Designed by Kristine Jensen and winner of the 5th Rosa Barba European Landscape award, the Nicolai Kulturcenter in Kolding, Denmark is transformed from the alley-like outdoor space of the former educational center into an integrated and inviting cultural space for activities in music, cinema, literature and art.

The circular amphitheater, a signature piece in the space, is used for outdoor theater performances, cinema and concerts blends new materials with old, introducing a Cor-Ten steel wall surround.

To offset the rather industrial nature of asphalt, old buildings and steel, a bit of whimsy is introduced into the space through neon flowers decorating the side of one of the buildings and white thermoplastic detailing graphic patterns in the asphalt and surrounding trees. This detail helps to bring in an element of playfullness as this courtyard will be used for the multidiscplinary acts of play while at the same time instilling a subtle sense of order to the otherwise vast, open space.

From Bustler: “It consists of various elements that are connected to areas designated for outdoor activities: the entrance; a garden where children can play and relax on the grass; a terrace for patrons of the cinema cafés; a large circular stage used for outdoor cinema in summer and for theater performances and concerts; a shopping area; a small garden next to the music hall; and a multifunctional square. A Cor-Ten steel wall and a Cor-Ten steel stage/platform have been built along the two terraces situated on the west side. The playground’s sloping terrain is prevalent in the project, and a new blacktop has been installed, which delimits the area with thermoplastic patterns and street paint.”

images via Kristine Jensens Tegnestue

Artist Nate Page makes art out of magazines, assembling beautiful multi-colored topographical models out of essembling pages and focusing on features like eyes in creating these beautiful landscapes.

From his website: “In my work I investigate the confrontations between materiality and images, occupied space and presence, potentiality and reality. I use methods of drawing and assemblage to set new rules to my physical surroundings and to alter found objects across my daily path. My immediate environment is inspiration and material. I enjoy transforming an image to become more physical and an object to be more image-like. Personal memories and consumer culture angst inform the works content while generating a visceral dialog between the banality and spectacular of the everyday. “

images via Nate Page

One of the things that amazed me about Europe was the friendliness towards and general acceptance of dogs. People take their dogs everywhere and rarely put them on a leash. Every morning walking to work in Germany, I walked along a lakeside path that was also the popular place for everyone to take their dogs for their morning romp. Not a single dog would be on a leash, but there were no problems with other dogs or people.

Only one time in my entire touring around Europe did I spot a sign urging people to put their dog on a leash, at that was in a vineyard. But after all, like the sign says, the vinyard is not a dog toilet. That was the one problem, people weren’t too keen on picking up after their dogs unless you were staring right at them when the business happened. An unfortunate occurrance that was worse in some cities than others.

There were also some fun things around Europe that catered specifically to dogs. One of my favorite sightings was at a gas station outside Berlin where they had a little area for people to feed and water their dogs, lovingly called the “Hunde-Bar”. Seriously, does it get any better than that?!

Then in Rome, outside of a little food market, I saw these “Cane Parking” clips where people could clip in their dogs while shopping. I saw these in other locations too. Sorry, I was having all kinds of trouble taking pictures at dusk, but you get the idea.

One thing I’ve been pondering lately is how to bring the community into the world of open space design because afterall, it is their space. It’s the people that know what they want but maybe just not exactly how they want it. And it’s our job as designers to help facilitate that process and bring those desires and needs forward, not just to come up with some idea that is placed in the space with no context. So if we are essentially working for the people, we should work with the people.

An initiative in New York City called “People Make Parks” will create a collaborative partnership between communities and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation for captial parks projects. The concept here is to encourage the sharing of ideas between the people who use the park spaces and those that help create them for what will hopefully be a stronger design process ultimately ending in a product that the community can be proud of and feel that they were truly a part of the creation process.

There’s a great interview on UrbanOmnibus with the two people behind this initiative, Anoo Siddiqi of the Hester Street Collaborative and Hillary Angelo of Parternships for Parks.

images via urbanomnibus

This year I think Park(ing) Day is going to be very exciting as it seems that people from all around the world are getting into it even more than ever with heightened enthusiasm, online social sites about the event, more cities taking part and even trying to find ways in how they can push the boundaries of the event.

In New York City, they are adding an extra layer to the event that they are calling POP.Park which challenges the Park(ing) Day participants to make not just a park for a day but a pre-fabricated, transportable park that could be taken anywhere and used any time and would essentially be able to just pop up quickly and assume it’s duty as a temporary park space, just as easy as one my pop out a folding chair.

From the website: “POP.Park prototypes should create a relaxing, safe and visually compelling environment for people. POP.Parks must provide physical delineation from traffic and be contextual to the city street environment. Physically, POP.Parks must fold into a box (or reusable bag or tote) that one person can carry while walking or riding public transportation. When assembled, POP.Parks should be no larger than 8′x15′ – the size of a regular car parking spot. The cost of building a POP.Park must not exceed $20.00.”

