We all know that Copenhagen is the bicycle capital of the world. They have such a fantastic infrastructure setup for the hoards of cyclists that they are now able to begin focusing on the friendly little details of urban bicycle life. What’s the latest and greatest on the streets? A little something to lean on.
The new double railing system has tapped into a little subconcious human behavorial detail like the Paul Bennett from IDEO discussed in a TED lecture about designing for people. Basically, observe what people do and design for that. The natural behavior when it comes to bicyclists can be observed anywhere there is a pole, a person or just anything at all to lean on at a traffic light.
And not only lean, but put up a foot so they don’t have to get off the seat and maybe can even have something to push off on.
This bicycle friendly detail popped up in Copenhagen on a little island midway between crossing a street. For the people that get stuck on the island from a red light can grab onto the bar and put a foot up while they wait for the green. It’s also very nice and it reads, “Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here… and thank you for cycling in the city.”
This friendly little detail is part of Copenhagen’s “Hi, Cyclist!” behavorial campaign developed by Mikael Colville-Andersen, also author of the blog Copenhagenize. He describes it as, “a behavioural campaign and a communications template with which the Bicycle Office can communicate with the cycling citizens. The average Copenhagener who rides to work or school each day doesn’t really pay much attention to bicycle infrastructure or even bicycles. They just ride.”
Mikael continues on to say, “We all have a sense of pride about the city in which we live. Here in Copenhagen we love to hear that we’ve been voted the world’s most liveable city and things like that. I figured that our cycling citizens should be made aware of all the positive aspects of our bike culture, in order to stimulate that inherent civic pride in relation to our cycling life.”
It’s such a simple detail, this double bar system for leaning, resting and pushing off, but it works so well because it taps into the very thing people want without overdoing it and throwing in any unnecessary bells and whistles. It also gives back to the cyclists that make the city what it is today and the friendly note offers that thanks and spreads the love.
eVolo holds a Skyscraper Competition every year with the main idea focusing on the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the community and urban life. They recently started showcasing some of the entries on their blog from the competitions from 2006-2009. A recent post focused on the vertical element as using more of the traditional horizonal streetscape elements rather than traditional buildings. Too bad they don’t know how to spell “scale” ;-)
From eVolo, “The main idea behind this project is to create a vertical city with the same qualities of traditional horizontal settlements. The goal is to define an outdoors vertical street that is connected to commercial, recreational, housing, and office areas. The vertical street would have a mix of escalators, ramps, elevators, and stairs with green parks and terraces.”
“The grouping of several buildings would create a new type of city with vertical streets and bridges. There is no need for automobiles because a series of electric monorails will connect each building to create a true sustainable city. Farms, wind turbines, solar panels, and water recollection systems are the norm in this true green city typology.”
In Brisbane, architects Nettleton Tribe have tranformed an old elevated parking facility into thirteen stories of office space above 9 levels of parking and teamed up with artist Jennifer Marchant to beautify the exterior of the building. The new art piece creates made up of 549 laser cut powder coated aluminum that were custom formed into a lovely mesh that disguises the parking facility while allowing for continual air flow and therefore saving money on mechanical air ventilation.
The artist chose to design a topographical piece called “Landlines”, that depicts the contours of Brisbane’s own Cunningham’s Gap and the Main Range. The inspiration came from the very nature that urban environments tend to be cut off from the surrounding landscape and few people get to take advantage of the views seen by tall buildings that look out from the urban core. Marchant brings the contours of the landscape in and adds a twist by debicting the 2 dimensional graphic traditionally used in the professional world to depict 3 dimensional land forms and show it on a vertical building.
There’s no doubt, water should not look like that. In the Chaohu Lake in Heifei, China, it does. At least for now. But with the country putting the cleanup of it’s waterways on in it’s sights, having invested over $7 billion towards the treatment of eight rivers and lakes in 2009, hopefully things like this algae filled lake will soon be an image of the past.
Despite the unnatural state of this water, there is an amazing amount of beauty in the image. The fisherman can be seen instead as a painter, his oar the brush and the water the canvas that supplies it’s own paint. He stirs the water, skimming across the canvas in his boat and with simple strokes applies the color. He paints his movements through this somewhat surreal landscape.
