Wanted: Inspiring Projects!
To promote its upcoming Fortwo electric drive, car brand Smart travels Europe with the Smart Urban Stage. The Smart Urban Stage is an international platform offering an exciting view on the future of the city. What will the future be like in urban areas and how will we move around? At the Smart Urban Stage […]
And We Call It The Lifepod
If Apple would have been an architecture office, they would have come up with this portable house.
Book Review: Made Of…
Gestalten is a Berlin-based publisher known for its visually oriented books on architecture, urbanism and design. Made of… New Materials Sourcebook for Architecture and Design, written by architect Christiane Sauer, is such a publication. Whereas new materials and innovations in architecture and design are practically always presented by boring corporate brochures, this book takes another approach […]
The Pop-Up Condo Box: Animations By Luke Painter
Luke Painter is a Toronto-based visual artist whose recent work has explored architectural symbolism and representation through large-scaled ink drawings, print and animation. A new show at the York Quay Centre in Toronto showcases some of his animation work called ‘Fiction and Invention: Utopic Visions for the 21st Century’. The work features animations of condominium […]
What You See Is Not What You See
Normally I use to write about urban interventions and performances on the streets, but this time I would like to spend a few words on a funny, smart project, realized inside the Tate Modern Gallery of London. Many people heard about the great work of the artist Ai Weiwei entitled ‘Sunflower Seeds’. Currently exposed in the main […]
Grow Some Food. It Is Good
Growing vegetables in your own home has abundant benefits, including money-saving, environmental sustainability, and even as a source of creativity. From our garden patch in inner-city Melbourne, we produced abundant crops of garlic, lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetable goodies. Sometimes our crops were so successful we were able to share the excess produce […]
Hybrid Urban Games And #Tahrir Square
These are very exciting times for hybrid (or augmented) urban games. With Betaville, Chromaroma and TERA, the digital game-space is not only emerging strongly as a character in itself but also transforming the real-world experiences. One does not enter the game-world to ‘escape the real’ any more, but to acknowledge the hybrid and return to […]
A Swoosh To Slide
The best thing to do for a lost village somewhere down a polluted river on the country-side of the United States is to build a hugh lava lamp. This is what marketing guru Seth Godin claimed in his TED speech back in 2007 when he explained the Purple Cow effect and the power of being […]
Hacking The Market
Transmediale.11 is on! If you are in Berlin this week there is no excuse but to visit the Haus der Kulturen der Welt! Remember to bring your party mood as the place becomes Club Transmediale (CTM) at night. For those unfamiliar with Transmediale, it is “a festival aiming to define the contours of contemporary digital […]
Insomnia Design
If industrial design for interiors with a middle-class target has to communicate coziness and comfort to the users, it seems like just walking outside the door changes the rules of perception — public space apparently has to aim for a sleepless panorama and many are the elements made to contribute, from small disturbing clusters to […]
How The Facebook Generation Starts A Design Office
An interesting development in the world of architecture and design are new types of experimental offices. Traditional firms are slowly being replaced by new architecture start-ups and old fashion 20th century thinking is replaced by a fresh 21st century approach. The new office is no office!
Urban Station: The Best Of Both Worlds
While offices tend to look like bars, more and more bars tend to look like offices. With the increasing numbers of freelancers looking for a convenient place to sit and work, some bars are slightly becoming new types of offices. While the first generation of mobile workers is already more realistic about the convenience of […]
Audi Spectacle
In our Top 10 Trends for 2011 we marked ‘Marketing is Urbanism’ number 1. Advertising on huge billboards along the ringroad is not enough any more, which pulled urban marketing to a new level. World-famous brands do not hesitate to good money for the opportunity to show their message in public space on a rather sympathetic level. At some […]
Instagram As A Marketing Tool
Photo-sharing application Instagram saw its userbase grow to one million in only three months. The service enables people to share their finest moments by letting them take a picture, choose a Hipstamatic-like filter to transform the look and feel, and share it with a small text and/or its geo-location on numerous social media, such as Facebook, […]
Print Stuff In Guido's Room
Yesterday Guido Tamino started his project Print Stuff. Tamino has installed a printer in his room and enables people from all over the world to print stuff over the Internet. Everyone is invited to submit a short note together with a drawing or picture via a fully automated web form. After hitting ‘print’, a clean […]
