Popshots...

...proud to have popuplunch featured as part of the US Pavilion at the 2012 International venice Architecture Biennale. So exciting!

Love Locks

It's been nearly a year since I was sucked back into the vortex that is working full time but this weekend, I had a chance to come up for some fresh air. My husband and I took a lovely post-taxes stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge on saturday. We had barely pushed off from the shore of Manhattan when we started noticing locks affixed to every affixable structure on the bridge (benches, hooks, wires). In some places there were so many locks that they began to look like barnacles. I had seen locks on the bridge before but what we were seeing now was exponential growth since the last time we had crossed. Every lock was different and most were personalized, with initials or affections. The hot pink ode to NYC above was one of my favorites. Another lock looked like it was the first lock ever made. It was over-sized and rusty and seemed to have spent a number of years in the Hudson before someone had dove in and drudged it out especially for the occasion. It was, aesthetically, a perfect barnacle for the Brooklyn Bridge. We started to seek out the locks as we walked and made a sort of game out of who could find the next one first. It was lovely - as if we were on a treasure hunt - and we appreciated this strange lock barnacle phenomenon, even if we didn't understand it. When we got home we did a Google search and then we did understand it. Though I kind of rather liked it better when we didn't. Click here to learn the lore behind the love locks.

Break me off a piece...

While I contemplate this blog's evolution into an urban design-based news aggregator, take a look at this brilliant Kit Kat "ad" that recently launched in NZ:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1644021/have-a-break-in-kit-kats-new-diy-chair

a couple of more that i meant to post earlier, while i am at it..."oldies" but still goodies:

A Smashing Idea: Eco-Friendly Aggression

Kate Gilmore: Walk the Walk

Excitement: Metropolis Coverage

Link to article here: THE IMAGE VS. THE OBJECT

The Key to the City

Saw this bit in the Times and after reading more on the Creative Time site, I got goosebumps and want to cry (tears of delight!) all at the same time....it is just a wonderful idea and I can't wait to participate:

‘Key to the City’ Kiosk

You no longer have be someone important to get a key to the city, at least not this summer. The New York artist Paul Ramírez Jonas likes engaging the public in his interventions. Together with Creative Time, a nonprofit organization that presents art around the city, and the office of the mayor, he has come up with “Key to the City.”

From June 3 to June 27, a kiosk in Times Square will give out 35,000 free keys that recipients can then bestow on friends and family. The keys will unlock a host of mysterious events including small exhibitions or provide access to little-known, otherwise off-limits spaces in New York. It is a scavenger hunt involving 20 sites in all five boroughs, like a boxing gym in Brooklyn, a community garden in Staten Island and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.

The keys will unlock steel gates and padlocks, security booths and secret doors, and what will be hidden behind them is yet to be revealed. Each participant will receive a map to the sites.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Ramírez Jonas has used keys in his work. Five years ago he distributed 1,000 that opened the gates to a tiny park in Cambridge, Mass. He also mailed 5,000 artist-designed keys to Cambridge households, stamped with phrases like “Copy Me,” encouraging people to make duplicates to increase access to the park. And in 2008 as part of the São Paulo Biennale, Mr. Ramírez Jonas arranged for members of the public to receive keys to the front door of the exhibition’s pavilion. Each recipient was required to leave behind a copy of one of their own keys.

The New York project was like “creating a portrait of the city,” Mr. Ramírez Jonas said in a telephone interview. To pick the sites, he explained, he sat down with a map and made a list of different kinds of experiences that make up a city. “It was like being an urban planner,” he added.

Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time, said the custom-made keys themselves were little sculptures. “I don’t think people will ever get rid of them,” he said.

Creative Time has more info on program + how to volunteer!

ok - i am back. LOVE the billboard:

so much fun...see post below...everyone must try it: just send an email to 390gaoxip@tumblr.com or go to wesee.us.

Beautiful Day for a Chair Seeding

DoTank:Brooklyn is a recently-formed group of industrial designers, planners, architects and urbanists with a passion for urban betterment. It stages guerrilla-style design interventions for the public good. Look out!

Currently the team is hard at work turning used wooden shipping palettes into Adirondack-style chairs and will be seeding them around Williamsburg today, near N5th + Berry. I could really see this evolving and I'd love to see them develop location-specific chairs....what would a Williamsburg-style chair be versus a Brooklyn Heights-style chair?

DoTank:Brooklyn obviously has a lot more in its toolbox than just a hammer and nails (do you love that line?). Another standout project they have spearheaded is The Brooklyn Wall: an interactive billboard/live graffiti wall that leverages technology as a means of building community in Brooklyn. The screen projects an on-going stream of user-generated images. Anyone can participate in the experience by sending their own images to 390gaoxip@tumblr.com. The billboard went public for a test run earlier in the month in Williamsburg and I hope we see it up again real soon. In the meantime, you can still send your images to the Wesee.Us site. I am going to try it myself right now...

More on the birdhouses

Including the tiniest pictures ever, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Saw this "Book Forest" - a street-based public book exchange in Berlin - in the DIY Culture article in the Times this weekend. Brilliant.

Chair Graffiti

Some people check out cars, I check out standpipes. A couple of months ago I saw a real beauty on Henry street near Montague. Look at it - clean, shiny and just perfect for sitting. In the way of street structures, it is really something to see.

My initial thought was that there should be more of them. If the whole side of the building was lined with standpipe-style seating, it would give people a built-in place to sit back and watch the world go by.

