Sinus

Image: Smekab, mmcité

With new product line Sinus swedish outdoor furniture company Smekab goes creative. Available in a rainbow-wide range of colors.

Biking goes cultural

Starting on april 21 there will be an exhibition on bicycles and associated items at design museum Röhsska in Göteborg.

Ciclovia

Images: Global Arquitectura Paisagista

The Tagus is more beautiful than the river which flows through my village
But the Tagus is not more beautiful than the river which flows through my village

Because the Tagus is not the river which flows through my village

Poetry by Alberto Caeiro lining a bicycle path along the river Tagus in Lisboa, Portugal.
By Global Landscape Architects.

O Tejo from Abilio Vieira on Vimeo.

Save the date: Mellanrum 33-35

Göteborg City Museum continues its series on city planning this spring;

Mars 28 Mellanrum 33: Lars Reuterswärd presents the work of Mistra Urban Futures

April 25 Mellanrum 34: Is it possible to plan for the future? With Sara Westin, University of Uppsala and Claes Caldenby, Chalmers

May 30 Mellanrum 35: Occupiers collectives and Baugruppe. Alternative living in Berlin with architect Vanja Larberg (who made the illustrations for this book)

Pavement

Machine part pavement up at Montjuïc.

Leafy roof

Gingko leaf roof at Jardins de la Villa Amèlia, Sarrià.

2021

There is a new iPad-app out called 2021, a game that allows you to be head of a team planning the future of the city of Gothenburg.

Developed by Mistra Urban Futures for Stadsmuséet. Via G-P.

Parc del Laberint d'Horta

Last week I spent a sunny morning in the Parc del Laberint d'Horta named after its impressive cypress maze. Emitting a sense of abandonment, with its main building partly in ruins, and offering treats as the topiary garden, the romantic creek, the island of love, the camellia garden and the false cemetery it's a wonderful place to lose yourself.

Tree house hamper

Image: Etsy

The thought of a house in a tree is always tickling. Jenna Fenwick has hand screen printed her illustration with non-toxic water based pigments on organic fabric and made a hamper, now for sale on Etsy.

Come out and play

Original images: Come Out And Play, Movium 

Finding it hard to overlook the resemblance between the grid pattern of the streets surrounding Washington Park Square and a Pac Man game plan Mattia Romeo and Gregory Trefry initiated a human version of the game calling it Pac Manhattan in 2004. (Gregory Trefry is also one of the presenters at the upcoming Movium Winter Conference I posted about here.) This came to be the starting point of the annual festival Come Out And Play offering play and games in the city streets, squares and parks with its inhabitants as participants.

The festival, every year growing and every year moving to a new location to attract new kinds of people, wants to provide a forum for new types of public games and for the participants to play and interact with their city while experiencing a sense of belonging and a strengthening in their relationship with the city and its public spaces.

Via Movium.

Iron Wire Tree

Image: Signerat

This tangled tree made of iron wire by Arnfridsson Art and Steel makes me think of fanciful fairy tales and old secret gardens. It can be bought at Signerat.

Jardí Botànic de Barcelona

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Barcelona Botanical Garden located on the northwestern slopes of Montjuïc. The area, between the 1940s and 1970s home to a vast shantytown known as Can Valero and later the site of a landfill, is now a lush 14-hectare garden displaying a representative sample of flora from the areas of the world with a mediterranean climate, i.e. Australia, Chile, California, South Africa and The Mediterranean Basin.

The garden, designed by a team of architects, horticulturalists, biologists and landscape architect Bet Figueras, is covered by an unstructured grid of situ concrete paths adapted to the topography of the area creating organized spaces for the plant communities.

Opened in 1999, the Barcelona Botanical Garden has a very contemporary feel and the objectives to help preserve threatened plant species and raise public awareness about nature and the importance of biodiversity.

The winter being a period of rest for the aerial parts of the plants, I can't wait to come back in time for the spring rains.

Eiffel tree

Image: Inhabitat

A french urban planning consultancy recently launched their vision to turn the eiffel tower into an immense body of biomass by covering it with 600.000 plants which, according to the consultants, would symbolize the reconciliation of nature and mankind as the world's population heads for nine billion, seven billion of whom would live in urban areas. Why not? Via Reuters.

Poetic path

Image: Landezine

I like how this thin path winds about among the beech trees supported only by the trunks. Installation performed between may and october this year in Kadriorg Park, Tallinn, Estonia. By Tetsuo Kondo Architects. Via Landezine.

It's a sign!

I walked by this sign in Gràcia today. Maybe it's trying to point out a direction for the upcoming holidays.

Second hand cooking

A few days ago there was a second-hand market at Placa de la Virreina where you could only buy things in exchange for food and beverages. It was initiated by an organization whose idea is cooking for homeless people with left over food given to them from markets at closing time.

Good cause at a nice site!

Happy wall

Wall painting in the corner of Carrer Verdi and Carrer d'Or in Gràcia, Barcelona.

Concrete deckchairs

Today I walked by this group of Sillargas designed by Gonzalo Milá and Juan Carlos Inés for Escofet. Situated at Platja de la Barceloneta in Barcelona they are being well used also in december.

Moses Bridge

Images: Landezine

This evening I marvel at how this ingeniously designed bridge splits the water in an almost biblical way. By RO&AD architecten. Via Landezine.

Lovely leaf

Image: Natura y Arte

Inspired by traditional paper cutting techniques art project Natura y Arte creates pieces like this.