weburbanist

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The 99% Invisible City: Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

The 99% Invisible City: Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

From the creators of WebUrbanist and 99% Invisible comes a new beautifully designed and illustrated guide to cities. In their New York Times best-selling book, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design, Kurt Kohlstedt and Roman Mars zoom in to tell fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and drinking fountains to fire escapes and street signs. In…

[weburbanist]

Urbanist Exploration: Discover Over 5,000 Compelling Architecture, Art & Design Stories

Urbanist Exploration: Discover Over 5,000 Compelling Architecture, Art & Design Stories

For over a decade, WebUrbanist has featured a wide range of innovative and inspiring urban art and design projects from around the world. The website has attracted more than 500,000 subscribers and been visited over 100,000,000 times since it was launched in 2007. And while WU will remain online, we are not currently planning to publish new pieces going forward. We greatly appreciate your…

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Wondering About: Deserted Cities, Derelict Buildings & the Allure of Abandoned Places

Wondering About: Deserted Cities, Derelict Buildings & the Allure of Abandoned Places

Before it was abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Pripyat was a thriving Ukrainian city with a population of nearly 50,000. The relatively sudden exodus of its inhabitants left behind a physical snapshot of the times, preserved by the absence of humans intervention for fear of fallout.

Despite the dangers of returning, urban explorershave been…

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Clean Vandals: Invisible Paint & Reverse Graffiti Artists Work in Gray Areas

Clean Vandals: Invisible Paint & Reverse Graffiti Artists Work in Gray Areas

The word “graffiti” usually conjures images of people with spray cans illegally making murals or jotting down tags using colorful paints. A lot artistic interventions use other tools and materials, though, subverting expectations and working in (literal and legal) gray areas to create works without leaving a conventional trace. Consider, for instance, the massive deep sea monsters, jungle…

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Redressed to Impress: Uncovering Camouflaged Facades & Architectural Fake Overs

Redressed to Impress: Uncovering Camouflaged Facades & Architectural Fake Overs

The world is full of architectural fake overs, from individual facades to entire buildings designed to look like something other than what they really are. Historically, some of these disguises have been less well-intentionedthan others. During World War II, Nazis gave the Red Cross access to a concentration camp but they controlled the experience, putting up false fronts to make it seem more…

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Saving Up Space: Transforming, Multifunctional & Flat-Pack Furniture Designs & Ideas

Saving Up Space: Transforming, Multifunctional & Flat-Pack Furniture Designs & Ideas

In 1900, San Francisco entrepreneur William Murphy designed a fold-out bed that would allow him to court a young opera singer inside his studio apartment. The hidden bed was a workaround to circumvent dated taboos against having ladies enter a gentleman’s bedroom. With no visible bed, the single-room flat became a parlor. This novel idea opened the door to all kinds of modular space-saving…

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Shipping Manifesto: An Introductory Guide to Building Cargo Container Architecture

Shipping Manifesto: An Introductory Guide to Building Cargo Container Architecture

In the 1950s, Malcolm McLean developed a modular design that would simplify the loading and offloading of ships, boxing up goods for easier loading and unloading between trains, trucks and boats The standardization of cargo containers revolutionized the modern shipping industry. Today, though, an increasing number of the world’s 20,000,000+containers are being adapted to new uses, transformed…

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Outward Mobility: Clever Campers, Trailers & DIY Mobile Home Conversions

Outward Mobility: Clever Campers, Trailers & DIY Mobile Home Conversions

The 20th-century American dream of suburban houses and picket fences unfolded in parallel with another vision: freedom to roam, embodied in camper vans and other mobile housing designs. The increasing costs of city living and desire to escape nine-to-five life has since led to a new generation of creative solutions, ranging from converted camper vans and buses to space-saving sleeping trailersth…

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Localvore Revolution: Vertical Urban Farms Promise to Deliver Greener Produce

Localvore Revolution: Vertical Urban Farms Promise to Deliver Greener Produce

In Newark, New Jersey, a large and deceptively nondescript building is redefining the Garden State, producing millions of pounds of food per year just outside of Manhattan. This 70,000 square foot facility has the equivalent yield of over 5 million square feet of traditional farmland. Inside, a year-round, closed-loop aeroponics system employs no pesticides and requires 95% less water than field…