So as of today, the September 18 event is only a month away so it should be a lot of fun to see what everyone creates, especially since I will be participating this year as well!

And what about the lovely poster of the overgrown car designed to promote this years Park(ing) Day event? I like it. But perhaps that’s because it reminds me of a beautiful screen printed poster I have on my wall from the 2006 album release show of one of my favorite bands, The Long Winters.

I’m a big fan of street art and graffiti (when it’s done right), not that I’m condoning the activity of defacing public property but hey…blank walls could use some good art…although I’m not talking about that horrible tagging junk. But have you ever stopped to really study some amazing graffiti? Beautiful. Here’s an idea from Paris that makes street art without harming property and takes advantage of the view at the same time.

Superkilen is a park about diversity, conceived by BIG and Topotek1 in Nørrebro, Denmark. The project is intended to celebrate the neighborhood’s diversity that reaches all corners of the world and bring everyone together into one global neighborhood. The primary concept is to fill the park space with objects and plantings from all around the world so you could theoretically sit on a Turkish bench under a Japanese cherry tree while looking at a Moroccon fountain. The designers even want the help of the community to pick out items from their country. Will this look like a mixture of things that don’t fit or will it all fit together in harmony and work with its differences?

The park will posess all that typically makes up a modern park with trails for pedestrian and bike, connections to local transport and outdoor recreation spaces along with a market space, areas for games and a community gathering plaza. The space also focuses on increasing the green, adding plenty of vegetation broken down into groups of species from various regions of the world and flowering times.

In the Green Park, the area would be primarily used for sporting events where people from all parts of the world could play games together. Games are something that seems to disolve borders, bringing people together into a common set of understood rules for a time of fun, no matter where you come from or what language you speak. Anyone can learn to play the game.

The red area is seen as the cultural center of the project, the Red Square, and is viewed as an outdoor extension of the new Nørrebro Hall, a cultural and sporting center. Some sort of red paving material would flow from the foyer of the hall to the outdoor space. The area could also offer an urban market with the hopes of drawing visitors out from Copenhangen to explore the outer areas.

images via superkilen

For the World Expo in Shanghai, China 2010 the theme is “Better City, Better Life” and the various country’s pavilions will be reflecting of this theme with a focus on sustainable urban environments of the future. Recently unveiled as the winners of the 6,000 square foot French Pavilion design, Jacques Ferrier Architects have created ‘The Sensual City’ featuring a building sitting in a pool of water for the illusion of floating, covered in a mesh-like skin and solar panels on the roof along with a courtyard with vegetation inspired by the traditional french gardening style but with a modern twist as the garden moves up the walls and over the roof.

The clipped style is a little rigid and maintenance instensive for my taste but definitely reminds me of the gardens I saw in many parts of France. No doubt, they like to clip everything from hedges to trees. But the shapes that move down the interior walls of the courtyard look strangely like those of Zaha Hadid’s Stone Towers. Nevertheless, it maintains an interesting look with the green shapes trailing over and down into the building. I love designs that connect horizontal and vertical planes of vegetation. This gives me some interesting ideas that doesn’t involve continuous clipping…

images via archdaily

Here’s another idea for transforming a building facade into a dramatic audio visual nighttime show, this time coming from Linz Austria. Set to music, this performance takes advantage of the 1085 LED controllable windows in the facade of the Ars Electronica museum. The windows have been programmed to perform in realtime with synchronized music that is played from speakers surrounding the museum. This was all programmed and choreographed in three days.

When I was living in Germany last year, there were a lot of things that I missed because the country is just so very different from here. The first couple months were especially difficult and I was always looking for comfort moments where things didn’t feel so foreign. The television was a difficult thing because everything, and I mean everything including the worst tv shows and movies ever made, were dubbed in German and so I had few options for English outlets. The BBC was pretty much it, aside from what became my favorite station…Baby TV.

It wasn’t a station dedicated to babies, it was for babies! So it was a lot of visual stimulation set to music which, personally, I found very amusing. It also got increasingly soothing the closer it got to bedtime so turning it on before going to bed was an excellent way to bridge the gap between my frustrating German language lessons and dreamland. No one wants to conjugate German verbs in their head at night. No one.

One of my favorite segments was one where the camera was focused on some sort of dish with water and oil in it and different colors would squirt in from the sides. The colors would swirl around and make different patterns and shapes, all set to music. So when I saw this clip of oil and water video from Shawn Knol, I instantly loved it. He tries to capture the beauty of the circulare shapes as they move and collide and flow in different directions. It’s quite lovely. Have a look…