Information Takes Over

While reading the DfT’s publication of a report on Infrastructure and Cycling Safety, it occurred to me that increasing the length of the pre-green red/amber phase at traffic lights, and allowing cyclists to cross the junction in this phase could be a relatively cheap way to improve the visibility and reduce the risk of collision by cars.

What do you think?

What are the pros and cons?

Just a quick thought… In this age of social networking via portable smartdevices, It would be really interesting for architects and planners to explore how their development of open space can become a part of online social space.

Some ideas for you…

• have lots of easily identifiable public art sculptures that can act as meeting spaces.
• number the squares in the square so that people can find a square stand in it and tell their friends to meet them at that square. could be the basis of some rather interesting games too…
• street furniture that can be tweeted to provide identifiable meeting places

One aspect of the mini-projects at #sssw11 was to create a one minute video that was both humorous and contained reference to some innovative semantic technologies.

Our Mini-Project team, Don’t Move the Plants was intrigued by the signage in the residencia, so took that as our inspiration.  It is worth noting that all the text translation seen in the video is as translated by Word Lens, an iPhone app which translates words right before your eyes.

Don’t Move the Plants comprised myself, Esther Lozano, Andrea Nuzzolese, Ferdinand Dhombres and Luca Greco.

I’m at risk of over explaining the joke, so here is our winning entry.