Three curious examples of a kind of infrastructural sedimentation, found in New York City and Brooklyn. The first one shows a broken portion of a (ugly) sign that had been placed over the original art deco style lettering on a behemoth post office. The next is a (ugly) fancy condominium module that has been plopped…

A curious urban mountain or boulder of some sort. I think there’s a story behind this concrete lump, but I’m not 100% sure. It could be some sort of street furniture, or perhaps an accident that occurred while concrete was being poured and no one cleaned it up?

This is probably old hat for current New Yorkers certainly, and something that makes visits home really interesting, these street furnishings and people zones are incredible interventions and nice experiments about alternative urban landscaping. When arriving in Times Square with my brother for a quick screech throu…

It has not been a quiet couple of days here in the Laboratory. Lots of gear and glassware about. Goggles, bunsen burners and all that sort of thing. And the report draft was just finished with Nicolas Nova, which occupied many early mornings. We almost spilled an organic, but toxic material on the draft which cause…

I think I figured out why I enjoy this map by Jack Schulze and Matt Webb — it can possibly induce vertigo, which means it’s human, real and embodied. The rolling coasting perspective that deliberately distorts the island of Manhattan shows the city from a fixed point of view, but still showing no horizon. The map is…

Scales of things and their relationships. A curious moment while out on a weekend’s Urban Scout, with these bicyclists, who could fit into the Smart Car that could fit into the ridiculous, shameless Hummer SUV. This scene reminded me of the image of relatives scales of occupancy between the same number of people, on…

We’ve been out of the Laboratory proper — the place where things are constructed and soldered and heated up — for a bit now, not because we don’t go in there, or we haven’t been doing things that will go in there. No, rather, or because of a variety of curiosities that have attracted our attention and, in that way,…

Our friends from NONOBJECT, the studio in Palo Alto that is working on the NONOBJECT book of designed objects meant to provoke reconsiderations as to what things are, will be participating in the Belgrade Design Week 2009 this next week. Wish we could be there but in any case, if you attend, be sure to look out for…

BSG Twitter Hybrid from Julian Bleecker on Vimeo.