Urban challenges we face today. This video articulates a set of underlying principles by which would should plan and design our cities.
styofa doing anything
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

★
i don't do bad sauce passes
Claire Keane
DEAR READER
NASA

titsay
Show & Tell
Today's Document
todays bird
Jules of Nature
One Nice Bug Per Day
$LAYYYTER
Cosimo Galluzzi
cherry valley forever
Sweet Seals For You, Always
KIROKAZE
occasionally subtle
Three Goblin Art
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@imaginingcities
Urban challenges we face today. This video articulates a set of underlying principles by which would should plan and design our cities.

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Our common daily experience in the modern American anywhere is anything but robust. We live in un-places, built of cheap materials, ignorant of scale and proportion, executed with little care, imbued with no trace of the human hand and lacking in a sense of context - which can only create humans of similar character. That is to say that humans implicitly absorb the character of their surroundings. Ugly, thoughtless, depressing surroundings do not encourage beautiful, creative, vigorous people - people with soul and spirit.
Bill Beard
Currently on view at the Place Des Festivals in Montreal, Impulse is a new public art installation comprised of 30 illuminated seesaws and a series of video-projections on nearby building facades. When the seesaws are used they “activate” and begin to emit various musical harmonies. The project is part of a collaboration between CS Design and Toronto-based Lateral Office. Impulse will be on display through January 31, 2016. Photos © Ulysse Lemerise
Interesting video that includes the history of bridge design, and as the title suggests, doing more with less.

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District//S
Allies and Morrison Architects were awarded the Francis Tibbalds Prize for best Practice Project at the National Urban Design Awards in 2013 for this project in Beirut. The scale and distribution of the 22 buildings is well thought out, creating a network of pedestrianized public spaces. Photos via Allies and Morrison Architects
...one natural consequence of disproportionately rising prices in walkable areas ought to be the construction of new walkable neighbourhoods. The problem is that modern parking regulations often make it impossible for new neighbourhoods to have the walking characteristics of older ones.
Matthew Yglesias
Winners of the 2014 Jane Jacobs prize: Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali. Watch this short film on their efforts to transform Toronto’s now aging suburban high-rise clusters into livable communities that work.
Not just another pop up, but a crowdfunding campaign started by an urban botanist who is clearly passionate about preserving diversity.
Great video outlining a manifesto of 6 principles on how to build an attractive city.
Not too chaotic, not too ordered. Organised complexity. Between chaos and boring.
Visible life.
Compact. Squares over 30m in diameter too large – a square must offer containment but not claustrophobia.
Orientation and mystery. Balance between big, straight boulevards and little warrens of streets.
Scale. Ideal city block is 5 storeys high. Tall buildings reserved for something special, worthy of prominence.
Make it local. Cities need to have strong characters.

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London is changing
A creative and engaging way to facilitate discussion of peoples' experiences and perceptions of living in London. Affordability seems to be the big issue, something that many major cities are struggling with.
Participate via an online form. An edited selection of responses are currently on display on digital billboards in Central London with new responses being added daily.
More here.
Temporary architecture / installations are of interest to me not only as a way to prototype, but also as a way to add interest and offer opportunities to interact in, and with our cities. This project, the Miilu, is a wooden, site specific installation. It was located next to the Nordic Pavilion during the Venice Biennale and offered an informal meeting place for visitors. The work consists of layered sawn timber of different dimensions. The material becomes not only the structure, but also an interior space with benches, a decorative presentation of wood inspired by marble layers in Italian churches and Venetian blinds. Finally, it also becomes a light installation during the evenings.
More here.
Things I don't need but are nonetheless cool: Brutalist paper cutouts. Shop here.
You may remember a while ago I had written about a development at 1 William St in Brisbane.
Well, this week 2 designs were revealed for an area known as Queens Wharf, located next to 1 William St (see pictures above).
This site constitutes 10 percent of Brisbane’s CBD. From an initial shortlist of four EOI proponents, two consortia entered the request for detailed proposals for an integrated resort development.
Before looking critically at the designs themselves, what have the consortia been asked to deliver?
The Queensland Government website for the Queens Wharf development describes its vision for the precinct as follows:
“A unique and vibrant new world city development that attracts visitors and investment, reconnects the activity of the Brisbane city centre to the river, preserves and celebrates Brisbane’s heritage, and delivers high quality public spaces.”
Precinct objectives
Queen's Wharf Brisbane will:
become an internationally-recognised precinct with world class sustainable urban design and architecture that establishes a clear identity that is uniquely 'Brisbane' and 'Queensland';
stimulate broad investment and economic development in the long-term future of Brisbane as a New World City, focusing on tourism and construction;
redefine public access and transport connections into, through and around the Brisbane city centre - from bridge to bridge and river to ridge;
transform and activate places and spaces that draw people to the origin of Brisbane as a city; and
promote social interaction and a broad range of urban activities from the city centre down to the river’s edge.
Honestly, I don’t know enough about the economics of the city to comment as to whether or not Brisbane’s CBD needs an integrated resort development, but clearly development of this site is driven by economics.
As for the design itself and with consideration to the precinct’s objectives, I think both designs are grossly out of scale, with neither design stepping down towards the riverfront. There doesn’t appear to be anything that establishes a clear identity that is uniquely 'Brisbane' or "Queensland', nothing that relates to a subtropical climate; these buildings could be rendered into any number of city skylines. Admittedly I am only going off the few images released, but the designs do not appear to create vistas towards the river, but block them. I am also concerned about the shadows these towers are going to create and how the designs connect and respond to the existing buildings. Neither design appears to deal with the bordering freeway that currently cuts off access to the river, which is a missed opportunity for some interesting / innovative design. Both designs propose bridges across the river, which I’m sure can be used to argue redefines public access as noted in the precinct objectives, and yes, it can be argued that both designs promote social interaction. Overall, I’m pretty disappointed. I could understand if this was a design for the Gold Coast, but Brisbane’s CBD? My preference for spending time on the the other side of the Brisbane River remains.
Friday Link Pack
- the Right to the City in the 21st Century. Are citizens losing their rights to corporations?
- Future Cities, an Australian perspective
- London School of Economics' 3C model for growth: compact, connected and coordinated
- Are policy makers promoters of gentrification?
- Playful urban spaces, lessons from Bilbao
Image here.

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Starting from the observation of people’s behaviors inside public spaces and their multiple ways to have a break, Studio Bernstrand designed special pieces of furniture for the renovated Stortorget in the town of Gävle (Sweden).
Centipede Cinema
The Centipede Cinema is an urban intervention that demonstrates how easily new cultural programs can be developed with minimal costs. Located in Guimarães, Portugal, this project by the Bartlett School of Architecture demonstrates how cork can be used in architecture.
The outside of the freestanding cinema is clad in a lighter colored cork while the interior is clad in dark cork to create a blackout effect.
Yellow nozzles protrude from the bottom of the cinema. These allow up to 16 people to pop in and watch a film.