The World Is Your Oyster… Or Fishtank!
As we take on the struggles of setting up a fishtank in our office here at Pop-Up City, this fabulous aquarium concept for Designboom's TIFF Awards is a timely splash of inspiration. Designed by Takuro Yamamoto Architects, the glass fish basin is a stylized version of a world map that doubles as a coffee table.
The Decaying Decadence Of Vienna’s New Train Station Proposal
For a post-graduate design project students were asked to design a renovation or replacement for Vienna's existing Westbahnhof train station. What Shahira Hammad offered up is a striking mass of what appears to be decaying foliage.
350 White Chairs Pop Up In Rotterdam
During Rotterdam's public art festival Wereld van Witte de With, urbanism office M.E.S.T. left 350 white chairs in public space in Rotterdam. The chairs served as a terrace for all the decentralized performances, and fed a discussion about public space and ownership at the same time. People were allowed to use the white chairs freely and to take them to any other location as long as they remained part of public space. The white chairs were slowly spread across the city. According to the festival organization, they were even spotted at the Central Station of Leiden, a town somewhere between Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
DIY Architecture: First WikiHouses Built
It was one year ago that we brought you news of WikiHouse, the innovative open-source concept for housebuilding from London-based design team 00:/ (zero zero). The idea is to bring house design and construction to the masses through open-source designs that use easy-to-assemble CNC cutouts from standard sheets of plywood. Anyone can contribute designs, download models (that can generate code for CNC cutting) and assemble the components with minimal training or skill. We've already seen IKEA dabble in urbanism. Imagine if they were to offer flat-packaged self-assembly houses — you would probably get something very much like a WikiHouse! Since we've last reported on this project, much progress has been made.
How the Experience Economy Changes the Automotive Industry
As most industries, the automotive industry no longer exists as an industry solely based on manufacturing. Of course, without factories there will be no cars, but this part of industry has left the western city and has moved to industrializing countries. Detroit might be the clearest example of such a former industrial city. But who thinks the automotive industry has entirely left the city is wrong. The old manufacturing industry has made place for the automobile experience economy.
The Urban Living Room
Eddy Kaiser, one of the artists behind the infamous Flying Grass Carpet, has launched a new project, the Urban Living Room. The Urban Living Room is a small living room in public space. Completely painted blue (FYI: RAL 5015), the projects aims to give people a more homely experience in public space as well as stimulate spontaneous meetings and conversations.
IKEA Introduces Furniture X-Ray Vision
Furniture giant IKEA has been trying a lot of new things lately, from urbanism to airport lounges. Now they're turning your smartphone into x-ray goggles! IKEA is adding a digital layer to their new 2013 catalogue by using Augmented Reality to see into cabinets and dressers, superimpose animated scenes onto pages, and show additional possible furniture configurations.
A Movable 3D Printer That Prints Architecture
Sometimes flexible architecture pops up right in front of you. In our front yard in Amsterdam's Tolhuistuin area, the architects of DUS have finished their so-called KamerMaker, claimed to be the world's first movable 3D print pavilion. In fact, the 6-meter high metal tower is a 3D printer for architects. Based on an upscaled Ultimaker, the KamerMaker helps architects to print all kinds of smaller rooms using PLA (bio plastics produced from corn). The KamerMaker can print small interiors, measuring up to 2m (width) x 2m (length) x 3.5m (height).
De Wereld Van Witte De With — 5 Questions To Axel Timm (Raumlabor)
Axel Timm is one of the founders of the Berlin-based office Raumlabor. Raumlabor is currently working in Rotterdam to prepare their latest project for the 'Wereld van Witte de With' festival, which will take place between 14 and 16 September. The festival's theme for this year is 'The Street – Live!', focusing on new ways to use and experience public spaces. We asked Timm five questions about Raumlabor, his views on enhancing public space, and 'Limousine Service', the office's current intervention on the streets of Rotterdam.
Movement Café Pops Up In South East London
Thanks to these nice people on Twitter, we found out about an amazing pop-up café in Greenwich, South East London. Designed by Studio Myersough and situated on a construction site near the Greenwich DLR station, the Movement Café is an ode to typography and poetry.
Falling House: Why Dorothy Travelled To Oz
Pop-Up City has a penchant for quirky ideas with an element of surprise — they help keep the imagination flowing, prompting us to question the 'everyday'. Do Ho Suh's Fallen Star really fits the bill: a full-size house precariously hanging off the edge of a 100-feet building in the middle of a university campus in San Diego.
PICNIC 2012: The New Ownership
Next week, Amsterdam's brand-new EYE Film Institute will set the stage of PICNIC 2012. This year's theme is 'New Ownership' — the global shift from 'top down' to 'bottom up'. PICNIC is one of the world's most prominent professional conferences in the fields of new media and emerging technology, investigating the role of upcoming media in contemporary society. Pop-Up City is a media partner of PICNIC and proudly offers readers a 30% discount on PICNIC tickets. Interested? Send an email to mail@popupcity.net and we send you a discount code!
Find My Friends With A Twist
We've talked about apps that can help build community or let you remotely explore foreign places with impromptu tour guides. Here's an application with a more utilitarian function that you may find useful on a daily basis — Twist, an app that combines GPS, Google directions, real-time traffic conditions and a handy notification function. It's similar to the popular app Find My Friends, which lets you track the GPS location of fellow users. But, Twist gives context to that random smattering of GPS dots with en route information. You can select who gets notified and with what: time of departure, GPS location, expected time of arrival (ETA), etc.
Tokyo River Lit Up By 100,000 Glowing Orbs
We have recently written about how waterfront lighting can create dramatic and memorable effects. Even the canals of Amsterdam have been involved in a bioluminecsence design proposal. This past May, the city of Tokyo executed an exciting temporary lightshow in its Sumida River as part of their Hotaru ("firefly") Festival.
Kate McLean’s Sensory Maps Show How People Smell, Taste, Feel, And Hear The City
What is it about that smell? Maybe it’s not a smell you crave, but maybe it is one that you love, one that you breathe in fully to remind yourself where you are. Or perhaps it is a smell that you love to hate. Or maybe it’s not even smell at all, but it’s the touch of lightly dragging your fingers along an old stone wall somewhere in a European city or caressing the blades of grass in a park nearby. Kate McLean wants to know. She is a cartographer of senses and she maps out how people smell, taste, feel, and hear the city. Edinburgh-based McLean has made a series of sensory maps of cities on both sides of the Atlantic. She seeks to challenge an “ocular-centric” perception of space and introduce new ways to gather understand and navigate experiences in urban places.
