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

Future Cites

Another circular city, I cannot find out who did the illustration or when it was done, but circular space cities pop up all over the place. There are many images of peoples ideas on how we might live in the future on the web, with some interesting ideas.

Image via www.globalnerdy.com/

Image via ILMO JOE

But maybe it will not be that different?

Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder is a Canadian Sci-fi and fantasy writer, the images below are visualisations he has done into cites from his work.

Images via www.kschroeder.com/

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu, her work is inspired a number of different things, such as buildings, maps, plans and architecture.

Artists Cities

Many artists over the centuries have depicted cities, both real and imaginary. This a depiction of The Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Over the next week I will hunt downs more artists work around cities.

Cat Bus

The Cat Bus from Hayao Miyazaki's film 'My Neighbour Totoro' is one way of getting around a city. I will add some more pictures of different methods of transport, so we can find some inspiration in designing our cities transportation.

Miyazakitopia by Iain Heath

A work inspired by the films of Japanese animator and director Hayao Miyazaki. His films provide lots of ideas for developing cities on land, in the sky or under the water.

Miyazakitopia by Iain Heath

Some more ideas.

Logical Toys

Mark at Logical Toys has kindly given us some makedo materials to try out at The Carnival of Creativeness. Logical Toys are the New Zealand suppliers of the kits and if you have a look at the makedo website gallery pages there are lots of ideas to inspire you.

Liquid City by Cache via makedo

A Better Wellington

A Better Wellington is a website were you can send in your ideas for improving Wellington. It has been set up by Grant Robertson, who is the MP for Wellington Central. I contacted him about Lets Play City and how those attending the workshops would be coming up with creative and imaginative ideas for a better Wellington. So Mr Robertson is going to come along, probably on the morning of the 13 April, around 10.00am. So hopefully by then we will have some great ideas, I can't promise that he can get them built, but a chocolate fountain in Civic Square is surely a vote winner?

City Gallery 'The Obstinate Object'

I was looking around the City Gallery in Wellington and came across some of Yuk King Tan's new work. It incorporates both a city, in this case Hong Kong and cardboard. So if you are coming along to Lets Play City at the Carnival of Creativeness, you can pop in to the City Gallery to her work, it is in the cinema area. There is also a another piece of work upstairs made out of cardboard, I am not sure if it is by Yuk King Tan or someone else, but have a look. Below is a short interview with Yuk King Tan and there is a short clip in it of her work 'Scavenger'.

Slide

Photo by redjar

Accordion Chair

More Cardboard

Photo by duck-26

Photo by exploratorium

Photo by exploratorium

Photo by nikki pugh

More things to do with cardboard

Photo by johnthescone

Photo by kenjonbro

Photo by avlxyz