Tag Archives: city

Revamping Urban Pedestrian Spaces With These Friendly Bollards To Improve Roadside Safety

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As cities around the world strive to improve urban living and create pedestrian-friendly environments, the need for well-designed public spaces becomes increasingly evident. However, one aspect that often goes overlooked is the entrance to these pedestrian areas. Frequently, we see neglected concrete barriers, makeshift signage, and uninspiring elements that fail to create a welcoming atmosphere. This lack of coherent and well-thought-out urban furniture results in cluttered spaces that do not effectively serve their purpose of inviting visitors.

Introducing Réal, the innovative safety bollard designed to revitalize pedestrian streets and enhance the pedestrianization of urban centers. Réal not only serves its functional purpose of delineating pedestrian areas but also adds a touch of style and character to the space. Its design evokes a friendly and inviting character, welcoming visitors with open arms.

Designer: Maxime Bourgault

One of the key features of Réal is its versatility. It offers a multitude of attachment options, allowing for the inclusion of various accessories. This flexibility simplifies and harmonizes pedestrian areas, ensuring a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing environment. By integrating additional elements such as planters, seating, or informative signage, Réal transforms the pedestrian streets into a cohesive and visually appealing space.

Moreover, Réal contributes to the overall sustainability of urban living. By clearly delimiting pedestrian areas and creating identifiable entrances, it encourages the pedestrianization of urban centers. This shift towards pedestrian-friendly spaces has numerous benefits, including improved safety, reduced pollution, and increased economic activity. Réal plays a vital role in supporting this transition, creating a more sustainable and livable cityscape.

In addition to its functional and sustainability benefits, Réal also possesses a strong product identity. Its design exudes a friendly and welcoming aura, due to its rounded edges and cute form, making visitors feel invited and at ease. The combination of safety and style creates an engaging and memorable experience for pedestrians, enhancing their overall enjoyment of the urban environment.

By addressing the need for well-designed and visually appealing urban furniture, Réal sets a new standard for pedestrian spaces. Its presence helps refurbish pedestrian sites and elevates the overall aesthetic of urban centers. No longer will concrete barriers and temporary signage dominate pedestrian areas. Instead, Réal provides a coherent and well-thought-out solution that showcases the city’s commitment to creating welcoming, sustainable and vibrant public spaces.

So, if you’re a city planner, urban designer, or simply someone passionate about creating livable and inviting public spaces, consider Réal as the ideal solution. Let Réal be the friendly face that greets visitors and transforms pedestrian streets into harmonious and captivating urban environments.

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Saudi Arabian city of the future to house nine million people

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A lot of sci-fi movies set in the future have all these amazing looking skyscrapers and modern cities that we think are still years into the future and may not even happen in our lifetime. But the future may not be as far off as we think, especially if these plans for a linear city in Saudi Arabia will push through, then we’re just a step away from cities like that we see in the movies. Well, we still won’t have flying cars probably, but that may also be just a few years away.

Designer: Morphosis

The Line is a megastructure that will be built as part of the Neom development in the Tabuk province in Saudi Arabia, near the Red Sea and across the Gulf of Aqaba. Neom will be a tourist destination and city with smart city technologies and sustainable structures and The Line will be part of this development. It is a 500-meter tall and 200-meter wide linear city that will occupy 170 kilometers across the planned city. When finished, it will be able to house nine million people and will be the 12th highest structure in the world and most likely the longest.

This will be a vertically layered community with mirrored facades, having two wall-like structures and an open space in between them. The aim of such a structure is to give city dwellers an alternative way to live than the usual urban structures that we currently see. There will be residential, retail, leisure, and educational sections in The Line, as well as parks and other green spaces in order to make it more connected to nature. They call this arrangement as Zero Gravity Urbanism.

The outer mirror facade will make it blend with nature while the interior facade will be created for “extraordinary experiences and magical moments”. They are still committed to creating a small carbon footprint for this development although how that will happen is still not clear. The Line will also have a transport system for the entire megastructure and can connect both ends within just 20 minutes. Again, how they will be able to create this sustainably will probably be tricky.

The Saudi Arabian government has said that the entire city will be powered by sustainable energy and will be designed to have a more sustainable lifestyle compared to most traditional cities. The entire Neom development is also part of the country’s drive to be less reliant on oil by diversifying its economy.

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Bitcoin City in El Salvador takes the Metaverse in the opposite direction

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We’ve all heard about bringing cities into the Metaverse, but this city will bring a part of the Metaverse to the real world instead.

