MIT’s Visual Arts Program donates its Armadillo trailer to Pasadena’s Side Street Projects in an upcoming ceremony at Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. The handover event is June 18. The Armadillo trailer is the result of a year-long collaborative art project, the MIT FEMA Trailer Project, in which faculty and students transformed a surplus FEMA trailer into a “green” mobile composting center with vertical gardens, rainwater catchment system, permaculture library and indoor multipurpose space. The trailer has been dubbed the “Armadillo” for its ribbed retractable shell. It was originally one of thousands of trailers purchased by FEMA for temporary housing in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Side Street Projects will take the Armadillo on a tour to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and the Louisiana State Museum. (Slide show at http//www.sidestreet.org/armadillo.)
 via APInews: MIT Donates Its Armadillo to Side Street Projects .
 Exit Art in New York City has extended the run of an interesting show: “Vertical Gardens,” a project of Papo Colo’s SEA (Social-Environmental Aesthetics). Extended through June 6, 2009, “Vertical Gardens” is an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof. It features over 20 projects, both imaginary and real, by artists and architects that envision solutions for building greener urban environments. Special events have included talks by public-health scientist Dickson D. Despommier, founding director of the Vertical Farm Project; and SITE Founder James Wines on ways to meet the demands of economic crisis, energy efficiency and sustainable design without a loss of aesthetic quality; plus poetry readings and composting workshops. SEA is an endeavor that presents a diverse multimedia exhibition program and permanent archive of artworks that address social and environmental concerns. [LINK]