Previously, I thought organisation skills applied to work, and work alone and did not have much to do with having fun. Apparently, I was very wrong. The more organised a person is, better his time management and the more time he or she has to enjoy.

At Canning Town Caravanserai, we have our own, intriguing way of organising ourselves. Antoine, one of the interns, comes in with our “Daily Menu” with Starters, Main Course and Dessert. It includes a list of tasks that need to be done for the day; our Main Course indicating the tasks that are the most important ones and Desserts representing the lighter, less important tasks that require the least amount of energy.

Kieran, on the other hand is our Documentation Officer. He keeps the record of all the paper work, and all the what, who, where, when and whys. Our blackboard of “List of things to do” is organised by each individual, adding and crossing off weekly tasks of what needs to be done for CTC Make, CTC Trade, and CTC Grow.

This does not stop here. Every one of us has a name, and with that name comes a certain responsibility. Where Mitesh is our ‘Key Keeper’, there Amy is our ‘Chief Gardner’; Where Abi is our ‘Health and Safety officer’, there Derek is in charge of the Oasis Cafe; Where Jason is our ‘Scavenger’, there Ivo is our ‘Chief Carpenter’.

We all belong somewhere, and with self motivation and determination, we run Canning Town Caravanserai. I am the ‘Chief Story Teller’. I record all stories of our ‘self organisation’ skills at CTC.

Haleema Malik (Follow: @haleemalik)

We have had to find things to do to keep us busy, and set upon seed bombing the caravanserai.

A quick trip to the corner shop for a couple of dozen eggs, some drinking straws and grass seeds. To pierce the egg, blow out its contents, and pack the hollow shell with seeds. Then you have a handy object to lob across to wherever you want plants growing.

Our first seed bombs were very demure and ladylike – neat little pin prick, liquid patiently eased out, seeds pushed in with the straws or funnels improvised from the egg carton’s pockets. Standing gingerly at the warm dry threshold of a Caravanserai kiosk and rolling them towards bald patches of ground, eggshells barely cracking upon impact.

Then the seeds spilt all over the table, yolks starting cracking everywhere, and we got more creative with throwing – backwards, skips, playing ball games, stamping the crumbling shells deep into the ground.

Now we are wet in the rain, have mud on our boots and probably smell of egg. We’re also giggling like schoolchildren at a picnic. The rain is clearing away, and the freshly planted seeds are hopefully starting to do their thing greening the city.

We have loads of ideas for future seed bombing events. Different seeds and plants. We could play proper games like cricket and bowling, or have an egg fight in the spirit of the Holi and Tomatina festivals. Give teams pre-dyed eggs of different colours, set a stopwatch and later count the number of shells each team dispersed on site. Make a delicate rope of ecofriendly party crackers by threading through the shells…

And next time, we’d like you to be there too!

Thank you to the lovely Bourne family from Gardenscape Direct in Kent for supporting our community garden plans with several tonnes of topsoil and compost.

After a waterless and windy winter outdoors, it’s time to relieve the Caravanserai plantlings.

Could you help with sowing potting and landscaping? Drop us a line!

Since our spring reopening earlier this month, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting two Caravanserai events, and can’t wait to tell you how much it’s made me look forward to our summer programme.

Organising live events and activities is, for me always a heady mix of terror and thrill – because of the unpredictability of what the weather and other variables may throw up, but also the sense of unprecedented potential this affords. These possibilities are amplified at a venue like the Caravanserai; for instance during our Garden Fete last Saturday when we tried to pull off a pre-planned meditative ‘relaxing in nature’ workshop – with a guzzling forklift lugging our shiny new food truck into place just metres away, because it’s scheduled delivery was held up by traffic earlier.

Ordinarily this mismatch of activities would be untenable, but in Caravanserai spirit everyone just got on with it and both coexisted. After all, as a mixed use space incorporating a diverse range of uses and audiences and durations, the Caravanserai is designed to accommodate this sort of multi-tasking and hybridity. It may seem confusing and chaotic on the surface, but also allows a form of interaction and ‘messy fun‘ which few public spaces can match.

