Urban Playground To Sleep On
During the annual art fair Art Pie International/Kunstvlaai 2010 (taking place between May 15-23), Amsterdam-based artist Brian Kersbergen aka ROYALSTEEZ showed his biggest work so far.
Top-Level City Domains: The Next Big Thing?
Two things are happening. First, needless to say, the role of the Internet in daily life is only increasing. Second, the role of city regions as strategic nodes in the world system only gets bigger, resulting in a global inter-urban competition to attract all kinds of knowledge workers. In regard to this, Berlin-based economist and […]
Human Pixel Screen
This is cheerleading taken to another level — a human pixel screen which is one of the most amazing group performances I’ve ever seen. And it would never have been there without the presence of the LCD screens providing us with our ‘necessary’ portion of advertising messages in public space. A lot of physical elements […]
Squeezed Vertical Campsite In Amsterdam
This week, Amsterdam-based artist Leonard van Munster will be opening a squeezed vertical campsite in Amsterdam. The Camping is a project in a series of facade projects at building sites opening during the annual Art Amsterdam festival. The vertical camping is located on the facade of ‘Het Magazijn’ in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. With this […]
Street Furniture Pops Up When Needed
In the district of Lombok in the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands, the first pop-up lounge has been placed. Pop-Up, a piece of furniture for public space, is a design of Carmela Bogman and Rogier Martens.
AR Landscaping In Central Park
During Arbor Day Weekend QR codes were seeded across New York City’s Central Park, transforming it into a mobile interactive experience. The QR codes we formerly used to transform secret messages in public space in Amsterdam are up to a new stage of development. They give access to an Augmented Reality here. With iPhones and […]
Urban Composting
Washington DC-based Compost Cab is a soon to-be-launched initiative that engages busy urbanites with the phenomenon of composting. Most of the urban dwellers lack expansive yards, but the average American household produces more than 500 pounds of leftover organic material every year. Under the slogan “it’s only trash when you treat it like trash”, Compost […]
The Berg: Berlin Goes Beyond Dubai
On top of the ruins of the closed Berlin Airport Tempelhof, the German architect Jakob Tigges proposes a plan to construct a 1,000-meter tall artificial mountain. The recent closure of Tempelhof has been an emotional decision for the Berlin people. The airport was originally constructed by the Nazis as part of their megalomanic Germania plan […]
'Das Manteltier' And The Robotic Zoo
Two years ago I stumbled upon Banksy’s pet shop in New York City. It was amazing. Not only the statement made by the street artist from East London was thrilling, but also the way it was made. Moving chicken nuggets and sausages were presented as if they were the cute little pets one wants to […]
Hong Kong's Transformable 24 Room Apartment
Architect Gary Chang is one of the approximately 7 million Hong Kong inhabitants living in a small 30 square meters apartment behind one of the concrete facades of a recognizable Hong Kong skyscraper. While many Hong Kong inhabitants more or less share the way they furnish their shoebox apartments (as seen in Michael Wolf’s photo […]
Plug-In Architecture Underneath Tokyo Viaducts
When cities get crowded, inhabitants get amazingly effective in finding space to live, work, sell, and sleep. We've written a couple of articles about Hong Kong's cage homes, informal rooftop communities and tiny apartments. On her Tumblr blog, Betonbabe shows how all kinds of small buildings and other informal structures appear underneath railway viaducts in Tokyo.
Flyfire: Pixel Swarms As Displays
It’s a good idea to visit the website of MIT’s Senseable City Lab from time to time. It showcases plenty of refreshing projects and experiments that aim to stress “the increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years”. The lab tries to investigate the ‘real-time city’, which is the product of these rapid […]
Mobile Donation Launderette Pops Up In New York
Soon a mobile pop-up laundry truck will drive the streets of New York City. It will not only facilitate mobile laundry services but also asks people to donate clothes for charity.
The Next Big Annoyance In Loaded Trains
SixthSense presents the narrow escape for old media. As digital spaces seem to take over a lot of functions that used to be present in public space, augmented realities now bring this digital world back into real. SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.
NANO Supermarket
Since the rise of Philips' Foodprinter and the amazing developments in 3D printing we made some speculations on future shopping on this blog. What, for instance, will a future supermarket look like if we can print our own food? We might buy only the basic elements to fill the printer with, such as C2 powder or a bag of NaSo4. And what will an electronic shop look like if we're all able to print our cables and extension pieces? They might not even exist any more. These are all interesting questions focusing on only one new technological development. To create a broader understanding about the future of production Next Nature calls upon designers, technologists and artists to submit their speculative nanotech products for the NANO Supermarket.
