While not having a huge impact on user experience, those intimidating spikes and other devices used to ward off pigeons don’t exactly give you warm fuzzies.
Swiss designers Martino D’Esposito and Alexandre Gaillard’s sharp-edged urban sillouettes demonstrate how functional design can still be beautiful.
LINK: Core77 Design Blog Post on Pigeon Repulsive
1 comment August 15th, 2006
Spend a hot afternoon in Old Sacramento and you quickly understand why early settlers went through the trouble to build fancy porches over the sidewalk: Protection from the brutal sun.
As hot as it is in Sac, it really doesn’t seem so bad when you’re under some shade.
But the unintended benefit of these roofs is that they draw the indoor activity out into the public realm of the sidewalk: Colorful signs and merchandise displays seem to belong among the pedestrians. Walking along the street is just like window shopping, only in 3 dimensions. These porticos also add additional real estate to the second story of the building.
This sort of feature would be perfect for east coast and midwest cities where there are different sorts of elements to battle in different seasons. It might be an effective strategy to enliven a downtown commercial district.
Add comment August 14th, 2006
Here’s how NOT to plan around a commuter rail station.
The Santa Clara/Great America ACE & Amtrak station is used by many living east/north of the Bay Area as their daily entry point into Silicon Valley.
But who wants to take the train to go golfing or walk to a parking lot?
Instead of encouraging Silicon Valley tech companies to locate close to the train station, planners took a laissez-faire approach and forced multitudes of commuters to hop on another 10-30 minute bus ride to access their technology employer.
The nearest semblance of an activity generator — Great America theme park or the Santa Clara Convention center — is a lonely 15-20 minute walk.
Add comment August 12th, 2006
Turn Here celebrates the uniqueness of urban places, as documented through locals by amateur video contributors.
It’s great to see people discovering that their neighborhood has a unique identity that they can be proud of, even if that identity is not nationally recognized.
Link: TURN HERE: Short Films, Cool Places
Link: Video on Davis, CA
Add comment August 8th, 2006
A noble effort by the city of Love Lewisham to involve the community in identifying problems in the urban environment.
At this site, residents can easily post photos of issues along with descriptions and location info to be reviewed and addressed by the borough.
The reports are primarily of abuse problems (graffitti, junk left on streets), not design problems, but it’s an interesting way of getting the community involved nonetheless!
Link: http://www.lovelewisham.org/public/images.aspx
1 comment August 8th, 2006
Granted it was designed before laptops were so prevalent, the Chicago O’Hare airport’s lack of outlets in seating areas forces people to make awkward adaptations.
At least the airport staff all know where the outlets are and can quickly point you to the nearest hallway. But in case they can’t, there’s always the Airport Power Wiki:
Link: Where to Find Airport Outlets
1 comment August 8th, 2006
I like how San Diego incorporated light rail into its downtown. They took a section of C St. and dedicated it solely as a transit/pedestrian street. As seen here, this pedestrian in the center is free to read a book quietly while waiting for her train. Another can safely venture out into the street. The boundry between sidewalk to streetway feels safely marked yet comfortable to cross.
I can only speculate about what it took to convince the driving public that sacrificing automobile capacity for a handsomely designed transit street would be more beneficial to the city in the long run.
Add comment August 7th, 2006
Attach GPS locators to people and the resulting maps reveal a lot:
Cabspotting traces San Francisco’s taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible.
Amsterdam RealTime: Every inhabitant of Amsterdam has an invisble map of the city in his head. The way he moves about the city and the choices made in this process are determined by this mental map. Amsterdam RealTime attampts to visualize these mental maps through examining the mobile behaviour of the city’s users.
Link: Amsterdam Real-Time
Link: San Francisco Cabspotting
Add comment August 6th, 2006
I’m intrigued by how flickr photo pools are being used to tap into people’s experiences.
This one is an endeavor by a user experience guy, Joshua Kaufman, to get people thinking about “information, design, interaction and usability” within the urban environment.
It’s less about the design OF the spaces and more about design WITHIN the spaces (environmental graphics, signs, etc), but well worth looking at!
Link: “Urban Experience” Flickr Photo Pool
1 comment August 3rd, 2006
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