Chris Pape's Freedom Tunnel
During my holiday I read Jennifer Toth’s ‘The Mole People’, a terrific book published in 1993 about the urban legend of homeless people living in the huge system of (mostly abandoned) interconnected subway and train tunnels beneath the busy streets of New York City. When doing research for her book, Toth found out about more […]
Telok Blangah's Flying Infrastructure
Singapore’s Telok Blangah Hill Park is an amazing park structure consisting of different landscape types connected through a fly-over-like infrastructure. Within the context of the Weak Signals, Wild Cards exhibition, curated by art gallery De Appel in Amsterdam, a little green book with images of the park has been published. I discovered it lying on […]
Introducing The Erotic City
According to the Times, the blog Cycle Chic Copenhagen belongs to the Top 100 Blogs Worldwide. Cycle Chic Copenhagen reports about biking culture in Denmark's capital Copenhagen. But after the fact that Copenhagen is a real bicycle city, most of the 3,623 frequent readers that Feedburner reports, must be especially interested in the sexy way the message is put forward: by portraiting 'cycle chics'. To me it's interesting that the blogger understands what the single most important quality of a city's public domain is: people on the street, for this particular situation the presence of pretty girls (not hard to find in Copenhagen though). In fact, Copenhagen Cycle Chic focuses on the erotic dimension of the city. And because it's not done to just take pictures of nice girls in a voyeur-like way, the biking theme is introduced. It's a great contribution to Copenhagen's city marketing to represent the city as a progressive bicycle city with plenty of pretty girls. It makes you wanna ride a bike yourself.
Modern Living Without A Car
Could you live without a car? In the neighbourhood of Vauban, near the German city Freiburg, they can. This innovative neighbourhood is almost car-free, except for the main thoroughfare in the centre that connects the train station with the car garages where citizens can purchase spaces for 29,000 euros. Construction began in the mid-90s and […]
Social Environmentalists Versus Car Fetishists
Controlling a car with your mind… it sounds unrealistic, but just imagine, in 20 to 30 years this will be the new way of driving your car. Just thinking about selecting first gear will be enough. Thinking about stopping for another traffic light will be enough. It’s proven that people who are either stressed, angry […]
7 Useful Tips To Explore The Cool City
It’s holiday time! But how to find cool places, bars, clubs, shops and restaurants in a city you’ve never been to? The only way not to land up in a ‘Lonely Planet Queue’ or walking around behind a guide’s umbrella, is to look for new ways of ‘city navigating’. You, in the end, are your […]
A Floating Plugin Park
Joop recently wrote about the floating camping in Sausalito Almere by the Amsterdam-based ‘floating everything’ gurus that are working on these kinds of concepts since the late sixties. Their website contains some nice projects. For example the floating garden slash park you see in the picture above. This ‘plugin park’ could have big potential in […]
The Flying Grass Carpet Goes Sky High
Last summer we reported about the Flying Grass Carpet, the huge pop-up landscape entirely made of artificial grass. The project of our friends, Rotterdam-based architecture and design office HUNK-design and artist IDEddy has been travelling the world since.
The Green Deal
After a decade of neoliberalism selling off public services, local governments are taking matters into own hands again? For example, Amsterdam and the other shareholders of Nuon, ‘the second largest energy company in the Netherlands’, agreed to sell their energy company to German giant RWE. Amsterdam is making plans to start its own energy company […]
On The Future Of Our Food
Matt Brown, a student Interaction Design at the Swedish Umeå Institute of Design, is the guy behind the project ‘Food and the Future of It’. He created an awesome blog (one of those small jewels you find from time to time), which he used to report about his research on the future of our food. […]
Waiting For The Bus Will Become Fun
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology have presented new futuristic bus stops called EyeStop. The EyeStop is entirely covered with touch sensitive E-ink and screens. This provides the traveller with the latest sensing technology, interactive services, community information and entertainment. EyeStop brings waiting for the bus to a whole new level. Florence is the first city […]
Where Are The Blonds?
Mapping the most simple stuff can be amazingly interesting. Recently I found this map, which doesn’t need any explanation. During the holiday season this might be a handy tool as it gives you some preferences for your destination. It might be delighting to know that Jeroen will visit the Baltics and Finland. I’ll go to […]
Floating Camping
After our recent report about the meanwhile disappeared Dutch Sausolito near Amsterdam, we should spend some of our time on this small floating island at Almere Beach. Actually this one is from the makers of the floating market and, of course, the world famous floating gardens. These Amsterdam-based ‘floating everything’ gurus are working on the […]
What Are New Liberal Arts?
We just have to spend a few words on the recently published book ‘New Liberal Arts’ by the Snarkmarket network. Andrew Fitzgerald states: “In this digital world, your attention, once in abundant supply, has become ‘sex’ increasingly scarce… Now, what did you take away from that sentence? Was it the thesis to this program? Or was […]
Talca's Red Umbrella Cityscape
A temporary shelter of red Umbrella’s has been constructed in the centre of Talca, Chile. The project is done by students Jaime Latorre and Pablo Retamal of the 5th Year Architecture Workshop under the guidance of Professor Juan Román at the University of Talca’s School of Architecture. They created a landscape of 400 red umbrella’s […]
