Become A Part Of The Pop-Up City

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday September 2, 2010

The Pop-Up City is busy building a brand new website. Besides that, we’re extending the editorial board. We’re looking for clever, inspired and up-to-date editors that like to write about new ideas in cities. Since our amount of readers keeps growing, we’d like to develop into a multi-layered platform that covers a wider range of subjects. The Pop-Up City is a non-profit independent web magazine about anything interesting going on in cities. Our focus was on temporary and flexible urbanism, but has gradually moved to the question: what works in contemporary cities? The focus points of The Pop-Up City include urban culture, lifestyle, technology, urbanism, architecture, and marketing.

Editors and writers
We’re looking for talented writers; inspired people who like to be part of our editorial board. Applicants should have great analytical capacity and good written English language skills. Besides that, they’re extremely interested in innovations in the urban context or related subjects. You will have a free position, writing autonomously and being able to build an own group of readers and a network of informants. Furthermore, you will be a full member of the editorial board, which means we’d love to discuss general Pop-Up City developments with you, as well as possible new topics and formats.

What do we offer?
For now this job is unpaid. However, we can offer a huge and growing audience of more than 1,800 daily readers. The Pop-Up City is a platform to get your ideas spread. It offers writing and blogging experience and plenty of network opportunities. Being an editor of Pop-Up City is not related to any place. We’re based in Amsterdam, but new editors can write for the magazine from all over the world.

Wanna join us? Please write us a short message with your resume and motivation. Please send your email to studio@golfstromen.nl! Deadline for applications is October 1, 1010.

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CityCamp In Public Space

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday September 2, 2010

Recently the Dutch town of Castricum was been changed into a temporary open air campsite. Between August 19 and August 29, camping was made possible all over the place — in the public green, at parking lots, et cetera. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Castricum offered camping places in their gardens and facilities. Staying at the campsites was entirely free.


This city campsite was no enclosed enclave but truly intertwined with life in the town. Artist Sabrina Lindemann has collaborated with Amsterdam-based DUS Architects and graphic design office Duel to transform the public domain into a huge campsite. As such, CityCamp Castricum is part of the North Holland Art Biennial 2010… Yes, yet another biennial. For those up for a true urban camping shower experience, DUS Architects designed the grand shower house located at a public green in the centre of Castricum. The temporary building is perfectly waterproof, as it is made entirely out of plastic airbeds. Unfortunately, the event suffered from some poor weather conditions over the last ten days. Heavy rainfall and wind must have afflicted the CityCamp initiative. It’s still unclear whether the shower house has survived these stormy days.

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Wireless Fireworks

By Jeroen Beekmans | Published: Tuesday August 31, 2010

In order to communicate with its surroundings, London-based interaction design agency Unit9 has attached an interactive public screen to its building which allows passers-by to fill it with drawings coming right from their smart phones.


The so-called Wi-Fireworks project provides a free Wi-Fi connection. Once people are connected with the network through their phone, the installation redirects the device to an HTML5 page that enables them to make a drawing with their fingers. Whatever they draw on their screens, appears on the windows of Unit9. Click explode, and watch your doodle explode as a firework. Visit the project website to watch a video of Wi-Fireworks.

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Zuidas Pleasure Landscape

By Jeroen Beekmans | Published: Sunday August 29, 2010

The economic crisis has led to delays in further development of Amsterdam’s new business district and second city center, the Zuidas (South Axis). But what to do with the large amounts of unused land? With some help from artists from the nearby Sandberg Institute, local authorities turned an empty building site into both an urban agriculture and pleasure landscape. At the place where big office towers should rise in the future, everyone can now enjoy a temporary urban corn maze.


“This creative, ‘green’ solution makes a piece of derelict land into something that can be used by local residents and office workers as long as there will not be built”, the municipality explains. Besides the labyrinth the temporary pleasure landscape also contains a public tennis court that will be opened next month.

