Budapest Design Week 09 – WAMP

The past Sunday marked the end to this year’s Budapest Design Week. A notable event conclusion was the Finnish-Hungarian WAMP, a designer’s market offering fun and inspiring designs. (photos from Oct 11th, 2009)

During WAMP at the Magyar Iparmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest.

http://designweek.hu/en/okt/11

By Heim Zsuzsi, PUCC sweetwear

By Heim Zsuzsi, PUCC sweetwear

By Heim Zsuzsi, PUCC sweetwear

http://pucc.hu

Beograd Bag made from reused bicycle tubes.

http://www.balkantango.hu/

Salt and Pepper shaker by Lublóy Zoltán

http://www.lubloy.hu/

Reused bicycle tires as belts by 1mindeg

Reused bicycle tires as necklace by 1mindegy

http://www.myspace.com/1mindegy

Amazing art watches by Óra Mü

Amazing art watches by Óra Mü

Amazing art watches by Óra Mü

http://www.katonabarbara.hu/

Stately dog leashes by Márton Strohner, JFD.

E-mail at, Stromarci@gmail.com

Toilet Signs from Around the World

I love seeing and photographing bathroom signs and pictograms during my travels. Signs can often surprise you and tell you a good deal more about the culture and you anticipate. Check out these Flickr groups dedicated to bathroom/toilet signage from around the world.
Restroom Signs
Bathroom Signs
Gender Signs

Flags By Color

In his Flags By Color project, Shahee Ilyas uses a list of countries generated by The World Factbook along with the world’s national flag images fetched from Wikipedia to produce a series of charts that break down the color proportions for each flag. These proportions of color are then displayed in a single chart revealing the color proportions of all of the flags of the world combined. This project was generated entirely with script.

Tracking the Progress of H1N1 Swine Flu

This dynamic map and the data behind it were compiled by Dr. Henry Niman, a biomedical researcher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, using technology provided by Rhiza Labs and Google. The map was compiled using data from official sources, news reports and user-contributions.

Fabrica lectures: Yu Hua “My Uncanny and Amusing China”

On Friday 3 October the famous Chinese novelist Yu Hua came to Fabrica for an interesting Lecture titled “My Uncanny and Amusing China”.
He told us about China’s recent history, traditional mindsets, contradictions, extremisms, and hopes in an enterteining and passionated way.
In particular, he told us about his chilhood, when people could not even use the word “love”; about the fast Chinese economic growth in the last 40 years; and then about the big gaps between people’s dreams and desires (from an airplane to a simple pair of shoes!).
In the end, answering to our questions, he talked about the feeling that Democracy is going to be the political goal his country is looking for.
And yet, after having talked about unbelieveble and crazy episodes of his life we can hardly imagine, he could not but smile referring to Italian democracy.
As people sometimes may feel ashamed of what happened in the past, I feel ashamed of “My well known and funny Italy” today!

Power to (or from?) the music!

If you are in Rotterdam and you wanna have an “energetic” dancing night, Watt is finally open and the Sustainable Dance Floor is a reality.

During the last workshop at Fabrica, Cameron Sinclair asked the students to imagine a soccer team club for young people in Zambia. Thinking of the importance of music and dance in that country, Lars, Pushkar, Priya and I tried to think of how to produce electricity and save consumptions.
That’s how I discovered Sustainable Dance Club.
SDC invented an Energy Generating Dance Floor that converts the movement of the dancing
crowd into electricity and uses this power to change the
appearance of the floor’s surface.
All visuals are a continuous real-time interaction between the
clubbers on the floor made visible, allowing every individual’s
actions to contribute to the collective experience.

Doing your part for the environment doesn’t have to be boring

they say…
but that’s spectacular isn’t it?

1kg More

ARS Electronica, Golden Nica Digital Communities

This is a wonderful project. This website is a tool for helping provide rural schools in China with resources they are lacking. The organisation is targeting backpackers in China (of which there are about 300, 000, 000 per year) as their contributors and distributers. They ask them to carry one more kilo in their backpack in the form of books, stationary and other resources to a school along their journey. Backpackers can use the website to get information on the schools in areas they are visiting and connect with them. It’s a really nice way for travellers to give back to the places they are visiting, and meet local people.
At the moment the site is only in Chinese, but hopefully we’ll see other languages in the future.
1kg.org

Beijing’s pictograms

The Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games integrate pictographic charm of inscriptions on bones and bronze objects in ancient China with simplified embodiment of modern graphics to make them recognizable and easy to use.

Fantasy Cartography

Fantasy Maps offers you a whole new world. One that in the past you could only imagine: a collection of maps from various fantasy and science fiction works for your viewing.

From literature, the Bible, television programs, movies to video games. From Atlantis, Lost, Star Wars to Flash Gordon’s Mongo, there are many worlds ready to be to explored!

Journeys of Franz Kafka

Photographer Jan Jindra presents eminent Franz Kafka from a very different perspective. With beautiful black and white photography, he takes us to the writer’s journeys around Europe; his steps, his travels, what he saw, what inspired him.

The photographs are completed with details of Kafka’s relationship with the places, which creates a stronger connection between his life, his unique body of writing and our personal perspective about him. Fascinating!