The classic newspaper vending boxes have always played role in the city larger than their designated one. At their peak, when each box was filled with that day’s issue, even the most hurried urban citizen running for the bus could get an analogue news feed of current events by scanning the headlines as they ran …
Read moreEscort Cards and Old Media: Rethinking Perception and Design in the City
Today is a day that brings a special memory to mind – one of my first large-scale urban public projects, created for The National Theatre in London to create a public space for remembrance and reflection on World AIDS Day 2000. To mark World AIDS Day today, and to re-visit the 10th anniversary of the …
Read more10 Years Ago Today: BLUE at The National Theatre London for World AIDS Day
One of the drawbacks of living in London (and most other major metropolises) is that the ambient light from the buildings, street lamps, etc, make it impossible to see the stars in the sky at night. So when designer Oscar Lhermitte applied to the London chapter of the Awesome Foundation, of which I am a …
Read moreAwesome Foundation London Funds Creating Stars in the London Sky
For most people with even a passing interest in innovative urban problem-solving, the words Jaime Lerner and Curitiba, Brazil will hold special reverence. Lerner is the urban planner and three-times mayor of Curitiba who transformed the once traffic-congested, economically and environmentally challenged city into one of the world’s most livable urban spaces. This Wednesday at …
Walking around London yesterday I found myself paying attention to the secondary narrative of the city’s fonts, text and signage. How the current condition of some of the texts differ from their original form, and that within the aesthetic of that difference lies the story. The image above is from a suit maker and tailor …
Creative re-use of existing urban areas is something of an obsession for me – I’m even moderating a dinner on the topic in a couple weeks. While my radar is tuned mostly to re-use done outside of formal cultural structures, Artangel is one organisation that always blows me away with their installations, and their latest …
Read moreTake 1 abandoned housing estate, add 90,000 litres of copper sulfate…
Last night CutUp installed their latest batch of work throughout London. For those of you not (yet) familiar with CutUp, they specialize in physically remixing the urban visual, taking down billboards, cutting them up into pixels, and re-installing them to create new images out of the original source material. While my personal favorite medium of …