When I mocked it up I realized that more of a good thing is not better. Plus, installing multiple standpipes onto a building is a bit impractical.

I must have had standpipes in the back of my brain since then and the other day an idea came to me. Now, I am not a graffiti artist and I don't plan on blazing that path, but in the vein of functional street art, what about chair graffiti? The graphics wouldn't have to be permanent (think chalk, or decals, ala the Droog subway cars) but they would provide a nod to the potential dual function of the street structures around us.

This one is simple and based on a Thonet-style chair but the designs could vary by standpipe. Some could be really ornate and over the top, others could live in a more modernist vein. It is a really fun idea, and useful. It isn't about creating more things but about creating awareness.

A busker who passes muster

Artistic performances pop up unexpectedly in NYC. Sometimes they can be really in your face, like when a Mariachi band suddenly steps into your crowded subway car or when an 8-year old break dancer with a boom box starts doing backflips in the aisle.

Other musicians are more low-key and their sounds really help to enhance an ordinary experience, like commuting, by creating a lovely mood that asks for your attention without demanding it. Brother Han lives in that camp. I first heard him a few months ago in the High Street subway station and I was delighted to find him more recently performing right smack in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, perhaps the bestest New York stage of all.

What do parachuting easter bunnies and solar-powered trash bins have in common?

The answer: Philadelphia. What a fun city. I was there over the weekend and saw many interesting things in and around it, including:

A parachuting Easter Bunny.








A performance by a Mummers band.

A public pillow fight.

And, if you are still with me, perhaps most relevant to Pop Up Lunch, these "Big Belly" solar-powered, compacting trash cans. Looks like they were installed last year throughout Philadelphia, amongst other cities, to great success.










The benefits? Big Belly says it better than I could: "The unit takes up as much space as the "footprint" of an ordinary receptacle—but its capacity is five times greater. Increased capacity reduces collection trips and can cut fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. BigBelly also provides cost efficiencies from labor savings, fuel cost and maintenance savings, as well as environmental benefits from reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants."

So that's all great - Love it and am wondering why we aren't seeing these popping up around NYC. HMMM....

I was also thinking that there may be room to build on the Big Belly concept. Instead of trying to blend the bins into urban environments with a "sleek design" (again, Big Belly's words, not mine), what if they were designed to stand out? What if you could see from the outside what was happening to the trash inside the belly? That would be totally cool, A, and B, it would be an educational experience, leading to heightened awareness about consumption. C, it would be useful for the trash collectors, as they could take a quick visual read of when a bin needs to be emptied. And D, the garbage bin would shift from industrial structure to living sculpture. Here is a quick sketch to illustrate what I am talking about:

As it is now, you drop your trash and then it is out of sight, out of mind. But if the bins had a soft/flexible but structured middle, you would be able to see the shape of the trash, and the different stages of compaction (with trash getting flatter and more compact from the bottom up). If you could literally see trash being "digested", you would make the link to your own consumption cycle and think about what happens next.

I don't think it is so different from Volkswagon's Fun Theory (they have a garbage bin idea too). It is about rewarding positive behaviors with engaging experiences. Here is a video of their Piano Step project in a Stockholm subway:

NYC Smells

I feel lucky to have had the chance to attend a very thought-provoking all-day scent symposium at Parson's yesterday ( Headspace: On Scent as Design ). Today in the Post, of all places, there is a recap of research done by one of the most impressive presenters, Dr. Leslie Vosshall. She did a 5-year study on the New York scent experience. I love that there is a universality to smells but that each person's interpretation and experience with them is completely unique. But what really blows me away is the potential for our noses to bring so much more to our everyday experiences if we just paid a little more attention to them.

More at 'Rank' them in odor - NYPOST.com

Pop Up Lunch Does Radio

A month or two ago, I was contacted by a couple of radio guys who do a show called the Dinner Party Download for American Public Media (which is just like NPR but not). They had heard about Pop Up Lunch and wanted to see if I was interested in being interviewed for a pilot segment (purposefully vague here). We shot some footage (well, the camera guy shot it, the rest of us just talked and ate) and then later in the week I did a radio interview with Rico. It was a lot of fun and you can listen to the radio portion if you go to this link: Episode 45: Tig Notaro, Big Brass Bells, & Pop Up Lunch

It is too early for cocktail hour, but maybe then I will be able to listen to it myself!

The Dinner Party Download was conceived by Rico Gagliano + Brendan Francis Newman. In their words: The Dinner Party Download is a fast and funny "booster shot" of unconventional news, cuisine and culture to help you win your next dinner party. It was named one of iTunes' 25 Best Podcasts of 2008.

This is HUGE

Pier One, the first nearly completed piece of Brooklyn Bridge Park, is open! MVVA | Brooklyn Bridge Park

Lunch Lady Land

Hey - Last night I watched what must have been a sneak preview of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Push aside any cynicism - it is pretty riveting stuff, if not a bit sensationalist. Sure, he isn't an American chef and that might rub some of you the wrong way but it shouldn't. He is putting his fame to good use and even if he is building the Jamie Oliver brand along the way, the net effect is absolutely positive. The show premiers this Friday (3/26 at 8/7c). Watch it.

sites and sounds of spring

if only i could import the scent of hyacinths...

a little piece of happy

Spotted, on the Brooklyn Promenade. Love-ly.

A "new" and useful folding lunchbox

came across this idea in a patent search. i just love that we have access to digital info that far back:

IMPROVED FOLDING LUNCHBOX