Chop Chop
Jack Prendergast
I am a co-founder of the West Cork Architecture Network (WeCAN) a Research Platforml. Our mission at WeCAN is to address rural dereliction through community-centered approaches. I have extensive experience in organizing community-focused events, workshops, and navigating local councils.
I offer extensive tutoring experience with diverse workshops for EASA, spanning theory to construction, enhancing my leadership and teaching abilities. My Previous involvement in the Venice Biennale has equipped me with versatile skills in pavilion design and construction, including all stages from inception to deconstruction.
When I'm not at work, I enjoy riding my bike around the city and when at home am often busy tinkering at ongoing restoration/construction projects around my flat, while also cooking, caring for plants and beekeeping when I get the time :)
Looking at the surplus materials within the contemporary city. In what ways can we reimagine/ recompose these materials? Using simple methods. Limited tools should be required. The site would be the city, nomadic in ways, where participants would learn the skills and abilities to be resourceful.
We will build on site, with the engagement of the community members in both the design and construction of the object(s).
Materials to be sourced by communities we work with but also by participants.
The materials sourced by the participants can be anything, ideally waste material from construction sites or in skips, but also any objects fund discarded, like old office furniture, broken chairs, etc.
Who owns material if someone's waste is repurposed?
~ Mistakes welcome ~ Room for experimentation ~
Building is part of the process, not the end goal. Disassembly, reassembly, and alterations are welcome (and encouraged!)
Question ownership models re: materials + how we interact in collective space
Can this lead to alternative forms of collective ownership?
Exploring if this intervention can create new communities and feel connection/ownership of the place. Can small interventions in public space made through engaging with the local community create a new sense of placemaking if locals are involved with the process?
Methodology:
Construction is to be simple and relatively fast.
Limited tools to be required.
Materials to be found, donated, upcycled and repurposed
Timeline:
The workshop would initially begin by sourcing materials. By the end of the first day, we will (hopefully) collectively build something, probably something simple. As the workshop processes objects will be built, rebuilt, adjusted, modified, destroyed, used, stolen, etc.
By the second half of the workshop, will focus on putting what we build into public space and seeing how they activate space.