Check Back Soon!

Although we haven’t posted any updates for while now, some of you may have noticed additions to the gallery. Rest assured, we’ve both been busy and new pockets have been planted since last we wrote. However, updates will probably continue to be sparse for at least the next several weeks, if not longer. I’m hoping to have more time to devote to the blog again by late December.

The planting season for the year in Toronto is essentially over for us because of the cold weather. In fact, we decided bring inside plants we put out on Harbord to save them from the frost. It was fantastic to see that this wall lasted for well over a month before we relocated the plants. They even survived through Nuit Blanche.

Again we remain busy putting other work out around the city, both individually and in collaboration, so keep an eye out.

- sean

Wooster! 2 (LNB)

The Wooster Collective has posted the first Late Night in the Bedroom episode today. Congratulations again to the LNB crew for the success with this premier. Also, thank you once more to Marc and Sara Schiller from the Wooster Collective for featuring both projects.

http://www.woostercollective.com/2009/09/late_night_in_the_bedroom_an_introductio.html
www.latenightinthebedroom.com (episode 1)

- sean

Late Night in the Bedroom

The first full episode of Late Night in the Bedroom, Toronto’s new late night live audience talk show, is now online. Despite that our tendencies to be a bit camera shy, we were honored last week to appear as guests on this inaugural episode alongside Che Kothari, and Boys Who Say No.

Thank you again to the whole LNB crew. Here’s a link and description from their website:

Late Night in the Bedroom is a brand new late night live audience talk show, featuring Toronto’s freshest local artists, musicians and cultural players. A side project of Whippersnapper Gallery, the show takes place bi-monthly with the aim of expanding public dialogue around the art we see, hear, and create, as well as supporting the ongoing development of our creative community.

On August 26th, Late Night in the Bedroom, Toronto’s brand-spanking new arts and culture talk show premiered in front of a live audience with a wildly exciting lineup of guests. The show’s guests included the extremely prolific hip-hop photographer Che Kothari, who talked about his work as well as Toronto’s Manifesto Festival, which he helped found and currently directs. Guerilla gardeners Sean Martindale and Eric Cheung, otherwise known as the “Poster Pocket Plant Guys”, discussed their delightful street interventions. Finally, musical guest Boys Who Say No, graced Late Night in the Bedroom’s apartment studio with a set of their quirky and unpredictable indie pop rock."

http://www.latenightinthebedroom.com/?p=1

- sean

GreenMuze

Thank you to the staff over at GreenMuze for posting about our project today as well. They report sightings in Halifax and Vancouver... I planted some in Vancouver with friends earlier this month, but if anyone has more info or images for the Halifax planters we'd love to hear more about it!

greenmuze.com

- sean

en français

Thank you also to Julien Cordelle from France for posting an article about our project in French on his "Slowest - A Slower Blog" site. Apologies for the delay in uploading this link. You can check it below:

http://slowest.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/la-main-verte-poster-pocket-plants/

merci!

- sean

en español

Thank you to architect Felipe Garcia Riesco from Santiago Chile for posting an article about our project in Spanish on his verdecuidad.com site. You can check it out at the link below:

http://www.verdeciudad.com/20090831115/Iniciativas-Ciudadanas/verde-activismo-callejero.html

¡Gracias!

- sean

inhabitat.com

Arrived back home after planting this morning to find that inhabitat.com posted about our project yesterday. The article has also since been dugg on digg.com.

Thanks to Olivia Chen for writing the article!

We seem to be perpetually behind on updating our blog, but thanks for bearing with us. More details and photos from both Vancouver and Toronto will be put up when we get a chance. If you've been checking back, you will probably have noticed that we don't post all of our planting excursions, mostly for lack of time. Meanwhile, you may have also seen the slideshow now rotating on the site. It links to a gallery of images if you would like to see any at a higher resolution.

inhabitat.com
digg.com

- sean

Vancouver, BC

I've had this idea for a heart-shaped planter in my mind for a while, and I decided to test the design for the first time when I was in Vancouver, BC. Now I'm back in Toronto amidst apocalyptic thunderstorms and tornadoes(!), so I'll try to put up a more detailed update with more images soon...

- sean

Green Living Magazine

Green Living Magazine featured our project today as the top story on their site. Thank you to writer Lindsay Hutton for the article! You can check it out at the link below.

http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/poster-pocket-plants

Quick note on PosterChild's NYC planter

What I find interesting about PosterChild's adaptation of the planter is that it actually jams the advertisment completely....by folding it outward the blank white of the poster backing interrupts the message completely rather than creating a wrapping of the ad around the planter. So, I guess if you're a hardcore ad jammer that's the technique to follow.

Further, I actually enjoy that folding outward reveals the staples holding the planter together. It's a good way of making the planter construction transparent to those passing by--there's a rough honesty to the construction that's is in line with the 'open source' ideals of our urban interventions.

-eric 09.08.05

Brooklyn, NYC

Our new friend PosterChild, the legendary and prolific Toronto street artist, just sent us these shots of a fresh planter he installed while in Williamsburg Brooklyn, NYC. We're excited that he's helping us spread the project.

Note that PosterChild used a nice alternative pocket technique, where he used the triangular cut, but wrapped it out and forward, instead off back and in to form a cone.

Thanks again for bringing the project to NYC! If anyone else wants to make some planters, we'd love to see your photos.

I'm still in BC, where my internet access is sporadic, so appologies if we don't respond immediately to any emails etc... There might be a delay, but we hope to post some more updates while I'm here on the West coast anyway. Eric has still been putting up new planters in Toronto too.

