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Posts Tagged ‘Playful’

Playful Kirigami: Touch-Activated Paper Animals Pop into Action

12 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Acting out scenes from storybooks or animating real activities, these deceptively simple-looking, folded-paper toys leap, bounce, roll and hatch into action when played with.

Japanese designer Haruki Nakamura was inspired by the ancient art of kirigami, a variation on origami that involves cuts as well as folds, but takes it to the next level with his playful animals.

The specific behaviors of the toys often follow the natural reactions of a given animal, like an armadillo rolling itself up for protection when threatened.

Combining kirigami with karakuri, the art of mechanical puppets actived by touch, led him to these neat hybrid creatures that one can poke, prod, press or drop into action.

In some cases, the activities are innocent and entertaining, like a turtle popping into its shell or a chick hatching from an egg. Others are humorously sinister, showing wolves in sheep’s clothing or a tortoise being eaten by an alligator. For now, alas, these works are only available in Japan.

Book of Shadows: 2D Shape Cutouts Cast Silhouettes on Pages

A children’s book with an interactive twist, Motion Silhouette engages readers through pop-up pieces that require lighting to animate shadow pictures on each page.

The idea …

Nameless Paints: Cleverly Coded Tubes Show Color Composition

Instead of names or swatches, this series of minimalist paints comes in tubes that show off constituent colors that double as lessons about how complex hues and shades are created.

The …

Free Universal Construction Kit Bridges Generations of Toys

LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys … what do they have in common? They each represent a universe of constructive possibilities, but each is incompatible with the next, like alien planets with …

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Pop-Up Pavilions: 15 Playful Temporary Architecture Installations

19 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Pavilions are like playgrounds for architects and designers, allowing them to show off what they can do when they really set their imaginations free. Unfettered by the typical limitations of a permanent structure, they can experiment with new materials and processes, potentially producing innovations they can apply to other structures. These pavilions are often subversive in the urban environment, too, taking over public spaces and giving them back to the people or creating micro housing that falls within grey areas of the law.

Transforming Street Cinema in Venice by Omri Revesz


Created for a V-A-C Russian contemporary art foundation exhibition at the Venice Film Festival 2017, this pop-up cinema celebrated the 100th anniversary of the start of the Soviet Revolution. The modular wooden structure is collapsible, its design inspired by the logic of Russian constructivism. Its wooden frame is on wheels set into rails so it can expand to make more space for performances, or contract to create a darker, more intimate setting.

Algae Dome in Denmark by SPACE10

IKEA’s ‘Future living lab,’ known as SPACE10, debuted its ‘Algae Dome’ in Denmark a couple weeks ago, demonstrating how we might be able to grow “the supercrop of the future.” Designed by a team of engineers, the dome-shaped structure supports a network of transparent hoses, regulating their sun exposure so algae grows in the water inside them. The dome produced 450 liters of microalgae in just three days of its demonstration, which SPACE10’s chef crafted into such foods as ‘spiraling chips.’

Super Hot Pavilion in Bucharest by Morag Myerscough

Designed for the 7th edition of the ‘Summer Well Festival’ in Bucharest, Romania by artist Morag Myerscough, the ‘Super Hot’ pavilion is envisioned as a fun and whimsical place to stage and take in performances. There’s space within the structure to hang out, dance, play or zoom down a slide.

Wave of Buckets in Mexico City by Factor Eficiencia

Hundreds of painter’s buckets are connected into a walkable structure that curls up into a wave at either end, occupying the central Alameda Park in Mexico City. Designed by Factor Eficiencia and 5468796 Architecture, the installation uses the bucket as a symbol of liberation of public spaces. In Mexico, it’s common for entrepreneurs to use buckets to block off certain areas of the city so they can aggressively charge for parking.

Urban Camouflage Pavilion in London by PUP Architects

PUP Architects wanted to disguise their pop-up, entitled ‘H-VAC,’ as ordinary rooftop mechanical equipment. Do you think they pulled it off? The designers are taking advantage of UK building legislation that makes it legal to install rooftop equipment without planning permission; they believe that if you can sufficiently disguise rooftop addition as infrastructure, thousands of new micro dwellings could be added to London and other cities. The temporary structure is clad in waterproof tetra-pak shingles and includes two rooms.