The abundance and variety of shapes and patterns in the natural world goes on forever. One interesting facet of the naturally patterned world are the patterns found in the skin, hide, scales and fur of animals. The way the patterns shift and stretch as they move over the curves of the differently proportioned bodies and fit into and around various shapes and crevices is fascinating.
Patterns change and blend from a fusion of one shape to another as it transitions over the animal like an M.C. Escher drawing. These patterns are excellent studies in design, especially for tansitioning and movement in landscape architecture which can work for laying a grid over a hilly site that requires stretching to conform to the land. An example of this from a project I visited in Europe coming up in a future post.
Wednesday January 20th 2010, 12:05 pm
Filed under: Furnishing
Lines are the simplest of design forms but are so versatile. Lines can be manipulated and transformed into amazing shapes yet still maintaining that simple form of a single line. When the Finish design duo Aamu Song and Johan Olin from Company decided to play with the lines of a simple railing, they came up with new shapes that lended themselves to various uses in addition to just looking cool. The sketch below shows some of the different shapes that came from pushing or pulling at the traditional lines and how they are intended to be used.
These rails in a new Helsinki housing project also provide lovely artwork in addition to their utility. This project has been called Kaide-Taide or Art-Handling. The 8 stories of metal rails are bent into shapes that follow in the footsteps of form follows function to create shapes for leaning, sitting, and viewing.
Ideas like these simple line manipulations could be incorporated into the urban landscape to facilite quick lunches (like seen in earlier post on urban lunches), gathering and seating spaces without taking up too much valuable space.
Tuesday January 19th 2010, 2:57 pm
Filed under: Notes
I love the rain for so many reasons…the fresh smell, its life-giving properties, the artistic potential and of course the musical quality. I can sit forever just listening to the rain hit various surfaces, from light tapping to the beating on the roof tiles like drums while the wind whistles the melody through the trees and the sound of thunder crashing like cymbals just as the song reaches the climax.
The last couple nights have been really stormy with lots of wind and I have enjoyed turning out the lights to sit and listen to all the different sounds swirling around my house and the occasional howling in through the air vents. It made me think of the amazing vocal group from Slovenia, Perpetuum Jazzile who performed an acapella version of Toto’s “Africa” with an astounding introduction using voice, hands and feet to simulate a rain storm with crashing thunder. I’m not easily impressed by vocal perfomances but when you mix an amazing song and a storm it’s gonna catch my attention. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out:
Wednesday January 13th 2010, 5:03 pm
Filed under: Living Wall
A recent post about the living wall at the cafe at Nike in the Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City displayed one example of the many lush vegetated walls that are popping up around Mexico City from Verde360.
Verde360 is a Mexico City-based compay founded in 2006 that specializes in the design and construction of living walls in urban settings. The members are on a mission to contribute to the greening of large cities by way of innovative green technologies like living walls. They’ve sent me images of some of the walls they have completed around their city which are truly inspiring in their lushness, variety and success. At the end there is also a sneak peak of a project for 2010.
First, expanding upon the previous post, some images from the cafe courtyard at the Nike sportsware store in the Condesa neighorhood of Mexico City, built in August of 2008. The mounding was built specifically for the green wall which covers 180 square meters. The space is open to the public.
The next wall resides in the open central courtyard in a private Mexico City home apartment. Built in 2008, the abundantly vegetated living wall measures at 4 meters in length and 5 meters high and receives natural light.
The following images are from the outside of the Restaurant Solotto in the trendy Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. This wall which runs from the public sidewalk to the top of the building was built in February 2009 and covers 82 square meters of this east-facing building facade.
On the terrace floor of the Restaurant Solotto, there are two living walls covering 21 square meters as well as a vegetated multi-story column inside the restaurant that reaches 15 meters high and is lit from the below.
In Mexico City’s Sante Fe Shopping Mall, Verde360 have designed a lush display wall for the Steve Madden retail store. This double-sided indoor living wall is 6 meters in height and 2.5 meters in width with artificial lighting.
