In depth rundown of upcoming GA/GI Festival on Penn Ave

Occasional poster, Susan Constanse takes a look at this year's GA/GI festival.

No surprise--most likely because of the limitations set by funders, it's all about the local and the hyper local. Don't get me wrong, local can be great, it's just that most events here end up retreading very familiar ground, offering out of town visitors little reason to pay attention and local creatives little opportunity to develop wider networks. (Great that this year a big slice of the Pittsburgh innovation crowd booked flights to attend the SXSW festival)

Even so, one sees a lot of stuff from interactive kids projects, to technology demonstrations, animation, street performances and craft.

GA/GI Festival: From Dirt To Digital

Transformazium Update In POP City: Braddock Deconstruction Workshops Tomorrow and Friday

Pop City has a long piece about progress on The Transformazium in North Braddock. I'm sure lots of us want them to just get it over with and get an exiting new art and community center up and running.

But these folks are not just talking the talk about sustainable reuse, they are using the building as a lab project and lesson in building deconstruction. The goal is to save as much of the building as possible and adapt it to reuse through as few steps as they can. If you've been to Construction Junction you know what that's about and also have a clue as to the precious quality unique material and craft went into buildings here.

"All reuse is a form of recycling, but not all recycling is reuse," says Brian Swearingen, the head of Construction Junction's deconstruction crew. "In deconstruction and reuse, we're taking that same material, but using it for the same purpose, or slightly altering it for another purpose. When you do that, you're saving energy, because you have less transportation costs, less energy costs, and no remanufacturing costs, which are high. A good example is a metal table. If you recycle that at a landfill, you have to put it on a truck, probably put it on a train, possibly put it on a ship, and send it maybe halfway around the world to make what is oftentimes a similar product."

Construction Junction was set up eight years ago by the Pennsylvania Resources Council to spearhead a movement in Pittsburgh away from disposing waste in landfills without exploring its other purposes. They operate a store, which accepts donations of reusable materials from individuals and businesses renovating or demolishing buildings, and sells those materials at a low cost so they can be repurposed.

Want to learn about this process, and the emerging industry developing around it? There's are workshops tomorrow and Friday.

Update--Crap, the link on POP City didn't work and I can't seem to easily find the details. One has to realise just how broke and pressured many of the organizations and people involved are.

Perhaps you can hunt this info out?

Braddock Redux

Transformazium

Construction Junction

Reuse Consulting