Building A Temporary Favela In The Dutch Winter

Amsterdam’s first slum will open this spring. The temporary favela is a project by art, society and new technology institute Mediamatic and will consist of all kinds of small, organically developed buildings inside a huge industrial building called De Fabriek.

Mediamatic’s Freezing Favela will be a flexible space open for experiments with new ways of building, growing, isolating, energizing and programming in austere conditions. The projects focus on new ways of thinking about the urban future. Together they explore the way new settlements are organized. As we speak all kinds of idea makers can apply for a space in the huge Mediamatic Fabriek Hall. All these ideas together will set a favela-like experience, but with Dutch temperatures. The collection of concepts that are already there is remarkably fresh, staying away from most of the urban clichés.

Freezing Favela

Freezing Favela

Alexander Krone (Denmark) and André Avelãs (Portugal) propose a liquor factory that produces vodka and jenever out of organic trash collected from the neighborhood. Their investigation started during Slum Session #2, a preparatory series of workshops hosted by Mediamatic.

Freezing Favela

Freezing Favela

Sascha Landshoff is gonna make a sandwich. Yes, a sandwich. But he’s doing it all the way, growing and producing every element of the sandwich himself, whether it’s the bread, the ham, or the cheese. In February he will start production and in May he hopes to get the first sandwich out of his Sandwich Factory. In the coming time he will grow wheat, mill flour, bake the bread, buy and raise a piglet, slaughter it, turn the meat into ham, buy a cow, milk the cow, make cheese of the milk and let it ripe.

Freezing Favela

Another group of idea makers proposes to build Mediahamam, a series of spaces (a hamam, a bar and a yoga studio) with different temperatures heated with wood burning stoves. Together they will be a relaxing space for the temporary dwellers of the freezing favela. Also Hot Love Nest is an interesting idea that comes from the brain of Derk-Peter de Rijk. It’s a huge relaxing space on top of a compost pile. This way the space is always warm and becomes an intimate room in the usually cold industrial hall. How the whole project will evolve is not sure yet, but obviously that’s part of the exploration. Come and experience it this spring!