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Amsterdam Dresses Up

By Joop de Boer | Published: Saturday August 28, 2010


We’d like to share some pictures of Liesbet Bussche’s graduation project at the Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam. The Belgian jewelry designer has transformed objects that all belong to the regular inventory of Dutch public space into recognizable pieces of blown-up jewelry. The collection that decorates the streets in Amsterdam consists of a concrete ball changed into a black-pearl earring complete with butterfly back, a necklace from construction-site rubble, and a woven red and white warning tape belt. To me the most interesting pieces in the series are the pendants attached to the heavy metal chain saying ‘Huis’, and the button pin attached to a traffic sign. Check the whole collection on Liesbet Bussche’s webpage.

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Wheel Chair Beach: Nice!

By Joop de Boer | Published: Friday August 27, 2010

The city of Nice takes well care of the disabled. Here at the city’s central beach, I spotted this special section kept for visitors in wheel chairs. For them it must be a hell of a job to enjoy a regular beach. This special service contains wheel chair parking spots, shadow, a concrete ramp, a special drive-in shower, and a swim wheel chair which enables disabled to enter the sea. May this be inspirational for other beach communities.

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Freiburg’s Tolerance Pillar

By Joop de Boer | Published: Wednesday August 25, 2010


Since 2009 the city of Freiburg in South Germany has a tolerance zone. On the Augustinerplatz in the center of the city, a perplex pillar spreads colorful light and the message of tolerance. Interesting is the way this pillar is used. It looks to work as a sign for people to sit, drink, smoke and make music on the square during warm summer nights. I don’t have any idea what the legal status of the pillar is. Does the pillar mark a zone where ‘abnormal’ behavior is allowed? Are formal rules less heavy here?

According to a German newspaper the sign hopes to stimulate local youth to behave a bit more quiet while sitting and drinking on the square surrounded by family houses. The ‘Säule der Toleranz’ is switched off most of the day. At 8 PM it turns totally green, which means activity such as drinking and making music is allowed. Slowly it changes color. At 11 PM the whole pillar is colored red, which means that any loud activity is forbidden. As far as my one night observation goes, the pillar doesn’t work for this last bit. It’s used as an argument to use Augustinerplatz as an open air pub, with a great atmosphere stressed by cosy red light. Which makes it a great place.

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The Remarkable Electric Vehicles Of Spijkstaal

By Joop de Boer | Published: Monday August 23, 2010


What would our vehicle landscape look like without the ongoing inventions of the Dutch company Spijkstaal? Here we would like to shed a light on the collection of remarkable Spijkstaal vehicles produced since 1938. Spijkstaal has a tradition in producing electric vehicles for special use, which makes them a real visual attribution to the collection of cars in public domain, as all these vehicles are special designs. Spijkstaal products are currently used mainly at flower auctions, airports, car factories, manufacturing companies, hospitals, care institutions and municipalities. In addition the company from Rotterdam suburb Spijkenisse is involved in developing diverse Personal Trans Rapid (PTR) systems in cities such as Abu Dhabi and Masdar City.


In the past the company predominately produced vehicles for milkmen and mobile shops. Since the rise of the supermarket these shops have mostly disappeared. At this moment a lot of Spijkstaal vehicles can be bought at different auction websites for very good prices. Here we’d like to present a collection of rather remarkable vehicles made by Spijkstaal throughout history, with special thanks to collectors of  Spijkstaal on Flickr.

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Auto Check-Ins With Nike+ And Foursquare

By Jeroen Beekmans | Published: Friday August 20, 2010


If anyone can make wearable computing cool, it’s Nike, MobileBehavior claims. The world-famous sports brand created the famous Nike+, a connected running shoe which enables users to track their running progress and compile a “quantified self”. In order to take Nike+ to the next level, several designers make attempts to turn the service inside out and reprogram it in ways that open up new opportunities. One of these projects is Casey Halverson’s setup which lets him to automatically check-in to a venue on Foursquare by just walking in the front door.