In a private home in San Angel, Mexico City, this 2.5 meter wide wall of vegetation reaches up 6.5 meters in a sunny courtyard. The living wall is south facing with lots of natural light and was built in February 2007. I love the huge ferns and the way some of the plants defy the boundaries of the wall.
In the Benito Juarez International Airport, the Mexicana Airline proudly displays their support for the vertical greening of Mexico City with a 20 meter long living wall in their check in lounge that sits 2.7 meters in height. Artifical lighting adds to the effect.
At the International Airport of Toluca, a city just outside of Mexico City, this living wall displays the logo of a company at their private hanger. The double sided wall was built in May 2009 and sits 14 meters long and 4 meters high. This wall displays a very different character from many of their other designs. Instead of flowing clusters of plants these plants are confined to a rigid design in order to exhibit a company logo. The plant choices here therefore are different and yet just as beautiful.
In another private home in San Angel, this living wall integrated with a 2.5 meter wide water feature and pool was built in April 2008 and reaches to the top of the building at 6.5 meters high.
And finally a future project for 2010 has Verde360 working on greening an intriguing structure for the El Volador Market in the Mexico City center. It will be interesting to see this project unfold.
Below are some images from their mobile test wall done for the Mexican Government for the El Volador market project. This wall was built in August 2009 at the office building of the authorities of the historic center of Mexico City. The test wall is 4 meters wide and 6 meters high.
My recent post on quick eating in an urban environment reminded me of trying to find a place to sit in Florence. There are all these fabulous little deli-like spots throughout Italy that feature an array of pizzas, sandwiches, bread and other tasty Italian treats ready to take on the go. You simply grab a number, listen for them to call it, then tell them which items you’d like and then you pay for the nicely wrapped up take-out lunch. The picture above is a spot that I stopped at located down some random alley purposely chosen for it’s location off the beaten path.
After happily leaving the store with a multitude of tasty lunch stuffs, I thought I’d grab a seat in one of the low window sills of the many shops lining the alleyway. But then upon closer look, I realized they were not at all rear-end friendly. See the gigantic spikes in the lower right of photo below. These were everywhere. It actually proved to be a somewhat difficult task to find a place to sit. Also note the planters in front of the lunch spot conveniently keep people from eating there as well. I remember being thankful that my food was already cold.
With the long winter months of the post holiday season setting in I can’t help but have thoughts of how lovely it would be to get away and lounge in a hot steaming thermal bath in the mountains of Switzerland, in particular, a certain masterpiece hidden in the mountains of the southeastern state of Graubünden designed by Swiss architect and 2009 Pritzker Prize winner, Peter Zumthor.
The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa built over natural thermal springs and partially embedded into the mountainside, surrounding by gorgeous views of snowcapped mountains in the winter and lush green and colorfull hillsides during the warmer months. The structure itself is build from the exquisite layering of Valser Quarzite slabs from a nearby local quarry. From ArchDaily, “The idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like structure. Working with the natural surroundings the bath rooms lay below a grass roof structure half buried into the hillside. This stone became the driving inspiration for the design, and is used with great dignity and respect.”
“This space was designed for visitors to luxuriate and rediscover the ancient benefits of bathing. The combinations of light and shade, open and enclosed spaces and linear elements make for a highly sensuous and restorative experience. The underlying informal layout of the internal space is a carefully modelled path of circulation which leads bathers to certain predetermined points but lets them explore other areas for themselves. The perspective is always controlled. It either ensures or denies a view.”
From Pete Zumthor, via Arch Daily, “The meander, as we call it, is a designed negative space between the blocks, a space that connects everything as it flows throughout the entire building, creating a peacefully pulsating rhythm. Moving around this space means making discoveries. You are walking as if in the woods. Everyone there is looking for a path of their own.”
The thermal spa sits as part of the mountain, an extension of the landscape. The roof of the structure looks as though the ground plane has been lifted up with the same vegetation as the surrounding landscape that even blooms with the same springtime color.
Below is a tour through a virtual model of the Therme Vals…
