How to send an E-Mail, Thames TV's computer programme 'Database', 1984

Back to the future of our commuication. The digital communication was seen as a sort of a social inclusion tool.

"How to send an e mail 1980's style. Electronic message writing down the phone line. First shown on Thames TV's computer programme 'Database' in 1984 (07/06/1984)."

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via Thames Television Archive

Los Angeles: Hispanic Heritage Month

"To commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month, Big Hero 6 The Series character designer, Jose Lopez, goes to Plaza de la Raza in East Los Angeles to create a mural in celebration of his mariachi family heritage." (Disney XD)

World Town Planning Day

The international organisation for "World Urbanism Day" or "World Town Planning Day" was founded by Carlos Maria della Paolera (1890-1960), professor at University of Buenos Aires, in 1949 aiming to advance both public and professional interest in planning, to promote the role of planning in creating livable communities. The day is celebrated in more than 30 countries on 8th of November each year (Wikipedia).

This year, there is no theme. In 2014, the theme was "Equality in the Cities - Making Cities Socially Cohesive" (see abstracts).

::: World Town Planning Day Online Conference 2016: LINK

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Photograph via Mulopo Consulting

Texas African American History Memorial

"The Texas African American History Memorial Foundation is created to raise funds for the construction and dedication of a monument honoring African American Texans and their contributions to our great state."(Texas African American History Memorial Foundation)

“We have walked these ground for years and talked about the lack of representation in terms of the monuments as it relates to the African American experience. We know in the beginning of the beginning that African Americans, even when they were in chains, helped to build this building.” Helen Giddings

"Denver-based sculptor Ed Dwight proposed the Texas African-American History Memorial to celebrate more than 400 years of achievements by black Texans. The sculpture, which will be 27 feet high and be 32 feet long when completed, stands near the Capitol’s main entrance. (...)
One side of the monument, which will be completely installed by mid-October, depicts 48 slaves and marks the moment that slaves were emancipated in Texas. The other points to the state’s abundant cattle, cotton and oil resources and the contributions black Texans made to those industries. Plaques and other features still need to be added to the monument.
Here's what the monument at the Texas Capitol will look like when it's completed. This model was on display at the Texas Capitol's agriculture museum. BOB DAEMMRICH A public dedication and unveiling of the monument will occur this fall after its completion, according to a spokesman for the State Preservation Board." (The Texas Tribune)

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- Photograph via Ed Dwight
- Posted on 11 October 2016

Nonnas of the World

"Just like grandma used to make" is much more than a clever advertising scheme, it's literally what's happening at Staten Island's Enoteca Maria, where the kitchen's staffed not by professionally trained chefs, but by a fleet of "nonnas" from around the world. For about a decade, owner Jody Scaravella has opened his kitchens to grandmothers cooking the cuisines of their native countries. It started with just Italian grandmothers, after his own heritage, but has since expanded to include dozens of women from places like Argentina, Algeria, Syria, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Liberia, and Nigeria. (...)

There's the old adage about too many cooks, so do the nonnas get along? "Each one of these [Italian] grandmothers feels like they're the boss, because in their particular family unit, they're at the top of that pyramid. So when you put all of these grandmothers that are all at the top in a room together, they all feel like they're in charge and they're all wondering what that other person is doing there," Scaravella joked. "It can get dicey." (...)

"Usually at the end of the day, the people will applaud the nonnas that have cooked for them," Scaravella beamed. "They get standing ovations on a regular basis and it's really something nice." (Gothamist)

Dementia Village in the Netherlands

"For those who have forgotten who they are. For those who no longer count time. For those to whom love and care is all that matters. Dementia Village Architects creates custom living environments for elderly people with dementia. No big anonymous buildings, but instead manageable and pleasant residential areas. Where it is comfortable for everyone to live. Where residents feel safe at home. Where they enjoy living out their final days, connected with family, caregivers and healthcare providers. Where they can enjoy the precious life they were used to and still want to lead." Dementia Village Architects

