Haptic Lab brings us these AMAZING quilted city maps - quite possibly the best way to interact with a map ever!
Haptic Lab was started by Emily Fischer, a Brooklyn-based architect and designer. Soft-Maps started in 2002 as an academic experiment in tactile wayfinding; the quilts were inspired by Emily’s mother Peggy who had begun losing her eyesight.
The website has quilts, baby SoftMaps and even custom maps available. I am dying to own one of these someday!! If you join the mailing list you can be entered to win a free quilt :)
If we think about the subculture in NYC, graffiti art is the most substantial thing that we we see it everyday in our lives. But when and how did graffiti start spreading over the city? The curiosity project brings you back in the old days to the 1970's–a video from Jon Naar's view about graffiti art in New York.
Jon Narr is a photographer in New York who enthusiast about graffiti photography, and he published "The Birth of Graffiti", which was his photo collection of graffiti.
It is incredible that subway trains was still full of graffiti in the 1980's. The documentary film "Dream City"(1987) depicted the graffiti culture at that time: some graffiti writers were busy creating their new pieces during midnight, and some of the artists tagged their names on every train that they wrote. Until 1989, The Clean Train Movement started and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) begun a program to eradicate graffiti on the subway trains.
The Curiosity Project brings you Legos today. Yeah, you know what Legos are...we know. But these projects push the limits of craziness with creative uses of these beloved building blocks.
Above, a video by rymdreglage called 8 Bit Trip combines Legos with one of my favorite things ever - stop motion. It will blow you away! It took 1500 hours to make which makes perfect sense - this is insane!
Below is the Munchausen Lego Kitchen - an IKEA counter covered in Legos by two Paris designers. This makes me want to cover something in my apartment with Legos.
Lego has recently released famous architecture buildings in lego form including Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright (seen below) as well as the Guggeheim Museum in NYC also by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Farnsworth House. They also have a landmark building series that includes favorites like the Empire State building, the Willis (Sears) Tower, the Hancock Tower, and the White House. If they weren't quite so expensive, I'd have one of these for sure.
Next up is the DispatchWork, an international project to patch up cities with Legos. Not sure what the ultimate goal is other than smiles and awesomeness, but I know I'd sure love to see one of these around NYC
Haptic Lab brings us these AMAZING quilted city maps - quite possibly the best way to interact with a map ever!
