Amsterdam's Citizen M, Beethovenstraat

A couple weeks ago I was in New York City to give a talk and Masterclass at Eyebeam on my work with open source cultural models. After NYC I was off to Amsterdam for a week to work with the Premsela Foundation for Dutch Design and Fashion, so I thought back-to-back sessions in two great cities would allow me to run a bit of a “pod hotel” comparison between the two.

The Pod Hotel, New York

In NYC I chose the, yes, Pod Hotel on East 51st Street near 3rd. Every room is extremely clean with a pleasing minimal design, and you can basically create your own room experience at the macro level when you book – single, double, king, bunk beds, with private bathroom or shared bath, and so on, with the variables you choose being reflected in the price. There are some nice touches such as free wifi throughout the hotel (not as standard in all hotels as it should be), a decent mini stereo with an external port for you to plug in your iPod to get your own tunes filling the room, but the thing that really stood out for me with the Pod Hotel was the social site you are invited to join once you make a reservation. Once you book your room, you receive an email with login details to enter an area of their website where you will find headings of “drink with me”, “shop with me”, “eat with me” with listings and email addresses of people who are going to be in NYC the same time as you and would like to get together with other travellers to experience the city together.

Artist's Rendering of Life in Citizen M

Amsterdam’s Pod offering is Citizen M on Beethovenstraat, near the city’s World Trade Centre financial district. It is actually the second Citizen M to hit Amsterdam, after their premiere at Schiphol Airport. Citizen M is an entirely different breed of a pod hotel experience. While its critics may comment on it being insanely over-designed and over-concepted, which is true, there is an entertainment value to these same things which I sometimes enjoy.

Citizen M is a design hotel on steroids. As the press release states:

Here, past the touch-screen check-in and check-out terminals, exclusive partner and renowned design firm Vitra provides even more environments and new furniture. There’s the legendary Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson, the brand-new Vegetal chairs by the famed Bouroullec brothers … above its extra-long bar with many plug-in points and white Eames bar stools are 14 Asian-inspired lantern lamps from Vitra’s Home Collection … There’s even a special corner for kids, featuring colourful child-size Panton chairs, the fabulous Porcupine Desk by Hella Jongerius and cute plywood elephants by Ray and Charles Eames.

The Philips Mood Pad (image copyright Philips)

Within the design festival disguised as a hotel, the thing that really stood out for me was that each of the 215 rooms was entirely an customisable environment, controlled entirely by a universal remote created by Philips call the Mood Pad. The Mood Pad is the secret to creating an “Ambient Experience” for the guests. As Philips says:

There are two main elements to the system. Firstly, the Ambient Experience combines a host of various ambient products, including dynamic LED lighting, VoiP phone, free wifi and FlatTV which contribute to a guest’s overall experience of the hotel room. Secondly, Philips has also created a unique back-end network design solution, which enables all different software platforms to work together seamlessly. This means that individual hotel rooms, and all functionality within the rooms, are linked to a central server that manages everything from room temperature and curtain settings, to the welcome message guests receive upon arrival in their room.

Now, it was indeed pretty damn impressive to be presented with a palette of “themes” for your room’s ambience. By pressing the TV theme, the lights dim, the TV comes on, curtains close… the Romance theme brings up chilled lounge music, lights go down…

Citizen M in full Ambient Experience Mode (image copyright Citizen M)

So for all the wonders of Citizen M and its fully customisable Ambient Experience, here’s what bothers me: there was no true personal customisation to the aesthetic. Why not go one step further and put some digital photo frames in the room and put some Bluetooth access onto the remote so I can upload some photos that mean something to me or remind me of the people who are waiting for me at home while I’m staying there? There’s an impressive sound system hidden in the walls of the room, and a dedicated wifi network, so how about letting me stream one of my playlists to make my listening experience, well, MY listening experience? It was interesting that while Citizen M was a veritable feast of design and user experience in the rooms, the longer you spent in the rooms, the more these things became apparent, and the colder the experience became – figuratively and literally. There were times when I thought back to the simple joys of opening at window in NYC’s Pod Hotel and plugging in my iPod that made me overlook the Vitra-o-rama in Citizen M.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

