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Trust Art is a social platform that is commissioning
ten public artworks over the next year. People are invited to
become shareholders with $1, share with interested friends, and renew culture.

Homebuilding From the Streets of Brooklyn

A public project led by artist Facundo Newbery

Project Proposal

Millions of people migrate with the hope of a better life, but end up ruining their futures. Wood burning stoves, kerosene lamps, and dirty water are partly to be blame.

This will be a social experiment that aims to achieve a win-win-win situation by mixing DIY architecture, engineering, art, and environmental ingenuity.

The project aims to create a self-sufficient home out of discarded shipping containers and other NYC waste in a remote location in the Dominican Republic. This house will collect rainwater for drinking, produce electricity from wind and solar energy, and biogas from animal waste. And of course food from the land.

New York City offers an incredible amount of discarded materials that can be used 'as is' or transformed to create a comfortable home.

I will be hiring locals in the Dominican Republic to help build the home, while teaching and inspiring them with alternative ways of improving their lifestyle in cheaper, healthier, and more environmentally-friendly ways. Hopefully, we can create a viral effect that will spread through the community.

An ideal home could be built from a base of 4 shipping containers. Naturally these containers can store more than the necessary amount of materials needed for the construction. The rest of the space will be use to store all the incredibly useful stuff that we often see in the New York streets and wonder: "Why they are going to waste so easily?" Children's bikes, plumbing supplies, working computers, satellite dishes, electronics of all kinds, and even vehicles: extremely cheap school buses that can benefit a small agrarian underdeveloped community in unimaginable ways.

Resources

Timeline



Phase 1: Fall 2009

Find appropriate site in Brooklyn, install shipping containers to store and re-purpose found objects

.

The shipping containers will first be used as sculptural storage as Facundo gathers the recycled materials he needs to build structures and furnishings for the home. The installation will offer the public a transparent look at the urban waste that is being reimagined and revived by the artist: bikes, plumbing, supplies, working computers, satellite dishes, and electronics of all kinds.

Phase 2: Spring 2010

Ship and erect shipping container home in the Dominican Republic.

After the necessary objects have been gathered, the full shipping containers will be sent to a remote rural area of the Dominican Republic where the home will be assembled in partnership with the local community, who will learn alternative and environmentally friendly ways of improving their homes and lifestyles.

About the Artist

Facundo Newbery was born in Buenos Aires, and lives and works in Brooklyn as an artist and welder.  He studied at the Academy of Art College San Francisco, where a professor lnspired him to work with with found objects and waste materials.  Facundo left art school to travel across Europe, living in squatter communities sustained by urban excess.  In Paris, he founded his own squat.

 

The best way to explain his vision for our future can only be glimpsed by the way he leads his own life. Nearly everything in Facundo’s home is made up of objects that others thought to be useless excess.  His kitchen sink used to be a discarded refrigerator.  The canvas of the paintings on the walls were made from the cloth of thrown-away sofa beds.  

Facundo was awarded the Silver Medal from the Argentine Art Critics Association, though he is known to say that the only art critics that matter are his wife Lia Zuvilivia, an artist herself, and their children Cala and Noak.  In many ways, Facundo's work has always been about homebuilding.

www.facundonewbery.com

facundonewbery.blogspot.com

www.woostercollective.com

Artist's Past Work


Me, Myself, and I, 2003




Shadow Painting, 1998-2008
This work consists of painting the outline of shadows created by streetlights and fixed objects. This project has been done in numerous cities around the world mostly in chalk or in washable paint, giving the work a temporary quality to contrast with the permanence of the shadow.




Manzana Tecla, 2001




Sidewalk Installation, 2004-2008
A few times a year, Facundo and his wife Lia curate group shows on the sidewalk of Brooklyn that leads to their home. The art shows usually involve many local artist's work, live music, a feast of food, kids racing, and neighbors coming together, sometimes meeting each other for the first time.

Public Wall

Homebuild - Left
Homebuild - Right2

Your Voice

Homebuild - Right1

From The Artist

« Heavy furniture | Main | Inspiration Video »
Friday
Mar202009

Sources and Funnels


I can't help to think how all this research I've been doing can benefit rural communities in many countries, along with the immensity of things that go to landfills, either for lack of time, space, creativity, or god knows what. I want to show you a few things that will hopefully blow your mind: biogas, wind power, biodiesel, and free water. For insulation, I have my own story.

When i lived in Paris, my house was incredibly cold in wintertime because the concrete of the floor stretched all the way out to the yard bringing the cold right in. I used to burn 3 wood pallets a day to keep warm. But one Christmas, when cell phones became super popular, and everyone got one from Santa, my wife Lia and I collected all the styrofoam we found from discarded packaging, applied it to the concrete, and layed a wood floor that I picked up from a demolition site a few kilometers away. It was phenomenal! I went down from burning three pallets a day to less than one. After that year, I was finally able to just wear a shirt at home. Check out the some more pictures below of our home in Paris in the mid-nineties.






DateMarch 20, 2009 at 16:42 | Comment1 Comment

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    Response: jouelizp
    at jouelizp on November 7, 2009
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Reader Comments (1)

facundo, i love seeing the pictures of your apartment in paris. it's kind of crazy and homemade and just what i would expect from you and lia! but really, it seems like this project is the culmination of your past home-building experience

May 16, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAnne

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