Halverson’s frustration about Foursquare or any other venue check-in application, is having to remember to actually check-in when you arrive at some place. This led him to develop a prototype of a Nike shoe check-in plugin for Foursquare. Instead of having to lug around your laptop, or connect to the local WiFi, you could also have your Nike shoes (or sensor in generic shoes) check in for you.

“The backend device would need to be located in the venue, but it is internet-independent, low power, and can be located anywhere in the world. (…) Currently, its on an electronics bread board and rather bulky, and it talks to Foursquare directly…but it (mostly) works.”

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Blind Date Swingers Club

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday August 19, 2010


The Blind Date Swingers Club probably has the best name for a club night. In fact the BDSC is a Berlin-based club with an ever-changing location throughout the city. The night is a new clubbing concept based on sharing music. All guests have to bring a self-made mix tape which swings during the night and helps visitors getting into a blind date. The Blind Date Swingers Club is based on a couple of ‘rules’, which makes it an interesting new concept in night life:

  1. Make a mix CD or mix tape. Feel free to decorate the cover and/or leave a note inside and contact/email, Facebook, MySpace etc.
  2. Drop of the mix to the DJ stand upon the entrance.
  3. Have a drink, sit down (or stand, your preference), make conversation, party, dance, unwind, enjoy your night, make new friends.
  4. When you leave, return to the DJ stand and pick up a mix that someone else made… then listen!


Making a mix tape with a self-designed cover is the best way to express affection for somebody. At least that’s how we managed our fear for girls back at high school. Covers of those mix tapes once were mostly small pieces of home-made art. On the Flickr group page Creative Cassette Covers these are collected, with some great designs among the contributions. More into the digital era, there’s a group that collecting covers of both mix tapes and CDs.

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Supermarket Skate Lane

By Joop de Boer | Published: Wednesday August 18, 2010


After having introduced The Fun Theory (with the brilliant piano stairs), Volkswagen now comes up with another interesting action which speeds up life a little: the fast lane in the supermarket. The idea is simple: some shopping carts are pimped with a skateboard, providing some extra shopping fun for those who can’t stand people who take shopping as an all-day event. Click here to watch the video!

Besides the fact that this is a rather interesting marketing strategy by Volkswagen (campaign for the Polo GTI), it’s also interesting to see an upcoming stream of projects which intend to separate different spaces in our modern society. Earlier we blogged about the Tourist Lane, a prank by NYC’s Improv Everywhere group, and about Fast Lane/The Slide, which was also a project by Volkswagen.


Some want it slow, but they tend to forget that others want it quick. In fact the escalator was once designed to speed up things a little at urban nodes. In hasty London this seems to work out, thanks to the signs telling people to “stand on the right”. In most other cities they only cause major congestion thanks to ‘the power of the slowest’.

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The Pop-Up Lunch Bag

By Joop de Boer | Published: Monday August 16, 2010


Some time ago we already paid attention to the great and inventive Pop-Up Lunch initiative by New York-based Alexandra Pulver. She changes public urban places into temporary lunch spots by adding designed pop-up furniture. All her designs are easy to take and can be removed when you’re done. Here we show just another great example of her work — a stylish lunch bag that can be instantly transformed into a seat. With two solid clips, the bag can be attached to all sorts of fences (which are pervasive in cities these days), and voilà, there’s your pop-up lunch spot.

“I am exploring how nontraditional public spaces – like sidewalks – might be easily transformed into lively places to lunch. This blog follows a series of Pop Up Lunches I have staged (some big, some small) and my development of mobile eating tools designed for the sidewalks of NYC. Ultimately, I hope that my efforts might inspire even a handful of my fellow urbanites to reconsider the potential for lunch – to be a joyful daily event – and for the sidewalks of NYC to serve as more than just pathways. This project was all part of my Master’s thesis as a graduate student of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute.”

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Monaco’s Vertical Infrastructure

By Joop de Boer | Published: Friday August 13, 2010

Monaco breathes luxury. It is not only a tax avoider’s paradise and therefore home of many rich and famous, the city also has the most luxury infrastructure for pedestrians I’ve ever witnessed. Monaco is built on a steep mountain rising from the Mediterranean sea. In order to facilitate an easy way up and down, the city has built an amazing network of public elevators as an integral part of the infrastructure for pedestrians. A complete vertical system of elevators and escalators connects the streets and sidewalks on different levels.


