You know you’re on Oxford Street…

…when even the street furniture’s gone kinky! Wooot~

Street furniture is an integral part of the urban landscape — they could be designed to merge with urban public spaces to achieve a harmonious environment by considering their sense of unity and identity. They should interact with its people, users… representing the different needs, different predilections…

Sydney’s Oxford Street has acquired a reputation as the city’s main gay district, and is closed to traffic annually for the famous Mardi Gras celebration. Oh well, there is definitely no doubt that the street furniture along this street embodies the uniqueness of the locality and its regular users.

North Sydney bus stops

It looks like the North Sydney’s CBD has forgotten to upgrade their bus stops…

How sustainable is that…?

For almost seven weeks now, the West Metro Studio has been researching and discussing TODs (Transit Oriented Developments). As self-proclaiming ‘intellectuals’ (yes, that will include architects/designers/planners), we pride ourselves in the consciousness, responsibilities and ethical considerations behind every decision we make in creating new buildings, places, cities…

I came across this in a forwarded e-mail recently:

Air conditioned bus stops in Dubai!
(Image from thecontaminated.com)

After so many crazy experiments and intense development Dubai has been through, I can already imagine some nature-loving environmentalists going “sheikh bashing” again. Yes it sure doesn’t look very environmental friendly at first glance, but what about the energy the cold-climate countries use to heat their bus stops? What about your car’s air conditioning system…? From this point of view, I’d say they could be equally as bad.

I guess if you look at this from a different angle, these are not as bad an idea as they may seem. Essentially, the whole concept of creating a TOD is to be more environmentally sustainable by switching from cars to public transportation, by converting drivers into commuters… Well, in an unfavorable weather condition, it is perhaps necessary to provide an artificial environment which will enable commuters to get to their destinations comfortably.

And of course there’s more to this equation — Is it worth it?

That, I do not know. I am not taking any sides just yet, and besides, at the moment I cannot say I’m a very “green” person heheh. But there are always two sides to every story. Well in this case I believe we have to consider the greater good.

Oh well! I just personally feel they could have done a better job designing that bus stop!

Sydney train stations

Hey peeps! Of course I am aware I haven’t updated for awhile now. Just a little pre-occupied with uni, as usual. Well after an incredible series of misfortunes in the past weeks, I’ve finally got myself (pretty much) back on track and I’m now passionately working on the West Metro Design Studio with the MUDD students in uni.

So I am sure some of you will not be too surprised to know that THIS is one of my recent interests:

TRAINS! Woooot~

Well I’ve got more work waiting so I’ve really gotta run soon. But for now, here are some photos of a few of the train stations (a little off the Sydney CBD) I’ve visited recently… The photos were taken collectively in the past month, so yeah, they’re quite up-to-date.

Parramatta Station

The Parramatta Station by Hassell, linked to the retail giant Westfield. My group’s currently working on revitalising the Parramatta CBD with a rail proposal for the city for the West Metro Design Studio. A lot of fun

St Leonards Station

I guess this project’s not as new as the rest, but here’s a photo anyway. The Forum Development by PTW creates a pleasant place for the community which lives/works there. Notice the Dubai-esque theme (with the palm trees and water feature) going on in the courtyard there..

Chatswood Station

New exciting interchange project, at the Chatswood Station by Cox, still under construction.

Can’t wait to see the development of these future retail areas (on the left). It will be interesting to see how shopping activities can feed in to the station’s livelihood when it’s all done, or vice versa. Btw more of the Dubai-esque trees here…

Milsons Point Station

Good ol’ Milsons Point Station, simply blessed by fantastic views of Sydney Harbour Just a stone’s throw from the ferry services.

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Alright that’s all for now guys, will try to update more often! Ciao.

Dateline urbanism

Like all other hosts, Beijing became a gigantic stage on Friday — a spectacle for one of the most celebrated triumphs of humanity, the Olympic Games. There has been a high-profile race, a rush, in the urban development of Beijing: “the auspicious 08/08/08″ became the dateline for the completion of new spectacular architectural icons, the subway system, and even for the urban experiment to clear up the hazy Beijing skies.

And it was indeed exciting, with all these developments as the backdrop for the fireworks on the opening night. How could it not be?! These are the projects that flanked the spreads of archimags over and over and over again in the past year. This dateline saw every inch of Herzog de Meuron’s Birds’ Nest finally complete and fully manipulated for show effects; the Water Cube grandly, but unfortunately not-so-tastefully, lit during the Opening Ceremony; OMA’s CCTV glass facade finally complete…

The GoogleMaps have been updated, go play with it!