In December 2009, a village was founded in the Netherlands, one for people with Alzheimer's Disease. Hogeweyk in the municipality of Weesp, on the outskirts of Amsterdam, has a town square, supermarket, theatre, pub, hairdressing salon, garden, post office, restaurant, green areas, i.e. parks and gardens designed by the landscape architect Niek Roozen, 160 inhabitants and 250 geriatric nurses and specialists whose 24-hours-a-day occupations range from cashier to grocery-store attendees and post-office clerks. The residents live in "lifestyle groups", in groups of six to seven persons who share similar interests and backgrounds. They live in houses together with one or two caretakers. The decor, design and furniture of each house is based on the design of furniture at the time the residents' short-term memories decreased. Homes resemble the 1950s, the 1970s, or the 2000s - a narrative reality with many recognisable stimuli. Cameras monitor the residents, caretakers in street clothes take care of the residents. Family and friends are encouraged to visit as often as they can. According to reports, the residents need fewer medications, eat better, live longer and appear more joyful than those living in elderly-care facilities. And, they are more active as they spend comparatively much time outside. By contrast, nursing-home residents go outside for just 96 seconds a day. Hogeweyk residents engage in a community instead of feeling isolated; isolation makes the disease worse. Living in the village does not cure but it creates an environment "around life rather than death". (Diversity is beautiful)

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Photograph via New York Times

Alzheimer Village in France

"NORD Architects has over the past 10 years developed buildings that meet current and changing conditions in the healthcare sector, and the studio has just won an international competition with a building for people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease in the town of Dax in France.

According to partner at NORD Architects Morten Gregersen the therapeutic solution is not necessarily found in the buildings themselves, but the evidence has gradually build up, that buildings which respect people's personal needs for privacy and create a homely atmosphere, have a much higher efficiency rate when measured in recovery times and result in generally lower costs in care and medication. (...)

In the winning competition entry "Alzheimer village" everything is arranged to accommodate a gradual inclusion of people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease and their relatives in a centre that contains familiar elements from the residents' previous lives, such as a local shop, hairdresser, restaurants, cultural centre and a healthcare centre positioned as small houses in a beautiful landscape. Everything is designed taking inspiration from local building tradition, which gives residents a sense of being able to maintain a relatively normal and recognisable everyday life in an otherwise confusing new reality." (World Architecture News)

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Image via inhabitat

Sirens Resort: Accessibility in Loutraki, Greece

"Sirens offers one of the best wheelchair travel experiences in the world. This Mediterranean resort is equipped with wheelchair accessible rooms throughout as well as showers that offer roll in access. The property features nice wide walkways that make navigation easy. It also has the distinction of being one of the only resorts in the world that offers direct access to the ocean. A ramp extends into the sea." (CurbFree)

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Photograph via Sirens Resort

Improving Pathways to Transit for Persons with Disabilities

"Persons with disabilities can achieve greater freedom when they have full access to a variety of transit modes. Expanded access allows mobility and independence in their daily lives. But this can only be achieved when the pathways to transit – the infrastructure and conditions in the built environment – allow full access to transit stops, stations, and vehicles. (...) This research study explores, through case studies, efforts that have improved pathways to transit."

::: DOWNLOAD: Mineta Transportation Institute (2016) Improving Pathways to Transit for Persons with Disabilities, 116 pages

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Photograph via Wikipedia

City of Singles

Milan is a city of singles: 164.435 live together with a partner while 379.035 live alone. Those who live alone say that they are happy, that living as a single has been an active choice - choosing freedom and independence. Most importantly, singles living in Milan say that they do not feel discriminated against (Corriere della Sera).

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Photograph via ESL

Wayfindr

According to a survey carried out by the Royal London Society for the Blind (RLSB), a quarter of the visually-impaired youth are nervous about taking buses, trains or the underground in London. RLSB teamed up with the London-based design studio Ustwo to create an app that helps visually-impaired riders navigate underground subways.

"Called Wayfindr, the mobile app locates the user’s location within a subway station by picking up signals emitted from bluetooth “beacons” that have been strategically placed throughout. The signals prompt the app to provide spoken instructions that tell users which station they’re entering, for example, how many steps a particular staircase has, and which trains are to their right and left. The app even issues an alert when users approach the end of an escalator." (CityLab)

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Photograph via RLSB

Cahokia. Gender roles in an ancient city.

"The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site /kəˈhoʊkiə/ (11 MS 2) is located on the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (c. 600–1400 CE) situated directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in southern Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km2), and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles (16 km2) and included about 120 human-made earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions.

Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture that developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1000 years before European contact.[5] Cahokia's population at its peak in the 13th century, an estimated 40,000, would not be surpassed by any city in the United States until the late 18th century. Today, Cahokia Mounds is considered the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico." (Wikipedia)

"Archaeologists in Illinois say a prominent pre-Columbia burial mound in the famous ancient city of Cahokia was hardly a monument to masculinity, as their predecessors in the 1960s had claimed. They published their findings in several journals, including American Antiquity." (mental_floss)

"We had been checking to make sure that the individuals we were looking at matched how they had been described," said anthropologist Kristin Hedman. "And in re-examining the beaded burial, we discovered that the central burial included females. This was unexpected."

Even the notes about those two central elites were wrong. They weren't two men; they were one man and one woman. This completely changed the meaning and symbolism behind Mound 72.

"Now, we realize, we don't have a system in which males are these dominant figures and females are playing bit parts," Emerson said. "What we have at Cahokia is very much a nobility. It's not a male nobility. It's males and females, and their relationships are very important."

And this actually lines up better with some other stuff we know about this city, too. For example, a lot of the temples around Cahokia weren't dedicated to war or male power at all." (Upworthy)

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Image via Latin American Studies

Arrival Cities

"(...) Arrival City argues that the ad hoc, self-determined neighborhoods that emerge out of mass migrations, termed “arrival cities,” are integral to integrating newcomers in their destination country. Saunders contributes an essay to Making Heimat. In it, he cautions that arrival cities are “where the new creative and commercial class will be born, or where the next wave of tension and violence will erupt.” The difference, he adds “depends on how we approach these districts both organizationally and politically, and, crucially, in terms of physical structures and built form.”
The cities of Hamburg and Berlin have come up with two different approaches to designing arrival cities. (...)

Berlin’s Kreuzberg district was first established as an arrival city in the 1970s by Turkish men who had traveled to West Germany as part of its gastarbeiter (guest worker) program. Initially, these men lived in dormitories, until their employers realized that workers were more productive when they were happy. Guest workers’ families then joined them, and the men moved out of the dorms and into Kreuzberg. Along the Berlin Wall in Kreuzberg, the rents were cheap. More importantly, landlords were willing rent to Turks.
Today, Kreuzberg is a mix of first- and second-generation holdovers from the 1970s migration, arty Berliners, hipster tourists, and English-speaking expats from the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. Shabby-chic bars and white cube art galleries push up against kebab houses and hookah lounges. Saunders describes it as having “gone from disreputable to fashionable in a generation.”
But for all the cocktails and kebabs, Kreuzberg still plays host to new arrivals in Germany. It’s become a ground zero for Berlin’s refugee advocacy movement since asylum seekers occupied a disused school building in 2013. This past weekend, the refugee rights group Women in Exile held a rally there, seeking, among other things, more viable housing solutions for refugees and asylum seekers."

Via/More CityLab

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Photograph via Fashion Underground

Daniel Libeskind says...

"Universal Design (UD) should be embodied in every design process and not seen as an afterthought, because architecture is universal and it should be for everyone."
Daniel Libeskind (todayonline)

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Photo via Alchetron

The Dementia Simulator

"Di Peng's Dementia Simulator has a frosted casing with distorting eye-wear inside. An inhibiting mouthpiece makes it difficult to speak, and a noises and voices are played into the user's ears to imitate sound-based hallucinations. Essentially, the wearer perceives a severely skewed impression of his surroundings and finds it extremely difficult to communicate. With the awareness that this symptom simulator inspires, no doubt there will be further creative developments in products that make living with the disease more tolerable."
(TrendHunter Tech)

"Peng created the helmet as a way to help non-sufferers experience aspects of the disease, thereby increasing empathy and helping them care for patients or relatives with dementia.
'In order to weaken the stereotypes and misconceptions towards dementia patients, I believe we could use simulation and pretence as a method to further understand their inner world,' he said.
'Mostly, it enables the stakeholders around dementia patients, usually their family members or caretakers, to better understand dementia beyond what modern medicine could explain.""
(Dezeen)

Vibeat. An Alternative Sensory System

"Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design graduate Liron Gino has designed a set of jewellery-like devices that allow deaf and hearing-impaired people to experience music through vibration.
The Vibeat collection is an alternative to headphones that features a necklace, bracelet and pin with circular modules attached to them."
(Dezeen)

Narborough Road

Narborough Road in Leicester is home to more than 35 ethnicities and Britain's most diverse street. Lovely!