One can walk from the one ‘ascenseur public’ to the next while using a pattern of hallways. All are very properly maintained and working as a necessarily attribution to the sidewalks, leading the pedestrian from the high parts of the city and the parkings to the lower harbor. I’ve always been curious why this vertical dimension of public space is not been fully used at other places. Most cities lack a modern vertical public infrastructure. Their services are stuck to archaic inventions such as stairs, while later innovations are already for years in use within private spaces.


Monaco is a rich city (which explains a lot), unless the fact that the city doesn’t earn any money from income taxes. The Principality earns from property sale (very expensive here) and VAT. The high property prices could be another explanation for the elevator structure, as elevators need less space than stairs. Anyway, I like the public elevator structure. It’s innovative, fascinating and exciting to be in. They are extremely good for a series of pop-up parties as well (with a bar in every elevator). Nevertheless, it mostly reminds me of the online first person shooter Wolvenstein Enemy Territory, which I used to play. It would be great if Monaco with its public elevator structure would be model for a new battlefield.

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Genoa’s Augmented Reality Light Signs

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday August 12, 2010


Yesterday we discussed the effort of cities to do something about too much commercial expressions in their streets. We concluded that most cities find it very hard to find a balance between prohibiting of private initiatives and earning money with advertisement spaces leased by the authorities themselves. Here is another brilliant example from Genoa. The rather chique shopping street Via XX Settembre is one of the most famous and beautiful areas of this North Italian city. In order to preserve its character, the municipality has made a deal (or a decision) with the entrepreneurs along the shopping arcade. Advertising in light is made possible, but only in the same style, which therefore becomes immediately recognizable as the Genovese light sign style. The street’s main characteristic is its light advertising which looks as a physical translation of augmented reality at first sight.


The Genovese authorities have to deal with some big companies along the expensive shopping lane, all having their own famous logos and advertising methods. Here the local government has obviously won the battle about the character of public space. Even big companies such as McDonald’s had to adapt to the Genovese light style.

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DIY Guerilla City Advertising

By Joop de Boer | Published: Wednesday August 11, 2010


Cities often try to find solutions against the excess of advertising in public space. Shop owners and entrepreneurs are forbidden to have light signs or banners that affect the visual character of the public domain too much. Such happened in São Paulo for instance, where the mayor decided to remove all advertising in public space. This is a great way of city-marketing in itself by the way. In other cities such as Amsterdam, the governmental morality is rather complicated. Shop owners in Amsterdam’s most liveable and important street Damrak are requested to take their signs away in order to preserve the historical townscape. To the contrary, the whole city is full of banners and advertisement spaces exploited by the local government themselves, and organized by a company called Bizon.

Some days ago Urban Shit and Rebel Art wrote an interesting post about a guerilla advertising exhibition in Vienna. The collective Phorm organizes an exhibition called GEWITZTA, which deals with the issue of ownership of the city’s visual space. Along the project comes a ‘DIY Reclaim Your City Kit’. This box enables people to, for instance, hack a city light poster. The key which provides access to the poster box is copied and spread as a part of the DIY kit. The project is called GEWITZTA after the name of the Austrian company organizing the public advertising Gewista.

“The name GEWITZTA is a wordplay. The company that owns nearly all the advertisement areas in Vienna is called GEWISTA and the modification to GEWITZTA means “shrewd”. So that is of course an artistic attack against the monopoly of a huge advertisement area providing company. In Austria free placarding is anchored in the right of freedom of expression but the company which is providing the areas for advertisement wanted to make a monopoly on this and remove every poster (placarded by e.g. small cultural institutions) to achieve that those institutions had to pay high prices for placarding in the city. This affected political movements as well. For there are nearly no free areas provided by the city and the company for placarding.”

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