Augmented Urban Gardens

The Time's Up workspace, situated on the verge of the city, on the industrial harbour but still in an urban environment, offers clear connections to the fields of urban gardening, vertical and other nonstandard systems such as floating, hanging or even “non-green” gardens. Informed by the geographical location, spoiled with sufficient sunshine and immediate access to a water area (the harbour on one side, the Danube on the other) our interest in the creation and maintenance of experimental and alternative horticultures has been aroused over the past few years.

There have been several activities over the years which are strongly related to the field of urban and urban-fringe gardening, plus there has been the creation of an international Guild with European partners which touches a range of aspects dealing with the development of resilient creative practices, that tries to contribute to the long-term sustainability and prosperity of European culture. Together with the “Guild of Resilients” an application for the European Culture Program 2007-2011 was formulated, accepted and currently enables mutual investigation and exploration.

The main occupations within “Augmented Urban Gardening” from Time's Up can be summarized as follows:
 

• Urban (fringe) gardening: creating & maintaining productive gardens in the urban & industrial areas, using suspended beds, vertical/hanging/balcony gardens, guild gardening & rooftop fields. Recycled objects & mechanical systems are deployed for watering, composting or other practical & aesthetic purposes
• ‘Neo-crafting’ techniques: mixing pre/early-industrial mechanics with modern technologies to obtain autonomous sculptural elements - turning gardens into responsive artworks
• Experiments with energy autonomy: using renewable energy & recycled industrial materials to power (horti)cultural applications.
• Gardens as eco-arts venues: exploring the boundary between urban/rural, public/private space to find different ways of gardening & creating in a city context
• Cities as continuous landscapes: turning public & private green spaces into distributed gardens (e.g. guerilla gardening, augmented foraging & bee-keeping), assisted by mobile applications & a gardening database.