Your regular commute is likely a bit of a drag: enduring traffic-clogged freeways, navigating inefficient public transport, hustling down blocks that could use a little TLC. But eh, that’s just modern life, right? Well… kind of. In some ways, navigating the realities of your day-to-day is a bit like backwards time travel. The world you step into when you walk out your front door was actually conceived a long time ago, when logistics of modern life were very, very different.
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As you’re driving around town today, you may find yourself asking these questions: Why are they sold out of astroturf at the hardware store? How did this cello end up in the street? Who are these people doing yoga in my parking spot? Welcome to the ninth annual Parking Day.
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Dan Barasch, the co-founder of the Lowline, gets calls all the time from people who think his underground “culture park" already exists. In fact, the project’s successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign was only the first step in the old-fashioned process of politicking, fundraising and engineering. A year later, a look at the renderings versus reality, and the ongoing question of what exactly the Lowline will be.
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Environmental awareness has risen exponentially in recent years and many people have grown a strong urge to surround themselves with anything green amidst vast concrete jungles. Vertical gardens, urban farming, and guerrilla gardening are a few phenomena that have only recently entered our daily lives.
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Tokyo was chosen as the host of the 2020 Olympics this weekend, based on a $5 billion bid that’s surprisingly slim compared to the money spent by other recent host cities. The crux of their proposal (besides that whole ice wall around Fukushima thing)? A plan to retrofit three major venues originally built for the 1964 Summer Games.
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It seemed like a good idea at the time, right? We’d build vast, multi-lane roads slicing through the center of our cities, bulldozing our most historic architecture and displacing tens of thousands of residents at a time, all in the name of progress. 50 years later these genius improvements have severed our neighborhoods, ruined our air, and may not even have helped that much in the way of traffic. So why have a freeway exposed like a gaping, oozing urban wound when you can put a park on it?
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One of Britain’s greatest industrial designers, David Mellor is probably best known for his sculptural cutlery, which was the first stainless steel flatware to be mass-produced in the UK. But even those who’ve added his spoons to their wedding registry might not know about the system of street furniture he designed, which became iconic on British sidewalks.
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Labor Day sales can be frightening things indeed, so it’s a perfect time to look at this scary abandoned mall in St. Louis. After 55 years in business, Crestwood Court started closing its stores in 2006, eventually shutting its doors for good last month. Digital artist Dan Wampler photographed the slowly dilapidating space, managing to make everything from Claire’s to Champs look creepy.
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Post-industrial cities have long struggled to find new uses for the (often gargantuan) factory infrastructure that once made their towns boom. Usually, that means a park or a museum. But a few cities—like Genk, Belgium—have tried a more experimental approach, turning these decrepit sites into unusual creative spaces.
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For every existent building in your city, there are a dozen that never came to be. Some plans were abandoned for good reasons (see: LA’s 5,000-foot skyscraper), others were abandoned because of legal and financial quandaries. Either way, these forgotten drawings show us what we could’ve had.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
