Complaining Has Never Been So Easy
Do you have a noisy neighbor? Someone who always stresses you out with loud music? Young students celebrating chaotic parties? If you feel ashamed calling the police for such a matter, there is a new way of delivering your message to who lives around you: the online complaint directory of NYC 311. 311 is New […]
DIY Publishing: An Interview With SOILED
With the recent launch of the ArchiZines website and Actar's publication of Clip, Stamp, Fold, it would seem that independent architectural publications are enjoying newfound importance in the architectural scene. But in the age of cheap and accessible blogging platforms, what is the value old-school physical printed media has over its online digital cousin? And what inspires people to go down the road of DIY publishing? SOILED is a new independent architecture publication coming out of Chicago. I decided to put these questions to the editorial team of SOILED. The following is a short interview.
Tomorrow’s Furniture Will Be Robotic
Scientists have been working on a series of robots that have learned to reconfigure themselves in whatever furniture you like. Want to sit? Let them know and the swarm transforms into a chair. Having lunch? There's your table, entirely consisting of robots.
Augmented Reality-Powered Fishing
Since we are in an aquatic mood this weekend, I would like to share this great augmented reality fishing game entitled Virtual Master Reel. Developed by Takara Tomy, this Japanese toy makes use of a 0.3 megapixels camera that offers a wicked fishing experience by superimposing virtual fish over the real-world locations you film. The creators of the […]
A Phone Booth Full Of Fish
Some projects are just too nice to not show here. This phone booth aquarium featured by GOOD as ‘image of the day’ is a brilliant example of an inspiring urban intervention. It not only looks very well designed, but brings people together, all staring at a phone booth as if they are walking through a […]
Looking Cool At The Coffee Bar
Somehow geeks and coffee have become an inseparable combination over the last few years. Coffee bars are furnished with nerds and laptops, tweeting about the inspiring brainstorms they have had with other geeks. In our 2011 trend forecast we have observed how the ubiquitous coffee bar has become a showroom for lifestyle. We also described […]
Somewhere Under A Pier…
In the Swedish city of Malmö, a couple of friends, Nils Petter Löfstedt and Erik Westman, decided to create a quite singular artwork: between January and May of 2009, they built a hidden living room in a cavity under a pier. First they painted walls, then they placed a new, wooden floor, a bench, lights, […]
Betahaus: The Chair Is A Surfplace
All around the world the creative workforce looks for new ways to enjoy flexibility while working. Last month we wrote the article ‘How The Facebook Generation Starts A Design Office’, which deals with new forms of collaboration in the cloud. Here we like to shed a light on another interesting new form of social collaboration […]
City One Minutes
Want to go on a global drift through various cities at any hour of the day from the comfort of your own home? City One Minutes can make your digital derive a reality. City One Minutes is an online resource which portrays the daily rhythm of a city through one minute videos. Each city is […]
Gum Democracy
Gum Election is a guerrilla art project which kicked off in New York City in October 2008. Claiming to install "modern democracy" in public space, the project was aimed to encourage people to vote in 2008's presidential election, and also not to spit out their chewing gums carelessly on the Big Apple's already dirty pavements.
The Next Office Is In The Sun
Working has been an indoor experience for decades, at least for brain workers. However, the notion of the office as a central point of obligatory collaboration becomes slowly outdated. The modern working force of young brain workers does not accept working to be unpleasant in any form. Working has to be a fulfilling experience, and an expression of a lifestyle at the same time. After years of exploring the coffee bar as the new office, the discovery of public space as the new place to work is emerging. The new office is in the sun.
Recycling Worries And Some Fantastic Things
Last year, architectural/design competitions and their discontents were much in discussion. Maria Popova led the charge crying for ‘death to design awards’ and was swiftly rebuked for her ‘generalist, populist view point’. While the respondents to Popova themselves were quite generalist and populist too (I mean it is a fact that most of Popova’s arguments […]
A Bench Is For Sitting?
More fresh ideas from Copenhagen. If you associate a traditional bench in the Danish capital with kissing teenagers, a sleeping homeless guy, or an old lady feeding pigeons, it is about time for you to go exploring. It seems like times when benches were only benches and just had the function of providing people an […]
This Is Not A Waste-To-Energy Plant
‘Hedonistic sustainability’ is a concept introduced by Bjarke Ingels, embodying the idea that sustainability is not a burden, but that a sustainable city in fact can improve the quality of life of its citizens. I would immediately refer to several initiatives that we have highlighed here on Pop-Up City, for instance the Corona Save the […]
Community Mapping
Thanks to hundreds of community-sponsored open space project sites, New York citizens have historically joined together to grow plants and set up green areas on empty lots, keeping up with the great efforts taken by Liz Christy and Green Guerrillas. ‘Community garden’, a term which expresses traditional dependency of two life forms, brought together by […]
