Sergio Lopez-Pineiro’s “Olmsted’s Blank Snow” Project
Soon enough we’ll be getting into the thick of winter and Sergio Lopez-Pineiro–an assistant professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo–is not going to let the snowfall go to waste this year. He is planning a large scale project in Buffalo’s Front Park which involves plowing snow into 15 giant mounds, forming a pattern [...]
![All Tomorrow’s Problems: the Weekly Design Night for Future-Focused People We’re hosting another round of All Tomorrow’s Problems (ATP), a weekly Design Night focused on creative and speculative problem solving.We’re going to kick things off by picking up where we left off in 2012, working through the future of local transit and mobility issues, and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ATP-2013-2-150x150.jpg "All Tomorrow’s Problems: Winter/Spring 2013")
![We’re a week into taking submissions for Regret & Resolve and to get a jump start on all the t-shirt making we’ll have to do at the end of the month (remember, submissions close on January 25th), we’ve begun pressing some test shirts. We also got some great coverage in the University of Windsor Daily [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/wpid21099-IMG_2053-150x150.jpg "Behind the Scenes: T-shirt pressing for Regret & Resolve")
![Sara and I spent some time planning out some very preliminary designs for our Grades for Public Spaces project. The gist of the project is to have a series of rubrics to annotate / grade public space — or rather, use those rubrics as a tool to generate conversation and engagement in the use and rethinking [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_6597-150x150.jpg "Grades for Public Spaces (design phase)")
![We spent the day in Hamilton again, this time walking around downtown as Official Hamilton History Hunters, building a timeline of Hamilton’s history with the help of city residents and visitors around Jackson Square, a multi-use complex in the downtown core. Both Hiba and I had specific tasks that we alternated during our investigation. Hiba [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_61001-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Hamilton History Hunters Day 2")
![Our magnetic planters have finally been finished and installed (temporarily) along the alley that runs behind our headquarters. Consider yourself cordially invited to take a planter or two and move them to some other space in the city in need of a micro-garden. Cristina’s finally back from Italy, it was awesome to catch up and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_9407-150x150.jpg "Magnetic Planters Finished!")
![I wrote a plugin by hacking together some ideas based on the Notify on Comment plugin. Essentially, I was looking for a plugin whereby someone mentioned or tagged in a comment (using the familiar @username syntax from Twitter) would be notified. They wouldn’t have had to have made the post being commented on, nor would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-Shot-2012-01-22-at-1.17.49-PM-150x150.png "WordPress Plugin (notifying users tagged in comments)")
![On Day 2 of our ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project, our ongoing work finds us asking questions about a city that we’re still just getting to know. The questions are, necessarily, basic and straight forward. We’re not conducting deep sociological or statistical research, but rather trying to tease out a series of narratives that [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_3290-150x150.jpg "ATTC Calgary Day 2: Stories of a Distanced City")
![Save the Date: June 21st, 2012 at 7pm CIVIC SPACE (411 Pelissier St, downtown Windsor) On June 21st at 7pm, we’ll be kicking things CIVIC SPACE with the Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions). This open community project invites anyone and everyone to come borrow from our letterset to caption the city around them. With Windsor at [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/LetterLibraryProject-150x150.jpg "Project Launch June 21st: The Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions)")
![We want to know about London, Ontario. We’re doing an exhibition at Forest City Gallery, opening in September, and we’re looking into the wide range of narratives that go into constructing a place — the architecture, the headlines, the people, the memories, the relationships, the rumours — and we’re hoping you can help us out. Whether you’re [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ATTC-London-150x150.jpg "A Set of Informal Questions about London, Ontario")
![Some of our single use cameras have been developed and placed on our Letter Library grid wall. Above are some of our favourites so far! There has been such a diverse array of captions coming in, and we’re so excited to develop the rest of the cameras to see what other captions were created, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/lettergrid-150x150.jpg "Check it: Captioning the City with the Letter Library")
![Tom Provost came by a couple weeks ago with an idea for a new collaboration. We’ve work with Tom before on How to Forget the Border Completely — in particular the proposals for 1,000 Pedestrian Walkways and the Windsor-Detroit Portals. In short, the new project is to take the form of a triangular sign, something [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IMG_8460-150x150.jpg "Pop-Up Possibilities: Sketches")
![Last Monday night, a small group of us gathered around the table to talk about All Tomorrow’s Problems. This is an open event that invites anyone to attend and think of this as a very loosely organized group to discuss and exercise your ideas on a specific topic. We may not actually make anything, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wpid20092-IMG_1471-150x150.jpg "Last Week & Tonight: All Tomorrow’s Problems")
![We’ve been quiet on the blog, but not because we haven’t been busy. I’ve been working away at the final touches for the maps for Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope, which while taking longer than I had anticipated, was well worth it. The map looks great, we’ll be posting it on here soon [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_3153-150x150.jpg "Mid-August: Maps, Writing & Cardboard")
![Danielle and I spent the better part of the afternoon a couple days ago going through wheatpaste recipes, ultimately going with the simplest. We had wanted to avoid having to use a hot plate to make it, and after 4 different recipes requiring varying amounts of heat, we were successful. Flour. Flour + cold water. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/the-setup-150x150.jpg "Wheatpaste Research")
![Earlier this week we received a couple of samples of various retroreflective materials for use on our letters for CAFKA. One material, the one on the roll, is a vinyl (3M Scotchlite Reflective White Vinyl), perhaps most famously used in the Bright Bike project, while the other is an industrial substrate (3M Engineer Grade White [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_9505-150x150.jpg "Retroreflective Materials Test")
![On Friday night we played with some new things that Rosina brought over — retroreflective glass beads to be exact. We also made it through another three letters doing papier maché! And, we selected a colour for the letters, again thanks to Rosina doing some recon on paint chips. So, we now have two bags [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/IMG_3821-150x150.jpg "Retroreflective Glass Beads Have Arrived, Weeks of Work Ahead!")
![I’ve made some really great progress on this ongoing Arduino + LCD project over the last couple of weeks — some of the two larger hurdles are now out of the way, the results of which you can see in the video above. Since the video was shot, I’ve improved the PHP script some more [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_8202-150x150.jpg "Parsing RSS Feeds for the Arduino + LCD + PHP project")