Street Lamp Transforms Into An Umbrella When It Rains
Say hi to the Lampbrella, a concept for a new street lamp that's able to double as an umbrella to keep pedestrians dry. The innovative idea comes from St. Petersburg-based designer Mikhail Belyaev. The Lampbrella is made from fiberglass and equipped with a rain and motion sensor that help to figure out when it needs to open and close the umbrella canopy.
The Tree Tent Hotel
Rotterdam-based tent architect Dré Wapenaar has created an amazing decentralized hotel that combines tree houses with tents. Part of the Pit landscape art festival in Belgium, Wapenaar's so-called 'Tranendreef' consists of four teardrop-shaped sculptures that are hanging from standard trees and provide an alternative form of accommodation to spend a night in the town of Haspengouw.
Mexican Container Restaurant Pops Up In London
Wahaca, a London-based Mexican restaurant, has just opened its pop-up location in Southbanks. And how does a pop-up restaurant manage to fit seating for 130 diners? With shipping containers, of course! The relatively low height of a container enables the construction of a two-floor restaurant in a very compact space.
Win A Copy Of The #IABR Catalogue!
We just published our review of the catalogue of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). We’re happy to give away three copies of the catalogue to our lucky readers! The only thing to do is start following Pop-Up City on Twitter. That’s easy, huh? We’ll pick three winners from everyone who starts following Pop-Up City before Saturday 21 July.
Making City: Catalogue Of The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
Over the past couple of months, we’ve written a fair amount on the 5th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (you can see our overview of the IABR here). There’s been a lot going on in the contemporary world’s architectural heart as part of the 5th version of the IABR, including a rooftop farm, a pop-up urban village for surfers, and an exhibition about art interventions in Douala. In addition to all the happenings across town, the curators of the IABR have put together a nice catalogue of the exhibits that we’re excited to be giving away three copies of the catalogue to our lucky readers!
Introducing the Rail Bike
Urban Shit reports about the next step in urban bicycle culture. The guys from WAV (We Are Visual) have come up with something new — the 'Bahnradbahnrad', or 'Rail Bike'. The Bahnradbahnrad is a combination between a bicycle and a tram and allows bike enthusiast to cycle to predestined locations. You don't want to slip into tram rails when you're cycling. This cycling innovation changes the tram tracks of the city of Kassel into a new kind of bike lane. Great idea for cities without a proper network of cycling lanes.
Deconstructive Graffiti By Alexandre Farto
Alexandre Farto's ongoing project, entitled ‘Scratching the Surface’, takes a wall of a building and chips away at it until a portrait emerges. The locations vary, from the sides of beautiful buildings in Moscow to derelict buildings in London to abandoned interiors in Portugal. The result is the transformation of a bland surface in public space to an ornate piece of art, free for all to see.
Landscape Artists ‘Grassify’ Interior Of York Cathedral
As far as art installations go, this is certainly one of the most sacrosanct: laying down real God-fearing grass inside of the nave of York Minster in England. The pious pitch was installed by Wow! Grass!, which I hereby declare to be the greatest possible name for a group of people that install grass. York Minster laid down the saintly sod in time for a major benefit dinner to raise funds for the building’s maintenance. The 900-guest dinner was recently held as part of the Diamond Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II.
Procter & Gamble Launches QR Truck Store
What will the future of shopping look like? Perhaps this concept gets close. Two American mega brands, Procter & Gamble and Walmart, team up in a new marketing campaign to promote online and mobile shopping. This truck allows pedestrians to buy household products from the side of the truck by scanning a QR code.
London’s Most Fashionable Facade
In an effort to recycle clothing and decrease waste fashion, department store Marks & Spencer launched 'Shwopping', a project that combines shopping and swapping. The fashion brand covered a couple of facades of buildings in hipster town East London with 10,000 pieces of unwanted apparel, resulting in a brilliant, colorful temporary installation that completely changes the face of the buildings.
Urban Working Fuel: The Eco-Pod
The ever-inimitable Blah City recently brought our attention to the Eco-Pod, a concept developed by Höweler + Yoon Architecture in collaboration with Squared Design Lab. The pods are both modular office spaces (and, as everyone knows, we love all things stackable) and sources of fuel: the pods harvest micro-algae, which serves as a highly promising bio-fuel type.
Computer Alerts Meet Street Art In New York
Jilly Ballistic is currently running around New York placing computer alert-type messages over top of a selection of advertisements and signage. Most of them look extremely similar to a certain operating system made by a company you may have heard of from Cupertino.
Del Popolo: Food Truck Meets Shipping Container
We can't seem to get enough stories on food trucks and shipping containers. So finding Del Popolo on the Inhabitat site really made us swoon. This is a mammoth of a food truck made from a 20-foot shipping container. It was first dreamed up by veteran pie slinger Jon Darsky of San Francisco and made its street debut this past May.
The Super Green School Bus
Okay, so the school bus is actually still classic yellow in colour, but it is so packed with green goodness that I'm not sure where to start. Named the Green Urban Lunch Box, the bus has vegetable gardens, an aquaponics system, solar power, a gravity feed watering system, and it is still a functioning vehicle that travels to schools and local events in Salt Lake City, Utah.
From Smoke Signals To Tweet Clouds
Similar to traditional smoke signals, Galleria Mall in Brazil spiced up the re-launch of Brazil’s first open mall not by offering people gifts, but by allowing them to create ‘gift clouds’. Using the Flogo Cloud technology, visitors of the mall were invited to send clouds accompanied with a simple tweet.