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Living City Streets: The Global Drive to Reclaim Routes for Cyclists & Pedestrians

Living City Streets: The Global Drive to Reclaim Routes for Cyclists & Pedestrians

In the mid-1900s, Dutch citizens of Delft were sick of cars driving too fast down their narrow residential streets. The city was slow to respond, so residents took matters into their own hands. Groups of neighbors came together and tore up sections of pavement, then put up planters and other partial obstructions, often overnight to avoid traffic or official resistance. Their traffic-calming urba…

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Retail Turnover: Suburban Megastores Remade into Libraries, Schools & Shelters

Retail Turnover: Suburban Megastores Remade into Libraries, Schools & Shelters

Years ago in McAllen, Texas, an old abandoned 124,500-square-foot Walmart superstore was renovated and put to new use as the largest single-floor public library in the United States. Across America, many malls have emptied out and thousands of abandoned big box stores sit empty, including hundreds of former Walmarts. Some, though, are getting creative new leases on life, becoming community…

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Covert Photo Ops: Uncanny Disguises Blend Humans into Built Environments

Covert Photo Ops: Uncanny Disguises Blend Humans into Built Environments

In bustling cities packed with other people, it can be nice to stand out at times, but it can also be a relief to fade quietly into the background for a bit. Creative wallflowers looking for a bit of both draw on all sorts of inspiration to create urban camouflage that ranges from virtually invisible to fashionably outstanding.

Take Menja Stevenson, a German artist transfixed by public transit…

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Deciphering Cities: The Secret Languages of Utility Markings, Hobo Codes & Graffiti Tags

Deciphering Cities: The Secret Languages of Utility Markings, Hobo Codes & Graffiti Tags

Most cities have so much in common that a generic “map of every city” can seem similarly familiar to people living in London, Paris, New York or another metropolis entirely. General types of neighborhoods aren’t the only things different cities share, though — much less obvious but pervasive are sets of codes, symbols and markingsthat can communicate meaning across different times and urban…

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Key Developments: 10 Essential Diagrams Tell the Story of Modern Urban Design

Key Developments: 10 Essential Diagrams Tell the Story of Modern Urban Design

For much of history, urban planning as we know it didn’t exist. Sure, there were cities with zoning ordinances and building codes, but ones thoroughly planned from scratch with heavily controlled development are largely a recent phenomenon. So a few years ago, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (known as SPUR) assembled ten key illustrationsto summarize the twists and…

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Restyling Blandmarks: Those Much Maligned Boxy Urban Condo Buildings

Restyling Blandmarks: Those Much Maligned Boxy Urban Condo Buildings

From Seattle to New York City, Minneapolis to Dallas, boxy apartment and condo buildings sporting bland facades, metallic or colored cladding and a generally flat aesthetic seem to dominate new urban developments these days. Surprisingly similar in style from one place to the next, they have been dubbed works of “developer chic” or “fast-casual architecture” and branded blandmarksor LoMo (Low…

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SOS Brutalism: Book Advocates “Saving Concrete Monsters”

SOS Brutalism: Book Advocates “Saving Concrete Monsters”

Pahlavi University by Minoru Yamasaki, Iran, compl. 1979

Perpetually divisive, Brutalist landmarks around the world are disappearing fast. A massive 716-page book called “SOS Brutalism – Save the Concrete Monsters!” aims to archive as many of them as possible – and hopefully, inspire public passion to save them before they’re demolished.

Two projects featured in the book were destroyed during the…

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A Sidewalk is a Wall: Street Art Project Highlights Lack of Accessibility

A Sidewalk is a Wall: Street Art Project Highlights Lack of Accessibility

We come with so many different shapes, sizes and abilities, yet the world is built as if there’s a “standard human” whose access and comfort takes precedent over everyone else. If you’re close enough to that artificial norm, you may not notice all of the ways in which people can be excluded.

A project called “A Sidewalk is a Wall” aims to call attention to one major barrier to accessibility: a…