For those who would rather read than watch, an interview with me and an overview of Urban Play is on design.nl, with some great images from the street hits of Mark Jenkins and Windowzoo in addition to the design interventions.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

After waking up a bit groggy from the festivities of the Urban Play opening party last night, I went for a walk around the installation sites to see how they had progressed after their first night in the public realm, and, well, I got a little more than I had expected when looking for Stefan Sagmeister’s piece: it was gone.

I had asked Stefan to create a new work for Urban Play, and his piece – a sentence designed using 250,000 Euro cent coins – blew me and everyone away each day as it progressed. I had expected a certain ebb and flow to take place within the piece, which is of course the point of the entire Urban Play project, but to have the entire thing completely disappear overnight was more than anyone had expected. After recovering from the shock, I did some research and discovered that the story behind its removal was stranger than anything I could have imagined.

It seems that the Amsterdam police were called by a resident of one of the overlooking buildings early Sunday morning to report that someone was “stealing an artwork”. As the story goes, people were pocketing a few of the coins, which was also expected, but things got a bit out of hand when a resident saw this happening. So the police responded, and, in a rather bizarre instance of police efficiency, they proceeded to “secure” the artwork, by sweeping up the entire installation.

The event is superbly captured on the flickr page of anjens, who lives in a flat overlooking the site. 

I will update with more info if and when I get any, but for now, I’d like to give my huge thanks to Sagmeister’s team of Joe Shouldice and Richard The, who along with an amazing team of volunteers worked for many days, literally from dawn to dusk, to install the piece. It was a beautiful addition to the Urban Play project, and will be sorely missed.

For now, let’s remember the way it was on Sagmeister’s page on the project.

UPDATE: So, the police say we can have the coins back. Anyone want to suggest what we do with them now?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

 
Until I can find the time for some quality updates, you can take a look at my flickr photos of the preparations here.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There has been a tremendous response to the Ikea Hacker contest and forthcoming exhibition I’m doing with Platform 21 in Amsterdam – some insanely good DIY Ikea innovations are coming in, and some completely unexpected Ikea Hacks, such as the one above from Daredo, where the Ikea store is turned into a workout area, its products being re-purposed into exercise equipment. Be sure to subscribe to see more as the final entries pour in.

Related posts:

1. IKEA Hacker Oslo A couple weeks ago I was in Oslo, Norway, following...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

dblt (diablito) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

It’s been very satisfying to watch 3D urban intervention come into its own in recent years due to the historically unparalleled roster of people hacking and remixing the physical city with their work. But even out of this immensely talented pool, Esparza has emerged as something of a game-changer. His Urban Parasites – small robotic creatures made from recycled consumer goods which wander, climb, crawl and explore the marginal areas of the city – bring a fresh, unexpected dimension to the city itself and to urban intervention in general.

While his early works required direct human interaction to be animated, he said in a recent conversation that he then began looking at the natural energy sources in the city, using for example “wind or water to help a shapeless sculpture move through the irregular urban geography.” His combined interest in mechanics and a frustration with the lack of an entirely self-sufficient animated object in the early stages on his interventions introduced him to the study of robotics, and “the way they can express or project their ideas, wishes, or fears.”

To hear him talk about the “ideas, wishes or fears” of robotics in the city is only the tip of the iceberg in understanding his emotional and philosophical approach to the inter-relationship of his objects and the city. Inspired by the street vendors (ambulantes) of Mexico City, who get the power for their sidewalk shops from nearby electrical posts, Esparza’s creatures also use the electric cables for power and as a means of movement, such as with diablito (little devil).  And on the ground below, his “ppndr-s” (pepenadores) intervention is Esparza at his best. Abstract, mechanical beetle-like creatures, made of recovered and recycled consumer electronics and discarded materials, pick and forage their way through piles of trash which have gathered in the corners of the city’s streets:

ppndr-s (pepenadores) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

I always find immense satisfaction in work which uses existing, cast-off areas of the city as opportunities for interaction and animation. But more than that, the pleasure lies in seeing the perplexed, confused and eventually amused look on the passers-by as they begin to decipher what is taking place. Which, as Esparza says when thinking about the larger picture of cities in general, is quite substantial. For him, the “micro” interventions of his work, are directly part of what is happening at the “macro” level:

