Container – House of the Future?

'maison container lille' by patrick partouche, lille, france

French architect Patrick Partouche recently designed and developed a single-family unit made up of five shipping containers. In Africa we’ve seen containers being used as community gathering places, schools and places of business. Having been largely confined to the African continent these efforts always carried a make-shift and “low-class” notion. However, this family unit looks fantastically industrial-chique. With a big push to sustainable building perhaps one of the greatest ways is to simple re-use and recycle. And to be honest I wouldn’t mind coming home to one of these.

-All images are courtesy of designboom and Patrick Partouche

The true size of Africa

In his quest to combat Immapancy, a term he’s coined himself, Kai Krause has designed a map to demonstrate the true size of Africa.
In his own words:

In addition to the well known social issues of illiteracy and innumeracy, there also should be such a concept as “immappacy,” meaning insufficient geographical knowledge.

A survey of random American schoolkids let them guess the population and land area of their country. Not entirely unexpected, but still rather unsettling, the majority chose “1-2 billion” and “largest in the world,” respectively.

Even with Asian and European college students, geographical estimates were often off by factors of 2-3. This is partly due to the highly distored nature of the predominantly used mapping projections (such as Mercator).

A particularly extreme example is the worldwide misjudgment of the true size of Africa. This single image tries to embody the massive scale, which is larger than the USA, China, India, Japan, and all of Europe … combined!

Go here to see which countries all fit into Africa.

Meeting in Davos. Now what?

Imabe by WEF

From January 25th all focus is on one little city, in one country where a fraction of the world’s top leaders will decide on the faith of everyone else. It’s the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. And it couldn’t come at a better time. The world’s financial and economic state is in turmoil, as there a major shifts in global sovereign dominance, the characters at this years meeting could pose for some interesting observation. Not to worry, the usual personalities won’t be missing out. Why wouldn’t they, the problems are plentiful.

Life. Easy and simple

Source: http://shop.holstee.com/pages/about

As if it didn’t have enough problems, now Earth has to deal with a generation of humans that over-think, over-analyze, over-work and generally just do everything “over”. The pressure of solving the worlds‘ (and our own) problems whirls us into a spin and sometimes just out of control. Until we suddenly stop. In this fast-paced world all your worries and efforts may be warranted, but sometimes all it takes is to let go and remember that you’re here. And since you’ve made it you might as well enjoy it.

When the guys at Holstee (the forward-thinking sustainable design, goods and lifestyle company) started shop they created the above manifesto. It’s already all over the internet, but at a time where Steve Jobs is serving as inspiration and we’re asking ourselves if Less is More, there is no better time to remember that: La vita è bella!

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As appeared on Urban Times on Nov 4th 2011

Mental Hoarding

@Artits&Fleas

Lately, I’ve been trying to learn the economic and financial processes that surround my daily life, mainly to particularly understand what my new precious monthly funds are capable of. In this process I find myself watching (and reading) all sorts of reports of the logical interlocked processes and steps that create a certain phenomenon. And although I grasp these concepts quickly I doubt that I could (or maybe would) conjure up the same linear logical processes. Not that I can’t, it just doesn’t work that way.

The Melting Pot

This gallery contains 38 photos.

Describing my initial state when I arrived in New York as overwhelmed is an understatement. The city has a breath-takingness about it. It like nothing you’ve ever seen. My first images I shared where Black&White my attempt and calming my … Continue reading →

free falling

“Falling doesn’t hurt you, it’s the sudden stop at the end” – Douglas Adams

I personally believe this saying to be true, then why is it that we (or maybe it is just me) are so afraid to fall in love?

I say, it’s because there’s that nagging voice, that necessary but so terrible annoying unsilenciable voice, warning us of a possible painful thud at the end – and that thud, more often than not, is inevitable.

I’ve always loved the above quoted book (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) but this particular interpretation became prominent to me at a time of my life when I had just gotten out of a relationship. Now this isn’t a typical heartbreak story  it was just a nice relationship that ended with a bang. It did bring me to associate this phrase with love – with falling in love. I realised I wasn’t afraid of falling, rather that as I hurdled to the ground the fall would come to a painful end.

The grand question is: how do you stop the end of falling from being painful, or how do find that bottomless pit?

Gotham

This gallery contains 23 photos.

I recently returned from a trip to New York City. I’ve split the photos into two parts: this one a gray scale collection, and a part in colour. Just some impressions the city left on me…

Welcome to .soul.sailing.

So here it goes, there is a space online on which I am allowed to express my thoughts, opening the cage to the lion’s den.
I’ve thought of many ways to introduce this space to the world and have come up with one that pleases me: my name. (whilst hopefully steering clear of self-indulgence)

Hi, I am Mayra Hartmann.