‘Shift Shop’ Helps Local Entrepreneurs Kickstart Their Business
Some time ago a new pop-up store concept opened doors in North Amsterdam. The little shop called Mama Louise is a so-called 'Wisselwinkel', or 'Shift Shop', which means that the shop owner and the shop type change every six months.
Automatic Turns Cars Into Smart Cars
It’s hard not to get envious of all the fancy applications smartphone users have access to when being a motorist driving a fairly straight-forward car. Sure, your stereo might have buttons with obscure usage and maybe you even have a state-of-the-art entertainment center right in the center console. But really, what else can you do? To answer to these ‘appified’ needs of the contemporary motorist, Automatic is all you would ever want to know about your car in one simple smart device.
Metrominuto: The Subway-Inspired Map For Pedestrians
Walkability is a subject many cities are increasingly getting involved with. Our legs are often overlooked when thinking about transport in the city, with municipalities passionately constructing bicycle lanes and roads as far as the eye can see whilst competely forgetting about the pedestrian’s needs. Instead of focusing on these forms of transport, Pontevedra in northwest Spain has been trying for the last 15 years to make their city more walker-friendly. To further improve walkability, they have created a subway-inspired map for pedestrians.
Crowd-Funding Meets Peer-To-Peer At Hamburg’s Neighborhood’s University
“A DIY low-budget high-quality community-run luxury-hotel and 'university as a marketplace' in the neighborhood”? Many trending keywords in a raw, one great crowd-funded peer-to-peer project! Four years ago the Urban Design department of the HCU-Hamburg took the initiative to turn an old, abandoned building in Hamburg’s Wilhelmsburg district into a Neighbourhood's University.
Taiwanese Designer Launches Google Maps-Inspired Birdhouses
Taiwan-based industrial designer Shu-Chun Hsiao created a series of urban birdhouses that are inspired by the Google Maps marker symbol. It is interesting to realize how tightly this simple pinpoint marker is cognitively related to the services of Google Maps and how it has actually developed into a landmark symbol.
Make A Mash-Up Mix Of Your Street With StreetMix
StreetMix.net is a digital mixing board for the urban environment. It invites its users to create, mix and mash a streetscape with a wide array of typical road elements, such as bike and vehicle lanes, medians, boulevards, sidewalks and trees.
Jules Basement: A Bar You’ll Probably Never See The Inside Of
During the early twenties and thirties, the ‘speakeasy’ started to pop-up throughout the United States, illegaly selling alcoholic beverages as a result of the Prohibition. Although alcohol is now very much legal, the speakeasy concept happens not to be dead just yet with the opening of Jules Basement, a new exclusive bar in Mexico City.
Bitponics: Where Urban Agriculture Meets The Internet Of Things
Brooklyn start-up Bitponics makes urban farming a bit more convenient with its smart device and website that helps you manage your greens from a remote location.
Food-For-Food Intervention Encourages Shoppers To Rediscover Their Local Market
During the summer of 2011, Hackney-based multidisciplinary collective The Decorators (in collaboration with Atelier ChanChan) transformed a vacant plot within the market into a temporary restaurant named ‘Ridley’s’. Suzanne O’Connell, one quarter of The Decorators, was kind enough to answer a few questions on this unique program.
Studio Weave Turns London Hospital Into A Musical Box
Yes, they did it again! Studio Weave, the British architecture agency that was also featured in our review of Create GB, managed to amaze us again with another amazing intervention, called the Lullaby Factory.
Hong Kong As A 2D Game
Remember playing Super Mario Bros on the first Nintendo? Stockholm-based photographer Christian Åslund shot a series of photos in Hong Kong depicting the city as a 2D game.
Labrador Becomes Architecture Critic
An 8.5 meter tall sculpture of a black labrador pissing on the facade of the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach is Richard Jackson's latest artwork. The artist's thought-provoking installation 'Bad Dog' was installed for the occasion of the retrospective exhibit 'Richard Jackson: Ain't Painting a Pain'.
Virgin Launches World’s First Airplane Art Gallery
Virgin Atlantic has recently announced to open art galleries on airplanes. Teaming up with British street artist Eine (Ben Flynn), the ‘Gallery in the Air’ collaboration aims to bring art at 35,000 feet. The passengers of the first class (Upper Class) will have the chance to experience a pop-up gallery atmosphere while traveling between New York and London. Except for the in-plane exhibition, there will also be a series of the artists’ typography artworks presented in the lounge rooms, the exclusive ‘Clubhouses’, of London Heathrow, JFK and Newark Clubhouses airports.
Make Your Tools Accessible To Those Who Need Them At The Tool Library
Here’s another solution for putting those tools gathering dust in your house to use: make them available for lending at your local Tool Library! Opening next month, Toronto’s Tool Library is one of many similar projects that have popped up all over North America, Australia and Europe. The recent popularity of tool libraries is another example of how the peer-to-peer economy continues to gain popularity and evolve, changing the way we interact with each other and our cities.
Parasite Energy Harvesters Turn The City Into A Power Plant
Last year we told you about energy parasites and the efforts of groups of people to capture spoiled energy in the city and make it useful for other purposes. Recently we found a stunning new invention in the field of parasite energy harvesting that we want you to know about. German designer Dennis Siegel created a small device that is able to harvest energy from electromagnetic fields and instantly recharge batteries (!).
