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Posts Tagged ‘Urban’

Urban Hybrid: Double-Exposure Photos Fuse London & NYC

03 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

double exposure londong nyc

While photo shoots can be meticulously staged, sometimes the best shots come with an element of surprise – particularly in the chaotic context of cities like New York an London.

double exposure art photos

Architect by training and photographer by professions, Daniella Zalcman took a series of photographs before leaving the largest city in the United States for the largest city in the United Kingdom, overlaying them secondary exposures in the latter city.

double take city scenes

The results are predictably unpredictable – a mix of juxtapositions ranging from smooth transitional gradients to sharp spatial contrasts, capturing street art and sidewalk scenes as well as broader city-scapes and edge conditions.

double architectural overlap images

In the end, many of the most jarring compositions defy the brain’s desire to organize a coherent narrative, like a tip-of-your-tongue memory or a slowly-fading dream, an effect reinforced by the gritty texture and grainy quality of the images themselves.

double horizon urban lines

More on the artist, who has also since launched a Kickstarter project for this set: “Daniella Zalcman is based in NYC where she works as a freelance photographer for the Wall Street Journal. Born in Washington, DC, she graduated from Columbia with a degree in architecture in 2009. Other clients include The New York Times, the New York Daily News, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Saatchi & Saatchi, National Geographic, Wired, and The Nation.”

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Musical Urban Design: Rube Goldberg-Style Rain Drains

29 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

facade art

Architects go to elaborate lengths to hide the passage of water from the walls and roofs of buildings, but in this case, an interactive and artistic facade features the process prominently instead, turning the flow of liquid into music for passers by.

facade water channel art

Kunsthof Passage in Dresden features a typical urban German experience: a series of cute small shops and quaint restaurants tucked into tunnels and courtyards and removed from the main streets.

facade artworks

But it is more than that as well, thanks in part to the work of Heike Bottcher and others who contributed to turning the facades of structures facing its primary courtyard area into colorful works of musical art.

facade interactive urban art

And, at the end of the sequence, channeled water flows out into a rain station where people can play, rinse their hands or let their pets romp through the result of this strange chain of channels.

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Vertical Horizon: Urban Photographs Turn City Upside Down

08 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

vertical horizon hong kong

Hong Kong has to be one of the most-photographed cities on Earth, but these shots present a rarely-seen perspective by documentarians or pedestrians … unless they look straight up.

vertical urban photo shoot

From Vertical Art Space: “Romain Jacquet-Lagreze is a French graphic artist with a Masters in multimedia and art from East Paris University. His interest in photography began during his period of working in Los Angeles and Tokyo, and subsequently blossomed into a passion after his arrival in Hong Kong.”

vertical urban built environment

His Vertical Horizon series emphasizes the vast scale of tall structures, but also the “heterogeneous character” of the built environment – traditional alongside modern, scrappy versus refined, small set against large.

vertical city landscape photos

While some of his images are taken from the top down, or at an angle, many of the most powerful ones are straight-up vertical captures. Somehow, these more predictable approaches lack the striking gravitas of their deceptively-flat  cousins.

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Ruin Academy: Urban Lab in an Abandoned Building

04 Apr

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

Ruin Academy 1

Occupying an abandoned five-story apartment building in central Taipei, Ruin Academy is a living architectural laboratory where holes drilled in the walls let rain inside, plants grow from the floors and the bones of the structure serve as ‘compost’ for the future of the city. A collaboration between Finland-based Casagrande Laboratory and the Taiwanese JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture, this project aims to “re-think the industrial city and the modern man in a box.”

Ruin Academy 3

Ruin Academy 2

Ruin Academy serves as a setting for workshops and courses for various Taiwanese and international universities in subjects like architecture, urban design and environmental art. The lines between the city and the building have been blurred with the removal of windows and interior walls, so bamboo and vegetables can be grown indoors. Students and professors sleep in ad-hoc dormitories. The mahogany elements of the interiors, like walkways and steps, are made to be rearranged as the inhabitants’ needs change.