"Narborough Road, south west Leicester, LE3. A mile-long stretch of shops and bars, cafes and restaurants, writes Lee Marlow.
For the 11,644 people who live in this busy suburb of Leicester, this is the commercial heart of their community, the fulcrum around which everything else turns.
For the academics at the London School of Economics and Political Science it's more than that, though. It's a nationwide curiosity. Narborough Road is, officially, the most diverse street in England, they have discovered.
There are 222 shop units on Narborough Road. Researchers at the LSE found that the owners of those units come from 22 countries around the world."
(Leicester Mercury)

The Right to Wind In your Hair

"We are all heading on the same path that our grandparents were on. It is an inevitable journey of life. Cycling Without Age reminds us of that relationship with our elders and on our five guiding principles that we abide by.

It starts with the simple act of generosity. Give our time to them when they gave us their care and time. There are a lot of stories to be shared through storytelling from our elders, but also from us. They want to listen to us too and through this bridge we form relationships. We take our time, and the act of cycling slowly helps us take in the experience and appreciate it. Without age is the principle of how life does not end at a given age, but instead we can embrace what each generation has to offer through something as simple as cycling."

"Cycling Without Age is a movement started in 2012 by Ole Kassow. Ole wanted to help the elderly get back on their bicycles, but he had to find a solution to their limited mobility. The answer was a rickshaw and he started offering free bike rides to the local nursing home residents.

He then got in touch with a civil society consultant, Dorthe Pedersen, at the municipality of Copenhagen (now Cycling Without Age), who was intrigued by the idea and together they bought the first 5 rickshaws and launched Cycling Without Age, which has now spread to all corners of Denmark, and has now spread to Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, Singapore, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Slovakia, Netherlands, France and Chile – and it’s now taking off in several more countries around the world.

Volunteers (pilots) sign up for bike rides with the elderly through a simple booking system as often or as rarely as they want to. It’s all driven by people’s own motivation. At present (November 2015) more than 63 of Denmark’s 98 municipalities offer Cycling Without Age from well over 400 rickshaws – and the numbers are still growing. More than 3,000 pilots ensure that the elderly get out of their nursing homes, out on the bikes to enjoy the fresh air and the community around them. They give them the right to wind in their hair."

Via/More: Cycling Without Age

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Photograph via changemakers

Design vs. "Fat Tax"

"Canadian company Bombardier's CS100 aircraft features middle seats that are 19 inches (48.26 centimetres) wide – making them broader than both the Boeing 737 seats (17.3 inches/43.94 centimetres) and Airbus A319 (18 inches/45.72 centimetres). Window and aisle seats will measure 18.5 inches (47 centimetres)."

"We went to airlines and asked them what the appropriate sizes were. They said 18-19 inches because it gives people more room in the seat. Airlines were looking to have an option with more comfort."

"The larger seats cater to contemporary passengers, who on average are both taller and heavier than those of previous decades. They may also alleviate the extreme discomfort and embarrassment reported by some overweight fliers."
(Dezeen)

This is certainly good news as "airline obesity policies" are verly likely to make people feel embarrassed. Some airlines have announced to weigh passengers before boarding, in one case, an airline was sued by a passenger because he had to sit next to an overweight passenger... We all benefit from larger seats.

"Airline obesity policies differ in degree and detail, but decree essentially that if you don't fit in a seat with an extension seatbelt and the armrest down, you will be charged for two seats or removed from the plane.

Most airlines recommend that if you think you will be too large for your seat, you should purchase a second seat at the time you make your original booking (or, of course, buy a ticket in first or business class). Some airlines will offer a discount on the second seat or refund the cost if the plane isn't full, but in many cases obese passengers simply have to pay twice the price as other fliers."
(Independent Traveler)

Eye-opening read:
::: What it's like to be that fat person sitting next to you on the plane READ

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Photograph via Dezeen

Oneware, because everyone should cook

"Oneware is designed to eliminate the need for a second hand. The chopping board comes with spikes on which one can fix the vegetables or fruits. Cutting them becomes easier when the fruits/veggies are held in place. The Oneware also has a dish-washing mat made of a high-friction elastomer. The mat’s textures help hold the dish in place while one hand scrubs it vigorously. Pores in the dish help drain the water out."
(text and photograph via Yanko Design)

More: Yanko Design