July 5: International Defriending Day
You might have heard about the recent Burger King ‘defriending’ campaign called ‘Whopper Sacrifice’, in which people were encouraged to break ten Facebook friendships in order to get a free Whopper in the real world. Defriending seems to be the new trend in 2009, because this year “is all about quality friendships, (…) as we […]
How NYC Gets its Beer Delivered
Back in 2007, an artist called Junk made some great artworks regarding the city of New York. His work places the city’s public domains in another unexpected perspective, combining daily objects and materials with the urban context. Really well done and pretty pop-up! The whole series can be watched on the website.
Green Toolbar Saves Energy and Money
Do your part! Greenify your PC! AOL provides a new Green Toolbar that saves the planet and your wallet, aiming to contribute to the environment by saving energy through changing computer settings. As the number of computers in de the world is exponentially increasing, the environmental effects of our collective digital lifestyle does so too, […]
Growing For Nothing?
Over the last decades, economies in the Western hemisphere grew enormously. Many, many people seem to forget why we keep on striving for more economic growth. The goal of all our efforts should be more happiness, of course. Nevertheless, research after happiness levels show us that the average citizen in a Western country doesn’t feel […]
Walking Recycling Containers
As you might know, Germans are the recycling tigers of the world. For the special occasion of the Subversiv Messe festival in Linz, Stuttgart-based artists Sylvia Winkler and Stephan Köperl let their extraordinary arty recycling containers walk through the streets of the German city. Every container has four openings, each labeled with a recycling symbol: […]
Nothing Ever Happens — And I Wonder
Staying with the subject of shipping containers used in architecture, I have been thinking about the nineties; the years that I spent all those rainy sunday afternoons watching MTV. I’d like to bring up this video that comes with the famous song ‘Lemon Tree’ of Fool’s Garden. For me it was my first confrontation with […]
Swings In Subways
Tiny efforts, lots of fun. Some people in San Francisco decided to make a subway ride a different experience by hanging a swing inside one of the trains. Why not do this yourself? More pictures after the click.
Mapping The Changing World
Through TED we recently found a great presentation of Hans Rosling of Gapminder about changes in the world over last 200 years. This great moving visual graphic explains how countries have been evolving considering population growth, income and life expectancy. At the Gapminder website you can select a lot of other indicators in the fields […]
Google Latitude Project
A new Google application enables us to trace people via a Google account on their smartphone. By installing Google Latitude you can always see where your friends are and what they are up to. The movie above is a stunt using Google Latitude done by some guys in San Francisco.
Kuala Lumpur's Pop-Up Container Hotel
There seems to be no day without news about shipping containers being used for flexible building. First of all: perhaps container architecure is not really innovative any more. Further, we might conclude that the use of flexible building materials prove to be a serious alternative to the ‘stone age’ that we have lived in for […]
Urban Professionals Start To Like Street Art
I just went to the American Bookstore in Amsterdam and found out that books about street art and graffiti are the eye-catchers between their natural competitors, the books about urbanism and architecture. Most remarkable is the sudden adoptation of street art in the scene of serious city makers. In the first place, this is not […]
A Second Urban Layer
It must be incredible to wake up each day with the view of an endless grey roof landscape, and be a part of an uncontrolled second urban layer that has so much potention. The lady in the picture above is the owner of this house in the neighbourhood of San Telmo in Buenos Aires. The […]
How A Robot Survives In The City
Apparently, navigating through a city is a big issue. Thanks to Twitter I discovered a couple of initiatives helping vistors to find their way through the unknown urban jungle, either by using social software (Twitter, Google Maps) or by using iPhone tracking applications. The Tweenbots project by Kacie Kinzer is of an another kind and […]
Robot Bird Hunting at Amsterdam Airport
A very special robot bird flies around at the Amsterdam Airport since a couple of weeks. This innovative invention by Robert Musters it’s called the ‘Horck’. It’s a radio-controlled bird imitating a hawk and hunting after real birds that cause incredible damage to airplanes and form a risk for accidents. During the testing period Robert […]
Puma's Flex City
Apparently connections between brands and spatial interventions are succesful, considering the rise of the pop-up stores. The formule though seems to change slightly from using temporary empty spaces to a more profound architectural strategy. Complete new flexible constructions are set up with the singular issue of promoting a brand. PSFK comes up with the new […]
