Saturday I grow one year older and so, happy birthday to me! I am headed down to Bend, Oregon tonight to spend a couple days with my family, not just for my birthday but because I could use a break and because apparently my parents have acquired some free snowboarding passes :-)
This video from Streetfilms shows lines of cyclists crossing the Hawthorn Bridge in Portland, Oregon. For some kind of biking event? Nope. Just the daily work commute. In fact, 20% of the traffic on this bridge is from cyclists. And with the latest addition of Portland’s Bike Box (the green things in the street on the video), the city is recognizing the high number of riders and is looking for ways to continue to encourage the use of a bike as transportation and to make it safe.
Check out the original article over at Streetfilms.org here.
Vancouver B.C. recognizes the need for people to take charge of the future of their city and their own communities in terms of promoting great urban space and has formed the Vancouver Public Space Network. The network is devoted to things like “challenging the increase of advertising ‘creep’ in public places, promoting creative, community-friendly urban design, monitoring private security activities in the downtown core, fostering public dialogue and democratic debate, and devising creative ways to re-green the neglected corners, alleys and forgotten spaces of the city.”
The VPSN has 11 working groups the focus on different areas from public art to mapping and security as well as urban design. The urban design group is currently working on 4 initiatives….the public realm report card, where’s the square?, ecodensity & livability, and planning & design advocacy. While there are a bunch of different initiatives going on concurrently, one that I find particularly interesting is Where’s the Square? a design competition to imagine a public square for the city. According to the website over 100 design teams entered the competition and they are trying for one of two awards: the Jury Selection and the People’s Choice.
This competition was formally launched on September 23rd, 2008 and several events like walking tours, dialogues and presentations from prominent professionals covering various topics important to the public realm. Some background, as stated by the website:
“Public squares form the heart of many great cities around the world. When well-designed, they provide a central location for accessible, year-round activity – whether these are as straightforward as eating a bite of lunch, catching some sun, or playing a game of chess, or as elaborate as community celebrations, concerts and political rallies. Public squares are engines of cultural and local economy. They are a key factor in fostering community connections and quality of life.”
Now, the competition has ended and the designs have been submitted. This evening of April 28th, the shortlist of competitors will be revealed and available for public viewing. The public will then decide on the winner of the Public Choice Award. A link will also be available this evening online to view the competitors.
Update, April 29:
The 13 shortlisted entries are available for viewing online.
You can view them here now.
This table is called Fractal and was designed by Platform. “Fractal table is a result of studies into fractal growth patterns that can be found in nature and which can be described with mathematical algorithms. Treelike stems grow into smaller branches until they get very dense towards the top to form a quasi-surface. The structure starts quite unorganized at the bottom and gets progressively organized till it ends in a regular grid, thus a progression from an approximate fractal to a fractal with exact self similarity”.
I love this piece because it takes from nature and applies mathematics which is then refined into art. I too am fascinated by the world of mathematics and how it translates to the natural world, how the seemingly unordered finds order. I can really identify with the statement from the designers here. “The fascination for us as designers lies in the objects’ grown and organic nature but also in its structured and mathematical quality. Both in terms of size and complexity Fractal Table pushes the manufacturing process to its limits.”
This next piece is a beautiful hand worked martini glass called Botanical by Benjamin Hubert Studio looks to be inspired by a root system. The thing I find interesting with this one is that the top of the glass is very rigid like a typical martini glass but then the main stem of the glass turns into a more natural type root system with slight curves and wiggles in the shape along with irregularities. This fluidity almost produces a movement even though the glass is very obviously static. It looks like the roots should grow or that new ones may sprout out at any given moment.
Something recently reminded me of a fond childhood memory. I’m not quite sure how old I was, I believe 5 or less, but even back then I drew all the time. If I needed to figure something out, drawing always had the answer.
My room, for a time, was in the top floor and the walls were still unpainted. I thought it was the best place to be because the ceilings were low and had strange angles which seemed exciting. And I was small so it was especially fun because adults had to hunch over to be in my room, like giants. I used to constantly wonder what time it was…then simply draw a clock on the wall to find out. That is of course how you tell time!
