Designing a city has never seemed easier. Nearly every firm of note has produced a master plan or four in the last five years or so, usually at the bidding of an Emirate elite or as part of an elaborate slideshow for some “visionaries” conference. Needless to say, not many are taken too seriously, and the prospective cities quickly devolve into a “greatest hits” of the architects’ built and (mostly) unbuilt work. Still, it’s hard for an architect to turn down a chance to design the city of tomorrow. It’s a right of passage.

Cue “FREE City”, a new ideal blueprint by Fernando Romero Enterprise (FREE) for a future sustainable city that consists of a lot of flashy renderings and a sprinkling of ideology. FREE City is a prototype for emerging urban areas of the 21st century and which aims to become a model for urban planning for years to come. Currently being exhibited at the 2nd Creativity World Biennale, the master plan depicts an urban future in which everyone has access to security, healthcare, education, and the state-of-the-art technologies. If only. Read more.

more

The bus-rapid transit in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, where double-articulated buses able to carry up to 270 passengers zip along dedicated lanes and stop at sleek glass tubes that serve as station. Photo via The Chicago Tribune.

Last year, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel nominated a celebrity chef and an obstetrician to join the city’s landmarks commission. An architect, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. And though Emanuel found time to commission Jeanne Gang and Chris Lee to design some new boathouses along the Chicago River, architecture and design has generally been an afterthought in his administration. Now, as Chicago lays out plans for its next big infrastructural expansion, many, including Chicago’s conglomerate of architecture societies, are showing concern for the evidently low priority design has on the mayoral agenda.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Emanuel’s proposals to secure private investments for the development of a bus-rapid transit (BRT) and the extension of the existent CTA Red Line has been gaining momentum since Tuesday, when the Chicago Department of Transportation announced that the Rockefeller Foundation has agreed to shell out $485,000 for the big push.

The tiled and arched ceiling at Chicago’s Grand Avenue subway station designed by architect Carol Ross Barney, who is part of the team planning the Chicago BRT. Photo via The Chicago Tribune.

While the news seems like a victory for Chi-town’s urban design proponents, the details of the plan may be cause for reassessment. It seems that Emanuel has opted for the basic package when it comes to improving Chicago’s infrastructure. Granted the mayor’s new Chicago Infrastructure Trust must work with a modest $11 million budget, the expansion plans will be introducing only a small stretch of dedicated bus lanes and a rather lackluster prototype for bus shelters with bare bones amenities, including an information kiosk, a bike rack, and a tacked-on decorative planter. In other words, while improvement is on the agenda, innovation runs dry.

Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune sees this conspicuous lack of design as a missed opportunity, saying “If Emanuel wants to make his infrastructure trust truly transformative, good design should be an essential part of the package, not an afterthought.”

more

Edible Geography author Nicola Twilley is no stranger to ‘smellscapes.’ In her blog, she has often discussed the olfactory aspects of the built environment and “the importance of smellmarks in urban placemaking” (new buzz words). But she probably didn’t see this one coming: as Europe is feeling its first winter frost of the season, some bus riders in the UK will be warming up to a multi-sensory, protruding fiberglass potato sculpture that heats up and releases a precisely engineered baked potato aroma upon the push of a button. The $2.2m marketing campaign strives to “arouse consumers’ senses and demonstrate, quite literally, just how delicious new McCain Ready Baked Jackets really are.” According to advertiser JCDecaux, the aroma took three months of research and development at a scent lab. Is this a mark of progress towards designing what Twilley called “intentional olfactory architecture?” If this is a push forward, let’s also work on improving culinary standards and get some bus shelters to teach us how to bake potatoes.

more

Chromaroma from Mudlark on Vimeo.

Sure, Foursquare can be fun, traipsing around the city, hunting for badges in a layered world of cute icons and avatars with soft edges. But what if this glaze of augmented reality were pumped up with the exhilarating rush of a game like capture the flag? UK-based digital production company Mudlark has produced an application that turns the London Underground into a site for thrilling real time game play. Chromaroma tracks your journeys and creates missions for teams to complete with a military sense of urgency. Stations need to be captured and held, distances traveled, and puzzles solved, all by tube, bus or bicycle. With the taunting slogan “travel like you mean it,” Chromaroma pushes Londoners to explore the city, egging them on with the competitive allure of summer camp color wars.

more

A segment of the London Underground map designed by Harry Beck

Earlier this week at the Talk to Me symposium, Sandra Bloodworth outlined how the MTA is finding its way to better urban design. A recent example we’ve seen is the MTA Weekender website, which features a streamlined interactive map designed under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. As we learned from Fast Co. Design, London too has released an online reinterpretation of the London Underground map. But how did our friends across the pond improve upon an already legendary work of graphic design, a map that already sits tight in the “cartographic pantheon?” Click to find out.

Learning a thing or two from the Brits, the MTA adopts a simplified map, shown in part above, for their Weekender website

more