Psychogeographic London
Emilie Giles is an interaction designer who recently launched Lost London, a pervasive game that focuses on the forgotten places and networks that exist within the city of London. Based on the principles of psychogeography (“the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of […]
Transformable Mercedes Pop-Up Stage
Dutch artist Kevin van Braak transformed an old six meter long Mercedes van into a traveling performance stage. By tilting one side of the van the vehicle transforms into a platform for music, debates, lectures and all kinds of other activities. Currently Van Braak’s Mercedes transformer travels through the Ruhr area in Western Germany as […]
The Hup Holland Vending Machine
Staying in the winning mood, I'd like to mention this great vending machine I came across yesterday night at Amsterdam's Central Station.
Revitalizing Ken Isaacs
Yesterday I received a kind email from Glasgow School of Art design student Alec Farmer who wanted to thank us for sharing Ken Isaacs’ 1974 classic ‘How To Build Your Own Living Structures’ in our library. The DIY book focuses on how to build sustainable, eco-friendly, modular, flexible, multi-functional living structures which reconfigure the entire […]
World Cup Fever And Floating Houses
Today is one of those days that the whole topic of architecture seems to be of relative importance. After yesterday's amazing Dutch victory over Uruguay in the FIFA World Cup Semi Finals, my mind is almost completely filled with football-related content. So today's question is: how to relate the Dutch presence in the Final at this World Cup to flexible urbanism? Well, the answer comes from the past — 22 years ago.
Follow The Light Signs
As you may know, the mayor of São Paulo has decided to ban all neon ads, billboards and other forms of advertising in public space. The results of the Clean City Law are impressive. The removal of screaming commercialism has revealed beautiful buildings no-one had noticed before. Besides that, being the first ad-free city in the world has created São Paulo a unique selling point. Nevertheless, we consider it important to stay still for a minute and keep in mind the relevance of light signs. Light signs can be beautiful, and if you look closely you can even notice trends in light sign design.
The Fastest Way To The Underground
Urbanism is marketing and marketing is urbanism. That could be a leading phrase of this blog. In fact, more and more marketing initiatives take the urban sphere as their canvas while urban plans are communicated as if they’re sun cream or dog food. With their Fun Theory campaign, Volkswagen seems to understand the potential of […]
Five Questions To Reinier De Graaf (OMA)
The famous annual multidisciplinary conference TED is spreading across the globe. As of 2010, so-called TEDx events have been held in over 60 countries. Under the slogan ‘somethink completely different’ TEDxRotterdam took place on Friday June 4 at the New Luxor Theater, featuring twelve hours of performances and ‘ideas worth spreading’ from some 30 designers, […]
The Late Night Co-Working Club
The technological revolution increasingly changes the way people work, live with each other and deal with time and space. Due to modern information technologies, labor becomes flexible and independent from place. The working nomad is born as the classic dividing line between work and home gets blurred. This has led to the emergence of co-working — “the […]
Experiments With Football
‘Refait’ is a remake of the of the football match between France and Germany that took place in Sevilla during the 1982 FIFA World Cup. In June 2009 French collective Pied la Biche was invited by the urban interventionists of KompleXKapharnaüM (brilliant name) to replay the last 15 minutes of that match in Villeurbanne, a […]
Just Landed In…
I came across this great animation made by Jer Thorp. It shows international flight movements not by tracking planes, but by collecting recognizable tweets by passengers. Most people feel the need to let their friends and family know that have landed safely. In addition, they would like to show their network that they just came […]
The London Underground Live
Birmingham-based webdesigner Matthew Somerville created a great mash-up that provides live insight in locations of all Underground trains in and around London. The yellow pins are subway stations (click for a local map of that station), the red pins represent trains in real-time. Some extra information for the geeks among us: “Live departure data is […]
The Pearl River Necklace
Take a look at this proposal of Amsterdam-based NL Architects. Their brilliant concept for this ‘necklace’ highway bridge between Hong Kong and mainland China proves that the most creative ideas are very often simple ideas. The bridge’s dynamic twisted form easily solves the problem of differences in driving styles between the two areas (in Hong […]
Gold Rush: The Urban Adventure Game
If you’re in Amsterdam tomorrow, we’d like to sincerely invite you to drop by at the first official edition of the Nuit Blanche Amsterdam festival. Tomorrow night, five places across Amsterdam will be transformed into nightly platforms filled with art, design and fun. As you may know we’re not only running this web magazine, but […]
A Jacket For An Empty Shop
One in eight shops in the United Kingdom currently stand empty. On the one hand it's the credit crunch that trebled the number of empty shops, on the other hand it's the emergence of suburbian mega malls and the Internet shopping boom. "Shopping experts warned that the high street will never be the same again." UK-based Shopjacket claims to have a solution to the problem of empty shops on main streets. By using three-dimensional bespoke panels, the young company transforms unoccupied retail spaces into store fronts that look like they're in use.