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Pop Up Pavilions 15 Playful Temporary Architecture Installations

Experimental Architecture: 14 Boundary-Pushing Pavilions

Before a new form of architecture can be executed on a large scale, it has to be demonstrated through smaller structures, making temporary pavilions an ideal way to experiment. These 14 pavilions …

Red Bull Music Academy: Vibrant, Lush Temporary Space

Occupying an empty warehouse in Madrid, the Red Bull Music Academy is a temporary space for a nomadic music academy organized by the energy drink brand. With bright colors, bold patterns, high …

Bubbletecture: Poppable Building Made of Soap Bubbles

Is this the most temporary architecture of all time? Fragile and tenuous but undeniably beautiful, these bubble buildings rise for just moments at a time before they pop. To create the …

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Buildings as Backdrops: Playful Photography Humanizes Built Environments

16 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

People often play a small part in architectural photography and renderings – not so in this series of travel photographs, which would lovely but otherwise unremarkable without clever human inclusions.

Anna Devis and Daniel Rueda are a design-minded couple, one an illustrator and the other an architect. And they have taken their creative sensibilities on the road, filling in the implicit gaps in built environments across Europe.

The settings represent a range of architectural styles, often bold yet minimalist except for that added element of interactivity, sometimes using props or costumes to turn facades into theatrical sets.

In Denmark, Spain, Italy and other countries they visit, Devis and Rueda take that old idea of a person seeming to ‘tip’ the Leaning Tower of Pisa to new heights. Pixelated surface suddenly become other things, like clocks or canvasses, apparently manipulated by the duo.

That critical personal element that animates each scene also serves as a foil for showing off the patterns and colors of each context, subverting but also highlighting design details. In some cases, added manipulations warp their surroundings as well. For more on their work, follow the pair’s journeys via their Instagram accounts.

Hyperphotos: Architectural Hybrids Remix Built Environments

There is something almost mystical (or mythical) about these photographic collages, at once apparently realistic in content and seemingly impossible in composition.

The Hyperphotos …

Urban Camouflage: Nude Body-Painted Models Blend Into Built Environments

Nude human bodies seem to melt into their surroundings, expertly hand-painted to match their environments in an artistic form of urban camouflage. Artist Trina Merry dodges traffic, police, …

Spatial Gymnastics: Environments for Tomorrow Exhibition

What does the future of humanity look like? 28 architects and artists from 14 countries came together to answer that question from both creative and practical standpoints for an exhibition …

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Madcap Murals: Playful Urban Paintings Interact with 3D Elements

05 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

interactive street art 4

A wall with a texture reminiscent of a cross-stitch cloth, a rusted shopping cart half-submerged in a river, curbside trash finds and utility boxes all transform into interactive 3D elements of engaging street art pieces by Ernest ‘Zach’ Zacharevic. The Lithuanian-born artist not only takes the surfaces and immediate surroundings into account when planning each mural, but also reflects the culture of the setting for totally unique, spontaneous and yet targeted infusions of color, humor and fun into the urban landscape.

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Zacharevic assesses each location ahead of time, often getting inspiration from the elements already present before prepping as much of each piece as possible in his studio to cut down on outdoor painting time. Components like junked bicycles, busted chairs and peeling wheelbarrows are bolted or glued to the walls so they become an active part of the work – though many of these three-dimensional elements are already part of the urban fabric, and the artist simply integrates them.

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Gestural swipes of dripping spray paint contrast with Zacharevic’s painterly style, contrasting textures and making each mural look like it popped off a gallery canvas to become a part of the larger world. In an interview with DesignBoom, the artist notes that some of these dynamic qualities originate in a fascination with animation and “its ability to bend reality and bring images to life.”

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“I see my work more like a simple moment capturing everyday life rather than an elaborate narrative,” he says. “This seems to work best with the subject of childhood nostalgia, a subject which features often in my work.”

