German street artist EVOL created thhis underground urban "X" in a field outside of Hamburg as part of the MS Dockville cultural festival. It took us more than a few looks to wrap our heads around the fact that these are stencils. Pretty amazing. It took him eight days to get it together. Check out a photo series of his process here. The work is part of EVOL's......read more
Give us some of those good vibrations. How everyday behaviors can produce clean energy. Livable cities all have one thing in common; they're designed for people, not cars. It's hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. What does that mean for the worst oil spill in U.S. history? Now that's sustainable architecture. Straw, string or human hair, urban birds build nests with......read more
What can the world's poorest 'hoods teach us about city planning? Lots, according to architects and urban designers Pavlina Ilieva and Kuo Pao Lian. Grist discusses sustainable urban design lessons from the slums. It's a Tree Life: The first offline project from The Cool Hunter will feature tree homes designed by top architects from around the globe. The exhibition is slated to......read more
James Bowthorpe is bad ass. Last year, in a bid to raise awareness for Parkinson's, he rode his bike around the world in 174 days, setting a new world record. Earlier this fall, he built a boat from construction waste and rowed it down the Thames. Now he's doing the same thing on the Hudson River. Feel lazy now? Same. Read an interview with the man at Nowness. Everyone is going off......read more
While American cities tend to bend over backwards to accommodate vehicle traffic, cities in Europe are going the opposite direction, making planning changes that make it prohibitively annoying and expensive (if not downright illegal) to drive cars in the inner city. NYT environment reporter Elizabeth Rosenthal discusses the traffic-tormenting situation in Europe: Cities including......read more
We hear a lot about the "liveability" of cities. The Economist, Monocle, Business Week, all of them have their own an annual index of city liveability. But what about sustainability? What makes a city sustainable? In a recent interview, Harvard Professor Joan Busquets expounds on the idea. The former head planner of Barcelona says that cities are sustainable when natural geographic features......read more
Emil Kozak's raw, black-and-white collection "Get out of the city" looks at the links -- and contradictions --- between urban and natural environments. Based in Barcelona, the Danish photographer says of his photography practice, "I hope that my work can remind us that imagination can defy gravity and bend time. It is our own responsibility to enjoy every second of the day.......read more
For most of us, the thought of being without clothes in some dark, desolate corner of an abandoned factory is, quite literally, a nightmare. For Miru Kim, it's just another day at the office. In Naked City Spleen, the New York-based artist photographs herself standing stark naked in urban ruins such as abandoned tunnels, sewers, catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. The body of work......read more
It goes without saying that a vacant lot looks a far sight better with abundant greenery than filled with trash and dirt. But, aesthetics aside, greened lots may also be better for the health of people living nearby. At Fast Co Exist, Andrew Price points us to a new report from the University of Pennsylvania, which studied the health impacts of Philadelphia's vacant lot greening......read more
London-born, Marseille-based photographer James Reeve trips the light fantastic with his most recent collection of images, Lightscapes. Working under cloak of night, Reeve trains his camera on the lights of the city, removing everything but the speckled light patterns themselves. The effect is arresting, akin to the woozy feeling one gets when looking out the window of an airplane at......read more