Tabla de contenidos para September - October 2020 en Frame

Once destined to be the most extensive application of the smart-city principal yet seen, at the start of May Sidewalk Lab abruptly walked away from its project to transform a stretch of Toronto’s waterfront. A subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Sidewalk Labs was uniquely positioned in terms of both financial and intellectual resources to realize such an ambitious plan, one that involved the creation of a new neighbourhood ‘built from the internet up’ and that the organization described as ‘a testbed for emerging technologies, materials, and processes’. What that would have meant in real terms ranged from heated sidewalks to automated garbage collection, all mastered by an array of sensors that could monitor the movement of people and inform long-term urban planning. Having dominated the discussion about how future cities might…

Sports may be back, but fans aren’t, at least not in their usual capacity. Some question whether matches played out in empty stadia overlaid with the prerecorded chants of spectators actually constitute ‘live’ sport. But for all that the visceral reality of the match day is currently unavailable, you could argue that fan engagement is at an all-time high. Viewing figures are up across the board according to broadcasters. A study commissioned by Smart Energy GB also revealed how UK viewers were using technology to try and re-create the match day experience, with one in six chatting with friends via video call during the game. Broadcasters have aped this, showing fans reacting to events in their home as part of the live feed, as have teams, some of which have…

The plethora of packaging on the planet, much of it plastic, has spawned the zero-waste movement. Rather than merely recycling, the goal is to generate less rubbish in the first place – after all, some reports state that only 9 per cent of the world’s plastic is actually recycled. The conversation has centred largely on inorganic waste, but what about human waste? Although it’s a topic many would rather avoid, sanitaryware brand Laufen believes it’s time to not only speak up but to take action. Society has become accustomed to the flush-and-forget scenario. The way we dispose of excreta has barely developed in the past few hundred years – the flush toilet became widespread in 1851 – yet the process is now under scrutiny. Studies suggest that excessive nitrogen levels…

KIEV Believe it or not, many moons ago I spent a summer working behind the fragrance counter of a department store. ‘Such and such for men’, ‘So-and-so pour homme’: these were the fragrances I wanted to wear, but they were so clearly intended for the opposite sex. That didn’t stop me, but I did wonder: Why were so-called ‘female’ fragrances generally sweet and floral, and their masculine counterparts woody and warm? The past few years have witnessed moves towards dismantling such distinctions. ‘Recent data suggests the new generation of beauty consumers prefer a non-binary approach,’ writes Nia Warfield for CNBC. She references NPD’s iGen Beauty Consumer report, which found that nearly 40 per cent of adults aged 18 to 22 have shown interest in gender-neutral beauty products. Even though some…

When Covid-19 forced the world into lockdown, almost everything moved (more) online. Team meetings, yoga classes, concerts. No longer able to welcome guests onto their physical sites, industries across the board had to rely on website visits instead. ‘We are in the midst of a new digital revolution, yanked kicking and screaming by Covid-19 into a new reality,’ writes Lenox Mhlanga for Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard. ‘Where innovations such as virtual reality were relegated to a new breed of digital nerds, there is a mad scramble by mainstream organisations to adapt and play catch-up.’ Enter the explosion of virtual/online exhibitions. Some have gone so far as to call them virtual reality exhibitions, even if what appears is no more than a click-through website – no headset in sight. The latter…

Across the world, national executives have spent several decades pushing to densify their urban centres. The strategy offers economic benefits by bringing people closer to employment hubs and hothousing innovation; it reduces carbon emissions by reducing commuting time and emphasizing public transport; it increases quality of life indexes through proximity to better education, health care and cultural provision; and it creates a social dividend by broadening support networks. With over half (55 per cent) of the world population already living in urban areas, and the UN having previously predicted a further 13 per cent increase by 2050, density was the tool that was supposed to help us live more sustainably on an already overpopulated planet. But how does the drive towards density play in the post-Covid-19 age? After years of…

For several months, customer quotas have meant visiting a store has been as much an outdoor as an indoor experience. There’s recognition that such procedures will be in place for some time to come, which is why retailers are investing in permanent solutions like Philip’s PeopleCount displays, which track footfall, automate entry and double as a new marketing touchpoint for the captive audience outside the store. This renewed focus on storefronts as the key point of interaction between consumers and brands will last well beyond the short term. What is currently being implemented in the name of safety could soon be mandated to meet that evermore important consumer driver: convenience. A recent Deloitte study showed that the demand for convenience in every aspect of the shopping experience has only been…

New post-Covid safety protocols will prove challenging to implement irrespective of retail sector, but for those operating at the luxury end of the market, any hope of maintaining even a semblance of the in-store customer journey seems impossible. That’s why many high-end fashion brands and department stores aren’t even trying. Instead they’re making use of their properties in a different way, one that only requires the staff, not the customer, to be onsite. Call it personal shopping for the Zoom generation. In Paris, Galeries Lafayette will connect you via video chat to advisors from leading brand concessions such as Prada, Off-White, Kenzo and Hermès, while those who want to explore more broadly can book in a tour with an in-house personal shopper. At London’s Selfridges, a similar service was made…

