Check out the video of Glow above, hosting interactive artful experiences in the historic pier district, like a kaleidoscope that reads your emotions; 950 glow sticks stuck in the beach to demonstrate the changing tide to a video projected onto a waterwall. What makes these art festivals truly unique is allowing the crowd to not only participate in the art-making experience (like the kaleidoscope), but as a collective group as well, such as a large-scale outdoor water mist projection that displayed wildly vivid colors and patterns created in response to the “competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby”. See images below.
‘White Night’ all night art festivals sweep the world
What do Paris, Toronto, Copenhagen, Madrid, Malta, Montreal, Sao Paulo, Lima, Santa Monica, Chicago, Miami Beach and six cities in the UK have in common? They all host an all night art and cultural festival known as Nuit Blanche (White Night), which lasts from sundown until sunrise on the first Saturday and Sunday in October. While Paris kicked off the Nuit Blanche series in 2002, they were inspired by the ‘Lange Nacht der Museen’ (Long Night of Museums) held in Berlin, Germany since 1997, which goes from 6 pm to 2 am and has since expanded to 125 cities.
These events are focused on the downtown core of the city (streets closed to cars) which becomes an art gallery unto itself, infused with museums, art galleries and cultural institutions offering free admission to a suite of creative events and experiences including art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art) and themed social gatherings. Rome’s Nuit Blanche is one of the largest, attracting two million people via 400 events, while other cities focus on a more manageable 100. Read more about the different themes in this NY Times article, Outbreak of Insomnia is Spreading.
Think of it as a downtownCicloviafor after hours - on steroids. Every city should have one, and in Europe practically every city does. It brings new meaning to dancing in the streets - all night.
Thanks to Braulio Agnese of Architect magazine for the reference.
August 9, 2008 will go down in history as the beginning of Manhattan’s transformation in becoming a truly pedestrian-oriented city. Through their Summer Streets program, they held the first of three street closings to cars along seven miles through the heart of the city. How’d it go? Read the quotes below from participants (shown in the film) below and decide for yourself! Once again, any city that has a DOT (Dept. of Transportation) like New York City will be attracting hordes of creatives - Summer Streets is their idea. See the quote by the Commissioner of the DOT below.
“Every day should be Summer Streets day!”
“This is ridiculously fun. They should have done this a long time ago.”
“We’re so lucky to live in a city where Mayor Bloomberg and his team want to show the world that New York city is a sport capital of the world and a model city for healthy living,” Mary Wittenberg, President, New York Road Runners.
“This is utopia New York.”
“The general interest as we can see is that people want to take over the streets. People want to have fun, and people want to meet out as equals, and this creates a sense of belonging, and this is what makes New York the greatest city in the world. I think we have to applaud the Mayor and the [DOT] Commissioner for having the guts. Sometimes it’s much easier to do nothing, and then when you do nothing no one complains. But they are doing things in making the city more human-scale, and I think that’s what’s exciting.” Gil Penalosa, Former Parks Commissioner, Bogota, Columbia, responsible for Ciclovia, the event that started the street closing movement in the U.S.
“The best part is watching people look up, and enjoy buildings from the safety of the street instead of avoiding looking up because they’re trying to avoid collisions with motorists.”
“For eight years we’ve been anxious to come out of the house and sit on the grass. You can sit here and have lunch. It’s a wonderful place to be, but it’s terrible during the day with the cars going along and the fumes, and the noise, and the horns and everything, but today, it’s incredible!”
“We’ve got two more Saturdays to go, and it’s my hope that this becomes an iconic event for New York City for the next 100 years.” Jannette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, NYC DOT (Department of Transportation)
Tomorrow marks the first day of NYC’s Summer Streets program when 7 miles of downtown Manhattan are completely closed to cars for six hours. Check out the official PSA above, edited by Streetfilms. Check out this map for other streets that will be closed on the Saturdays of August 9, 16, 23 between 7am - 1pm.