AR, VR, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the lot are the usual culprits cited when talking about the Metaverse. Built on already existing and slightly unrelated technologies, this concept and buzzword is supposed to meld physical and virtual worlds together in an almost seamless fashion. In most cases, it involves recreating many physical things in a digital form, from avatars of ourselves to real-world cities and locations. There’s also a part that will bring digital artifacts into our world, mostly as overlays that can only be seen through screens or headsets. The Metaverse and its friends are already influencing changes in the real world, but perhaps none more daring and a teeny bit bewildering than an entire city founded upon the concept and the “image” of Bitcoin.

Designer: Fernando Romero

It’s not hard to imagine walking into a virtual city whose layout happens to be inspired by the design of a coin. After all, it’s pretty trivial to mold 3D spaces to one’s liking, whether or not they actually conform to the laws of physics. But doing it the other way around and building a real-world city patterned after a digital currency sounds a tad “out of this world,” to put it mildly. And yet that is what El Salvador is embarking on if the construction of this vision actually begins.

Announced late last year by El Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele, the “Bitcoin City” will be built on the side of the Conchagua volcano, which has thankfully never erupted in a very long time. The general layout of the city will be in the shape of a coin, as much as the terrain would allow it to be round, with a central plaza that bears the Bitcoin logo. At least based on the model that was recently unveiled, even the pattern of buildings and roads will give the city a remote semblance to the digital bits that make up all of the digital world as we know it.

Of course, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies don’t exactly have a defined form, despite the “coin” in their names, so this is pretty much an artist’s interpretation of what a city built on it should look like. The designer also opted to paint the model in gold, almost giving it a Game of Thrones opening sequence vibe, but President Bukele assures that the actual city won’t look so pretentious. It will be a mix of greens from trees and blues from the nearby sea, so its associations with Bitcoin can really only be seen from high above. Fortunately, there are also plans to have a viewing deck over the volcano for that very purpose.

Bitcoin City, which might be its actual name, isn’t just a tribute to the first cryptocurrency that made it big. The whole city will be built on Bitcoin, or rather its construction will be funded by the sale of Bitcoin bonds. The city will also be powered by geothermal energy from its neighboring volcano. Of course, that energy will also be used to mine bitcoins, which became El Salvador’s official currency last year, the first and so far only country to adopt a cryptocurrency in this manner.

The city’s design is admittedly enthralling, but its concept and execution will most likely leave many scratching their heads. Basing an economy and an entire city on cryptocurrency is a huge leap of faith, and there have already been signs of trouble even before sales of those bonds have started. Bitcoin City wouldn’t be the first bold enterprise to capitalize on new technological trends, but it is definitely one of the more ambitious ones. One could almost say it is Bitcoin-crazy, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration, especially considering how the city is designed around a Bitcoin.

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This pedestrian cross-walk system uses smart technology to ensure a safe flow of traffic

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Smartpass is a universal smart pedestrian cross-walk system.

The language of cross-walk signals is universal. When traveling to a new city, it can feel like such a relief knowing that you won’t have to pull out your pocket translator just to cross the street. While deciphering cross-walk signals is relatively simple, there are different road rules and forms of street etiquette that are unique to each city.

Designer: 2s.design studio

In driving cities like Los Angeles, jaywalking is generally frowned upon, but in New York, it’s an essential skill if you plan on being on time. In Poland, 2s.design studio has been at work on developing a universal smart pedestrian cross-walk system called Smartpass.

Aiming to create a cross-walk system that provides safety and comfort for all traffic participants, 2s.design studio’s Smartpass incorporates assistive features for pedestrians and vehicles that obey the cross-walk signals. When pedestrians approach the cross-walk, a central unit with built-in GSM and detection modules sends alerts to the system’s supplemental modules for pedestrians to cross safely.

Once the internal sensors detect oncoming pedestrian traffic, sound alerts are broadcasted and LED lights to illuminate to guide pedestrians to the other side of the street. Antiskid modules also trace the traffic lanes for cars to come to gradual stops as they let pedestrians walk across the street. While pedestrians cross the street, radar and monitoring modules indicate when it’s safe for cars to keep driving.

Designing Smartpass, 2s.design studio conducted research with the Institute of Roads and Bridges of the Warsaw University of Technology, which revealed that cross-walks can be made 30% safer by integrating smart cross-walk systems like Smartpass. Seeing the success of Smartpass in the city of Warsaw, the team of designers introduced the smart system to other European countries including Germany and Slovakia, holding onto the goal of opening up to manufacturers and representatives abroad.

