“BARCELONA: In increasingly green-conscious Europe, there are said to be only two kinds of mayors: those who have a bicycle-sharing program and those who want one.

Over the past several years, the programs have sprung up and taken off in dozens of cities, on a scale no one had thought possible and in places where bicycling had never been popular.”

Read the rest of this interesting article by Elisabeth Rosenthal over at the [International Herald Tribune]

It’s that time of the year again, and Sydney’s famous Bronte to Bondi ocean walk hosts the ‘Sculpture By The Sea’. 8am Sunday and it was already packed but here are what we thought were some of the highlights of this year’s show…

(more…)

Here’s a nice one for all those that still Ollie in the house…

The Dry Leaf Eco skateboard by Lets Evo is made from sustainable materials and socially responsible labour practices. Nice. Inhabitant.com wrote about it:

“The Dry Leaf is composed of multiple layers, using innovative renewable materials at every stage. The backbone of the board is a 3-ply organic Mosso bamboo, developed by Fibra Design Sustentável. The bamboo is treated using natural processes without of toxic chemicals and is produced following fair trade criteria. Than there is the second layer, a composite of 70% natural fibers (jute, malva and curaua) and 30% post production recycled polypropylene. To topping it off is a Pupunha Veneer - another material developed by Fibra Design Sustentável. The Veneer is produced from the waste of the sustainable palm-heart industry and is another way that the dry leaf supports farmers.”

[Read it all here]

You be the judge: [here]

Just spotted.  Designed and produced by German Industrial Design house ‘neongrau.id’, the Veloheld is a super paired down urban single speed. Sweet to look at, sweet to own we are sure - even if you are not into single speed.

While there are more cool SS bikes going around than one can poke a stick at, we somehow think that in some ways they are becoming collectible, like say….. collectible things. The rarer the cooler maybe?

100 to be made this year.

[neongrau.id]

[via]

Enough said!

(Brilliant)

Loving this we found on [Wooster Collective] via [Charlie Todd]

“Jake Bronstein recently bought a toy vending machine off the Internet. He filled the toy capsules with ideas of fun things to do and started placing the machine in various spots around New York. For 50 cents you get the original toy, an idea, and a map to guide you to the location for your idea. Each capsule also contains a quarter, refunding half of your purchase price (the machine wouldn’t let him charge less than 50 cents.)”

Public Farm One, an installation designed by architects [Work Architecture Company], has been unveiled in New York.

With food becoming an issue and much land around the world being lost to urban sprawl, there is an ever increasing need to find new ways to farm and limit the dependence on transport to markets; as well as solving the debatable quality of supposed fresh produce urban dwellers find themselves dealing with in supermarket chains. The PF1is a radical and very smart solution, indicating a fresh look and innovative thoughts on how to manipulate existing urban spaces and double use them for agriculture.

The diatribe on the Work AC site is too, well, academic to reproduce here, but you can rad more about the project…

[Here] at the Work Architecture Company sit (good thing they don’t do web design)

[Here] at Coolhunting (where we first saw it and nabbed the image)

And

[Here] at the P.S.1 MoMA site

Nuts!

…. yes, this is serious.

[via all sorts of places but the source is here]

Hijacked advertising.

Nice!

[read about it]