Motivated by NY’s program, Seattle will have Car-Free Sundays during the afternoons in three different neighborhoods at a time on August 24, 31 and September 7. The buy-in by businesses isn’t quite there yet, mainly because the mayor was a bit flippant in his announcement, so it’ll be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end.
Also following with enthusiasm, San Francisco just announced car-free Sundays on August 31 and September 14 from 9 am to 1 pm, covering six miles from the Bayview neighborhood, along the Embarcadero waterfront and ending in Chinatown.
All of these programs were inspired by the Ciclovia Sunday street closings in Bogota, Columbia.
This is an alternative for a growing number of people bored with ‘So what bar are we going to tonight?’
First of all, a couple of definitions. Mixed-use is a placemaking/real estate development term for combining uses in a building (residential over retail), which also applies to neighborhoods (walkable) and businesses (bookstore coffeehouse bar lounge theater). Mashup refers to the combining of songs, videos, and web application features into a new and distinct product.
Thus, what happens when you combine all of these into an event, or more specifically, an event as part of Manhattan’s nightlife, as the NY Times discovers in Night Life Reprogrammed? This is best answered via one mere example, IgniteNYC, which is:
- An organized, regularly scheduled networking party, bringing together NYC’s Silicon Alley techies and entrepreneurs, later becoming a dance party;
- A Meetup.com inspired spontaneous, informal happy hour;
- A Burning Man inspired display of collective personal creativity;
- A technology conference focused on unveiling new ideas around an emerging field (such as web video), with brief but compelling presentations on cutting edge/irreverent topics by ‘keynote’ speakers;
- A shortened version of Pecha Kucha with presentations of 20 slides at 15 seconds each;
- A sporting event, with a competition (on this particular night) to build a remote control, with the winner signified by being the first to turn off a TV set.
Btw, IgniteNYC was inspired by IgniteSeattle (pictured).
Founded in Austria, the purpose of the Permanent Breakfast is to promote public areas and places via spontaneous gatherings for breakfast. The very first breakfast was held in Vienna on May 1, 1996 among five people, and has since spread throughout the world thanks to its formal program with the basic rule:
One person plans a breakfast in a public space. Usually at least four of the invited persons commit themselves to organize another public breakfast with different persons in a different place as soon as possible.
Recommendations are that everyone is responsible for their own breakfast (or via potluck); interested passersby are invited to breakfast; and that organizers register their breakfast on the website so that it’s publicized and furthers the mission.
Think of the Permanent Breakfast as a less bureaucratic, more grassroots version of creating a social, dining scene in a public space that may serve as a model for a larger, more permanent destination, such as this dining scene in Siena, Spain.
In one of the best NY Times articles ever published as it relates to what this site is all about, writer Penelope Green pens the phenomenon of creatives in New York City spontaneously crafting their own public spaces in The Dining Room Takes to the Streets. The photographs alone that are associated with the article are a must see, and some of the quotes are priceless.
Referred to as ‘invisible theater’, here are some examples of New Yorkers making their own urban gathering places (clockwise from top left):
- At her “Chez L’Hydrant”, Suzanne Seggerman hosts dinner parties for six or eight on the street in front of her building. People strolling by wonder if it’s a new restaurant and want a table.
- Reno, a comedian uses the loading dock of her building as a front porch, “I was on my loading dock one day and I called my dog and somebody actually shushed me, because her child was sleeping in ‘the fancy condo conversion across the street’. Then I felt bad that I told the lady to go back to the suburbs.”
- Another shot of Suzanne’s Chez L’Hydrant.
- Ten guests gather for a standing dinner party on the Manhattan-side tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. Passersby add to the festive atmosphere.
One of the most progressive agencies in the country, the NY DOT (Department of Transportation), again provides stellar leadership. Janette Sadik-Khan, commissioner of the DOT, “Public space is the glue that holds our city together and makes it worth living in. I always say the streets are the living rooms, so I guess that makes the sidewalks the front porches. We’re trying to remove the barriers to enjoying that space. The D.O.T.’s priority is safety [rather than use regulation]. If someone wants to use the sidewalk for a casual dinner, they just have to be considerate of the neighbors.”
