Cigarette machine vending BOOKS

via Inhabitat

German publishing company Hamburger Automatenverlag found a brilliant new use for old cigarette vending machines — instead of icky cigarettes, the re-purposed “machines” carry a series of condensed novels, photo books, graphic novels and collections of poetry by local authors. The new initiative for book distribution is a throwback to the conventional vending machine and promotes literacy in a clever and charming way.

As smoking regulations keep getting stricter and prices continue to soar, the cigarette vending machines that used to be commonly found in convenience stores, restaurants and bars are now things of the past. The machines are valued for their robust mechanics however, and Hamburger Automatenverlag just needed to make a few small adjustments to transform them into book vending machines (a layer of paint, eye-catching graphics and some shiny new hardware).

The machines request 4 euros in coins (approximately 5 US dollars), which is inserted into the front of the unit. Then, after a small tug on a spring-loaded knob, the requested book is dispensed. The restored vending machines are also part of a public art series that will be distributed around they city of Hamburg.

+ Hamburger Automatenverlag

Via COOL HUNTING

Strong Women, Small Movements, Incredible Change

In a time and a place where women did not have a voice, Wangari Maathai stood sound against the most forceful powers in Kenya to protect the people and environment of her native country. Maathai’s initial small act addressing the needs of women in her village turned into a movement that ultimately helped bring down Kenya’s twenty-four-year dictatorship. Along the way, the movement grew to provided new sources of food and income to rural communities, gave previously impoverished and powerless women a voice and role in creating change within their country, and reclaimed the country’s land from 100 years of deforestation.

As quoted in the New York Times today, “Wangari Maathai was known to speak truth to power,” said John Githongo, an anti-corruption campaigner in Kenya who was forced into exile for several years for his own outspoken views.

Starting with the simple act of planting trees to address the need for water and firewood in her village, Maathai started a movement that resounded throughout her country. Now her institiution that was started in 1977, The Green Belt Movement, has planted over 35 million trees and has greatly contributed to sustainable development in Africa.

At first, Maathai and the women from her village were seen as voiceless nothings.  However, no matter the women’s simple agenda, harassment from the government began when they noticed the strength of the organization. An effort to debase womanhood was emphasized. There are clips of Kenya’s President, Daniel arap Moi, laughing and degragating Maathai and the acts of the women who work with her. Maathai’s response to the harassment was simply, “…we are planting trees for our country. A legacy for our children as our ancestors left a legacy for us. So let us not be pushed around.” One of the women from the village stated, “Wangari has given me the strength to know if I fight for something, I can make it happen.”

It’s the people who set their environment. It’s the people that must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.

Wangari Maathai
(April 1, 1940 – September 25, 2011)

More here:
The Green Belt Movement and the connection between poverty & environmental concerns

“…there are signs within the design community to advance service design. One of the issues motivating current research is the idea that service designers create multiple contacts, or touchpoints, between service organizations and their clients, including material artifacts, environments, interpersonal encounters, and more. The identification of touchpoints as an object of service design is a clear step away from the imposition of the goods-centered paradigms of the past.”

The Object of Service Design
Fernando Secomandi, Dirk Snelders

“Wicked Problems”

Structuring Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

via Swedish Morphological Society

“If you work in an organisation that deals with long-term social, commercial or organisational policy planning, then you’ve got wicked problems. You may not call them by this name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven’t been able to treat with much success, because they won’t keep still. They’re messy, devious, and reactive, i.e. they fight back when you try to deal them.”

 

Introduction

In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, both urban planners at the University of Berkley in California, wrote an article forPolicy Sciences with the astounding title “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”. In this landmark article, the authors observed that there is a whole realm of social planning problems that cannot be successfully treated with traditional linear, analytical (systems-engineering-like) approaches. They called these wicked problems, in contrast to tame problems. 

(A year later, in his book “Redesigning the Future”, Russell Ackoff (1974) essentially put forward the same concept — although in less detail — which he called a “social mess” or “unstructured reality”.) 

more here

Image from What is “Design thinking for wicked problems?”

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION IN THE HOME - info graphic

Kelli Anderson : The Collaborative Home
 info graphic (get a closer look here) she cre­ated for Collaborative Fund

via designworklife:

“With a lay out and design based on the exploding diagram, the graphic aims to envision ‘how the concept of collaborative consumption could replace traditional consumption in the average home’ — an intrigu ing con cept and design. Be sure to click over to this post on her blog, where she gives plenty of insight into the con­cept and con struc tion of the piece.”

Life is a typographic sculpture by Joonho Kwon about female North Korean refugees.

Link to video of sculpture: http://vimeo.com/25717077

via iamtibo

Creating a Local Food System in Abandoned Buildings

“The Plant is a project combining adaptive industrial reuse and aquaponics to create Chicago’s first vertical farm.”

The plan is to use abandoned buildings to create a local food system in Chicago… moving the food production to where the food is consumed in the city.

Innovated techniques are being tested to create less waste. “The whole project is about closing waste loops. So that nothing that leaves this facility, but food.”

Changing Education Paradigms

Here is a brilliant illustration that suggests some of the reasons why today’s public education in America is failing.

(Source: youtube.com)

Conflict Kitchen

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States government is in conflict. Please help us to realize the next stage of the project, “Bolani Pazi”, an Afghan take-out restaurant.

It is easy to forget that behind all of the government conflicts there are people and a culture. When this personal connection is lost, things become dangerous.

It is easy to forget that behind all of the government conflicts there are people and a culture. When this personal connection is lost, things become dangerous. Conflict Kitchen creates a public forum and space for discussions that might not normally take place, mediated by food.

Conflict Kitchen also programs public events to more directly connect everyday Americans with everyday people from the country of focus. For example, Kubideh Kitchen brought together members of the public for a live Skype meal between Tehran and Pittsburgh, during which groups in both countries shared the same meal on a virtually connected table: an inter-continental dinner party.

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