Rur-ban, no mistake

Regenerative microarchitectures for social empowerment
by Giovanna Tissi

Inserted into the Corderie pathway, “Enviromolecular” is a hybrid project that transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries, the result of a collaboration between Low Design Office and Yasmine Abbas of Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP).

Low Design Office is a practice that works in Tema, Ghana, and in Austin, Texas, founded by Ryan Bollom and DK Osseo-Asare. For over twenty years, the two have been working on microarchitectures as regenerative infrastructure for socio-economic empowerment. Their project Enviromolecular is hybrid multimedia installation of three monitors installed on a modular bamboo support that can be self-installed and is perfect to populate modular environments. It welcomes aggregation and participation and can be used multiple times.

At the current exhibition, these videos and images create an immersive experience of a spacecraft that will take visitors to Accra, Ghana, in the country’s largest dumpsite for electronic waste coming from the West. Within this context, Yasmine Abbas of Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), runs a workshop together with design studio Panurban that addresses local communities and uses design to re-assemble ready-made components and build modular kiosks. Typical of Africa, these kiosks are the substrate for sharing and the transformation of the human environment into a ‘rurban’ territory – a hybrid of rural and urban.

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THE BAG 2023