Photographs

Some more photos of the cardboard city and I have been playing around with some on photoshop to see what they might look like if placed in Wellington.

Lets Play City Update

I have just finished two short films of activities at Lets Play City, posted below. I will add more films and photographs when I have time to go through everything, I took, during the two weeks. So for now thank you again for all the creative and hard work you put in to making the cardboard city.

Lets Play City Fly Over

From Cardboard to City

Lets Play City Everything

This a short film made up of all the photos I took during the 11 days of Lets Play City at Capital E. The final film will take a week or so to finish, but this shows what you can do with some old cardboard, lots of kids and a big dollop of creativity. Thank you to all those who participated in Lets Play City.

New Developments in the City

The residents of our city now have access to a wonderful new tennis facility, pet owners should have a look at Pet Shop Towers the latest experience for the pampered pooch and we certainly should not forget our Fairy Tale friends, they can now pop into Rapunzel's Castle for a chat.

Rough Footage - Lets play City

Rough Footage of the last few days at Lets Play City. After the event I shall edit all the footage into a completed film.

Welcome To Our City

We have only been building our city for four days and it is already got a wonderful array of buildings, parks, a dinosaur museum, art museum and a hover bus. Where else in the world has a hover bus? I can't think of anywhere. I will carry on adding photographs as the city continues to grow so keep checking back. Also someone told me about the film I posted below about a young boy and his wonderful cardboard arcade, as with the young people at Capital E, it is their creativity and imagination which shows through, you only have to let them loose in a room with a pile of cardboard boxes and then stand back and see what they produce.

Welcome to the City

Who needs the Sky Tower? When we can have this tower

A Brachiosaurus in the Dinosaur Museum

Caine's Arcade

Cardboard City Test

Just a quick test for the cardboard city animation.

No More Buildings?

Not all buildings are designed by Architects

Blob Architecture

The Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria

Nils-Udo

Artist Nils-Udo

Tree House

Tea House Tree House by Japanese Architect Terunobu Fujimori

Sounds

There is a lot more to cities than buildings, transport, open spaces, people and sounds. We don't often just stand in a city a listen to the sounds but you should try it and see what you can hear. There are some great websites where you can explore the world from sounds people have recorded Freesound and Radio Aporee are two examples. Musician and artist David Byrne used some sounds recorded in London for a short piece of music you can watch the video here.
I have only lived in Wellington for a couple of months but already I have heard more bird song than 10 years were I last lived, so in the city there is not only noise from cars, coffee machines buses etc. there are also natural sounds such as bird song, waves and wind.
The video below is a short bit about a project by artist Nina Katchadourian, who uses bird sounds in an interesting way.

Japanese Playground

This playground in Japan looks like the game jenga on the outside and inside a colourful spiders web. Designed by Tezuka Architects and more information available here.

Images via archifera.com

Beehive

We have an example here in Wellington of a building at least taking its name from an insect home, The Beehive. I am not sure if the architect was influenced by a real beehive or not, but bees are often used  by people for all sorts of reasons to support their ideas or beliefs. The other image is from the Eastgate Building in Zimbabwe, which has adapted ideas from termites cooling systems.

Image via inhabitat

Insects Homes

There are huge variety of homes built by social insects such as bees, wasps, ants and termites. Some are huge constructions with many thousands of colony members and others are made up of their living bodies such as bees, click here for BBC clip,  or some ant species. Materials include wax, chewed wood, sewn leaves or mud.

Animal and Insect Homes

From carrying your home with you, simple nests to complicated designs, there are many different ways to build a home in the natural world.

Non-Human Buildings

As well working in cities we live in them as well. Though for many living in a city means being outside of the central city area and traveling into the centre to work, shop, go to school etc. Many animals and insects make homes and then spend time looking for food or mates before returning to their homes, or if you are as clever as a snail, you can just carry your home with you. So looking at how animals and insects build homes can be helpful and give us ideas how we can build our own houses or workplaces, recently architects have designed buildings, which are inspired by the way termites build their mounds and how they manage the temperature inside them. Other insects such as bees also need to keep the temperature constant in their hives, which they manage by clustering together if it is cold or it it is to warm they can fan cooler air into the hive with their wings.

Colour

Many buildings and public spaces in town and cities across the world don't use colour, well not from what I can see from the little bit of research I did looking at images on the internet and at the library. I found some interesting projects where people have used colour and they literally stand out from the crowd of dull and uniform cityscapes. The last image is from a project by Nina Katchadourian where she organised parking by the color of the cars,  there are many more interesting projects at her website.

Image via Urban Design Week

Image and more details via Superflex

Nina Katchadourian

Art in the City II

Some ideas to change how a city looks could be as simple as using colour or coming up with an interesting idea. JR is a French artist who uses cities to show his work and people to inspire it he says his work is about "Raising Questions", see more of his projects here.
The other image is from a favela in Rio de Janeiro, a favela is Brazilian term for a shanty town. More about the project here.

via Favela Painting Project

Art in the City

As well as designing buildings there are many other ways to make cities interesting and vibrant places to live. Sometimes they are just small things that can make a city a more creative place.

Image via Little People

Images via Oddstuff Magazine