Other cities, take note - if you want a culture and economy as rich and diverse as New York City’s, follow the NY DOT’s lead and you’ll manifest stories like this.
If you think being advertised to is worth free zero-carbon rides through town, then EcoCabs is just for you. Rapidly spreading throughout Europe and North America, this Dublin-based shuttle service relies on pedal power with electric-battery assist. Passengers say the ride is surprisingly smooth with some acceleration kick. Some of the vitals:
Launched: April, 2008
Maximum number of passengers: 3
Top speed: 7 mph/12 km/h
Where: Dublin, Ireland, Toronto, Canada; New York, Chicago, Detroit, California…
Cost to passenger: Free as far as money goes, subject to full vehicle advertising and occasional flyers
Cost per vehicle: $13K
On the one hand, would it be disturbing to be surrounded by a swarm of corporate-branded vehicles? On the other hand, aren’t taxis, buses and subways going the same route anyway? A combination of free, fun and green is an awfully powerful combination to affect peoples’ behavior. What do you think?
The previous entry profiled the Architect magazine story, The Next Coffeehouse, and there’s one that truly stood out to me as something that a creative would say, “You know, I’d actually really want to work there.”
Designed by STUDIOS Architecture, their Modular Community Kitchen concept is the spatial inverse of the piazza, with a 60’ communal table serving as the ‘town square’. Greg Keffer, principal, provided some insight in this CoolTown interview:
Do you think the market is ready for the modular community kitchen now? “Yes, I think people are ready for this and should have no problem adapting just as they have in workplaces. Our concept is based on ideas we originated over the years in workplace design. By looking at shared table type environments vs. typical cubicles you can immediately understand the effect on communication, spontaneity, and curiosity and how that can translate to idea generation, efficiency, and community in work. If STUDIOS has been successful in transforming how people can interact at work, why can’t we apply those same ideas to how people interact in social places such as a cafe?”
What are the modular components of the space? “There are the functional pieces such as cases for cold beverages and food, then there are more versatile pieces such as peninsula tables that build off the main 60’ long common table. These create nodes for gathering, or can be a place where someone might find more privacy rather than sitting on the common area. The concept also allows for the pieces to branch off from the main table and create areas in the space for special settings such as a poetry reading, or community gathering. The table is simply a framework which elements (and people) work organically off of.”
What is the signature element of such a space that identifies it as a coworking cafe? “This has to be the 60’ long common table.”
Would you work there? “Of course I would - I embrace the ideas of community and sharing of ideas - this is an exciting point of view to how [the modern coffeehouse] could become truly localized.”
What will the next generation third place look like? Architect Magazine asked five architectural firms to provide their unique answers which are presented in the article, The Next Starbucks. Clockwise from top left, there’s a definite coffee bar theme:
BARbucks by designLAB, Boston - Coffee served bartender style like at a bar for people that want a more social solo experience. This is how coffee is served in Italian espresso bars. designLAB also presents AUTObucks, the equivalent of the self check-out at the supermarket.
Drink/Think THIN, by Studio Works, Los Angeles and Beijing - This is definitely something you’d expect from L.A., with the idea of thin stretched out coffee bar occupying the edge of a building and the edge of a sidewalk, providing a duality of being in the street yet in the building.
Modular Community Kitchen, by Studios Architecture, New York - The coffeehouse as workplace, focused on the 60’ long communal table. More on this in the next entry.
Push-and-Pull Bar, by William E. Massie/Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI - Almost a perpendicular alternative to the THIN concept, a coffee bar protrudes out towards the sidewalk, providing a sort of take-out/outdoor service. The bar continues into the building for an indoor experience.
*$, by Pentagram Architects, New York - So named to reflect a brand associated with simple, fast, efficient, universal, the focus is on coffee and only coffee via two modes - fast on the bar, or slow at the tables.
Thanks to Braulio Agnese of Architect magazine for the reference and use of images.
In keeping with the spirit of the previous entry, 
