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Urban Glider: Compact Portable Electric Unicycle for Cities

17 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

urban glider design crowdfunding

Light, small and surprisingly fast, this single-wheeled cycle is designed to let you zip around cities, then stop and pick it up like a suitcase when you arrive at your destination – a sweet last-mile solution for urban commuters and travelers.

unicycle electric personal vehicle

The Urban Glider uses a gyroscopically-stabilized electric mono-wheel to help you stay upright as you stand on footplates straddling the sides of a central 16-inch wheel.

urban glider prototype concept copy

Leaning back lets you slow, stop or reverse while leaning forward engages the engine in that direction, and tilting to either side allows you to turn using intuitive movements.

urban glider colors

The convenient size of the device means you don’t have to worry about parking or locking up your car, scooter or bike. And unlike other small-scale solutions, you also do not need to switch out blades or skates for shoes between uses.

unicycle city street sidewalk

Hopping from the glider to other transit is also simple, since you can carry the 24-pound vehicle onto buses, trains or planes.

urban glider design

unicycle urban glider design

With a top speed of around 13 miles per hour you won’t be breaking any records for velocity, but can get places much faster than you would be able to on foot.

The battery is designed to last for up to 6 hours of use and can be charged in last than 30 minutes. Currently, crowdfunding on Kickstarter is paused but the company seems adamant about making a go of this personal vehicle one way or another. The Urban Glider is set to retail for $ 1200 – expensive on some metrics, perhaps, but fairly cheap as short-distance electric transit goes.

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Roaming Homes: 15 DIY RVs, Converted Buses & Tiny Houses

16 Sep

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

DIY Mobile Homes Neverwas Haul 1

Japanese tea houses spring from the roofs of ordinary-looking trucks, ornate handcrafted cabins are tacked onto school buses and fire trucks are converted into monster off-road RVs when industrious and determined DIYers decide to take on building their own mobile homes. One tiny house on wheels even has a back deck with a full-sized hot tub, and an incredibly fun two-story Victorian house on wheels makes its way around the desert.

The Neverwas Haul: A Steampunk Mobile Home

Neverwas Haul 3

DIY Mobile Homes Neverwas Haul 2

RVs rarely get more ornate than this – a two-story Victorian house on wheels, designed, naturally, for Burning Man. The Neverwas Haul was built over six months in 2006 and is made almost entirely of recycled materials. Designer and builder Shannon O’Hare used the skills and experience he gained creating theme park structures around the country to come up with this amazing vehicle, which is built upon the base of a fifth wheel travel trailer.

Tiny House with a Built-In Hot Tub

Tiny House Hot Tub 1

You can even tack a generously sized wooden hot tub – powered by wood, if you like! – onto the back of your very own custom-built tiny house. UK-based Tiny Wood Homes builds both hot tubs and little houses on wheels, making this combo a natural fit. The whole setup is small enough to be towed around via truck and sells for about $ 57,000.

Matthew Hofmann’s Renovated Airstream Trailers

DIY Mobile Homes Hofmann Airstream 2

DIY Mobile Homes Hofmann Airstream 4

Architect Matthew Hofmann purchases old Airstream trailers and renovates them into beautiful and modern mobile spaces, custom-creating everything from backyard offices to tiny roaming homes. The project began when Hofmann decided to downsize from a large house to an Airstream of his own. People took notice and soon enough, demand turned into a business opportunity.

Wothahellizat

DIY mobile Homes wothahellizat 2

DIY Mobile Homes wothahellizat 3

Sound out the name of this creation phonetically – that’s basically the reaction of everyone who sees it. Australian photographer Rob Gray wanted a home base while adventuring in the Australian wilderness, so he created his very own monster RV complete with a viewing deck, hydraulically operated roof and a bedroom over the cab. It’s got all the amenities of a standard camper, but can go off-road.

Al’s Housetruck

What looks like no more than a narrow cabin from the back is revealed to be an incredibly intricate hand-crafted mobile home, built right onto the back of an old Dodge bus. Featured in the 1979 book Rolling Homes by Jane Lidz, ‘Al’s Housetruck‘ has a sleeping loft over the cab, a wood stove, stained glass windows and decorative porch railings.

