VINTAGE SHOPPING.

Artist and designer Ebony Bizys captured our attention with her post about Shimokitazawa a suburb in Japan and must-visit destination for lovers of vintage shopping, cozy cafes and general cuteness. She describes it as “packed with teeny tiny six-seater bars, adorable cafes, loads of cheap and cheerful restaurants, vintage and retro clothing stores, live music venues, secondhand record stores, homewares and vintage stores…Come here if you fancy an afternoon wondering around people spotting, stay until sundown, have a G+T at Mois cafe, and try some delicious okonomiyaki.”

In addition to Mois, a relaxing cafe set in an old two story home, Bizys highlights several shops and thrift stores in the suburb. One is Sou, a crafty clothing and homewares store that makes a custom calendar just for customers. Commune is another shop, with a tiny gallery, that sells zines, art and other handmade items. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

» Read More

ARCHITECTURE.

At the 2006 Venice Biennale, MAD Architects envisioned the future of Beijing with three proposals. One of their visions was the “Future of Hutongs,” a plan for metallic bubble structures that would pop up in hutongs, or narrow alleys, in the city’s oldest neighborhoods. Now, the first of these bubbles has made its debut in a modest, residential courtyard.

Rapid development in Beijing in recent years has been hard for the city to keep up with, and standards of living in older neighborhoods have suffered. MAD’s hutong bubbles address these conditions as small-scale, adaptable interventions that can grow with the fabric of the city and provide new, positive opportunities in struggling areas. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

» Read More

ART & CULTURE.

The exhibition space at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York appears customary when you first arrive. The main level of the former industrial building is a traditional gallery with white walls, high ceilings and rotating exhibitions of contemporary sculpture and installation. But walk to the back of the gallery, and a narrow set of stairs descends to a basement where you will find artworks staked out in underground tunnels, nestled beside brick walls and projected onto stone alcoves.

Leopards in the Temple, an exhibition that opened in January and runs through March 30, 2010, utilizes both floors of the Center. Among the artists featured on the more cavernous level is Philadelphia-based artist Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, who answered a few of our questions about the show, the Center and the curious locale of Long Island City. Click Read More for the full interview and photos.

» Read More

LOCAL CULTURE.

People out in Rotterdam last Friday night who spotted a glowing, poppy-colored umbrella dome on the street couldn’t resist stopping in for a spontaneous party. The temporary structure housed a full bar and DJ, and over 300 visitors gathered there until 2 am when the police shut things down. Titled the Bucky Bar, the dome was part of a series of unsolicited positive proposals for the future of the city of Rotterdam by DUS Architects and Studio for Unsolicited Architecture.

From the architect/party planners: “The title refers to the great American inventor, Buckminster Fuller, who demonstrated how minimal energy geodesic domes could open a way to a more environmentally sustainable future. Could an umbrella dome lead the way to a more socially sustainable future? The Bucky Bar is a full-scale model of such a future. It shows the power of space for spontaneous gathering, for improvised shelters to host conversations, debates, games or even parties.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

» Read More

CITY INNOVATIONS.

Perhaps this is an argument for Travel Health Insurance. Though we generally try to avoid ending up in mental health institutions, Nendo’s recently completed clinic in Japan might be worth feigning maladies to secure a visit. The Japanese firm’s design aims to express the clinic’s philosophy of treatment in its architecture. It transforms a patient’s stay into an entirely encompassing experience.

From Design Boom: “The doors that line the walls of the clinic do not open, and ‘ordinary’ parts of the walls open up into new spaces. The consultation rooms are entered by sliding the bookshelves sideways. The door at the end of the hallway opens onto a window; the amount of light in the hallway is controlled by opening and closing the door.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

» Read More

PLACES TO SEE.

How do you take something old, decrepit and forgotten and make people pay attention? Lasers, apparently, are one solution. Mid-February, French lighting studio Creatmosphere set up high-powered lasers along Brighton, England’s skeletal West Pier, and brought new recognition to a struggling local landmark.

According to Fast Company: “Brighton, England’s 1,115-foot-long West Pier has had a tough run lately. Built in 1866, it closed in 1975 and was burned to a crisp by a series of fires in 2003 (arson, say the experts). Plans to rebuild it have been batted around for years, but they’ve always been too expensive.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

» Read More

ART & CULTURE.

On view now at SITE art space in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hasan Elahi’s Tracking Transience is a painstaking study in self-surveillance. It is also a response to, and provocation of, the politics of privacy and government oversight. Elahi, a Bangladesh-born American, developed the piece after being falsely accused as a 9/11 terrorist accomplice in 2002. He documents every detail of his life in photos: meals before he eats them, toilets before he uses them, and monitors his location with a GPS tracker. The artist has said: “I’ve decided that if the government wants to monitor me that’s fine. But I could do a much better job monitoring myself than anyone else.”

» Read More