Ruin Academy 5

Ruin Academy 4

“The Ruin Academy is looking at the ruining processes of Taipei that keep the city alive,” says Marco Casagrande on the Ruin Academy blog. The idea is that static urban structures aren’t a natural way of life, and that the ‘Third Generation City’ would mix nature with human construction in an ever-changing symbiosis. Restoring nature within cities, growing food indoors, and living in structures that constantly adapt and change is seen as a more organic way for humans to interact with our environment.

Ruin Academy 6

The Ruin Academy is just one of the many illegal, unsanctioned ‘parasite’ structures that have popped up on top of and around Taipei’s conventional modern buildings. Organic and often transient structures made of materials like bamboo or plastic sheeting sprout on the roofs of concrete skyscrapers and in abandoned lots, used as artist housing, urban farms, night markets and other social gathering places.

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Doing it Wrong: Funny Photo-Edited Urban Improbabilities

21 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

improbable crosswalk

It would be entirely right and wrong at the same time to call this body of work realistic. On the one hand, the results look like pictures (which form the basis of these manipulations) – on the other hand, while not impossible, the reality they present is dramatically improbable.

improbable urban landscape photos

This series by Robert Rickhoff is titled Out of Place and features all kinds of ordinary spaces and situations, from swing sets, crosswalks and roundabouts to railroad tracks, swimming pools and public bathrooms.

improbable swing sets pool

Yet in (almost) each case, there is something not quite right … or drastically wrong. It takes a little while to notice in each case, though, until you get the hang of it and start looking for the odd-man-out element right away.

improbable urban speed bumps

Still, it is fun to imagine what would happen to people taking a speed-bump ramp, or encountering a raised crosswalk – certainly a surreal experience in reality, and at least something to trigger the urban imagination in photographic form.

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Preservation Puzzle: Extreme Ideas to Save an Urban Facade

10 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

historic preservation prentice ideas

The Prentice Women’s Hospital building at Northwestern University has some serious fans, including a range of architects such as Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi, Tadao Ando, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, who would like to see it preserved. The open question: is the exterior of sufficient historical value to keep, even if it means building up through, above and/or around it?

historic new tower solution

While a wonder of structural engineering with an iconic shape, the structure simply is not practical or fit-to-purpose anymore. One daring proposal from Studio Gang Architects (illustration by Jay Hoffman) involves adding dozens of upper stories, and nearly a million square feet, while leaving the shell of the original intact.

historic mirrored facade idea

A scheme by Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacorta won a competition to suggest alternatives with another approach – one that allows half of the building to be absorbed by a new structure, while reflecting the other half – using a mirror-image effect to preserve the complete appearance via a rather ingenious and nuanced illusion.

historic original humorous proposals

Critics exist on both sides. Some say this proposal strips away so much of the building and its context that what is left is really metaphorically (not just literally) a shell. Others suggest that any solution bends too far toward impracticality to accommodate an arguably unattractive building (many consider it an eyesore). Humorists like LunchBreath have weighed in as well, as seen above.

historic preservation proposal rendering

Meanwhile, the university itself does not seem interested in considering preservation options, so these concepts, while compelling, could well be moot in the end. Still, the High Line in New York is a great example of how enough public pressure and celebrity support can change the minds of an entire city, and perhaps a private institution as well.

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Temporary Urban Coffee Farm Grows & Sells Bean Brew

10 Mar

[ By Steph in Culture & Cuisine & Global. ]

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 1

Coffee lovers are getting a special treat at this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: an urban coffee farm installation made primarily of pallets, which functions as both a temporary coffee shop and a learning experience. Australian design firm HASSELL created the ‘festival hub’ for the two-week annual event, placing it on the red stairs at Queensbridge Square.

urban Coffee Farm 2

While the installation won’t be around long enough for Melbournians to drink coffee grown right there in the middle of the city, it does have more than 120 coffee plants, in pots set into the stacked wood pallets. HASSELL’s Shaun Schroter and Mary Papaioannou told Habitus Living that their aim was to connect coffee consumers to the laborious and resource-heavy processes required to produce the beverage.