Remote work is here to stay. But, it won’t be synonymous with working at home, nor will it be a case of all or nothing. Those, in short, were the outcomes of our #FrameLive discussion on post-pandemic workspace design. So, what will the future of work look like? Panellist Ramon Beijen, creative director of commercial real estate firm CBRE, believes that even though work will become more local, people still need to get out of their houses sometimes, causing workspaces to become more and more dispersed across spatial typologies. ‘We’ve already signalled a growth in satellite co-working spaces that serve the OOO workforce, and the Covid-19 crisis will only accelerate this growth. A more distributed and decentralized approach towards office space is likely to persist.’ An occupier survey that CBRE…

LISBON As we all know, a lot of events were either postponed or cancelled this year. Those that could eventually go ahead – as well as the gathering spaces that housed them – often took a drastically different form, having to accommodate the kinds of safety precautions unimaginable pre-pandemic. No such case at Lisbon’s MAAT. The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology was scheduled to unveil a series of new projects by architecture and design firm SO-IL to the public on 27 March, before Covid-induced closures delayed proceedings. When the doors finally opened in June, the intervention was just as SO-IL had imagined it. The museum’s executive director, Beatrice Leanza, says that aside from putting in place certain preventive measures – including the mandatory use of masks, installing hand sanitizers…

01 As published on Statista, the VR industry is growing at a fast pace, with the market size of consumer virtual reality hardware and software projected to increase from $6.2 billion in 2019 to more than $16 billion by 2022. 02 It’s likely that most current at-home usage is by gamers. According to TechJury, 70% of VR headset-owning consumers have bought a game on it. 03 Aiming to democratize culture, the online-only Universal Museum of Art (UMA) opened in 2017. Others – such as the Virtual Online Museum of Art (VOMA) – are emerging with a similar ethos. 04 A number of galleries with existing digital viewing rooms saw an increase in visitor numbers during lockdown. For Seoul’s Savina Museum of Contemporary Art – which in 2012 became one of the first museums in…

Only 62 per cent of renters in the 15 most populated US metro areas have access to a ‘balcony, patio, deck, or a porch’ according to the American Housing Survey. In the New York metro area that drops to 21 per cent. Moses Gates, vice president of housing and neighbourhood planning of the Regional Plan Association has been calling for a redefinition of roofs as public space since 2017, but believes current events create even more impetus. ‘Most buildings without an actual deck prohibit roof access for insurance purposes and to prevent wear and tear,’ he wrote in a recent open letter to the New York Daily News, ‘[but] being outdoors isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity of human life and mental health.’ The outlook is similar in the UK,…

The trade-off for the expansion of pavements and other forms of public space is the relegation of the car. The pressure to decrease provisions for vehicles in dense urban areas has grown over the last five years, largely driven by increased awareness of the impact of air pollution on public health. Tangible change has been limited, however, and public pushback strong. Madrid took the bold move to severely limit traffic, after which a new local government won power on the promise to reverse the decision. In spite of our current crisis, resistance to car-free zones remains, with some local councils already refusing emergency funds provided by the London Mayor’s office to create new segregated cycleways. This lack of enthusiasm might be explained by a commensurate lack of vision for how…

While the pandemic has certainly accelerated the shift towards ‘active mobility’ – read walking and cycling – among certain demographics, it’s not quite as disastrous a picture for car brands as you might think. For every urban driver that swaps four wheels for two, others, most likely living in ex-urban and rural locations, could be spending even more time in their car. They just won’t necessarily spend all that time driving. Two recent reports paint the picture. The first is from UK car marketplace Auto Trader, which found that fears of travelling on public transport mean that 56 per cent of UK driving licence holders who don’t currently own a vehicle were considering purchasing one ‘post lockdown’. Just over half thought that car ownership would take on greater importance in…

It’s becoming increasingly common to live within a smaller footprint – and the trend will likely continue its current trajectory, given that 68 per cent of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2050. For many, small residences offer the only chance to live in such dense metropolises, where every single square metre counts. Even in rural areas, downsizing – the extreme end of which is the tiny-house trend – aligns with the desire to be more environmentally conscious. But houses that scrimp on size don’t have to scrimp on design. Quite the opposite in fact, since space must be maximized through clever – and sometimes unconventional – layouts. Case in point: the so-called Tiny Holiday Home, a project by Chris Collaris Architects and i29 in the…

Irrespective of the variance in distancing guidelines in place across countries, citizens have found a common issue: pavements don’t provide enough space for pedestrians to observe the rules. Take Toronto, where analytics firm Ratio. City used open data to create a map showing that more than two-thirds of the city’s sidewalks were less than 2.5 m wide. A survey by Danish architects Gehl, which covered 68 countries, revealed that over a quarter of respondents found sidewalks too crowded to social distance. In response, municipal governments from London to Washington, Milan and Bogotá have been widening sidewalks to help people pass safely. Many see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink a space that has in many places been relegated to just another part of transport infrastructure. Foster and Partners’ urban…

MUNIRA ALMULLA revitalizes – and re-socializes – Dubai’s underutilized alleyways You explored the effects of suburbanization in Dubai. What did you discover? MA: That the rise of suburbanization has led to the abandonment of human-scale architecture. There is a lack of proximity between residential zones and public zones, which causes detachment, isolation and deficient walkability. The increasingly fragmented urban language of the city has interrupted the connection between the built environment and the human soul. It’s evident that Dubai’s residents are in need of spaces that have a communication function. What’s your answer to the need for more accessible social spaces? My project The Spaces In Between aims to revitalize Dubai’s neighbourhoods by employing their alleyways, which are currently underutilized. I suggest to create a system of nodes that encourage…