On November 16, 2005 a parking space in San Fransisco was momentarily turned into a mini-park.

At noon, the parking-space transformed into a small public area with grass, a tree and a bench where people could rest and relax. After two hours, the park reversed back into a parking space.

The intervention was performed (and paid for) by REBAR, a collaborative group of creators, designers and activists based in San Francisco.

• PARK(ing)

Here's a link to my interview with Theo Jansen, published at artificial.dk.

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artists who is occupied with the making of 'new nature'. For the last 15 years, he has been evolving a series of wind-powered animals that look like skeletons. When these creations are fed by wind, they set into motion and transmute into organic-looking creatures; or 'beach animals' as Jansen calls them.

• www.artificial.dk • Theo Jansen

Delete! - delettering the public space - is an installation by austrian artists Christoph Steinbrener & Rainer Dempf.

For two weeks advertising signs, slogans, pictograms, company names and logos in a Viennese shopping street was covered in monochrome yellow.

Steinbrener and Rainer managed to realized the project by collaborating with the local shopkeepers who agreed to renounce their identities to become part of this large-scale installation.

• Delete!

On May 31 The Allianz Arena in Bayern, Germany was opened to the public after three years of construction.

The Arena replaces the legendary Olympic Stadium and will be the shared home ground of the two local football teams FC Bayern München and TSV 1860 München.

The membrane of the futuristic looking stadium is made of air cushions that can be illuminated in three colors; red, blue and white. When FC Bayern plays at home, the membrane will turn red and when TSV 1860 plays, it turns blue.

Furthermore, the patterns and the intensity of the lights can be used to reflect the drama of a football match as it is being played, thus giving outsiders an indication of the action inside.

The Allianz Arena is designed by the Swizz architects Herzog and de Meuron who are internationally reknown for their design of the Tate Modern in London.

• Allianz Arena

Beukelsblue (Beukelsblauw) by Florentijn Hofman is a temporary urban artwork that has turned into a city attraction.

Hofman was asked to redecorate a soon-to-be demolished residential block in Rotterdam and, in agreement with the neighbors, he covered the empty block in blue paint as an attempt to make those who pass by reflect on its past, present and future meaning.

Beukelsblue (or more precisely, 'Beechblue') is named after the street Beukelsdijk and with few means, it has become one of the most intriguing public artworks in the city - unfortunately, it will only remain until a new plan has been developed for the ground.

• Beukelsblue

Project Litmus by Designer Jason Bruges, consists of 4 reactive sculptural installation that are placed at highway roundabouts near London, UK.

The 12 metre high installations act as giant litmus papers, sensing and responding to a variety of environmental stimuli.

Each tower displays the collected information using different colored LED lights that are visible to drivers passing by. Two of the towers measure and display the light and tide levels in the riverside area. The third tower displays the power generated by the neighboring wind turbine and the fourth tower counts and displays the amount of traffic entering into the Rainham area.

• Project Litmus via WMMNO

In collaboration with MTV, Volkswagen is about to launch a 3 week-long lifestyle event in Copenhagen to promote the newest and youngest member of its family - the VW Fox.

The event, which is called 'Project Fox', brings together young hip designers, artists and cooks who have been invited to develop and implement their creative ideas at three 3 unique locations: a hotel, a factory building and an old warehouse. These locations will form a collective gastronomic and artistic stage for the public introduction of the VW Fox. 800 European journalists have been invited to witness the event that kicks off on April 2nd.

One of the more interesting aspects about the event and the locations, is the hotel, which has been totally redesigned by 21 different artists. Each of the 61 rooms will be a unique artwork in itself. Somewhat like Hotel Winston in Amsterdam.
The plan is that Hotel FOX will live on after the event is over.

• www.project-fox.org • Hotel Fox

Engineering students in London have come up with a concept that makes it possible to erect solid emergency shelters on demand.

The shelter comes in a bag - or more precisely, in a sack of cement-impregnated fabric - and to erect the structure, you simply have to add water to the bag and inflate it with air.

It takes 12 hours before the cement has dried out and is ready for use.

The idea was developed by William Crawford and Peter Brewin when they were thinking of an entry for the annual British Cement Association competition for new and innovative uses of concrete.

• Wired

Israeli product designer Ronen Kadushin has created a product line called "Open Design', which aims to close the creative gap between product design and other fields, such as music, graphic design, animation and photography that are traditionally more connected to political, social and economic flows and issues.

Inspired by the Open Source movement, Kadushin released the designs under a Creative Commons license, which means that you are allowed to reproduce them for personal use.

Each design can be downloaded along with a description and a 'blueprint'.

• Open Design

Seattle based 'Team HyBrid', formed by Robert Humble and Joel Egan, is a collective of architects and artists creating what they call 'Cargotecture' - prefab housing that uses shipping containers as building modules.

By definition, the shipping-container is readily available with an infrastructure in place to transport it globally, which gives the containers an advantage over other modular structures in terms of cost and efficiency.

The mobile potential of the concept is well-illustrated by recent events in South Asia. In collaboration with NGO's, the HyBrid team was busy transforming containers into long-term-use in Sri Lanka when the tsunami struck. The work was momentarily put aside, with the team instead turning to designing mobile medical stations for the aid workers.

The idea of using shipping-containers as basis for habitable structures is not entirely new. See www.fabprefab.com for a list of related projects.

• www.cargotecture.com • via Metropolis Magazine