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Most Massive Murals: 14 Large-Scale Works of Urban Art

Human faces loom over the city on the sides of skyscrapers, colorful characters cover industrial silos and Boeing airplanes and entire neighborhoods serve as …
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Mark Reigelman’s Playful & Thought-Provoking Urban Art

Flowers in a fire hydrant, a bus shelter decorated like a cozy home – Mark Reigelman’s urban art installations are cheerful and unexpected.
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Urban Landscapes Transformed: 23 Stunning Urban Murals

Exceptionally talented street artists to create murals so awesome, they could easily hang in a gallery, but so large that they hang on it, instead.
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Lego Limb: Bionic Arm for Kids Makes Prosthetics Playful

15 Aug

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

lego arm 4

This modular twist-and-lock prosthetic arm for kids is designed specifically for integration with LEGO parts, turning it into a fun toy that makes it easier to engage with other children. A standard gripper makes the ‘Iko’ by Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar practical and functional for everyday use, but it can easily be popped off and replaced with designs of the kids’ own making.

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This creative prosthetic system lets children with disabilities use their imaginations to build tools that fit their own needs. The basic system includes a custom-fit prosthetic socket and forearm with a motorized adapter, a removable gripper and an easy-to-use charging station. Kids can swap out the gripper for backhoes and other LEGO creations. The arm can be programmed for various purposes and functions using myoelectric sensors.

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Tovar came up with the idea while working at LEGO Future Lab, realizing that play is such an essential part of childhood and that a fun prosthetic could make it easier for children to engage with each other without discomfort.

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“Currently I consider that prosthesis are not really designed for kids, yes they are functional in a traditional way, but kids in disability need more than a traditional tool, the physical aspect is just one of the big challenges of growing up, the psychological and the social aspect are as equally important and I wanted to do something about it.”

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Brilliant Brick Creations: 13 Amazing LEGO Gadgets & Artworks

LEGOs can form the basis of all sorts of amazing things, but would you ever have imagined they could create working prosthetics, mechanical looms, drivable …
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16 Fun Kids Room Ideas Will Make You Want to Shrink Yourself

Why don’t rooms for adults come with cool tent-shaped beds, oversized Legos, slides, tree houses and secret compartments? These fun and imaginative kids …
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Getting a Leg Up: 6 Amazing Prosthetics Changing the Game

Prosthetic technology has come a very long way. These incredible designs are at the cutting edge of the field and are changing the lives of amputees.
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Playful in Paris: Life-Sized Interactive Street Art

20 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Everyday objects and imperfections in the urban surfaces of Paris become part of strange and unexpected scenes as French artist Levalet incorporates them into life-sized street art. A bull head sculpture becomes a minotaur, map in hand; a figure with a jackhammer goes to work on a damaged section of wall; a display box for advertisements is transformed into an x-ray machine.

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Known by day as an art teacher named Charles Leval, the artist creates humorous scenes that interact with idiosyncrasies and often-unnoticed details in the fabric of the city.

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The life-sized wheat paste posters take advantage of everything from pipes and spigots to false windows and concrete recesses.

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Levalet walks around the city looking for the ideal spots for his work, takes measurements and creates the paste-ups at home before returning to his chosen locations and installing the work.

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He told Street Art News that he considers all of the individual scenes to be part of a larger frame, “where I try to define a cosmology of a parallel world.”

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Interactive Urbanism: 5 Simple Street Art Projects

These five street art projects, including ‘Before I Die’, invite participants to alter, comment upon or ponder their urban surroundings in new ways.
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Cocaine Skull: Life-Sized Sculpture Made of Street Drugs

A pile of street cocaine mixed with gelatin is sculpted into a life-sized replica of a human skull in ‘Ecce Animal,’ a statement on …
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Marvelous Muralist Makes Giant-Sized Street Art Illusions

Madrid-based street artist Sam3 creates massive murals covering entire multi-story buildings in cities like Vienna, Valencia, Quito, Berlin and Atlanta.
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Absolutely Absurd: 18 Playful Furniture Pieces for All Ages

18 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

The humor starts with the name, but definitely does not end there. Straight Line Designs produces just about anything except works that are straightforward or linear.

Descriptions including ‘playful’ and ‘postmodern’ come to mind, or, more directly, the titles speak for themselves: canned bench, burnt table, cracked cabinet.

These objects indeed fit their monikers, as they crash, melt, rip and explode around, into and through your rooms in cartoonish fashion.

Still, to dismiss them as childish fun (though many are indeed designed for kids) would be to miss the remarkable attention to detail in these difficult and hard-to-execute pieces of furniture with their zigs, zagz, curves and springs.