As Cany, our creative director puts it, “Within the hoarding of our site the rules of the big city are subtly changed; cool behaviour is unarmed, and a more curious, open and authentic kind of conversation with strangers seems quite natural…” This has definitely been my experience, as I’ve watched children spontaneously play hide and seek, and strangers work together to design and build a wicker Green Man, or willingly get their hands dirty kneading dough and planting herbs.

that’s me, Lubaina, with the red headband

In my previous life as an architectural curator and theatre manager (I’m now full-time special project manager for Ash Sakula and the Caravanserai), I produced a lot of work around public spaces, trying to map out and tease the default behaviour patterns that particular spaces produced – the way certain spaces subconsciously made people walk in straight lines looking downwards, and others spontaneously formed social condensors. While the Caravanserai is still an experimental work in progress and has yet to sort out many aspects of its visitor experience, I’m glad that it still seems to manage making feeling at ease and ready for play, just happen naturally.

If you haven’t visited the Caravanserai or haven’t seen later additions to our suite of spaces, do join us on a Saturday afternoon (12-4pm) and test out this ‘Caravanserai effect’ for yourself. Perhaps you have an event idea that we could host?

Have you been to the Caravanserai recently? Share your experience by posting a comment!

We’ll also be exhibiting the Flitched competition entries, and hosting the first of our weekly rucksack sales.

Just turn up and trade / toast / till !

Attendees will have the chance to meet the enthusiastic teams that participated in the competition, whilst listening to a number of presentations from key supporters of up-cycling architecture: including Amanda Baillieu – Editor and Chief at Building Design, Mark Bradbury – Managing Director, Vertical Thinking Limited and Clive Dutton – Executive Director, Regeneration & Inward Investment, London Borough of Newham

The night will finish off with some networking drinks and the entries will then be exhibited online for the rest of the world to see.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP by contacting enquiries@flitched.co.uk.

We hope you can make it.

We are looking for a big structure. The demands are quite modest; the rain should be shed or captured and the space underneath should feel like a great making space, cheerful, purposeful and flooded with natural light.

The space will have more in common with a yard than a building, and yet it is a strange thing, once you get beyond a set of tarpaulins on a cats cradle of broom sticks and hanging buckets, structures get SERIOUS. A simple predictable rain cover that will stay in place…in this case for four years needs a prodigious amount of stiff supporting structure and even then it is tricky. There needs to be a way of getting some big objects in and out of the space and that will of course be the route the wind takes as well.

 >>The first challenge is to stop your flitched cover flying away.

 >>The second challenge is to make something surprising elegant and witty with scrap

This will involved assembling the materials your choose to use from the competition spreadsheet in a way that makes sense, from the micro to the macro and back again, so that the image of making hangs like an inspiration over makers below. This is course all to do with joints and those joints will have their own sweet logic which will start dictating the geometry of the whole.

When you meet these two challenges you will have something to share. Building tech has developed m•u•c•h m•o•r•e s•l•o•w•l•y than digital tech and it seems to take an age for one country in Europe to discover and import the clever vernacular tricks or modern construction techniques of a neighbour…no matter how many problems could be solved. Flitched will act as an accelerator in construction breaking through conservative thinking and setting up new Euro norms which will assume the legitimate role for scrap in construction. Waste materials will act as a spring board to new forms of additive construction, a construction that accepts it is always in the process of becoming, a construction that is part of a loop in constant repair guided by a poetic tectonic imagination as diverse as the makers will have it.

So starting with some fierce pragmaticism don’t worry if you find yourselves drifting into the poetic logic best exemplified by CJ Lim and his school.

With re-purposed vinyl name tags to break the ice, we quickly found that attendees were at various stages in the competition. The evening enabled those to share their enthusiasm and fresh ideas on the future of up-cycling in architecture, as well as, the strengthening of interdisciplinary relationships.

There was a very good professional and student turnout from both fields of engineering and architecture – with some already prepared to register a full team and many seeking additional members to create one. Attendees were also given the opportunity to get a first look at the materials list and site details to spark initial ideas.

Thank you everybody that could make it!

Check out www.flitched.co.uk for more information about the competition!

Seeing beyond the weaknesses or inadequacies of each product, we hope participants will creatively repurpose material components to form a mesh providing shelter and animation to a large open workshop where a range of making and horticultural activities can take place.

All entries will be anonymous. Entries are encouraged from established practices, multinational firms, students and freelancers with the input of qualified engineers.The opportunity to explore joints and junctions imaginatively will hopefully appeal to digital inventors, architects, fabricators, structural and environmental engineers and landscape architects.

Just as the flitching together of a variety of distinct materials can produce a strong compound structure, the flitching together of diverse disciplines can lead to a stronger, more dynamic design community, and risk defying concepts.