Veggies can be a powerful tool to fight obesity, food deserts, and create beautification and community engagement. This blog post is a great example…
Category: community
In Philadelphia, More Green Innovations
A great example of re-energizing public space and making it more green and friendly.
Superkilen: Global Mash-up of a Park
Using parks and other playful spaces to improve urban neighborhoods and the residents’ lives…
The nearly mile-long Superkilen park in Denmark is a bold attempt to create a new identity for an “ethnically diverse and socially challenged” neighborhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. An in-depth community outreach process organized by the city has led to a place like no other, with a sequence of plazas that honor different ethnics groups living in the area. Designed by Bjarke Ingels’ firm, BIG, landscape architecture firm, Topotek 1, and artists’ group, Superflex, the massive project also accomplished a lot with a little budget: at just $34 per square foot, the landscape “packs a lot of bang for the buck.” The project, which has recently been all over the design press, also just took home the AIA Institute Honor Award for urban and regional design and an annual design award from Architect Magazine in the “play” category.
The AIA jury, which included Ellen Dunham Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia
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Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA | Video on TED.com
Happy Spring Forward. Time to start planting seeds and playing in the dirt. In honor of getting dirty and creative, here’s a a TED talk from Ron Finley, guerrilla gardener.
Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA — in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”Ron Finley grows a nourishing food culture in South Central L.A.’s food desert by planting the seeds and tools for healthy eating.
Best quote ever: “Gardening is the most therapeutic & defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. Plus you get strawberries.”
via Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA | Video on TED.com.
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- TED: Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA – Ron Finley (2013) (ted.com)
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7 playful acts of kindness | KaBOOM!
The nice thing about this is you can do this ANY week!
Are you getting ready for National Peanut Butter & Jelly Day? What about No Socks Day? There are all sorts of random holidays, but this week we celebrate a different kind of random—Random Acts of Kindness Week. Here at KaBOOM!, we know all about t
he joys of spontaneous play. Whether you want to call them playful acts of kindness or random acts of play, here are seven ways to make friends and strangers smile, this week and beyond:
Monday: Give a high five—or five!
It’s impossible not to feel energized after a high five. Use this
week as an excuse to give out as many high fives as possible, to
strangers and friends alike.
Tuesday: Draw a hopscotch board on the sidewalk.
Turn someone’s routine walk into a hop, skip, and a jump by
sketching out a hopscotch board with sidewalk chalk. For extra fun,
target a business district to inject some play into the daily grind.
read on at 7 playful acts of kindness | KaBOOM!.
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- 2013 ‘Playful City USA’ Application Open ~ Due March 13! (liamomahony.com)
The best examples of street art in 2012 48 pictures | memolition
As you head home tonight, keep an eye out for any rogue street art on your commute. You’ll be surprised what you may see… 🙂
more at The best examples of street art in 2012 48 pictures | memolition.
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- Heart-Bearing Metal Fences – This Valentine’s Day Street Art is Simply Sweet (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
- Street art map: Pinning life to Chch (stuff.co.nz)
- Top 10 Street Art Across The UK And Ireland (essentialtravel.co.uk)
- Spray it out loud: London’s street art (onefinestay.com)
Power of Play
What a beautiful collection of photos capturing people playing around the world. Happy Friday, go play! 🙂
Landscapes Can Be Open-ended « The Dirt
An academic take on creating inviting, communal public spaces:
In Operative Landscapes: Building Communities Through Public Space, Alissa North, Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto, argues that the best contemporary landscape designs are concerned with more than just aesthetics. Instead of striving for fixed, static designs, the goals of these landscapes are “operational”: they aim to guide “the transformation of urban environments over time.” By moving away from fixed form, landscapes can be open-ended and non-prescriptive, changing in response to — but also influencing — the development of their communities.
continue reading Landscapes Can Be Open-ended « The Dirt.
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Playgrounds made from junk | KaBOOM!
Recycle, reuse, replay!
Plastic bottles, car parts, shipping containers, steel drums, and tires.
No, we’re not describing a junkyard — we’re describing a potential playground. Recycled playground structures combine ingenuity, whimsy, and thrift to create spaces that are friendly to our kids and our planet alike.From Brazil to Norway to Uganda, these playgrounds are true gems, even if they’re made from junk; more via Playgrounds made from junk | KaBOOM!.
At IIDEX: Will the Office Go the Way of the Phonebooth and Mailbox? : TreeHugger
Happy Monday. Most of us are probably back at work now after the holidays. But for many of us, our work space has changed fairly dramatically in the past few years, in large part due to advances in technology. What used to be office-bound work can now be done at home in one’s slippers while simultaneously playing with your child (not that I’ve ever done that!). What does the future of work spaces look like? This article tackles that very question. The subject isn’t specifically related to playful environments, but creating spaces that are more conducive to creativity and productivity are incredibly intertwined with playful environment:
The company Teknion has been doing a serious amount of research into where the office is going, and what they should be designing and building to furnish it, and have published Phonebooths and Mailboxes to look at the future of the office.
© TEKNION
Phonebooths and Mailboxes is a discussion about new technologies. Consider how quickly the cell phone replaced the pager, how quickly the fax machine was replaced by email. Mobile technology now signals one of the biggest transformations within the modern office.
more via At IIDEX: Will the Office Go the Way of the Phonebooth and Mailbox? : TreeHugger.
As awesome as flexibility with one’s work space is, there is also value with face-to-face, tangible collaboration. Plus spaces for creative work and data analysis work, or whatever kind of work, may need very different spaces.
What are your thoughts about how technology is changing what our offices look like?
Mental Flowers 