Urban Planning Blog

Technically this is a blog related to urban planning but at heart, I’ve always been a designer and absolutely love innovative and creative solutions to everyday problems. Unclutterer mentions that this idea was first implemented on yachts where space is at a premium.

When I first saw the ’storage under the staircase’, my first thought was - how cool is that! This solves the problem of trying to find a place for your shoes near the place where you actually wear them. Isn’t it tedious to haul in your shoes from some inside closet to near the door where you wear them before heading out? I wonder why no one thought of this before with all that space under the stair and the rise of the staircase doubling up as a drawer.

Via Treehugger, I get this news that New York is getting a major upgrade in its street furniture. Apartment Therapy gives us more insight on the public toilets:

“These state-of-the-art facilities offer comfort, hygiene, accessibility, and security to the public, within a modern design. Designed to self-sanitize after each use, the APTs will also be serviced twice a day for inspection and system maintenance, affording the people of New York a safe and valuable convenience.”

Any decent, aesthetically-pleasing, and of course, functional street furniture is always welcome in an urban environment. Hopefully these will be self-financed by the advertisement space they offer so as not to be a burden on the tax payers. Cemusa, a Spanish Outdoor firm has reportedly won a $1billion contract to sell ads on New York’s street furniture.

It has been a while since I roamed the aisles of interior design trade shows in Mumbai first organized by Inside/Outside Magazine at the Nehru Center or NSCI grounds. Even before I went to architecture school where it was almost incumbent upon us to attend such shows to collect reference material for our files, I used to attend these shows with my dad. Often strapped for time, we would split up and I would collect brochures and catalogues of products he hadn’t time to look at which he would carefully categorize and file away for future use.

The advent of the web may have made this exercise redundant but it was always fun to browse through latest products in one huge place. You almost had instant ideas for your designs that you couldn’t wait to implement or sometimes saw an innovative product that redefined your perspective for treating interior space; be it a new material or bathroom fittings. But the best display was always by light equipment and fittings. In this light (no pun intended), I was asked to review the website for Starry Nights Lights. Note that this is a part of ReviewMe’s Paid Reviews for this blog. Remember that this is not a review of their products which I haven’t sampled but that of their website.

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I have always loved abstract and unsymmetrical furniture designs. I had designed a bookshelf at home using parts of a old dismantled wallshelf but it wasn’t half as good as the ones featured at Tangram.

Technorati Tags: tangram, bookcase, furniture, art, abstract, design

Considering that the Internet is touted as the developing countries’ tool to leapfrog into the 21st century, the power that runs the Internet is sadly lacking in such countries. Well, thanks to a Bay Area nonprofit, wireless Internet access can now be powered by solar energy. As seen above:

“The latest version of the organization’s Wi-Fi’s access node, which
consists of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, a router and an
“intelligent” charge controller that moderates power use based on
sunlight intensity. The network is designed to automatically limit
broadband access when solar-power levels are low, which enables the
system to stay in continuous operation for as long as a month in weak
sunlight” [source].

Technorati Tags: green, technology, wifi, Internet, solar energy, networking, electicity, developing countries, sunlight

Ever wish if a particular product was biodegradable so that you could use it without guilt? How about a biodegradable cell phone? Well, that and many more such innovative products are opening up new avenues.

Technorati Tags: biodegradable, environment, product design

Any mention of barcodes bring to mind boring black and white striped codes that secretly carry price information of everyday products at Wal-Mart. That’s why it is refreshing to see ordinary and mundane barcodes refurbished creatively to present innovative images. Check them out:

More here.

How to make your parquet flooring a little – heck, a lot – more interesting.

Giant Block Lettering Bookshelves.

If you have ever staggered into the bathroom late at night, you will definitely find this water “cool”