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Trend Watch April 2021

Toronto swaps Google-backed ‘smart’ city plans for people-centred vision: Canada’s largest city has moved towards affordability, sustainability and environmentally-friendly design in a new vision for the Quayside waterfront – a year on from parting with Google-affiliated Sidewalk Labs. Waterfront Toronto launched an international competition in March to secure a new development partner for the Quayside lands, to build “a sustainable community for people of all ages, backgrounds, abilities and incomes.” The Quayside development will provide “market and affordable housing options for individuals and families. It will offer opportunities for aging in place, including the supports and amenities that will allow seniors to live independently. Inclusive economic development opportunities will create jobs and spaces for business owners that reflect Toronto’s diversity,” they write. The call for new proposals comes nearly a year after the Sidewalk Labs partnership was called off, a “stinging defeat” reports …

  • 26 apr 2021
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Trend Watch September 2019

Planting A Forest in a Football Stadium: Swiss curator Klaus Littmann and Enea Landscape Architecture hope to focus public attention on the crisis of deforestation with their public art installation, For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature. The project has converted the Wörthersee stadium in Klagenfurt, Austria, into a temporary native European forest. Some 300 trees, many of which are fully grown and some of which weigh nearly 13,227 pounds alone, occupy the stadium’s Astroturf and, together, form the country’s largest public art installation ever. Tree species include silver birch, alder, aspen, white willow, field maple, and common oak, sourced from three nurseries in Italy, Germany and Belgium. It took the team 22 days to ‘plant’ once the trees arrived in Austria. The work is inspired by The Unending Attraction …

  • 18 sep 2019
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Trend Watch May 2019

A guide to surveillance in the city: Google sister company Sidewalk Labs has created a system of urban signage that reveals the technologies it is using to track people in public spaces. The signs are intended to be a visual representation of the privacy policies the company is developing to go along with its data collection technology. While the project goes some way to address privacy concerns around data collection, there’s still no way for people to opt out of being tracked in public. The signage is being trialled in Toronto, Canada, but could be taken up in other cities. To find out more about the signage design, purpose and placement, see the article by Fast Company. Image: Sidewalk Labs. Controversial designs for new Notre-Dame spire: The redesign of the …

  • 27 may 2019
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