Flying Robotic Swarms To Create Wi-Fi Clouds
A team of scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have designed a robotic system that enables the rapid establishment of a pop-up Wi-Fi network. Using flying micro-robots grouped in a swarm, wireless networks can be instantly set up at places all over the globe. After serious catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods, communication infrastructure is often demolished, which complicates the work of emergency teams dramatically. This invention can help emergency teams to communicate quickly in response to disasters.
DIY Village Construction Set (Stir In Some Arduino)
Open Source Ecology (OSE), “a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters,” is putting together detailed DIY guides for creating your own farm equipments and other machines such brick makers and a very cool 3D printer (remember the Radiolara pavilion?). Similar to the ‘re-inventing construction’ initiative of Something Fantastic (featured here), OSE is interested in opening […]
New In The Cycle Style Shop
Cycling seems to become a lifestyle and design expression more than a means of transportation in diverse metropolitan centers around the world. Not only the bikes themselves become fashion items, but also bike repairing stuff changes from simple ‘dirty hands tools’ into highly designed fashionable products. Design blog Mocoloco shows a range of sustainable BikeCare […]
Endless Rain
Almost nothing sounds as good and relaxing as the sound of falling rain drops in Summer. Kouichi Okamato, designer and CEO of Shizuoka-based lighting and product design company Kyouei Design, created a remarkable record entitled ‘Endless Rain’, which contains an endless loop of Summer rain on one side and loops of single rain drops on the other. The […]
Great Urban Campaigns For Boring Shoes
A Chinese footwear manufacturer has made this small electric in the form of a giant shoe. According to Kang Shoe Company’s CEO the shoe car is designed as a branding campaign. Explains J-Walk Blog: “It can carry two people up to 250 miles at speeds of up to 20 mph on a single charge of the […]
Knocking On A Pale Blue Door
Everybody should learn from set designer Tony Hornecker how to face crisis times. Why? Because he manages to reinvent his job, using his experience to create an original and unusual installation: a restaurant. Yes, a traveling pop-up restaurant. The project somehow recalls to Swoon’s Swimming Cities, because, as in that case, the artist and his team built […]
Inflate A Balloon For A Better City
These days lots and lots of artistic projects are aimed at improving human interaction in public space. Montréal’s Museum of Possibilities (Musée des Possibles) is such a project, but a special one, that seems to be a physical life-sized version of the recently featured online crowdsourcing project Give a Minute. The urban authorities asked Melissa Mongiat, […]
DIY Publishing: An Interview With What About It
Last week we featured the new architectural zine SOILED and engaged the editorial team in a discussion on the merits of DIY publishing in the 21st century. This week we take a look at an emerging architectural office/think tank who has recently converted their blog postings into a monograph-zine. What About It is an emerging […]
Escape The Cameras
Having to deal with surveillance cameras in our cities is becoming more and more obvious nowadays, and while citizens are becoming used to the presence of these devices, artists and activists are constantly denouncing the intrusive role of the nearly-ubiquitous CCTV systems. It is interesting to notice how the practice of surveillance is growing without […]
Arduino And Its Relevance To Urbanists
At the MakerBot headquarters in Brooklyn you can find this rather peculiar vending machine. It doesn’t sell Snickers, Mars and Nuts, but open source electronics instead. Arduino might be a rather unfamiliar piece of ‘nerd stuff’ to most urbanists and architects, but its functionality tends to increasingly affect cities, urbanism and design of buildings. This […]
Brazilian Situationism
In 2009 the São Paulo-based Ocupeacidade collective created a paper-crafted Volkswagen van with life-size proportions and painted as a real van. Under the name of Kombi Project they brought the van into the streets of their city, moving it as it were a car from the Flintstones, just with their foot. They executed this performance in order […]
Office In The Cloud
As you may know we are investigating new modern office styles through a series of articles. Last week we reported about the cooperative Betahouse in Berlin and earlier we spoke about the rise of the office in the cloud lead by the Facebook generation. This is part three in this series — a reaction to […]
Legvertising!
Yes, this is what I would call ‘legvertising’. A clothing store in New Zealand came up with this fresh way of guerrilla marketing. Using plates installed on city benches to imprint their ad onto the back of bare legs, its campaign turns short-skirted women into unconscious advertising victims. Is this real? Well, the ad men of […]
Please Stay Behind The Blue Wi-Fi Fence
The city is filled with an invisible landscape of networks, but now we can see more and more of them. Wow! This is a great new invention that we waited for since so much digital information flows through the air. It is fascinating that a whole economy of information uses an infrastructure that we can’t see. […]
Incontinent Power Outlets On The Streets Of Essen
Together with an Austrian artist, advertising office Jung von Matt has launched a series of ‘leaking’ power outlets to show that energy is wasted every second and everywhere. The urban intervention was meant to get people’s attention on the regardless waste of energy. The installation speaks to the German energy company RWE which takes a […]
