Log in to your CAFx Account

USA

The film aims to repurpose 2000 acres of underperforming and marginalized land for shared timber farming to enact a more adequate synergistic relationship (socio-economically and environmentally) between the built space and the fragmented Hudson Valley’s forest. In Hudson Valley, most of the trees are privately owned, growing on land at the fringe of urban development- Wildland Urban Intermix (WUI). Tackling the large-scale U.S. monopoly of engineered-timber products, the project envisions a bottom-up timber economy- a vertically integrated, resilient timber supply chain- as a way to incentivize private landowners to sustainably manage their own forests while directly accessing a shared infrastructure of researching, harvesting, manufacturing, and retail, waste-recycling, and branding for their timber product. By creating shared collaborative infrastructure for local forest and small-timber-business owners and entrepreneurs, new social partnerships and equally-distributed amenities will be created, boosting local economies while preserving the local and regional forest ecologies. By sustaining long-term forest-plant-based economic development through this shared co-op system, Hudson Valley’s scaled-down timber industry will be funneled while a more socially adequate distribution of profits between diverse communities will be achieved. Composed of four entities, the Center for Resilient Forestry, which is clustered with Wood Innovation Facilities, the Certification Centers, the Sawmill and Distribution Center with additional facilities for Recycling and Storage and Renewable Energy Generation, this project provides a lasting infrastructure that promotes a holistic framework for profitable and sustainable timber agroforestry that ensures the wellbeing of both the forest and its inhabitants.

USA

The assumption that all people are able to actualize the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of citizenship within the built environment is misleading. African Americans’ ownership of property and use of public space for personal enjoyment has been historically perceived as transgressive behavior, and often met with punitive legal action, violence, and, at times, death. Given this context, the ability of African Americans to successfully navigate and shape the physical spaces within their lives has amounted to de facto survival strategies. Addressing this fraught social-spatial condition and its impact at the scale of the citizen, Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line), an intervention in the courtyard of the US Pavilion, is rooted in the historical spatial practices of African Americans, yet speculates upon new spatial strategies that support the most precarious of populations. We foreground these practices as manifestations of civic agency and freedom that move all citizens beyond mere survival toward thrival and full participation in the democratic ideal.

Taiwan

A guide dog and its master.

Georgia

The film is about the milk that gold and other ore mining companies distribute to employees to protect their health.

France

‘Terrain Vague’ is a term for spaces that have been unintentionally transformed as the result of design and planning action. The short film reveals the qualities of a Terrain Vague and its users in Versailles in an urgent but poetic tone, inspired by the work of Jem Cohen. ‘Terrain Vague’ is an ode to urban margins everywhere that highlights the shelter these places offer to people that find themselves, either through choice or misfortune, outside of the norms society. The explored terrain in the film is the indirect consequence of planning regulations related to the nearby Palace and Gardens of Versailles. Large parts of the urban fabric of the relatively small town of Versailles cannot be significantly altered due to the UNESCO heritage status of the Palace and Gardens. The development and use of these heritage sites are under strict control as a way to manage, preserve and propagate narratives in the collective memory. The static character of the heritage site has led to the developing of a modern margin to host activities, people and developments that are deemed not fitting within the cultural narrative. As such the Terrain Vague provides space for the people and functions that do not comply with the aesthetic and societal standards of heritage preservation.

Mexico

Amend walls with recycled wine bottles and homemade bio-cement, cultivate community garden and terraces, clean and decorate domestic spaces… This project is rooted in an anonymous building in Mexico City, and seeks an alternative to redefine the beginning and the end of architectural design. It is an attempt to learn from people, from the quotidian, and to provide an alternative literacy for architectural authorship that lives in the acts of otherwise unnoticed, 'everyday' care. This design agency is then captured and transcribed with a series of tools such as photogrammetry, data processing, 3d printing and plotting, etc.