3.pdf

proposed plans v.s. public opinions

We found this poster taped to one of the billboards showcasing the proposed plans of the area. Here is what it's petitioning against in the original wording.

'Network Rail plan to close all the entrances to the station and replace them with one at the far west side. The station will become a massive barrier between the local community and the transport links and amenities they have used daily for over a hundred and fifty years. We want Network Rail to build a bridge from the York Way/Wharfdale Road entrance to their new Western Concourse. Otherwise we'll all be condemned to use walking and cycling routes that are unsafe, dangerous, polluted and for years will be filled with construction traffic'

Sigh the petition if you are for it or go to their blog to find out more.

ready for business

100

Put your knives down,
Down with knives,
Knives down on you
We can not let the boat
In canal
Stop going upstream

Bicycle,
Strawberry jam
Black coffee
Group hug
Lots of love
CH WC CRM - chocolate with cream

Caution
Waterways London –
Industry and pleasure
Bank robbed
Financial chaos
Growing prices
Feed the hungry,
Damage bank
Up to you
The city

Caution high cables under
Slabs
Say
Don’t be a stranger

Religion is stupid
Don’t be a stranger –
Then the gate is closed

20

Damage city
High voltage
Cables under slabs
Disconnecting becomes strange
Fight Marxism
DPD thank you
Pond meadow and woodland habits
I’m ready for business too!
Clean it up!

ready for business 03

ready for business 02

ready for business