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3D technologies transformed plastic waste into city benches to beautify concrete barriers

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USE is an experimental furniture piece built from plastic waste for the small town of Lucca to operate as a second skin for New Jersey concrete barriers as well as a city bench.

R3direct uses innovative 3D technologies to produce a collection of different items, like furniture and public infrastructure, from waste. Currently, 55% of the plastic coming from urban waste is destined for thermo-valorization or dumped in landfills. R3direct gathers plastic waste from that portion of the main supply to use for their 3D-printed products.

Designer: R3direct & Giulia del Grande

Using large-format 3D printers, R3direct is dedicated to high commercial value applications like sculptures, functional prototypes, and public or private furniture objects. Their latest experimental furniture piece is dubbed USE, which stands for ‘Urban Safety Every day.’ USE primarily functions as a ‘second skin’ for New Jersey barriers and takes the shape of a city bench for residents and tourists to enjoy.

Made from post-consumer plastics, R3direct remains committed to printing durable and bespoke objects for private and public purposes. Using innovative 3D and parametric technologies, “The recycled plastic necessary for the realization of USE,” the R3direct team explains, “comes entirely from the recycling of polylaminate beverage cartons carried out by the company Lucart, [a] world leader in the production of paper and tissue.”

Dotting the streets of the small city of Lucca, while Lucart carried out the recycling and processing of the plastic, R3direct collected the plastic waste from the re-use of about 3,300 TetraPak® cartons. The final compositional makeup of USE is 75% of FiberPack®, a material obtained from recycled cellulose fibers used in beverage cartons, and the remaining 25% is made of polyethylene and aluminum, two components used as raw, secondary materials to produce the module.

Working closely with Giulia del Grande, the USE project originates from the designer’s thesis, which explores, “the issue linked to the design of spaces to prevent the sense of fear in people who live in cities.” Calming the chaos and busy nature of cities, public furniture like benches and water fountains are incorporated into the fabric of the city to function as aesthetically pleasing home bases for urban residents and tourists.

Speaking to this, the team at R3direct notes, “Urban furniture intends to transform the concrete barriers commonly used during events or in a fixed manner to protect strategic places in the city, making them aesthetically pleasing and equipping them with various functions useful to the citizen.”

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This sustainable forest complex absorbs CO2 and produces oxygen to mitigate the effects of urbanization!

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Easyhome Huanggang Vertical Forest City Complex, comprised of five sustainable green towers, was built to mitigate the effects of urbanization and fight for the environmental survival of our cities.

As our cities become increasingly popular destinations for younger generations, the need to introduce sustainable and biophilic architecture has never felt more urgent. As we face urban expansion and densification, architects are taking initiative to ensure the environmental survival of our contemporary cities. Italian architect Stefano Boeri has found promise in vertical city forest complexes, a form of biophilic architecture that incorporates teeming greenery into the very structure of residential buildings. Easyhome Huanggang Vertical Forest City Complex is Boeri’s latest sustainable undertaking, a forest complex in Huanggang, Hubei, China “intended to create a completely innovative green space for the city.”

Bounded by three streets, Easyhome covers 4.54 hectares and comprises five towers, each of which connects with an open, public space. 404 different trees fill out the layout of Easyhome, absorbing 22 tons of carbon dioxide and producing 11 tons of oxygen over the span of a year. Helping to mitigate smog and produce oxygen, the trees incorporated into Easyhome also increase biodiversity by attracting new bird and insect species. 4,620 shrubs and 2,408 square meters of grass, flowers, and climbing plants are also spread throughout Easyhome’s structure in addition to the complex’s tree species.

Easyhome’s rhythmic, modular facade also lends itself to increased biodiversity by mimicking the incongruent, wild look of nature. Rising 80 meters in height, two of the five towers are residential buildings, while the other towers remain in use as hotels and large commercial spaces. As Boeri is no stranger to vertical green complexes, he has worked on many urban forestry projects. Everywhere, from Milan to Cairo, Boeri has designed forest complexes to help mitigate the harmful effects of urbanization. However, Easyhome is a new type of vertical forest.

Describing the building’s difference in his own words, Boeri writes, “the floors have cantilevered elements that interrupt the regularity of the building and create a continuous ever-changing movement, accentuated by the presence of trees and shrubs selected from local species.” In addition to the building’s undulating facades and rugged appeal, Easyhome implements a combination of open-air balconies and closed-off terraces to blue the transitional boundary between nature and human-centered environments. This incongruent configuartion of the building’s exterior also allows the greenery to grow freely in height and foliage, the way it would in natural forests.