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Roaming Homes 15 Diy Rvs Converted Buses Tiny Houses

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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What If? Apocalyptic Art Explores Ends of Industrial Worlds

15 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

What if we filled the world with nothing but cars, or skyscrapers, or if we simply started building an industrialized mountain (like a modern-day Tower of Babel) that reached forever upward?

giant skyscraper filled world

modern tower of babel

Michael Kerbow is a San Francisco explores ways in which a world could end of industry were iterated to a point of near-infinite proportions – his works depict bottomless mines, planets covered (and carved out) with man-made structures and much more.

world filled with cars

hollow pursuits world

With titles like Fool’s Gold, Hollow Pursuits, Witching Hour and Diminishing Returns, it seems clear where the artist stands on the issue of endless industrialization in the face of limited resources and finite space.

industrialized future world

While he works with assemblage and digitally-manipulated photography, Kerbow’s large-scale paintings in particular show fascinating possible worlds where urbanization has pushed past the limits of reason and sustainability.

endless mining world

Of himself, he writes: “My work explores the way in which we engage with our surroundings and the possible consequences our actions have upon the world in which we live. Through my work I attempt to question the rationale of our choices, and try to reveal the dichotomy that may exist between what we desire and what we manifest. Recently my work has focused upon the mechanisms that power our society and examines how they may influence the construct for a possible future.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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All Washed Up: 11 Abandoned Coin Laundries & Laundromats

14 Sep

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned Laundromat at Night 2008 Laurie Nix
Abandoned coin laundries, laundromats and washaterias (for you Texans) have proliferated as utility costs rise and prices for domestic machines fall.

We’ve chosen artist Lori Nix’s spellbinding “Laundromat at Night, 2008″, part of her eerie THE CITY series of post-apocalyptic images, to lead off this collection of abandonments. Nix’s theme for the series revolves around an unnamed global catastrophe that suddenly and effectively removed humanity from the equation. “All that’s left of mankind is the cultural and economic spaces we once inhabited. Now these are falling into disrepair,” explains Nix, as Mother Nature inexorably reclaims her rightful domains.

Radiantly Clean

abandoned laundromat Namie Japan cat

abandoned laundromat Namie Japan 2t

Photographer David Guttenfelder (on assignment for National Geographic Magazine) explored some of the abandoned towns located within a 6-mile radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the months following the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami. One of these towns is Namie, now officially inside the government-declared, radiation-contaminated Exclusion Zone surrounding the troubled power plant, where the above abandoned coin laundry offers precarious shelter for a lost pet cat.

Clothesed Lately

abandoned laundromat Provo Utah 1

abandoned laundromat Provo Utah 2

abandoned laundromat Provo Utah 3

Credit LMK Photography for the above images of a recently abandoned laundromat in Provo, Utah, that according to the photographer “has a nice charm”. We have to agree… and at least stray animals haven’t begun hogging the dryers. Gotta love those classic mid-century “bowling alley” style plastic chairs, by the way – talk about discouraging loitering.

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All Washed Up 11 Abandoned Coin Laundries Laundromats

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Memo Bottle: Slim Paper-Shaped Water Canteen for Laptop Bags

14 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

memo mobile flat bottle

Rectangular, skinny and designed to fit in briefcases or computer bags, his is definitely a bottle with a message: it is time to make your preferred refreshment receptacle more mobile.

memo bottle various sizees

memo flat pack bottle design

memo bottle on table

A sleek portable solution for your potables, the memobottle comes in standardized paper sizes to fit your preferred carrying case alongside books or computers, including Letter, A4 and A5 in the initial run.

memo bottle to go

memo bottle hipster kit

memo bottle design prototype

Its creators come from dry places – Melbourne, Australia and San Diego, California – and have a mission in mind that involves more than mere convenience: “Single use bottle consumption [results in] 1,500 plastic bottles being used and discarded every second in the US.” Further, “bottled water is about 1,400 times more expensive than tap water and often less regulated.”

memo bottle stands up

memo plastic dishwasher safe

memo water bottle

memo leak proof bottle

The memobottle is a dishwasher-friendly, long-life, BPA-free water bottle that uses plastic, which its makers claim is more environmentally friendly than aluminum or stainless steel. The design definitely has its fans, with the project already over-funded by 1000% on Kickstarter with nearly one month left to go.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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By the Silent Line: Watch an Abandoned Railroad Disappear

13 Sep

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Abandoned Railroad Paris 1
Among the rusting vestiges of Europe’s Industrial Revolution, this 20-mile relic of a railroad in Paris has been abandoned since 1934, and while it has been retaken by nature in the ensuing decades, it will likely disappear altogether as the city grows. Photographer Pierre Folk has spent the last few years capturing what remains of ‘La Petite Ceinture,’ known as ‘Little Belt’ in English.

Abandoned Railroad Paris 2

Abandoned Railraod Paris 3

From the series, "By the Silent Line."

Completed in the 1860s, the railroad carried passengers around the City of Light until the underground metro system and personal automobile made it obsolete. At its peak, it was considered a hallmark of progress, with transfers to other Paris railway networks completed by horse-drawn carts. But once it was decommissioned, access was restricted, turning it into a sort of post-apocalyptic time capsule.

From the series, "By the Silent Line."

