« March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008 | Main | April 6, 2008 - April 12, 2008 »

April 4, 2008

The ultimate small apartment design guide

If you live in an apartment and you care about good design, it'd be a shame if you've never been to Apartment Therapy's 3-million-unique-visitors-a-month site, featuring great apartment design examples via several illustrated blog entries a day.

Being a regular at the site, one can fathom the criticism following the site's founder and HGTV design expert Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan for not having pictures in his first Apartment Therapy book. He didn't make the same mistake in his second book published March 5, 2008, Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Real Design Solutions, richly infused with 400 photos over 40 case studies.

Each of the home profiles provides floor plans and "how I did it" explanations from the renters/owners themselves, along with beautifully shot photos.

Check out previous Apartment Therapy entries here, especially their stunning Fall Colors and inspiring Smallest Coolest Apartments contests.

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April 3, 2008

Third place coffeehouses as economic development

I first profiled Tryst back in 2003 as a popular coffeehouse third place in Adams Morgan, Washington DC. But five years later, ten years after it first opened, it's not only become a neighborhood institution, but it really should be seen as a contemporary model for job creation.

Here's the big picture:

1. A majority of big businesses come from small businesses, and small businesses are started by entrepreneurs... from their homes.
2. Many (not all) entrepreneurs who tried working exclusively from home will tell you one thing - it sucks. No human interaction, no place for meetings, no escape from spending most of your life stuck at home.
3. Coworking sites are ideal, but are often too pricey for the budding entrepreneur.
4. Thus, enter coffeehouses with free wifi and staff trained not to bug you too often if you've decided to park there for most of the workday. The good news is they're packed with entrepreneurs all day. The bad news is that they're not very profitable until they leave.

In the meantime cities are investing tons of capital in contrived business incubators that often fail. Why not redirect that capital into economic development tax breaks for coffeehouses that provide evidence of effectively acting as free workplaces for entrepreneurs?

On the one hand, Tryst makes no money before 6 pm. On the other hand one can't get a seat during the day. It seems to be an economic travesty not to have enough workplaces for the neighborhood entrepreneurs. Proactive cities will overcome this, but it obviously hasn't happened in Adams Morgan yet.

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April 2, 2008

The best city-wide creative social events are sourced by individuals

You may think the most popular, buzz-inducing events that creatives flock to are sponsored by city or arts-related organizations with budgets, but not so. Remember, creatives are attracted to natural cultural districts, which in turn consist of third places, events and scenes sourced by individuals.

A case in point - let's look at the ongoing events attracting creatives in Washington DC:

Pecha Kucha - The first Thursday of the month, the DC version of this nationwide design presentation (a handful of artists presenting 20 images for 20 seconds each, no more, no less) is organized by two sister architects and hosted at innovative venues throughout the city.

The Pink Line Project - Single-handedly run by flaneur Philippa Hughes, Pink Line hosts ongoing creative get togethers known as Salon Contra, to spontaneous edgy events like roller derby art shows and live paintings, the latter of which just logged in at 700 attendees.

X in DC - This monthly third Saturday of the month event was founded by multimedia creative David Fogel as a 21st century Live-art "happening". In his words, it's a "kick-ass, inspired and inspiring event for all that brought artists out of their personal studios and into a multi-media, live-art environment" - LIVE (Electronica + Projections + Art + Fashion + Performance) + YOU = X.

Capital Fringe - The world renowned Edingburgh Fringe Festival, a wildly innovative, crowdsourced, underground cultural event of performers comparable to nothing else in the world, now has its own version in DC, thanks to founders Julianne Brienza and Damian Sinclair.

Elements! - Where else can you mass collaborate (that's right, crowdsource) a restaurant? Join its 'beta community', initiated by VIBE Linda Welch, and check out the monthly collaborations. Pictured above - the one-year anniversary party of the first meeting and celebration of the signing of a lease for a 3500 s.f. space.

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April 1, 2008

Crowdsource a tool to support local indie retail districts

What makes 'organically-grown' retail and entertainment districts (natural cultural districts) so cool? A lot of it has to do with the presence of local, independent businesses, you know, the shabby chic coffeehouses, restaurants with live music and neighborhood events, unique shops with cafes...

Many of you are also now familiar with crowdsourced placemaking, especially one specific business, one building, and one district at a time. But what if you wanted to make a difference to invigorate all of the local indie businesses in the natural cultural district within your own neighborhood, and you wanted to do it now?

Let's crowdsource a tool and system to do just that, shall we?

Let's start with a sponsor and an existing prototype a few triple-bottom-line businesses co-developed, such as a 'TV guide' and directory web portal and crowdsourcing tool for all the events, experiences, scenes and third places in your retail district that exist... and don't exist.

The effort to date is resulting in a vision to make it vastly affordable for all main streets, mass customizable, highly googleable, with Amazon-like user reviews/ratings of all the businesses and events, the ability to suggest missing events on the 'TV Guide', and the opportunity to crowdsource the missing venues that the local creative patrons collectively feel are sorely needed... In Adams Morgan, Washington DC, a willing candidate for this program, it's a bakery; another great coffeehouse because the present one's too crowded; a larger performance theatre; more legitimate places to buy clothes...

The incentive to join this crowdsourcing effort, in line with the Think Local First campaign (which I guess fittingly doesn't have a national website) and perhaps the National Main Street Center, is not only the chance to customize a program to help revitalize your neighborhood commercial center, but every contributor gets a tenth off the eventual cost, the top ones win a third to half of the eventual cost, some even free.

Email to participate via the email link in the right column.

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March 31, 2008

Pub on wheels

A year ago we profiled the conference bike from the Netherlands, which allowed seven people on one bike together - and have a 'conference' at the same time. Be it no surprise that the Dutch now bring us the Fietscafe (pictured above), or the PedalPub as it's known (and distributed) in the USA. If the world has a biking scene, it's hands down in the Netherlands.

This time instead of seven, there are fourteen people that can ride at the same time, each of them pedaling at their own leisure, with a roof, a bar counter, and a keg. To get the true spirit of it you'd have to check out a video and read a journalist's personal experience.

The inventors, the Van Laar brothers, have built 31 of these bikes ranging in price from $30,000-$40,000, offering different versions with models seating from seven to seventeen people, designed for wedding parties, women or the non-drinking crowd. It has a top speed of 8 mph going downhill.

Think of it as the ultimate alternative to the Hummer limousine.

Thanks to Luke Graven for the reference.

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