Twitter's Geodata Revolution And The Soft City
Two days ago Twitter platform developers announced to launch a new, revolutionary component in Twittersphere: location. A geodata team is working on an API that makes it possible to map tweets physically. The idea is explained on the official Twitter blog: “We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A […]
Leisure Suit Larry In The Erotic City
Recently I rediscovered the obsolete but incredibly exciting computer game Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. The whole game breathes the Erotic City concept as it combines the adventure of looking for love with the metropolitan atmosphere. “Set in the fictional city of Lost Wages, the story follows a middle-aged virgin […]
The World's Fastest Floating Hotel
Wow! Just after I reported about slow floating houses easily finding their way to the IJburg harbour, today I came across this rather amazing speedboat hotel called the SS Silla. According to Wendmag this floating structure is the “world’s fastest sauna”, as the SS Silla won the official World Championship for fast floating saunas. Just […]
Camper On A Bike
This camper bike is a project by artist Kevin Cyr. It’s a functioning sculptural piece, built in April 2008. Kevin describes his one man camper as a stand alone piece and the subject of a series of paintings. He gets his inspiration from the real world, and the way infrastructure and mobilty gets involved in […]
New York's Day And Night Population
On the Urbanophile blog I stumbled upon an interesting graphic that gives insight in the huge differences between New York’s day and night population density (click here for a larger image). The designer has calculated both the number of people per block during daytime and nighttime. As you can see Manhattan has far more jobs […]
Shipping Of A Floating Home
The first floating homes enter the new Amsterdam suburb of IJburg. This process goes very slowly, as there are 40 dwellings that have to be shipped from the wharfs of the most experienced ‘floating villas’ builder ABC Arkenbouw to their destination in Amsterdam. Bureaucratic regulations haven’t been very supportive in these, as the transportion has […]
Intimacy Shelters
On this blog we’re looking for an interpretation of the Erotic City. Within this third post regarding that topic, we freely interpretate the public installation shown above. Rotating Shelters is a project by the German artist duo Winter/Hörbelt. Recently they designed these colourful round ‘cabines’ as a part of the redesign of the newly laid-out courtyard of the Willem Arntsz Huis, […]
New: Knitted Phone Booth Sleeve
Sleeves for the iPhone are available in every single material and colour. The ‘WePhone’ (the public phone), to the contrary, has never had such a fancy jacket. Of course we spotted the upcoming knitting trend over last years. And this here might not be the first public space knitting event. But now we’ve got to […]
Opening Soon: Pop-Up Mini Swimming Pool
Marseille-born and Amsterdam-based artist Laurence Aëgerter is about to launch a new episode in her ‘Opening Soon/Opening Now’ series in Amsterdam. Currently she is busy turning a former brother in the so-called ‘Grey Area’ into a two-day public mini swimming pool. All ages are welcome to recreate in this unique swimming pool, under supervision of […]
Graffiti's Augmented Reality App For Restaurant Recommendations
One thing is for sure: Augmented Reality (AR) is changing the urban realm and how the city is being perceived. Sometimes we write about neat ideas in the world of AR, and the new Graffiti restaurant recommendation app is absolutely one of those refreshing initiatives. Graffiti is an online application which allows you to write […]
Foreclosures Become Nature
In case you haven’t heard of the ReBurbia design competition yet, you should definitely check the list of its finalists to grab your portion of instant inspiration. Supported by Inhabitat and Dwell, the competition is dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs. Important contemporary issues such as the climate problem, shrink of household size and the economic meltdown affect the future of suburban areas, especially in […]
Neukölln, Part 3: Two Fresh Ideas
As I reported before on this blog, the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukölln is full of crazy ideas and mind blowing initiatives. Here just two announcements that I came across on the streets of Neukölln. It might be a little hard to understand, but both ideas are completely new to me. The first hand written paper […]
Cycle Inflator/Bike Stand
We often report about fixed city elements that get flexible through new ideas. You could say we support that on this blog. Sometimes though, things are interesting the other way around. Making stuff more solid can provide us with interesting new concepts. In the Dutch city of Delft I came across this clever piece of […]
Neukölln, Part 2: Ohrenhoch Soundscape Gallery
Recently I posted about the Berlin district of Neukölln. To demonstrate what’s going on there, I dedicate this post to reporting about one of the great initiatives taking place in small spaces. Ohrenhoch is a soundscape gallery combined with a bar. The exhibition space is opened on Sundays only between 2 PM and 9 PM […]
First Floating Homes Enter Amsterdam
Recently the first floating homes have been moved into the harbour of the new island neighbourhood IJburg in Amsterdam. IJburg is a brand new district in the eastern part of town completely surrounded by water. Artificial islands made of sand from the bottom of the IJmeer are created to build over 12.000 new dwellings. On […]
