Berlin part 1: Contemporary architecture in memoriam of WWII – Daniel Libeskind & Peter Eisenman

This December, the weekend before Christmas, I made a flying 24 hour visit to Berlin. Berlin has so much to see that in that short period of time, one can only get a little taster. So I curated my own visit by making a small selection of sights to see, rather than trying in vain to do everything. I mainly concentrated on the 20th century, which means WWII and Cold War memorials.

As someone who studied architecture in the turn of the century and took not a few classes in Deconstructivism (or Decon), I had to visit two of the works I had read and been taught so much about, from two of the biggest names in Decon.

The Mosquito Killer Billboard

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Welcome Collections exhibition “Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?”. I always enjoy a good design exhibition and there were a lot of interesting exhibits to see. But the one that really caught my eye was about a Billboard in Brazil that helped fight the Zika virus by killing mosquitoes.

Solar Road

This is slightly old news, but some of you might not have heard of it already. Others who have heard of it might just like to be reminded so they can get excited over it all over again.

Assuming you get as excited as me over these sorts of innovations.

Sao Paolo’s Parklets

The Need For Public Space

Public space has always interested me immensely: the necessity of public spaces where people can meet and congregate and play and just be, together in public for free. The free part is very important. A true public space belongs to the public, the entirety of the public, no groups or individuals are excluded. You can spend as long as you want in the space, and you don’t have to pay or ask permission from anyone. One of the worst things about capitalist society is the illegal privatisation of space. The government parcels off and sells the public domain bit by bit leaving us, the people, the public with less and less places we can freely be.

Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park in Stratford

Despite being in London during the 2012 Olympics, I never went to see any of the events. And despite hearing a lot about the olympic park in Stratford and the planes for it, I had never got round to visiting it. A couple of weeks ago, during Green Sky Thinking week, MACE, the company in charge of making the olympic park, held a treasure hunt there one evening as a fun way to tell us about it. It was actually quite fun.

Poynton Regenerated

One day I might write a detailed rant about how cars and traffic have destroyed our cities and landscapes and contributed towards the alienation of the modern city and life. But today I want to sing the praises of sensitive urban design and how sometimes simple low-budget changes are all you need to completely turn around an area.

Poynton is a Cheshire village with a population of 16,000, situated on the southern fringe of the Greater Manchester Conurbation. The heart of the village used to be completely destroyed by the two four lane busy highroads that crossed right at it’s centre. Hard headed town councillors who didn’t back down from a fight together with an innovative design team pushed through a humane and innovative shared space scheme to completely transform the town centre.

Don’t take my word for it, look at the short film!

more reading:
www.sustrans.org.uk
www.ice.org.uk

Freiburg – the German eco-city

The City of Freiburg is often called Germany’s “ecological capital” and has been recognized internationally as one of the world’s most livable, sustainable and child-friendly cities. In 1993, IMCL awarded the City of Freiburg the IMCL (International Making Cities Livable) City of Vision Award. Since then, Freiburg has received numerous awards for its leadership in sustainable transportation planning, promotion of walking and biking, traffic calming mechanisms, human scale mixed-use development, renewable energy, protection of nature, and sustainability.

City Lounge

I have never been there but I heard about this project in a talk about city design and regeneration and thought it was one of the most fun things I had come across in a while. And it managed the rare feat of actually making me consider visiting Switzerland to see it.

Trees in the townscape

I have changed up my posting schedule a little bit by adding a new category. I live with the hope that I will eventually become a proper blogger and uphold my schedule.

So first urban brief.

Let’s talk about trees. I love the city. I’m a city girl born and bred. That doesn’t stop me loving nature too. I find the countryside gorgeous, but I don’t know if I’d be able to live there. So some of my favourite places are parks and city beaches and hills, generally all sorts of places that bring nature into the city.

New York’s abandoned subway stations

I went out yesterday and I have to run soon today as well, giving me no time to properly think of a city story post. I really should plan these things in advance.

I know I usually post about city locations I have actually personally visited, but I came across a very interesting tidbit about a city that I’d love to visit, but haven’t managed yet. I bookmarked this interesting blog post about an abandoned subway station in New York with the idea of doing some research into it.