Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Animalia Exstinta is a fascinating imaginary bestiary featuring beautiful surrealist collages by Hugo Horita and humorous descriptive texts by Esteban Seimandi. This elegant volume was designed by Juan Cruz Bazterrica, and published by the Argentinian Ediciones Tres en línea in 2010.”
(source)
[ wherever ]
Any way you care to say it… or to act on it (or not), there’s a definite anti-consumerist movement growing around the globe. I must say, I was very encouraged this evening, when doing a simple image search for “buy nothing christmas,” to come across a plethora of supportive online resources, blogs, and links… (including lots of sharing of some simple posters that I put together years ago for Buy Nothing Christmas —one is shown below).
Please buy nothing (or at least considerably less) this holiday season, OK? Both the planet and your Karma-quotient will thank you for it…
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Wolfsburg, Germany
The Volkswagen Type 2, officially known as the Transporter or Kombi (short for Kombinationskraftwagen) and informally as the Bus (US), Camper (UK), Bulli, Kleinbus, microbus, minibus, and sometimes even hippie van, was a panel van introduced in 1950 by German automaker Volkswagen as its second model, following and initially deriving from VW’s first model, the Type 1 (Beetle).
Some 61 years after its introduction, the Type 2 is still to be seen everywhere (and is still manufactured in Brazil, where last month the 1.5-millionth unit rolled out of the factory). Perhaps it’s because I have many friends with them and that I myself have owned a few (including Bettie Blue, a Type 3 now safely tucked away for the winter) that I seem to encounter these perpetually iconic charmers everywhere I look (both on the roads and throughout popular culture)… thanks to climber friend Gerald Brandt for some of the links/sources of the images shown above (click on images for links to articles and more images).
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New York, USA
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”
Remarkably, less than 5% of the world’s population even knows that the Declaration exists. Do you know your human rights?
To celebrate the milestone 60th anniversary (10 December 2008), designer Seth Brau created an engaging type-based video. Enjoy it, here, and please do what you can to help disseminate the Declaration, an important and timeless treatise for all humankind. You can find over 337 different language versions of the Declaration here.
Courmayeur, Italy
Climbers in the Alps can now spend their nights sleeping in a tube that cantilevers over the edge of a mountain. New Refuge Gervasutti provides an optimal combination of comfort, safety, and respect for the environment. Installed in mid October on the Freboudze glacier (in front of the spectacular East face of the Grandes Jorasses of the Mont Blanc Range) this alpine refuge is now ready for use by mountaineers and climbers.
This innovative survival unit was designed by Italian architects LEAPfactory, who specialise in modular accommodation for extreme environments. The tube was prefabricated off-site and airlifted to the site by helicopters. The living area is lit in the daytime by a big panoramic window facing towards the valley and contains a kitchen, a table, and seating. The sleeping area is equipped with bunk beds and spaces for the storage of gear.
The comfortable wooden interior finish recalls a traditional mountain hut and is intended to make a stay in the module a pleasing and relaxing experience. A red pattern (inspired by the shaved straight stitch of mountain pullovers, to evoke warmth and comfort) decorates the structure’s exterior and aids visibility to climbers and mountaineers approaching from a distance.
Owner: Italian Alpine Club CAI Turin
30 square metres of usable space
6 contact points with the ground
2500 kg. total weight
12 bed spaces
2.5 Kwh of solar energy produced
2 days to install unit
For a full description of New Refuge Gervasutti, including drawings, interior images, links, and full creative credits, visit dezeen.com (Thanks to designer friend Oliver Oike for putting this lovely shelter on my radar).
Bhopal, India
Twenty-seven years ago, on the night of Dec. 3rd 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal.
In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women.
In 2001, the Michigan-based multinational chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However, Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the Bhopal disaster site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.
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Now, more than a quarter century after the disaster, the Bhopal site has still not been properly cleaned up. (Dow’s reported profits for 2007 were over $3.7 billion… so the lack of restorative action on this horrific issue is clearly not because the firm cannot afford to make things right). Children of victims continue to suffer, but have no health coverage. Hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects as a result of what is considered to be the world’s worst industrial disaster to date… Read more here.
Photo: ‘Burial of an unknown child’ by Raghu Rai, 1984.
Madrid, Spain
On a tour of Central de Diseño / Mataduro Madrid these two posters caught my eye. The original was designed by Franz Krausz in 1936 and issued by the Tourist Development Association of Palestine. The updated version (below, 2009 I believe) and featuring the Israeli West Bank barrier needs no explanation… I couldn’t fine a designer credit on the serigraph.
Any questions?
Den Haag, Netherlands
My friend Chaz has a show opening the day after tomorrow…
(the feather on the arrow is a bar-code).
Being: The Graphic Design of Chaz Maviyane-Davies
De Affiche Galerij (The Poster Gallery)
Den Haag (The Hague, Netherlands)
Nov 30, 2011 – Feb 27, 2012
