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Sari Suki 2050: Another Another Scenario Draft

We don’t know what the world will look like in 2050. Our time spent traveling around Cebu the past few weeks has reminded us that different slices in the city generate different relationships with time. The scrap metal recycler looks like they are from a post industrial future decades away while the empty sidewalks of a business park feel like an aged future vision gone wrong. Despite the fact that both of these settings described are perhaps only two to three decades old. They both exist in a city that has lasted over 400 years and an island that has been around for several thousand.

Our relationship with time is limited as seen by the way we build our spaces. When is the last time you had heard of a building taking over 100 years to build? A multi generational project that aspires to greatness, however when building a cathedral the relationship to time isn’t human anymore it is divine, it transcends the human relationship to time.

Looking 35 years into the future maybe as futile as looking 5 years into the future as we may not even be aware of the global changes happening around us because we are ingrained in the present time. Trying to sync with present time may take us away from an objective view of our time in relation to past times and potential future times.

Sari Suki 2050 attempts to use the structure of a ‘Sari Sari’ store, a convenience store a structure that has transcended it’s spatial origins and has permeated as a national icon through the Philippines. The ‘Sari Sari’ may not change as a structure but some of the products and services it delivers may start shifting as an indicator of the times. The products in the store may or may not come around. We do know as you may already know that many of these concepts already exist in our world.

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Sari Suki 2050: Another Scenario Draft

VSOON has no idea what 2050 will look like in terms of aesthetics nor concepts. We do however have some speculation based on overarching global trends relating to the growth of global populations, the diffusion of technology, the slowly shifting regional and global geopolitics, the existing social conditions derived from pre and post colonial power structures, and our relationship with time in its different forms.

In the seven weeks leading up to the exhibition our relationship with time has never been more confused. Our relationship with spatiality has never been more blurred and the idea of the future has never appeared so trendy.

In traversing any urban landscape you are confronted with different segments of time represented by materiality, founded by ideology. A tabula rasa, a blank slate versus a milieu, a natural environment or setting was the dichotomy we kept seeing while exploring Cebu in order to gain a firmer cultural grasp on our surroundings.

A small scale metal recycling shop feels post industrial and futuristic as often times the structures are collaged with different types of metals. A space that evolved out of the city environment and accommodated its function to consume the city’s excess material.

Compared to...

A large scale residential commercial business park that has been plopped there and designed from the top down as an instrument of development. Inhabiting a blank slate it is still trying to generate its social fabric.

Both settings inhabit a city that is a couple hundred years old that stands on an Island that is thousands of years old.

Spatially

Sari Suki 2050: A Scenario Draft

Some thoughts surrounding the initial research we’ve done so far around the sari-sari store in the Philippines.

As of 2015 ASEAN as a regional bloc is projected to emerge as a more unified region in the years to come as the most complete form economic integration thus far nears fruition. However what does that really mean for the everyday person that isn’t a governmental power elite nor a corporate entity?

Will more cultural objects, systems, and services that aren’t inline with a neoliberal development agenda wither away as we’ve seen over the last two decades as countries all over the world desperately attempt to modernize?

The sari-sari store, a neighborhood corner store that is responsible for nearly 40% of the retail sales in the Philippines has been a micro economic corner stone in supporting the families that run them as well as 20 or so families that will do business with one sari-sari store.

Beyond the entrepreneurial retail model inherent within every sari-sari store, there are a plethora of other systems that exist to serve the community. A social and recreational gathering point, a bank of sorts where people buy products on credit, an eatery, social services such as childcare, a media center, a farmers market.

How will the sari-sari stand up to corporatized convenience stores like 7-11? A similar structure to the sari-sari store is a neighborhood bodega in a city like New York. These privately owned neighborhood stores are already disappearing as their corners get taken over by corporate behemoths like CVS, Walgreens and 7-11.

On the ground observations in and around Cebu have already suggested an aggressive expansion of 7-11s and other super/hypermarts. How can these small neighborhood sari-sari’s compete? Under the current parameters of ASEAN economic integration, government elites and corporate entities take priority over the 600million people that inhabit the region.

How might a sari-sari serve as a catalyst to support independent and autonomous neighborhoods that are able sustain and thrive on their own without having to fully participate in a archaic neoliberal developmental agenda?

#vsoon #ss2050 #processingfuture

#tellart #processingfuture #postplanetarydesign

ryanpanos

Tokyo Expressways | Thibaud Poirier | Tumblr

The constant sights, sounds, and lights that link Tokyo to the other great modern cities of the world - New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong - are also tempered with the cramped alleyways reminiscent of a deeply historical Japan.

Yet it is the expressways of Tokyo that allow it to undergo such a fantastic transformation from 9 million inner city inhabitants to the astounding 35 million who commute from the metropolitan area everyday to go to work.

As one crosses Shinjuku or rides in the shoulder to shoulder human traffic of the metro, the perfect harmony of its inhabitants is more reminiscent of a perfectly functioning body than a city coping with chaos.

It is precisely these highways that shuttle in and out traffic, like blood in and out of a beating heart, that transform Tokyo into a living entity.