“I believe that the city, as a concentration of human beings, is the epicentre of the most radical transformations in human history – it is also the materialisation of a human project that facilitates the meeting of imagination, knowledge and information. All this happens in an environment for survival, where social and economical relationships and other aspects depend on a continuous negotiation and fight for power with others. The city is a live organism, in which many life forms subsist. I also think technology is an essential part of the city. It creates trends and situations, which are influenced by and subordinated to the environment, but sometimes these make their own rules…”

clgd (colgado) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

From small mosquitos which fly around the inside of subway cars to the amazement of children, to odd creatures which move towards lamps and lightsources in the corners of buildings, Esparza’s work opens new areas of expression in the ongoing narrative of creative interaction with the city, and I’m honoured to be working with him. A complete overview of his work can be found at his Parasitos Urbanos website.

If you don’t want to miss any of the articles in the Urban Play Focus series, please subscribe.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As part of Platform 21‘s excellent Checking Reality programme, I have been asked to give a talk on “Hacking Reality” this Friday at their space in Amsterdam, how the virtual world and digital culture is altering our interaction with the real world, in particular in the realm of street art and urban intervention. To read more about my talk, go here.

Friday 6 June, 20 00
Platform 21
Prinses Irenestraat 19
1077 WT Amsterdam

Related posts:

1. Design Hacking available for download For those who weren’t able to attend the launch of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“… [shared space in the city] is increasingly devoted to commercial messages and advertising – communication that is exclusively one-way: the public is being spoken at, in areas where the social expectation is one of shared interactions between people, so the same is expected of the shared visuals of the areas. Yet the one-way visuals and communications of the city run in opposition to the instinctive behaviour of people in the city. Therefore people are increasingly reversing the communication streams of the city and are communicating back.”

I’m fairly pleased with how the interview went. So if it’s a slow news day where you are, you can read the rest of it here.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Image Credit: Mark Jenkins

With Milan just around the corner, Droog and I have been putting together a few communication documents for Amsterdam’s 2008 International Design Biennale – Experimenta Design (EXD08), of which Urban Play will be the main event. Doing this, I realised the majority of public attention right now is on the new designs being created for the project. These are staggering, believe me. But in parallel to the design work is the work that’s being put into the Urban Play exhibition. So as a taster, here’s the PR info that’s going to be released about the show in Milan:

Urban Play: The Exhibition
international unauthorized collaborations and urban interventions

The Urban Play exhibition will provide a global overview of urban design interventions done by the public, for the public. While some refer to the latest wave of urban creativity as guerrilla design, and others term it “3D Graffiti”, the common definition is that this work is where creative expression in the city streets becomes physical and is literally transforming cities around the world. Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents, as the title states, unauthorised collaborations which exist at the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design. The Urban Play exhibition will show how this latest wave of urban intervention is not only challenging the rules of engagement between people and allowed creative expression in the city, but is also changing the language of creativity in the city. While social attitudes have previously dismissed urban intervention as a form of vandalism, at the heart of the current wave of guerrilla design is in fact a deeply sophisticated movement with a dedicated attitude concerning their role in the life of the city. The Urban Play exhibition is the definitive overview of the next wave of street art and the creative urban interventions that are literally transforming cities around the world.

The Urban Play project is conceived and curated by Scott Burnham and produced by Droog Design. For both the exhibition and the design commissions which create the Amsterdam route the renowned Dutch design studio Thonik (www.thonik.nl) will provide the design of the interface and interactive media campaign.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.