From the company: “Straight Line Designs is a one-of-a-kind workshop that has been operating out of Vancouver, British Columbia for the past 25 years. In addition to installations, sculptures and private commissions, designer Judson Beaumont and his staff of eight full-time craftspeople have designed and constructed a variety of custom-built furniture and projects for public institutions and children’s exhibitions throughout North America and abroad.”

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More Creative Furniture for Cramped Urban Living: 20 Pieces of Ingenious ‘Flat Pack’ Furniture

Without further ado, here are 20 more examples of incredibly compact and transforming furniture for cramped urban living.
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10 Pieces of Unusually Awesome Furniture for Kids: Part Six in an Eight-Part Unusual Furniture Series

While much of it can be boring, some designers are putting the fun back into kids’ furnitures. These pieces are a delight not only for kids, but for their hip parents, too.
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Tiger Stripes to Cow Spots: 13 Playful Home Paint Jobs

25 Aug

What would your homeowners association say if you were to step way, way outside the bounds of normal home exteriors and do something way creative with your home’s appearance? These people did just that, and their homes have some of the wildest, weirdest paint jobs in the world.

(image via: artofthestate)

Stanley Donwood, the artist behind some of the most iconic artwork associated with the band Radiohead, has a signature style that is replicated on the side of this home in Ladbroke Grove in England.

(image via: FunkyDowntown)

Fans of the uber-cute Sanrio creation Hello Kitty know that the whiskered one can be found on literally every kind of merchandise. This incredible “castle” in Shanghai, China not only features the famous feline and an appropriately pink color scheme on the exterior; the interior is chock full of Hello Kitty accessories and furniture.

(image via: nodigio)

This polka dotted home would be perfect for a resident with a bubbly personality. Its fun multi-colored pattern no doubt draws plenty of stares and smiles as people pass by.

(image via: The Telegraph)

In Usk, South Wales, a homeowner who was extremely fond of the movie 101 Dalmatians decided to create an unusual tribute to the black and white dogs by painting this house white with black spots. They look more like cow spots to us, but we aren’t picky – it’s still an excellently playful paint scheme.

(image via: Apartment Therapy)

Believe it or not, there is a house hiding in this photo. The Austin, Texas home was painted in the style of the US Army’s Universal Camouflage Pattern, resulting in a home that actually manages to stand out from its surroundings despite its best attempts to blend in.

(images via: LA Weekly and Daily Mail)

Fans of fashion will immediately recognize these high-profile patterns. The first, a bungalow in Mexico, was painted to look like the logo of the famed French fashion house Louis Vuitton – and then appropriately hidden behind a tall security fence. The second is the home of artist Jans Werner, painted to look like the signature tartan pattern of UK fashion brand Burberry.

(image via: The Telegraph)

People who paint their own homes in crazy colors or patterns are one thing…but this tiger-striped home was painted by the owners’ friends while the owners were away on their honeymoon. Would you be able to forgive your friends for a “gift” like this?

(image via: Cat Rocketship)

Zebras have stripes in order to blend in with one another and deter predators from attacking what looks like one gigantic animal, but the same concept doesn’t quite work with this solitary house in Basset, Nebraska.

(image via: ChicagoGeek)

The zebra house might want to steer clear of Chicago, which is where this leopard-spotted house spends its days, lounging in the sun and waiting for an unsuspecting antelope house to wander by.

(image via: The Telegraph)

This house in Penrith, Cumbria, England is surrounded by otherwise normal-looking row houses. Its bizarre pink background filled with smiling yellow happy faces sure is weird, but it probably causes a lot of smiles, so it’s hard to find fault with it – unless you live next door, of course.

(image via: Dystopos)

This building in Birmingham, Alabama is technically a garage, not a house, but its beautiful rainbow exterior is so cheery that it warrants inclusion.

(image via: m.a.r.c.)

Looking like a gigantic lava lamp, this townhouse in Basel, Switzerland calls to mind the psychedelic 60s – or maybe the carefree days of blowing bubbles in the backyard and watching them float toward the clouds.

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Bridging Home: House Wedged in an Alleyway by Do Ho Suh

A tiny traditional Korean house is wedged between two more conventional buildings in Liverpool, England, in artist Do Ho Suh’s installation ‘Bridging Home.’
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Haunted House? The Abandoned Mansion of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is known as the visionary head of Apple, but there were other facets to his life as well. This is the tale of his magnificent abandoned mansion.
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