Abandoned Railroad Paris 9

Abandoned Railroad 10

In the eighty years since it was last in use, La Petite Ceinture has become a habitat for at least 70 different animal species and host to over 200 varieties of plants. Folk’s photographs reveal a strange sort of in-between phase in which this stretch of railway in such a vibrant, metropolitan city is nearly forgotten, tangled with ivy.

Abandoned Railroad Paris 7

Abandoned Railroad Paris 8

As popular elevated parks like the High Line in New York City and Paris’ own Promenade Plantee prove, it likely won’t stay this way for long. Proposals have already been put forth to transform the rail from its current eerily quiet state into public space. Says Folk, “As a river, its shores constantly change over time, but it persists… an intimate place where past and modernity make their acquaintance.”

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Mirage Muralist: Street Artist Bends Surfaces Using Illusion

12 Sep

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

street art subtractive wall

With works often requiring second looks or sanity checks, artist Pejac bends reality in his use of paint and other materials to create sublime art from walls, streets, sidewalks and gutters.

street art splatter paint

street art painting scene

His newest works in Paris, shown above and below, play with our sense of surface and depth, revealing a hidden world beyond the wall in each case. If the close-up scene looks familiar, you may recognize it as The Luncheon on the Grass by Manet.

street door silhouette drawing

street art door illusion

Likewise implying something secret is this silhouette of a door – at a glance, it is hard to tell what part is a real crack in the concrete and which pieces are simply painted on top.

street art world flow

In previous projects, he has also played with the arts of subtraction and illusion in other clever ways – letting the world, for instance, slowly melt, drip and trickle toward the drain.

street art brick removal

street art paint closeup

Some of these works are quite time-intensive and incredibly detail-sensitive, like this final piece in which the artist carefully chipped away at the white paint on a brick wall to selectively reveal the red surface below it.

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

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The Desertron: World’s Largest Super Collider Lies Abandoned

12 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

super collider tunnel digging

Designed to break records held by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Superconducting Super Collider built (and abandoned) in Texas features fourteen miles of unseen and unused underground tunnels.

abandoned tunnel surface complex

abandoned super collider complex

Construction on what was to be the largest particle accelerator in the world started in the early 1980s but funding cuts in the early 1990s caused the entire project to be shut down. By that time, billions of dollars were already spent and the expected tag had tripled from 4 to 12 billion, 17 shafts were dug and 14 miles of tunnel excavated (out of a total of 51 planned).

abandoned particle ssc texas

abandoned underground tunnels texas

abandoned tunnels urban exploration

Located on a site near Waxahachie, Texas (south of Dallas, shown on a map below) without existing tunnels (which helped in the building of the LHC), removing millions of tons of soil proved to be a budget-breaking expense for the SSC. The complex has since gained the apt nickname ‘Desertron’ for obvious reasons.

abandoned subterranean super collider

supercollider particle accelerator map

Except for underground generators, most of the major machinery was removed from the site before it was deed to the local county, which in turn sold it to a private corporation planning to turn it into a data center. With an independent power grid and dedicated fiber optic line it seemed like a good fit, but when its would-be developer died in an accident the plans were scrapped. Since then it has remained empty, but has again been purchased, this time by a chemical company.

super collider exploration

super collider complex interior

super collider abandoned inside

Many factors have been cited as contributors to its abandonment, including the end of the Cold War with Russia and the comparable amounts being budgeted for the United States’ contribution to the International Space Station – at the time, it seemed to many to that spending as much on the SSC as the ISS would be folly (images via Jim Merithew, AmusingPlanet, Wired and Wikipedia).

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Fluorescent Geometry: Eye-Popping Murals by Maya Hayuk

11 Sep

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

Maya Hayuk 5

Striking geometric shapes in acid-bright palettes breathe life into gray urban spaces thanks to the signature style of artist Maya Hayuk. Often appearing perfectly symmetrical, her work seems to be planned and painstakingly designed well in advance, but it’s often created spontaneously in response to the feel of the chosen setting.

Maya Hayuk 2 Maya Hayuk 3

Precise lines in rainbow fluorescents converge into chaotic arrangements of geometric shapes, interspersed here and there with more organic imagery like human eyeballs. Look into one of Hayuk’s kaleidoscope-like creations long enough and you’ll start to notice little eccentricities, like sharp-toothed creatures, hiding in the mix.

Maya Hayuk 4 Maya Hayuk 6 Maya Hayuk 7

According to her bio, Hayuk is inspired by popular culture, Ukrainian handicrafts and advanced painting practices “while connecting to the ongoing pursuit of psychedelic experience in visual form.” It’s safe to say she achieves this effect, each massive mural looking trippier the longer you stare at it.

