urbanation:

I watched this in my lunch break and it was so inspiring. I recommend you watch this but here’s a summary: 

Eduardo Paes, Mayor of Rio, talks about the 4 commandments of cities:

1. A city of the future has to be environmentally friendly
2. A city of the future has to deal with mobility and integration
3. A city of the future has to be socially integrated 
4. A city of the future has to use technology to be present.

“[At] the end of the day, when we talk about cities, we talk about a gathering of people. And we cannot see that as a problem.” (Eduardo Paes)

(via urbnfutr)

efimeras:

WE CAN XALANT, A77

Gustavo Diéguez and Lucas Gilardi, the names behind a77, are Argentinian architects who explore spatial and functional concepts of nomadism, ephemerality and transition using the rough-and-ready yet symbolically charged language of recycled materials. This open structure was built for the arts centre Can Xalant in Mataró. It can be assembled and dismantled according to the needs and desires to bring different groups of people together.  

Gustavo Diéguez y Lucas Gilardi son los dos arquitectos que forman el equipo argentino de arquitectura a77, centrándose en la investigación espacial y funcional de conceptos como el nomadismo, la arquitectura efímera y la movilidad. Para esto se sirven de materiales reciclados que ya han adquirido un aspecto envejecido, por lo que ya han obtenido una carga simbólica, construyendo con ellos sus estructuras. Esta instalación abierta fue construida para el centro artístico Can Xalant en Mataró. El conjunto puede ser montado y desmantelado en función de las necesidades y deseos de las actividades colectivas del Centro.

(via urbnist)

secretrepublic:

Copenhagen, I Love You.

thisbigcity:

Should pedicabs be formalised and integrated with public transport networks? Our new post suggests so. But what do you think?

人力車是否應納入大眾運輸路網？我們的新文章即如此建議，但各位是否同意？

nymassurban:

“WALK THIS WAY

New City College center to promote engaged urban design.

Julie V. Iovine. May 14, 2012

To the architect Max Bond, social equity was a core value and so was design integrity. And the new J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City, named for the architect who died in 2009, will actively spread the word through collaborative research projects, design advocacy, leadership development, and education programs at its new home within the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York.

Launched on May 1, the Bond Center, said its founding director Toni Griffin, will aim to be “a leader in thinking on how design can become more central to the policies aimed at making American cities more just and inclusive places to live.”

The center is a reinvigorated recast of the City College Architecture Center (CCAC) that operated in the 1980s and ’90s primarily as a pro bono architecture and planning service for the Harlem community. The Bond Center will focus more on faculty and collaborative research, drawing on disciplines across the CUNY system and beyond, as well as initiate urban projects engaging with policy reform that could become models for other cities, and especially Harlem itself. An active conference, publication, and events program is also on the agenda.

The timing is propitious as activist architecture is having a strong moment, and Griffin, an architect and urban planner, comes well equipped to head the venture, having served over the past three decades as a founder of the Detroit Works Project, a deputy director of planning in Washington, D.C., a director of community development and planning for the city of Newark, and a planning vice president with the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation.

The Bond Center has already brought together landscape design graduates to submit an entry to the visioning Parks for People competition organized by the National Park Service and Van Alen Institute. Another advanced study project is aimed at developing a template with which communities can measure the effectiveness of design policies in their neighborhoods.

Noting that his old friend Max Bond was a director of one of the country’s first community design centers, the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem (ARCH), founded in 1964, New York–based architect James Polshek said he is looking forward to the Bond Center’s debut: “I hope it will inspire architects, who may still be confined in believing in the capital A for the Art of architecture, that architecture also comes with an obligation to solve problems and break down barriers.”

Via: The Architect’s Newspaper

Photo: MAX BOND. COURTESY PUBLIC INTEREST DESIGN

hahamagartconnect:

THE GLOWING HOMELESS

We could not say this better than ignantblog.com…the following is an excerpt from their piece on Fanny Allie’s, The Glowing Homeless

“It is this ghostlike existence, the state of being absent while being present, which is of interest to the French artist Fanny Allié. ‘The Glowing Homeless’ is an installation of neon tubes which represents the silhouette of a sleeping human. It precisely refers to the figure of a homeless person who chooses to perform the actually intimate act of sleeping amongst the park’s crowd but still stays excluded. He becomes a part of the surroundings of trees, benches and playgrounds and is thus almost invisible. Using the warm glow of the neon tubes, the artist creates an alluring object with the aim to bring light in to the darkness of New York’s parks and to change people’s attitude from avoidance into curiosity so they are drawn towards the figure on the bench. Thus Allié brought an object into being that represents the thousands of homeless that face social exclusion and the troubles of street life every day and night and, without becoming monumental, she also manages to aesthetically confront the difficulties of the ongoing art theoretical debate of the merge of private and public space.”

(via urbnist)

verticaltheory:

Greenhouse Island by Peter Buley

Short on space and hungry for some fresh greens? This kitchen island by designer and woodworker Puter Buley allows apartment dwellers to better utilize their limited space by turning a common household feature into what’s essentially a greenhouse. The design uses energy-efficient lights — two LEDs and 2 T5 CFL — and is sure to provide for some interesting lighting scenarios. 

via Inhabitat

(via urbnfutr)

(via hendel)

(via urbnfutr)