It’s the work of Sonja Vordermaier and it’s called Streetlampforest. It’s a collection of street lights from different times & places around Europe. (You can read more on My Modern Met.) She needs to come to New York and make an American version.

http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mkshl1.htm

PS: Project Neon continues apace, though I imagine things will slow down over the next couple of months, so you may see more of me around here.

One of the many issues with POPs is that they very often do not live up to the promises (and renderings) of charming, welcoming, vegetated vest-pocket parks sprinkled throughout the city’s high-rise office districts to offer respite for weary workers from the endless concrete. Instead, they’re often open limited hours, closed entirely, or designed to be utterly inhospitable.

Of course this isn’t true of all such spaces — there are some truly lovely examples from atria to waterfall parklettes that function beautifully as publicly accessible spaces well maintained by owners of office buildings and condo towers. Still, though, with little or no enforcement, too many land owners get away with too much.

The first step toward enforcement is documentation, and WNYC & The New York World have started a crowd-sourced project to document the state of New York’s POPs. I highly recommend New Yorkers adopt a space or two, investigate, and report back. The map interface is a little wonky, but it’s a short, simple survey to fill out for each space.  I’ll be stopping by the unvisited spaces near my work during my lunch break over the next week. Maybe I’ll see you there?

Here’s the map and survey:
http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2011/10/19/publicspace/

Just the map of POPs:
http://bit.ly/privatePublic

More information about POPs from the City of New York here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/priv.shtml

The deadline for the project is November 9th.

The new Gehry Technologies advisory board. Yes, a couple of people aren’t pictured, but still, what the hell? Especially since these people are going to “save architecture” according to the Architect’s Newspaper article. Unbelievable.

I just hauled this, my first computer, out if its case. It still works. I bought it with all my saved-up babysitting money back in 1989 when I left for college (yes, I am OLD). As I recall it was three-thousand some dollars with the academic discount.

Wow I was good at drawing in Mac Paint back then. I drew all the bugs in my room once. Also in the Mac SE’s hard drive (named ∞ as its 4,096K of memory seemed nearly infinite) a list of palindromes, the rules to a couple of made-up card games (Floof and Oh, puppy!), an analysis of mode mixture in one section of Schubert’s String Quartet in C Major (opus 163), and more—a time capsule of a long-gone era.

Some people have said they think it’s creepy to be sad that someone you haven’t met who was neither a saint nor a hero has died. It’s always sad, though, when someone dies too young. And when that person made your life better by helping design tools that enabled—no, encouraged—countless cool, beautiful, and important projects, I think it makes sense to mourn a little. He was a man with a clear vision and a strong imagination, and I wish he could have stuck around a little longer. RIP Steve.

Scandybars: sections of candy bars scanned to reveal the delicious innards

Cigar Feet: slices through cigars to reveal the subtle distinctions in wrapping and contents

Cutting Open Toothpaste: the secret of striped toothpaste revealed!

Plus all the great books featuring urban cross-sections like kate Ascher’s Anatomy of A City and David Macaulay’s Underground, among many others.

They are amazing combinations of x-ray specs, dissection, and architectural sections. What other objects can we slice open and look inside?

http://www.archdaily.com/168451/design-studio-top-10-things-you-should-know/

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PS: the Project Neon iPhone app was submitted to Apple! Here’s hoping for a swift and positive review from Cupertino…

Greetings from Project Neon headquarters. What you see above is my nifty new neon sign, which is going to hang in the window of the Project Neon show at the City Reliquary. If you are in New York, you should come:

Project Neon
Opening Friday September 23rd
7p – 10p
The City Reliquary
370 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY  11211

Also at that show we’ll be celebrating the launch of the free Project Neon iPhone app. In order for that to happen, we need to submit it to Apple in the next couple of days, so I’ve got quite a bit of work to get done (not to mention getting ready for the show). On account of that there will probably be radio silence around here for the next couple of weeks, but I look forward to catching up with everything after that, and I hope to see you at the opening!

These building vignettes made of found object by Toronto photographer David Trautrimas are pretty rad. Take a look over on the great Junk Culture blog.

I’m heading out tonight to visit the until recently missing 3rd Candela Structure, way up in the Adirondacks. There will be so much driving this weekend, but I’m really excited to see number three out in the woods, a long way from Flushing.

It’s been a crazy week with Project Neon app testing, starting to get ready for the Project Neon show on Friday September 23rd, 7-10p (will you be at the opening?) at the City Reliquary (yeah, hopefully they’ll add it to their website soon!) and more. Oy, September is always a busy month. I guess catch up on sleep in October!