10,000 unwanted books on the streets - Urban living fuels design of cities - A school’s greenovation - Cutting the mustard
10,000 unwanted books on the streets. The Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus has embarked on in a traffic-stopping installation in Melbourne, Australia, commissioned as part of the Light in Winter Festival to encourage reading.
Similar to the installation in New York City and Switzerland, the streets contained 10,000 books that had been collected by the Salvation Army after being discarded from public libraries. Artists have been allowed to expand upon the project, growing it for a month and making it their largest installation to date.
Via Architizer Blog
Urban living fuels design of cities. Dan Winey of Gensler blogs about his observations from abroad as he is seeing a highly accelerated demand for urban living that has fueled the design and creation of new cities.
Winey says what’s troubling is that too many emerging cities in China and other parts of the world are adhering to an outdated urban planning model that will ultimately prove to be unsustainable. However, super tall buildings like Gensler's Shanghai Tower, which is currently under construction, can help urban planners think in vertical terms instead of horizontal ones.
Architect enters the chicken coop fray. Peter Strzebniok, a pioneer of prefab for people with Nottoscale, is bringing the best of green modern prefabricated modular flat pack construction to the burgeoning chicken coop market.
Strzebniok has created the Moop (modular coop), which is the "architect designed prefabricated modular chicken coop for the design minded urban chicken." The Moop is compact enough to fit in most backyards while being modern enough to make any chicken happy and every owner proud.
By Lloyd Atler, Via Tree Hugger
A school’s greenovation. Lindsey Engels, Executive Director of the U.S. Green Building Council in Orange County and project coordinator at LPA, guest blogs about partnering with Davis Magnet School to make the school more green.
LPA monitored temperature, light levels, energy usage per circuit and CO2 monitors for air quality to find solutions to make the school energy efficient. With the completed retrofitted classroom, LPA and the school will be able to see a real-time comparison between the “greenovated” classroom and the control classroom.
Via LPA Blog
Innovative Social Media
Society of good taste. Grey Poupon launched an online marketing campaign on Facebook this week in which the mustard company will screen fans who attempt to like the page to see if they have good enough taste to become one of the company’s Facebook fans.
Fans of the brand will have to apply for membership to the "Society of Good Taste" on the Grey Poupon Facebook page, where an algorithm will determine whether or not they "cut the mustard". The algorithm searches and judges users' profiles based on their proper use of grammar, art taste, check ins, book and movie selections, and so forth, and gives them a percentile score based on their refinement. However, if the algorithm detects poor taste in music or text-speak, for example, they could be rejected. Those who do not qualify will have their "like" deleted, and be asked to refine their profile before trying again.
Via Ad Age