Designer Roger Narboni Turns Hangzhou’s Grand Canal Into A Landmark Of Light
Hangzhou is a core city on the Yangtze River Delta renown for its local natural beauty. The city also plays an important economic role being positioned on the southern end of China's Grand Canal, which spans over 1,700 km to Beijing in the north. This canal has been significant to the region's economic development for over a millennium. Spatially, the canal is Hangzhou's primary defining feature.
Urban Hacktivist Launches Street Library
Strasbourg-based street artist Florian Rivière is back with a new, neat urban intervention! Last weekend, Rivière installed a little library on a sidewalk near Gare du Nord in Paris.
Burn Calories Watching Movies In The Pedal-Powered Cinema
Continuing on the theme of pedal power, the city of Derby in the United Kingdom will be hosting a pedal-powered festival this Summer. Burn off your popcorn at the pedal powered cinema and wrap it up with a party where the DJ's spin on turntables energized by pedal-power. These community events also include demonstrations and workshops to show how to harness pedal power.
3Space Turns Empty Space Into An Opportunity
Re-using empty spaces is nothing ground-breakingly new: a country like our home base, the Netherlands, suffers from a staggering amount of underused public and private spaces, as recently highlighted in Rietveld Landscape’s exhibit, Vacant NL. Generally, re-use takes a typical form: young artists move in for a short amount of time in a way that generates interest in the area that briefly transforms a city block into hipster central. One new initiative bucking this trend in the United Kingdom is 3Space, an organisation that is taking temporarily unused properties and placing registered non-profit organisations in them for brief periods of time.
Pots And Pans Take Over The Streets Of Montreal
Starting a few evenings ago, Quebeckers of all ages and backgrounds emerged from their households at 8pm banging pots and pans to show their solidarity with the student movement.
LEGO Envy: School Children And Huge Toy Towers
When we’re not busy bees scouring the planet for cool things to share with you, our dear readers, we’re usually playing with our LEGO sets. We love when other people play with LEGO in creative ways, whether it’s at the bus stop, at the church, or on the sides of buildings. That’s why we’re in love with the world’s tallest LEGO tower, recently constructed in Seoul. 4,000 school children helped to build it to commemorate the company’s 80th anniversary.
Dutch Designer Prints His Own Furniture
Graduation projects are sometimes surprisingly good! Inspired by an old 3D printer, Eindhoven-based student Dirk Vander Kooij came up with the idea to build a machine specialized in making furniture. After getting himself an old Chinese industrial robot, Vander Kooij reprogrammed it into a 3D printer to print furniture using materials from old refrigerators. The result is an award-winning collection of chairs called Endless Pulse.
Delta Air Lines Presents… Your Bag’s Journey At The Airport
I always wonder what happens to my luggage after I leave it at the check-in counters before taking a flight. In order to promote its new luggage-tracking smartphone app, Delta Air Lines launched a neat behind-the-scenes video that provides some insight in where a piece of luggage goes at the airport.
Inspiration And Process In Architecture By Moleskine
Moleskine, purveyor of quality stationery, has added books to their repertoire. As of late, the brand has been branching out to better reflect our contemporary nomadism. These include city guides, reading accessories and, the latest addition, books. Moleskine's new collection, called Inspiration and Process in Architecture, is dedicated to four key figures/offices in contemporary architecture: Zaha Hadid, Giancarlo De Carlo, Bolles+Wilson and Alberto Kalach.
Lippakioski: The Vintage Helsinki Kiosk
In Helsinki we stumbled upon the infamous Lippakioski, a historical kiosk that serves Helsinki’s urban life from the 1930s on.
Charged Signs: Solar-Powered Street Charging Stations
Having your battery die: a constant problem for the person on the move in the city. It always feels a little silly to drag around cables to charge your electronics at the office, doesn’t it? The folks at Brooklyn-based design agency PENSA! have created a new concept that allows you to get your charge on outdoors. […]
Turn Table: An Urban Farm And Restaurant In The Middle Of The City
'Turn Table — The Urban Garden' is a newly opened city farm and restaurant located in Helsinki's old Pasila railway area. The idea behind the restaurant is to grow, prepare and serve food all in the same place.
Meet Vancouver’s V-Pole
Vancouver-based author/artist/luminary Douglas Coupland recently released the V-Pole at the New Cities Summit in the French capital city. The V-Pole (that’s ‘V’ for Vancouver, of course) a utility pole design that combines LED street lighting, a wireless Internet access point, multi-frequency telecommunications antennas for multiple carriers, and, coolest of all, inductive charging for electric vehicles. […]
Chicago’s Elevated Park Ready To Bloom
Like the wildly successful High Line park in New York City, the Bloomingdale Trail will be Chicago's celebrated elevated park. Just days ago, planners submitted a framework plan to guide the community-oriented design process.
Run Your Own Pop-Up Restaurant On Restaurant Day
Eat. Drink. Enjoy! Words to live by for residents of Helsinki, World Design Capital 2012. As mentioned in a recent article, Helsinki hosted its 5th worldwide Restaurant Day. Restaurant Day is an international food festival of sorts, where anyone can be a restauranteur for a day. You can set up a pop-up restaurant, café or a bar in your home, office, the park, or even the beach!
