Mika Savela

St. Petersburg Pier, Florida. When something looks so bright and...

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:24:17 +0800

St. Petersburg Pier, Florida.

When something looks so bright and artificial you think it’s a scale model but it isn’t.

When Manhattan was flat, and the Brooklyn Bridge towered above...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:41:20 +0800

When Manhattan was flat, and the Brooklyn Bridge towered above the city. Engravings from Peculiarities of American Cities (1883) by Captain Willard Glazier.

Dérive “explained” in the zine Bureau of Seditious...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:04:04 +0800

Dérive “explained” in the zine Bureau of Seditious Information – Issue 1 Dissemination by Mumtaz Muhati.

Internationale situationniste, No. 1 (June 1958) - 12 (Sept....

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:06:22 +0800

Internationale situationniste, No. 1 (June 1958) - 12 (Sept. 1969).

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) in Design...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:35:54 +0800

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) in Design Journal’s issue 286, 1972.

Cairo in a poster for the Egyptian State Railways, ca. 1910.

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:28:45 +0800

Cairo in a poster for the Egyptian State Railways, ca. 1910.

"In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh There’s nothing you can’t do, now..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:20 +0800

“In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh
There’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you, let’s hear it for New York”

- “Empire State of Mind” (2009) Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys

Design for a digital, portable (and kind of tangible)...

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:00 +0800

Design for a digital, portable (and kind of tangible) “City Guide”, 1990s. Designers Ingo Strobel, Justus Leonhardt and Susann Lohse.

Solar powered SOS telephone by James Irvine.

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:23:50 +0800

Solar powered SOS telephone by James Irvine.

Office futurism at Vitra Design Museum in 1993 by Ettore...

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:19:23 +0800

Office futurism at Vitra Design Museum in 1993 by Ettore Sottsass. The experimental digital prototypes by Siemens. Funny how the gadget dummies are now completely real and everyday, but it actually took 20 years.

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:35:46 +0800

“Wall growth” on deserted houses. Ma Wan, Hong Kong.

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:12:26 +0800

“Wall growth” on deserted houses. Ma Wan, Hong Kong.

Everyone should learn about Rut BrykAbove, poster from a 1970...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:31:16 +0800

Everyone should learn about Rut Bryk

Above, poster from a 1970 exhibition in the Netherlands.

Middle, “Kaupunki - City” (1957). “This work was on show at the Milan triennial of 1960 and it was given the American Institute of Decorators Award in 1962. The piece consists of hundreds of tiles and cubes of different size and colour.”

Bottom, “Kaupunki auringossa - A city in the Sun” (1975), outlining the map of Helsinki.

Annie Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College by Frank Lloyd...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:02:03 +0800

Annie Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College by Frank Lloyd Wright (1938-1941). The tower of the building, as the Tampa Bay magazine March-April 1994 issue notes, “is affectionately referred to as ‘the bicycle rack in the sky’”

The Stonehenge by I. Jones, 1655. From The Imperial Island –...

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:50:33 +0800

The Stonehenge by I. Jones, 1655. From The Imperial Island – England’s Chronicle in Stone (1886) by James F. Hunnewell.

Casa do Mandarim, Macau.

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:59:00 +0800

Casa do Mandarim, Macau.

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:57:00 +0800

Casa do Mandarim, Macau.

“Creative Cloud changes everything”, says Adobe and...

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:47:00 +0800

“Creative Cloud changes everything”, says Adobe and it got me thinking. I work almost daily with Adobe’s software and I’m not saying that I will not ever succumb to their new subscription system of paying a lifetime of monthly fees to a company that has quite the monopoly on “industry standards”. It’s more that all this got me thinking about creativity in places, cities, everywhere. And how this kind of software development is somehow really creating a creative class, as in separating globally those who can afford to become the creative types familiar with them “industry standards”.

In essence, you have to buy your way into the cloud of creativity in every meaning of the word: iPhone, MacBook, data plan, broadband, the works. And only then, can you become the carelessly free quirky creative type with access to your work everywhere, free to collaborate, free to create. But. With Adobe’s Creative Cloud, if you stop paying, the access to your work is discontinued.

At the same time Creative Cities are being touted as the thing by organizations such as UNESCO. Almost everything we create is nowadays, if not made with, but at least marketed with creative software and digital tools. But if you can’t afford the tools, how do you become creative? How do you design that community meeting flyer? How do you build a website? How do you use the apps?

Well, of course creativity as a human quality and a means to survive is not tied to a piece of software. But so much around the creative buzz is these days related to digital ecosystems. As an increasing number of these systems are going subscriptions-only, we are becoming oblivious to the fact how much we are paying for all kinds of things we haven’t really collectively decided upon. Today, our democratically collected tax dollars might get us something like healthcare or education in return (depending on where you live in the world), but they don’t give us creative tools that allow us to work on the level that matters. Instead, we’ve ended up paying quite a lot for creative software in schools and the government. And in our private lives.

So, when did software become such a lifelong burden? If you’re a designer, photographer, editor, artist etc., you may want to be those things for the rest of your life. But now, it seems you are becoming obliged to pay a monthly fee for these professions, a fee that globally speaking is beyond the reach of many. Paying the fees is no problem for big companies with big needs already spending large amounts of money for “computer stuff”. Small creatives and the ones trying to make do with old versions of Photoshops or lesser known open-source alternatives are being dropped out. In the end it seems, the world is becoming less diverse, again.

This is a portion of a panoramic photo by James Burke from Life...

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:50:00 +0800

This is a portion of a panoramic photo by James Burke from Life Magazine, May 1960. It brought to my mind the experience of arriving in Athens some years ago. I wrote a little “notebook” back then about the trip, and looking it up, I decided to translate here the paragraph describing that notion of seeing the Acropolis for the first time.

People always say Athens is horrible. At least in the summer with the temperatures and the smog. But it’s not just about those things, and t-shirts and plastic acropolises. There is more, and that part is dream-like and Eastern. And Mediterranean, of course, but not in the Latin sort of way. Anyway, our flight was late and we were greeted by A, who started driving like mad and explained that it didn’t matter because Greece doesn’t have time as a concept. First we discussed the weather and things practical, but suddenly in the dark, at the end of a nondescript street was the Akropolis. And it was so hard to describe what we saw, because it looked totally unreal floating there all lit up. But at the same time we simply had to believe it, knowing perfectly well it was so ancient and old.

The idealized rural American Main Street in an electrical...

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:15:10 +0800

The idealized rural American Main Street in an electrical company ad 1967, showing how electricity brings vibrant development to small towns.