From the Project for Public Spaces Blog:

"The second in a series of groundbreaking reflections from the travels of a 34-year veteran Traffic Engineer from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.  Gary Toth, who had previously never been to Europe, spent a week touring the Netherlands with fellow PPSers Fred Kent and Kathy Madden.  Their mission was to learn more about the Dutch approach to Sustainable Safety, bikeped accommodations and community-based transportation to support our Building Community through Transportation campaign.

After the jump is what they learned about the emerging concept of Shared Space, from seeing it first-hand and spending time with Willem Foorthuis and Wiebe Wieling of the Shared Space Institute.

May 2009 - Metropolis Observed

"A friend of David Gibson once wrote on his Facebook page that he's somebody who never seems to get lost. The author of a new book, The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places (Princeton Archi­tectural Press), Gibson is not sure his friend got it entirely right (he actually enjoys wandering around a new city a little bit lost), but he has spent most of his professional life helping people navigate buildings, transportation systems, and public spaces.

From National Real Estate Investor (NREI) Online May 18, 2009 4:07 PM, By Denise Kalette

"Architect Roger Morse, president of Troy, N.Y.-based building sciences firm Morse Zehnter Associates, won’t be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International in Philadelphia in late June. But he easily could be.

Morse, who will present a seminar called “Confessions of an energy engineer” to teach conference attendees about energy-saving tactics, has a lengthy resume that includes examining water-logged buildings in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and a 40-story tower in New York that was contaminated by toxic dust in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Morse Zehnter develops ways to address such catastrophic problems, and it also specializes in forensic architecture — investigating paint, asbestos or fireproofing materials, among others, connected with legal cases. The company remediates more routine problems caused by mold and water intrusion and studies the “skin” of high-rises, which frequently rely on glass and aluminum to form a lightweight, protective sheath."

For the rest of the article, click here.

Salk was convinced that the monastery had influenced his mind. So convinced, in fact, that he solicited the architect Louis Kahn to design the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, in hopes that other scientists might benefit from serene surroundings.

Sixty years later Salk's hunch is now backed up by empirical evidence as new research in neuroscience hints at how our surroundings affect feelings and behavior. In the current issue of Scientific American Mind, Emily Anthes describes how ceiling height, colors and other design factors influence attention and creativity. Scientists are just beginning to address these questions, in part by studying changes in brain activity as subjects make their way through virtual reality rooms."

For the rest of the article, click here