Designer: Stefano Boeri Architetti

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This original tiny home in the countryside is the ultimate freedom from city stress for this couple!

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‘Living Big in a Tiny House,’ met up with New Zealand couple Russel and Leah to tour their tiny home built to escape the high stress of the city for the high hills of the countryside.

Over the span of three years, our worlds have seemed to downsize. The pandemic transformed our lifestyles and prompted many of us to escape the rat races of city living and find respite in nature. Garnering attention from city residents eager to get out, tiny homes have become our one-way tickets.

‘Living Big in a Tiny House,’ a YouTube channel that covers a variety of tiny homes, met up with Russel and Leah, a police detective and social worker, who swapped the stress of urban life for an original tiny home on their friend’s plot of farmland in New Zealand.

In New Zealand, the views are aplenty. No matter where your gaze goes, different views of sloping, grassy hillsides, golden hour sunsets, and towering trees seem to follow. For Russel and Leah, their tiny home was designed especially to bring the outdoors and all of its wonder inside. “Almost every wall,” Leah describes, “has got a window or a door and that, of course, makes the house feel bigger, bringing the outdoors in and keeping the house cool during the summer.”

While many tiny house builders coat their home’s interior walls in white paint to enlargen the living space, the windows that punctuate almost every wall in Russel and Leah’s house provide an open-air feel and allow room for moodier interior design elements.

Walking through the tiny home’s spacious french doors, the lounge area welcomes guests with a black and white cowhide rug to hearken the wildlife right outside and set the tone for the rest of the home. Just behind the rug, a plush, emerald corner sofa provides plenty of resting space and storage beneath its cushions.

From the living room, the dining area and kitchen are well within sight. A breakfast counter merges the two rooms together and doubles as a workspace. In stark contrast to the living room’s optic white walls, the kitchen features matte black walls and robust wooden accents that might come from cedar or cherry timber.

Beneath the all-black storage units, emerald tilework is illuminated with soft, warm under-cabinet lighting. Just next door to the living room is the couple’s bedroom and bathroom, where an incinerator toilet, laundry machines, and a foldout ironing board can be found.

When designing their tiny home, which measures out to 34x10ft, Russel and Leah were focused on council consent. While the home is prepared for off-grid living, with solar panels and water treatment plumbing intact and ready for use, Russel and Leah do not regularly live off-grid, opting instead for conventional electricity and plumbing.

Designers: Russel and Leah x Living Big in a Tiny House

This transforming robotic furniture descending from the ceiling to take your home from bedroom to living room!

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‘The Smile,’ a new apartment complex in East Harlem designed by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) features smart furniture systems comprised of stow-away storage units, bed frames, workspaces, and wardrobes that rise into and fall from the ceiling on command.

Technology is changing the way we live in cities. Electric scooters and bullet trains are replacing city buses, while public spaces are relying on AI and smart technology for contactless services. In New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood, a new apartment complex called, ‘The Smile’ from BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) integrates a smart, modular furniture system from Bumblebee Spaces into each apartment to take full advantage of each living unit’s full cubic space.

Built around a grid that’s mounted to each unit’s ceiling, the modular furniture systems are comprised of storage cabinets and bed frames that rise and descend according to the changing needs of each resident. When a component of the system isn’t in use, it rises and disappears into the ceiling to enlargen the unit’s available living space. Then, when one is needed, the furniture system recognizes voice commands, remote controls, and programmed settings to initiate a component’s descent from the ceiling to the unit’s floor.

For example, after waking up in the morning, residents can command the bed to merge with the ceiling to conceal it from view. Then, in the same way, residents can instruct for modules like customized workspaces and drawers to lower down from the ceiling for access during the day. Crafted from wood, the furniture system brings a touch of comfort to each unit, giving the apartment’s industrial backdrop some organic warmth. Like a robotic housekeeper, Bumblebee’s furniture system also remembers where residents left certain pieces of furniture or smaller belongings so looking for your keys won’t keep you from getting a move on.

BIG’s ‘The Smile,’ located in New York City’s East Harlem currently features 163 market-rate and 70 affordable apartments, the latter group reserved for mid and low-income residents. While the furniture system, designed by former Tesla and Apple engineers, is currently only available in five units, the future of smart living is surely on its way to every city.

Designer: Bumblebee Spaces x BIG

Each module can be outfitted for specific purposes, from workspaces to wardrobes. 

Integrated organizational systems make each module easy to navigate. 

Residents can control their smart furniture system from their smartphones.

This biophilic air purifier uses 100% fully biodegradable filters to combat landfill waste!