View Larger Map

What’s next? Sure the event has changed the face of Beijing forever. The buildings look great on TV, and perhaps even on GoogleEarth. But what will happen after the Games? How can these developments contribute to the city and the country after the Olympic traffic is gone?

Preparations for the Olympic Games in Sydney eight years ago created a whole new suburb, major sports village with sports/expo facilities, and upgraded the city centre as well as many tourist sites. The main Olympic site — Homebush Bay — which once attracted hundreds of thousands of people during the Games, now falls short in its integration with the daily urban life of Sydneysiders.

It will definitely be interesting to see the post-Olympic effects of the Beijing sites in five to ten years time.

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P/s: Oh, the new Google Street View is worth trying out too!

Dubai urbanism

There is a new type of urbanism: designing islands and coastlines visible from the sky, recorded by satellites and transmitted across the Internet as jpeg attachments. Technologies that are used to monitor wildlife development, hydrography and land drought is now a tool for global transmission of projects under construction. Post-card GIS and reconnaissance technologies turn into spectacle and telegenic fantasy addressing mass tourism. Dubai’s suburbs are rising from the water, in the form of artificial and prosthetic islands, imitating Venice. Dubai is turning into a postcard portrait city of the future. Satellite imagery of unfinished projects gives rise to the exciting promise of fantasy.
– George Katodrytis, Transcity: Dubai’s Satellite Urbanism.

Designing cities to be visible from the sky. It feels to me like SimCity is being played out for real in Dubai. You’ll get what I mean if you are a fan of Google Earth — zoom in and around the Dubai coastline, you’ll find road networks laid out for future developments.

I guess god-games (SimCity, Civilization, etc.) can be extremely addictive because the player is the planner; the all powerful decision-maker; or, quite literally, a god. Quite similarly, we are now planning and designing cities by gazing down on the action from the ‘heavens’ (or watching city growths from Google Earth, in my case).

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Just a thought – Most human advancements in the history of civilization point towards one fact: Man wants to play god.

Are we there yet?

Rem Koolhaas on Rotterdam

Photo taken from here.

It’s a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent the city.
– Rem Koolhaas on his hometown, Rotterdam.

‘Radiant City’ for lunch

Am now 33minutes into Radiant City, while munching on my McD’s-lunch.

Radiant City (2006) is a ‘fictional documentary’ on the suburban sprawl, revealing the close-up life of families living in the suburbia.

It is funny because it documents the lives of the Moss family (which are fictional), but tries to capture the essence of real suburban situations in a documentary format and the actors that play these characters do live in real suburban areas. They’ve also inserted short clips on statistical data and interviews with architects, planners, real estate agents, authors, etc etc… There’s also a cute little musical in the movie that kinda makes fun of the suburbia

Seems interesting so far.

Watch the trailer at the Radiant City movie website, here.

Okay, my urban design elective starts in 15 minutes. Ciao guys!

Consumer culture and advertisements

There’s an extremely large market of consumption for video consoles in today’s world. Advertisers come up with new promotion concepts everyday. The built environment now has to accommodate for interactive advertisements.

Watch it!

Interactive live advertisement of Microsoft XBox – Blue Dragon, on the streets of Shibuya.

Consumer culture & technological ruins

I am currently working on my research about “the Consumer Culture & Urban Design” for one of my urban design electives.

And came across this:

“Future Ruins”: A photographic critique on the urban planning in the 1970’s.
(Image credits: Ballardian)

A technological detritus of domestic appliances?

Reminds me of Michael Thompson’s “Rubbish Theory”. There is a disjunction between economic decay and physical decay – most of our gadgets cease in economic value before they ‘die’, which is exactly why my poor CRT monitor is still sitting in one corner of my living room after I got it replaced btw.

Which is also precisely why, “in an ideal world,” Thompson writes, “an object would reach zero value and zero expected life-span at the same instant, and then disappear into dust. But, in reality, it usually does not do this; it just continues to exist in a timeless and valueless limbo where, at some later date it has the chance of being discovered.”

In today’s technological frenzy, things which were extremely cool at one point of time stop signifying our social desires – in almost a blink of an eye – but they continue to exist physically… So the backdated version of Playstation gets tucked in some corner of our storage. And the old car parts sit in some junkyard somewhere out there.

Sure i guess, perhaps in a decade or two, you could sell these things as antiques?

But seriously, what do we (really) do… with all the old Playstations and CRT monitors and old car parts in the world?

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Oh well, I’m leaving the CRT monitor there for now (until I find time to dispose it) so let me know if you need one, FOC!

Okay back to work!