Entrapped Spaces

Creative placemaking in Kabul:  does house painting by the authorities really improve the lives of impoverished migrants in the city’s informal periphery? Does it promote pride of place or mere aesthetic improvement? The debate reflects the views of local residents, as quoted in The New York Times (30 May 2017):

While many of the residents have been supportive of the effort, it has also stirred some backlash among activists who say it is a type of whitewashing of the poverty that prevails in those neighborhoods.

Musa Khan, a resident of Joy Sheer, said the government was better off focusing on paving paths to the homes high up the mountains or providing water to those houses whose residents still have to carry buckets on their backs.

“Every day, children slip and fall down on their way to school and return home with broken arms or broken heads,” Mr. Khan said.

But Gul Jan, 50, who was transporting buckets of water on her back from the foot of the mountain in Joy Sheer, was less critical.

As shipping containers continue their mission to have everything made out of them, it only stands to reason that entire shipping container cities would be next.

This “art city” in Poland doesn’t exactly qualify as a real city, but it’s still pretty neat. Called kontenerART, it’s designed by a different architect every year—this year (its seventh) it’s Adam Wiercinski Architektthis.

Via Here’s a Whole Little ‘City’ Made of Shipping Containers - Flipped - Curbed National

Clusters of Birdhouses Fantastically Wrap Around Trees

CREATIVE STREET FURNITURE:  At 777 Third Avenue, between 48th and 49th Streets in Midtown Manhattan, one finds this fascinating Big Red Swing. It can accommodate many sitters in a gentle sway. The moving swing is a favorite with pedestrians, who often sit there just to feel the swing move! 

William Whyte referred to the swing in his classic 1988 film on “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.” This highly influential film — a cult classic now revered in architecture, geography, and urban planning fields — analyzes the success and failures of urban spaces. 

This landmark building, built by the William Kaufman company in 1963, is home to Avon: The Company for Women. It was the developer, William Kaufman, who commissioned Theodore Ceraldi to design the big swing suspended on wires from a building overhang.