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Olus is a compact, biophilic air purifier designed for those living in small city spaces and is stocked with 100% fully biodegradable filters to combat landfill waste.

In major cities, dealing with air pollution is a given. We check the AQI just like we check the weather. As soon as the AQI slips into the yellow and worse yet, red territories, that’s when our air purifiers start whirring. However, living in small city spaces makes dragging bulky air purifiers from the closet feel like a chore and when everyone’s using one, the waste produced from discarding used air filters becomes another problem. That’s why Louie Duncan created Olus, a compact, biophilic air purifier designed with 100% fully biodegradable air filters.

Breathing in polluted air is physically unhealthy and the mental strain that comes from dealing with its effects only amplifies the stress. Then, the waste produced as a result makes poor air quality that much more difficult to combat, garnering 6,000 tonnes of air filter waste every year, all of which ends up in landfills. Most air purifiers taking on a bulky build with a clinical aesthetic, so Duncan aimed to give Olus an inviting look with biophilic accents that warm up its personality to enhance the product-user relationship. A digital display panel also reveals the room’s AQI, temperature, and other data.

Taking to nature for inspiration, Olus features organic forms, patterns, and textures like a moss-covered exterior and abstract trims that resemble flower petals. The filter, fan, and motor encased inside Olus’s body operate the product’s purification method in a similar fashion to most air purifiers, except Olus only works with 100% fully biodegradable filters.

The two-stage air filtration process purifies the air in any room, with the interior fan drawing in air to push through a layer of dried moss that removes large pollutants before passing through a high-efficiency particulate air filter that removes 90% of fine particulate matter. The plant-based biodegradable air filters are made from polylactic acid, a derivative of corn plants, and can be sent to Olus following use where they’ll be composted.

Designer: Louie Duncan x Christian P Kerrigan Architecture

An interior look reveals that even the encased fan resembles flower petals.

The fan, filtration system, and motor are stacked inside of Olus. 

Dried moss coats the exterior of Olus with a preliminary filtration system. 

Users can easily replace the air filters by dissembling Olus into three parts. 

Duncan created Olus to have an air purifier on the market that produces zero waste while cleaning the air we breathe.

This Japanese architect’s fairytale teahouse covered in a grassy facade is topped with a yakisugi-treated timber loft!

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Japanese architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori is known for his quirky teahouses and fondness for unusual city structures. His latest tea house transports an elf’s cottage from the pages of a fairytale to the concrete of Tokyo. Featuring grassy facades, timber treated with yakisugi, and a lofty vista point, the teahouse, called Goan, is sightly positioned in front of the new National Stadium of Tokyo where it remained until 5 September 2021 in celebration of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Poking out from the corner of one facade, visitors can crawl through a circular hole, traditionally known as a ‘Nijiriguchi,’ to gain entry to the tea room’s interior. Moving inside, visitors pass through the grassy exterior and are welcomed by an entirely unstained wooden first floor. Functioning as a reinterpretation of ‘Nijiriguchi,’ a small wooden staircase and ladder connects the bottom floor with the upper tea room.

Upstairs, visitors can enjoy a cup of tea and a view of the National Stadium designed by Kengo Kuma. From the outside, the upstairs tearoom inside Goan is visually separated from the first floor with a timber exterior constructed from yakisugi treated wood, a traditional Japanese method of wood preservation. The tea room is swaddled in polished natural wooden panels and furniture, giving the room an air of organic warmth.

Standing as one of eight pavilions that are designed to showcase Japan’s future of urban architecture and art, the Goan Teahouse was installed as part of the city’s Pavilion Tokyo 2021 initiative. The initiative coincided with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where six world-renowned Japanese architects and two artists each designed a one-of-a-kind pavilion for fans of the games and city visitors and residents to enjoy.

Designer: Terunobu Fujimori

Plots of grass were used to cover the exterior of Goan, a natural choice for Fujimori. 

Inside, visitors access the upper tearoom via a wooden staircase and ladder, a reinterpretation of ‘nijiriguchi.’

Upstairs, visitors can enjoy a cup of tea and city views inside a room decked out in polished natural wood.

The National Stadium designed by Kengo Kuma is a direct sightline from the upper vista point inside the tearoom. 

Fujimori worked alongside undergraduate architecture students from Ouchida Laboratory to finish Goan. 

Fujimori’s plans for Goan are now on display at the Watarium Art Museum.

The post This Japanese architect’s fairytale teahouse covered in a grassy facade is topped with a yakisugi-treated timber loft! first appeared on Yanko Design.