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 3

Educational signs offer coffee facts, including info on various types of beans and where they’re grown. The temporary cafe was installed in an underutilized area of Melbourne’s South Bank, inviting residents to explore their city in a new way.

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 4

“Coffee has become one of those consumables that is linked to a lifestyle experience and very rarely connected to the places of harvest,” says Schroter. “Embedding this narrative into the conceptual story then becomes important because it is a holistic experience.”

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Homeless Hotel: Radical Urban Retreat has No Rooms, Ever

10 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Boutique & Art Hotels & Global. ]

homeless hotel

You may have seen some strange and unique accommodations on AirBNB, but few hosts can boast something as unusual as Faktum Hotels, an unreal room-free resort in Sweden.

homeless shelter hostel rooms

Their offerings are entirely out in the open air, doubling as an awareness-raising campaign for the city’s homeless and and actual alternative sleeping space for those same citizens.

homeless urban living awareness

So if not rooms, then what are you actually booking? A sleeping bag, or simply a secluded space … everywhere an actual vagabond or vagrant might occupy, including park benches, public restrooms, abandoned buildings, bridge underpasses and below bleachers.

homeless street parking spaces

And how much to reserve one of these temporary hobo hostels? The rate for each of these 10 surreal pseudo-spaces is just 10 Euros per night … proceeds of which go to charity work supported by Faktum Magazine.

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Homeless Hotel: Radical Urban Retreat has No Rooms, Ever

08 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Boutique & Art Hotels & Global. ]

homeless hotel

You may have seen some strange and unique accommodations on AirBNB, but few hosts can boast something as unusual as Faktum Hotels, an unreal room-free resort in Sweden.

homeless shelter hostel rooms

Their offerings are entirely out in the open air, doubling as an awareness-raising campaign for the city’s homeless and and actual alternative sleeping space for those same citizens.

homeless urban living awareness

So if not rooms, then what are you actually booking? A sleeping bag, or simply a secluded space … everywhere an actual vagabond or vagrant might occupy, including park benches, public restrooms, abandoned buildings, bridge underpasses and below bleachers.

homeless street parking spaces

And how much to reserve one of these temporary hobo hostels? The rate for each of these 10 surreal pseudo-spaces is just 10 Euros per night … proceeds of which go to charity work supported by Faktum Magazine.

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Temporary Urban Coffee Farm Grows & Sells Bean Brew

08 Mar

[ By Steph in Culture & Cuisine & Global. ]

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 1

Coffee lovers are getting a special treat at this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: an urban coffee farm installation made primarily of pallets, which functions as both a temporary coffee shop and a learning experience. Australian design firm HASSELL created the ‘festival hub’ for the two-week annual event, placing it on the red stairs at Queensbridge Square.

urban Coffee Farm 2

While the installation won’t be around long enough for Melbournians to drink coffee grown right there in the middle of the city, it does have more than 120 coffee plants, in pots set into the stacked wood pallets. HASSELL’s Shaun Schroter and Mary Papaioannou told Habitus Living that their aim was to connect coffee consumers to the laborious and resource-heavy processes required to produce the beverage.

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 3

Educational signs offer coffee facts, including info on various types of beans and where they’re grown. The temporary cafe was installed in an underutilized area of Melbourne’s South Bank, inviting residents to explore their city in a new way.

Urban Coffee Farm Melbourne 4

“Coffee has become one of those consumables that is linked to a lifestyle experience and very rarely connected to the places of harvest,” says Schroter. “Embedding this narrative into the conceptual story then becomes important because it is a holistic experience.”

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