I just need one more 4x2 brick.

May 9, 2011 6:25 PM

"Day by day we pass by vacant lots downtown ... Neighbourhoods that, although having a huge potential, have more and more unused spaces ... Sometimes, the tourists are the ones who open our eyes by mentioning or questioning whether this situation is normal. On other occasions, we pay attention to it for a moment only because the secondary problems that those spaces imply affect us directly. But in most of the cases, they are only a part of our way."

Habit Makes Us Blind is a series of colorful images by Spanish studio Espai MGR that seeks to draw attention to the problem of wasted space in urban environments (specifically, in the city of Valencia) -- by building conceptual LEGO structures in them. [via]
posted by bayani (8 comments total)

not to be confused with Habit Makes Our Palms Hairy.
posted by nathancaswell at 7:09 PM on May 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

so they seek to change perspectives by intervening in.. drawings? architects will be architects. but why not intervene directly in the landscape where it might get more exposure, like in the firebreak project? i guess you could not do that it colorful legos. or could you?
posted by ioesf at 7:41 PM on May 9, 2011

I'd pay for that as a 3DS app.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:00 PM on May 9, 2011

That's a giant choking hazard...
posted by Simpsolover at 9:04 PM on May 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

The people who complain about the waste of vacant lots in urban spaces are often the same ones who decry the capitalist evil of gentrification when the yuppies move in and prices start rising. Easing restrictions on rent control and private renting will regenerate areas more effectively than building lego models, no matter how, you know, awesome.
posted by joannemullen at 9:25 PM on May 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Easing restrictions on rent control and private renting will regenerate areas more effectively than building lego models

I'd add in the old Common Law rights to settle wasteland, too. Incentivize landowners to drop rents and market their property, or they lose it.
posted by alasdair at 4:00 AM on May 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

The people who complain about the waste of vacant lots in urban spaces are often the same ones who decry the capitalist evil of gentrification when the yuppies move in and prices start rising.

Two interesting questions:

1. Where are the young, well-educated, and wealthy supposed to live? (If in the suburbs, we bemoan them, and if in the cities, we bemoan them).

2. Who's supposed to fix-up/repair/renovate old housing stock? Clearly the locals don't have the cash to do so, so what's the harm in extranjeros entering with boatloads of cash and improving/salvaging homes?

I'd add in the old Common Law rights to settle wasteland, too. Incentivize landowners to drop rents and market their property, or they lose it.

Speaking as someone who lives next door to a crackhouse (I regularly have to run away vagrants, until I bolted all of the windows and doors shut), I've become a huge believer that urban areas need to be able to claim properties and re-market them at fair values.

In my area, property owner rights trump everything, and if the property owner wants to sit on something and let it rot, nobody can really say/do anything about it.

As long as property taxes are paid, the city government doesn't much care. And, who pays the property taxes on my beloved crackhouse? The vet clinic two doors down, which pays to poop their dogs in the yard. So, I get 24/7 dog poop smell AND crackheads. Lovely.
posted by The Giant Squid at 6:06 AM on May 10, 2011

Horror vacui.
posted by francesca too at 6:09 AM on May 10, 2011