Hey, have you stopped by our neighbourhood department store PoPPo? You can eat, shop and get a haircut. We also have a dark concrete space available to hire for exhibitions, film nights, product launches, yoga classes, private dining or dance events. Looking for something more intimate? Tucked away in the depths of the building, there’s a hidden Amsterdam speakeasy. Here’s some more information.
Elsewhere
The city is shrinking. Not because there’s less of it, but because smaller is increasingly proving smarter. Look:
Councils manage thousands of small patches of green. Often neglected, and costly to maintain. London has therefore introduced ‘right to grow’ in parts of the city. Residents can use unused scraps of municipal greenery to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Smart, but also a quiet admission that the council hadn’t managed it themselves for years.
Take me to a K-bar. In Busan, South Korea, Blue House on the Stairs serves drinks through a tiny window that’s also too high up. To solve that inconvenience, your K-latte travels to you by balloon. The window is the bar, the balloon is the waiter. Every constraint is a design decision.
Monocab designed self-driving on-demand mini-cabins that run on disused railway tracks in rural Germany. Monocab is light, affordable, and you book it via an app. KVG Lippe hopes to tackle transport poverty in left-behind regions. Don’t count on riding the Monocab this summer though — the project is still in its testing phase and is currently moving mostly European subsidies from A to B.
America has a new pizza phenomenon. Casey’s Pizza runs micro-pizzerias as shop-in-shops inside petrol stations. Fresh pizzas prepared in under 6 m². According to the annual Pizza Report, Casey’s has rapidly grown into the fifth-largest pizza chain in the US, carried by a cult-like fanbase. The best pizzeria in America doesn’t need a kitchen — just a petrol station.