Sean

Rained out

Our plans for new planters over the last few days were thwarted by a series of torrential downpours. Those of you living in Toronto will understand. We normally don’t mind a little rain, but the recent heavy thundershowers have certainly slowed us down.

Water usually helps the plants, and our previous planters were strong enough to survive a deluge or two. However, the process of installing doesn’t go very well when the posters are soggy. Handling razor blades on slippery surfaces isn’t necessarily the best set-up either… At least it gave us a chance to begin fleshing out some of our other ideas (more on these later).

We were going to plant a few more tonight, but I’m still getting ready to head off to BC for three weeks bright and early tomorrow morning. Might give me an opportunity to do some planting in Vancouver! One of us will still be here, so keep looking out for new planters around Toronto.

More Thank Yous...

Just wanted to say how much we appreciate all the encouraging feedback we continue to receive. Thank you to those of you that have shown your support here on the blog and on other sites. A warm welcome to those who are following our feed! Also, thank you to everyone who has blogged or tweeted about the project on their own sites. We noticed that the project was up on the popular notcot site (link below) yesterday.

Again, we apologize for not having more updates and photos yet - we've both been insanely busy. Look out for more online here in the future, and keep your eyes open for new planters around the city. If any of you make your own, we'd love to hear about it and post your pictures! Please remember that we can't take responsibility for the actions of anyone else, so use your best judgment if you want to participate.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

http://www.notcot.org/post/23561/

Wooster!

Big thank you to Marc and Sara Schiller from the Wooster Collective, everyone's favorite street art blog, for featuring our project today. Thank you again to David Topping and Michael Chrisman from the torontoist for posting the original article yesterday.

Links

We'll be posting more information and photos soon, but in the meantime you can check out the links to spacing magazine and torontoist below. We really appreciate all your interest and great photos!

http://torontoist.com/2009/07/green_sleeves.php

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/07/15/poster-pocket-plants-revisited/

http://spacingmontreal.ca/2009/07/07/toronto-tuesday-pocket-plants-creative-class-the-strike-persists/

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/07/06/poster-pocket-plants/

Torontoist!

Thank you again to David Topping and Michael Chrisman over at the torontoist for the article and photos today and for coming out to see us at a ridiculously early hour on Sunday. Check out the link below.

http://torontoist.com/2009/07/green_sleeves.php

Spadina Post 09.07.10

-- This one was interesting and came at the spur of the moment--I always wanted to do something on the posts and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. The spadina post was our first collab. and all credit to Sean for making it a more graphically and functionally interesting object. I'm a pretty chaotic guy myself so I was just going to hack and slash planters in random ways across the post. But I think Sean found a very elegant solution in the cork screw graphic and triangular plant form... also thanks to Sean for getting up super early even after a night of beers to pump this bad boy out...

I think placing these in high traffic area is also a good way to spread the ideas around.

much, much better photos to come...

Some previous planters

These were done in bits and pieces to get comfortable with the planter system... done around bathurst and queen. There were loads more but they got taken down quicker than I could come back and take photos of them.

Templates

Both templates in downloadable .pdf here:

here (the triangle)
here (the slot box)

I think what these templates suggest is that creating the planters is not a very hard thing to do.

The geometry is exceedingly simple (the easiest one being a triangle) and all you really need is an exacto knife(i like Olfa the best--that's the extent of my marketing schill...).

So really, posting the planter templates is showing the real potential of the urban environment and the simplicity of a good 'urban hack.'

If you've developed your own awesome shapes and what not, give us a shout (info@at-aw.com) and we'll post them up! Do remember, though, that we interpret this project as part of a larger theme of "ideas for the city" rather than a "designer object"(as in don't be a marketing dick and use it to make a quick buck...more on this later) so everything that gets posted to the site will be considered 'non-commercial and remixable' a la the creative commons licence found here.

--eric 090716

spacing! (x3)

Thank you to Jake Shabas over at spacing.ca for the great posts about our project. We're both already readers of the Toronto's spacing magazine and blog, so it's really encouraging to see the interest. Also, thank you once more to Yvonne Bambrick, executive director of the Toronto Cyclists Union, for taking the fantastic photos.

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/07/15/poster-pocket-plants-revisited/

http://spacingmontreal.ca/2009/07/07/toronto-tuesday-pocket-plants-creative-class-the-strike-persists/

http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/07/06/poster-pocket-plants/

More updates on the way soon - we promise.

beginnings...

so me and sean thought it would be a good idea to start a blog to thoroughly document our work through out the summer. it's nice that people are interested in the work--there's going to be a shitload more coming around town so watch out for them!. here are the initial words, taken from www.at-aw.com . templates can be downloaded soon as we figure out this new fangled internet thing...

A further addition to the Natural Urban Interventions. I see this as an improntu architectural green wall system(or a satire of one) that is cut out of existing poster spaces. Some may call it a little guerrila gardening but I see this more as an 'Urban Hack' in its ability to jam an urban system and provoke reaction.

Anyhow, I like the idea so much and it seems pretty fun to do, that we're tossing the design out 'there' for free for you to use. Go to town and make your city awesome by clicking and opening the .pdf here. For such a craaaazzzzyyy idea, the planter is actually pretty simple folding geometry and I'm confident that you can develop much more refined and complex planter systems and shapes. Such as:

Kudos to artist Sean Martindale for the help and colloborative talk on the Spadina post. He diligently developed it from my random, chaotic cutout concept into a more refined corkscrew pattern and, along that line, established a more minimal planter cutout through the use of conical geometry. Plus, the dude got up at 5am on a Sunday to help me out with the planting! Dude is super cool--link to his website when it's up.

-eric 090714