Archive for January, 2009
Going apartment-searching in Helsinki has been a fun introduction to different customs for small-space-living. Here’s one that should be spread to all mankind - Dish racks are installed like shelves in a bottomless cupboard above the sink where they can drip, dry, and be stored away in one fell swoop. And I brought my standalone dish rack over here like a caveman!
Three neat works from the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art… Rita Roos by Anne-Karin Furunes. Half-toned face made from punched holes and shadow. Dot matrix meets minimal art!
15 Excavator by June Bum Park. A sped-up video of a construction site is layered with crafty hands to look like they’re directing the crane. Real world as your Lego playland!
Love at the High Place 1 by Li Wei. Cirque du Soleil on your morning jog!
Small talk turned into performance art…
Customized storage for guns, pipes, and medical tools at the National Museum of Finland. The art of packaging, ritual, and making your things feel special.
Thoughtful transitional services that take the local weather into consideration and help you clean up before entering… Shoe brush for cleaning off snow outside of an apartment complex in Helsinki.
Contraption for wrapping your wet umbrella at a restaurant in Kyoto.
Bowl of water for cleaning sand off your feet in front of a cabana in Placencia, Belize.
Watching Obama at 7pm today with Finnish subtitles…
and his Google maps GPS location at the bottom of the CNN screen. It happened to be Voting Day, November 4th, when I received my official job offer from Nokia and then giddily voted for Obama. And now hours within each other, Obama and I both officially signed our work contracts! Same same…
And bravo to the new White House website, very classy!
Who enjoys retrying a door knob or peering below a stall to awkwardly check if a public bathroom is being used? Always courteous when “occupied” signs are designed into a system that revolves around temporary privacy in a public space. In Helsinki’s Kamppi mall a red light turns on when you lock the door. But no fanciness needed - in this bathroom at a university in Durban, South Africa…
locking the door shifts the sign from “vacant” to…
“Engaged”.
A sweet example of information made accessible - A Little History of the World (1935) by E.H. Gombrich, who explains world history in the same spirit as The Little Prince. As explained by his granddaughter in the preface: “He was… feeling a little impatient with academic writing, having waded through so much of it in the course of his studies, and was convinced that it should be perfectly possible to explain most things to an intelligent child without jargon or pompous language.”
Not only does Helsinki have a tram system that tells you exactly when the next one will come, but they have a neat map of bus lines moving in real time. An arrow notes the bus direction and the icons jolt every few seconds like a city version of Asteroids. No more fidgety gazing into the unknown or nighttime uncertainty. And now that I’m waiting above-ground, every icy minute counts…
