LEGO Urban Infill

It's not just about bicycles as transport. The city needs lots of important things. More colour. More citizen interaction. More cinemas, for example. So Felix and I decided to do something about it. There was the perfect little hole in the wall across the street from us, in a doorway. Last December, we decided that a bit of urban infill would be just the ticket. We agreed that we needed a cinema closer to home.

We measured the hole and went home to build our Lego Cinema, returning to glue it in place. The kid taking the city back.

Because we can.

I recalled that a few years ago the Danish Architecture Center (I think) put up tables on City Hall Square along with a fantastic amount of white Lego bricks. Passersby stopped up and built whatever their heart desired. The Felix and I spent a good couple of hours there.

Continuing on the LEGO theme, Felix and I made this chess set five years ago. We still have it and use it.

Bike Helmet Protest in Melbourne

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi

Head Protection for Motorists

A while back we posted about an Australian 'motoring helmet' designed to protect motorists' heads in car accidents. It was designed in the late 1980's. Then we recieved this tip yesterday. Another head protection device for motorists, this one developed at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. A serious product for the serious of protecting motorists from the dangers of driving. Despite airbags and seatbelts, motorists are victims of alarming head injury rates. Here's what the Centre for Automotive Safety Research [CASR] in Australia says: The Centre has been evaluating the concept of a protective headband for car occupants. In about 44 percent of cases of occupant head injury, a protective headband, such as the one illustrated, would have provided some benefit. One estimate has put the potential benefit of such a device (in terms of reduced societal Harm) as high as $380 million, compared with $123 million for padding the upper interior of the car. Thi

Fear of Cycling 03 - Helmet Promotion Campaigns

Third installment by sociologist Dave Horton, from Lancaster University, as a guest writer. Dave has written a brilliant assessment of Fear of Cycling in an essay and we're well pleased that he fancies the idea of a collaboration. We'll be presenting Dave's essay in five parts. Fear of Cycling - Helmet Promotion Campaigns - by Dave Horton - Part 03 of 05 Like road safety education, campaigns to promote the wearing of cycle helmets effectively construct cycling as a dangerous practice about which to be fearful. Such campaigns, and calls for legislation to make cycle helmets compulsory, have increased over the last decade. In 2004, a Private Members’ Bill was tabled in the UK Parliament, to make it an offence for adults to allow children under the age of 16 to cycle unless wearing a helmet. Also in 2004, the influential British Medical Association, in a policy turnaround , voted to campaign for helmets to be made compulsory for all cyclists (for comprehensive detail on these

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