Pop-Up City Radar is live. 1,100+ urban innovations from 400 cities, 18 years in the making. Browse the globe, the trend series, or the growing archive. We’re adding new stories every week, so keep checking back.
Also, we just got the keys to this concrete bunker next to our PoPPo department store and offices in the busy heart of North Amsterdam. Two floors and 700 m² full of imagination, perfect for galleries, events, maker spaces, or your next wild idea. Get in touch if you’re interested, we’re happy to show you around.
Elsewhere
Stockholm launched a street furniture collection made from leftover construction waste. Most recycling projects hide their origins. This one doesn’t, and that’s exactly what makes it inspiring. More on Designboom.
The Marginalian writes about ma (間), the Japanese concept of the interval: the emptiness between things, the pause between moments. Not absence, but space where something new can emerge. Architect Kengo Kuma calls it the most important space in Japanese architecture. What if we applied that to cities? Streets and squares designed with deliberate gaps. Emptiness and silence as structural elements, not leftover space. More in our Urban calm series.
Space is increasingly scarce. So why build a new café when there are already hundreds of perfectly good restaurants sitting empty for half the day? That’s the simple idea behind Asano, founded by Kate Kaneko in New York City. Instead of opening a conventional café, Kaneko operates as a ‘barista in residence’, taking over existing restaurants during their quieter hours. The tables, kitchen infrastructure and other facilities are already there. Asano simply puts them to work at a different time of day. More ideas on hybrid space here.
Ma and mottainai sit in an interesting tension: one values emptiness, the other calls it waste. Two Japanese concepts, two opposite answers to the empty city. Have a nice weekend.
Super die radar! Ik ga 'm delen in m'n nieuwsbrief. En gefeliciteerd met de nieuwe beton bunker!