Maya Hayuk 8 Maya Hayuk 9 Maya Hayuk 10

In addition to large-scale murals located all over the world, Hayuk paints works on canvas and collaborates on a range of other creative projects, from fashion to music videos. In an interview with Cooler, Hayuk says “I listen to a lot of music while I work, there are a lot of repeating patterns in my art and in music. I also found it exciting to help create an object that empowers the person holding or carrying it. I do believe in this kind of magic.”

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

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Rejected Starchitects: 8 Controversial Building Proposals

11 Sep

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Rejected Starchitects Foster Airport 1

Even the world’s most famous architects, from Zaha Hadid to Frank Gehry, get rejected sometimes. When Norman Foster’s visionary proposal for a new London airport built right in the middle of the Thames estuary was rejected, the architect retorted that the decision lacked “courage,” and that does often seem to be the case, with cities balking at overly ambitious and futuristic designs. But sometimes, it just comes down to money – or the architect’s ego.

Floating London Airport by Norman Foster

Rejected Starchitects Foster Airport 2

Rejected Starchitects Foster Airport 3

Land-poor London needs a new solution for an airport that can grow along with the city in the decades to come, but adding new runways would just be a short-term fix. Architect Norman Foster’s solution is to build a four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary, linking to existing and new high speed train networks. The proposal would use land that’s not currently suited for anything else, and would also make it easy to transport good directly to Britain’s other container ports. But the proposal isn’t among the three that London city officials are moving forward with, leading Foster to comment that the decision is “sadly predictable.”

Eisenhower Memorial by Frank Gehry

Rejected Starchitects Gehry Eisenhower 2

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial was deemed a bit too flashy by the former president’s family, leading to a series of re-designs before the architect’s proposal was finally scrapped. The Eisenhower family wanted a memorial that was “simple, sustainable, and affordable,” and while Gehry’s design seems uncharacteristically sedate compared to his usual work, it still included elements that the family and committee found to not be in keeping with Dwight Eisenhower’s humble character. Congressional budget cuts ultimately slashed the funds available to the project, and now it’s unlikely to break ground.

Kimball Art Center Extension by Bjarke Ingels

Rejected Starchitects BIG Kimball 1

Rejected Starchitects BIG Kimball 3

BIG is an appropriate acronym for the Bjarke Ingels Group, as the firm typically designs innovative, futuristic architectural solutions that are sometimes so far outside the box as to be a bit mind-boggling. Often described as a ‘wonder kid,’ young architect Bjarke Ingels seems to think on a large scale, dreaming up mountain-shaped residences with walkable green roofs and other unexpected designs. In the case of the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, one design after another has been rejected. The first, a twisting timber structure, got the axe for being out of character with the historic setting. The second, a large concrete volume that proved more popular with locals, was thrown out for failing to meet strict Old Town planning guidelines in the former mining town.

Neues Stadt-Casino by Zaha Hadid

Rejected Starchitects Hadid Casino 2
Even Zaha Hadid, among the most celebrated of contemporary architects, has designs rejected every now and then. Hadid’s proposed design for the Neues Stadt-Casino for Basel, Switzerland won a competition four years ago, but Swiss tradition allows the public to have the final say on projects of this size that make use of public money. 62.5% of voters rejected the proposal, leading it to be scrapped.

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Urban Glider: Compact Portable Electric Unicycle for Cities

Roaming Homes: 15 DIY RVs, Converted Buses & Tiny Houses

The Neverwas Haul: A Steampunk Mobile Home

Tiny House with a Built-In Hot Tub

Matthew Hofmann’s Renovated Airstream Trailers

Wothahellizat

Al’s Housetruck

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Roaming Homes 15 Diy Rvs Converted Buses Tiny Houses

What If? Apocalyptic Art Explores Ends of Industrial Worlds

All Washed Up: 11 Abandoned Coin Laundries & Laundromats

Radiantly Clean

Clothesed Lately

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All Washed Up 11 Abandoned Coin Laundries Laundromats

Memo Bottle: Slim Paper-Shaped Water Canteen for Laptop Bags

By the Silent Line: Watch an Abandoned Railroad Disappear

Mirage Muralist: Street Artist Bends Surfaces Using Illusion

The Desertron: World’s Largest Super Collider Lies Abandoned

Fluorescent Geometry: Eye-Popping Murals by Maya Hayuk

Rejected Starchitects: 8 Controversial Building Proposals

Floating London Airport by Norman Foster

Eisenhower Memorial by Frank Gehry

Kimball Art Center Extension by Bjarke Ingels

Neues Stadt-Casino by Zaha Hadid

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Rejected Starchitects 8 Controversial Building Concepts

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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

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Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Rejected Starchitects 8 Controversial Building Concepts

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