After awhile, there were clocks everywhere. There were green ones, reds ones, blue ones….big ones, little ones. They were especially concentrated near my bed because, well, one needs to know what time it is the most when one wakes up or is going to sleep. But they were everywhere.
I often wonder what became of those clocks. When we moved, the couple that bought the house from my parents loved it and said they didn’t want to finish the upstairs because they didn’t want to paint over those walls, my art. While I wish digital cameras existed back then, I know I’ll always remember the way I used to tell time.
I need to get me one of these. You can get yours at Etsy. I love Etsy, it’s got all kinds of handmade goodness. Spotted via Happy Cavalier.
I remember doing those drawings back in school…you know, the ones where you close your eyes and draw without picking up your pencil. I was actually good pretty good it. It was sort of therapeutic, like drawing without really thinking and just letting the mind imagine the object and translate those images down the body, through the arm and to the finger tips. It was like yoga for the creative mind. Breathe, exhale, draw.
Recently I was thinking about this style of drawing and wondered what it might be like translated into reality. One design. One line. Ok, so that kind of sounds like some sort of reality tv show title but nevertheless, I think it could be an interesting experiment.
I was over at the Atelier A&D blog recently and saw some images of a restaurant by Demetrio Tsigos that starts to look like this kind of idea brought to reality. I like how the lines don’t just continue but sometimes split to form things like stairs (love this!) or that really interesting light fixture type thing hanging from the ceiling. Although I have to agree, it does look a bit like spilled white paint on dark marble, especially in the images that are a little angled. I can just image spilling a bucket of white paint, tilting the room and have it flow downward. Very fun.
Just because there is a crosswalk offering you safe passage across the street, that doesn’t always mean there’s actually a place to go once you get there…
I spotted this crosswalk while near the Polanco Mall in Mexico City in 2007.
A couple weeks ago I spent a day up in Seattle as part of a week long visit from a friend which had us touring projects all over the NW. The first project on our list in the emerald city was the Washington Mutual Green Roof. We got lucky in that we had good weather, slightly overcast with some sun breaks but no rain. I actually like rain but it definitely puts a damper on a walking tour. We met up with a few colleagues just before noon to walk up there as a group. One person in the group had a friend still working in the tower and was getting us security access. Sadly, as one of the last people in what she was calling a “waste land”, she said she would be laid off in two months.
We had to show our I.D.’s to get a security clearance tag allowing us onto the elevators. (Which reminds me, I still have a German drivers license and I really need to get a Washington one!) We arrived on the 17th floor to find it pretty empty. It was a lounge area but the televisions had been taken out and all of the outdoor furniture had been taken away on the roof deck as well. No one was sure exactly why or what was to become of the furniture.
The wooden deck was just a huge, open expanse of wood with a lonely fireplace at one end. With the tables and chairs gone, it felt really sad and depressing. But then again, I’m sure that isn’t a feeling merely confined to the 17th floor.
Aside from the missing furniture, the roof looked pretty good. Well, except for the missing glass panel and the huge swath of soil which had been planted in Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. But that last part was the designers fault. Not the best decision to plant such a large area in a perennial, a good lesson. I’m not sure what happened to the glass.
It was really interesting to see how the lights had been chosen to fit in with the Mexican Feather Grass when at it’s full height. But at this time, with the grass all cut back from the winter, the lights were a bit more obvious. Even though the sweeping field of gold is gorgeous, I kinda liked the winter version of multi colored tufts of green and gold too. It’s kind of a fun texture.
I sure do like the flagstones moving through the grass and how the stones interface with the wood decking. It’s such a pleasant atmosphere. I would love to just sit in with the grasses and eat my lunch. And it’s nice how this area is set back from the edge so it doesn’t interfere with the viewing area around the perimeter.
The original plan was to grab lunch at 16th floor buffet and then eat on the roof deck but with no tables on the roof and the buffet apparently drastically cut back, we decided to head for Pike Place Market. I couldn’t help but wonder about the future of such a lovely green roof. If use of the deck was no longer encouraged, what was to become of it after all the people left?
