Tag Archives: brazil

DIY Libraries

9 Aug

NYC

DIY Libraries

Awesome! Urban Hacker John Locke from NYC has been fabricating and installing DIY Payphone Lending Libraries around Morningside Heights. I’m really feeling them because they turn this unused, deprecated, relic of the city into something equally antiquated, yet fresh. The little libraries are getting a lot of love lately from the press, yet this interview in World Literature Today is the coolest review.

I’m excited about this project because it’s part of something bigger that John and his crew are trying to do, The Department of Urban Betterment, which is like Hack Your City NYC. What up DUB, lets link!

DIY Libraries are important because they install a little shelf of pride in a neighborhood, by showing that neighbors are chill enough to ‘give one, take one’. They are also easy enough to build that you can replicate them anywhere in the world and since people have been building bookshelves since forever, they’ve gotten crazy stylish too. Building a DIY library in your neighborhood, inspired by the local architecture can produce infinite, unique designs that can be thrown up in a day.

BRAZIL

Poetic Civility.

A crew of Urban Hackers in in Puerto Alegre, Brazil have been putting in DIY Libraries at a few of their Bus Stops. They started as one DIY project that got lots of respect, so the city and some nonprofits sponsored them to be built in other neighborhoods. A great trend that a lot of these DIY Urban Design projects have had lately is posting easy to follow instructions so that other like minded neighbors around the world can replicate these good ideas.

In the video below, this crew in Brazil has stepped up the design of the DIY libraries by encouraging local artists to help build and decorate the shelfs.

COLOMBIA

Colombia, always on point, has a bunch of small libraries in there public parks. The local gov took an easy, cheap idea and ran with it. They have over a hundred of them throughout the country.

More DIY Libraries

World Literature Today 10 micro libraries.

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DIY Crosswalks

18 Aug

DIY Crosswalks painted during the Argentina gameSome days your city is slipping on their responsibilities and you gotta grab crew and do it yourself. An ‘Urban Repair Squad” in São Paulo did just that by painting their own crosswalks on several dangerous intersections. Problem is São Paulo is home to 11 million people, it’s impossible to find a time when the streets are quiet enough to do some guerrilla urban design. So when would all of this mega city be preoccupied indoors? Futebol! Worldcup!

During the different Brazil games, these activists skipped the matches and instead made their city a better place.

Poppin Bottles

Crosswalks are one of the cheapest ways to improve safety in the city. All you need to do is slap some paint down and cars can tell that this painted piece of property is parceled for pedestrians. The more visible and distinct the crosswalk, the more noticeable it will be for drivers, and the safer your grandma will feel crossing the street.

Other folks have taken DIY crosswalks even further. Banksy was the first I remember, using the zebra stripes to get revenge on someone. Old Banksy

While other groups have used crosswalks to raise awareness of their importance in the public realm.

More crosswalk art can be found at Web Urbanist.  I found out about this all from Good.

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