New York Horizon

Geplaatst op 28 april 2016 door amylifeinstyle

The city life in New York City is often a hectic and chaotic one, due to the large amount of inhabitants and busy roads. New York is therefore called the city that never sleeps, and with a little imagine you will understand what that means for the people over there. New York is full of skyscrapers which indicates their busy urban lives. However, the solution is near and it contents a surprising component.

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A new Central Park

Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu proposed a design for the 2016 Skyscraper Competition which is judged by the Evolo magazine, and they actually won the first price. Their design contents a new central park, wherein the bedrock is being revealed and central park is being reduced. Besides, the soil from central park will be re-used by adding it into the new Central Park and thus creates a lively landscape. This new landscape offers a great abundance of activities as biking, climbing and swimming. In addition, the new central park will be surrounded by a 1000 feet tall and 100 feet wide glass wall which reflects the nature of the park and creates the illusion that the nature is never-ending, middle in the busy urban lifestyle.

Other designs who proposed for the 2016 Skyscraper Competition:

Why does this appear?

It is a certainty that this new design creates a balance between the urban life and the nature we know in New York. The fact that this design intertwines the two different environments into a megastructure is related to the society’s need for some experience. A large amount of disciplines in the society are much more connected to the other ones, what results in products and services which are a bit out of context. Therefore, the strangest inventions are now valuable to the customers. The society wants more and the slogan ‘the bigger, the better’ identifies this need. A normal park with a few seats and a lawn doesn’t match with the preferences any more, there should be more, and technology plays a huge part. This design of the New York Horizon breaks with the current perception of the large-scale skyscrapers.

Furthermore, the inhabitants from New York need a space to escape when the urban life is getting too complicated. The desire to search for simplicity and clean, natural surroundings can be concluded from the trend ‘wonderlust’. The acceptation of the small things in life is very important in this trend, which we also see in the part when citizens want to escape from the city and its high-pressure standardization. The landscape offers you a moment of nature, a moment of release, a moment for yourself and especially a moment to wonder what in life is most valuable.

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Future

When the landscape and city combine in the future, the dynamism will increase immediately. In this manner, the traditional perception may change and the spaces we know today are in a deep connection with each other in the headland. The vision will change, since Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu are creating new spaces in this world, by re-using the nature and implementing it into a new, creative mega structure. I think that if this will set through, there will be a lack of space to escape to in the future. The landscape is a place to relax, to make up your mind and to enjoy the nature. However, if the urban life and the nature are so closely connected and dynamism is the new standard, what will there be left of the real nature? In that case, there will be a need to invent new ways to escape the busy life.

What do you think; how will the society escape their busy, urban life in the future?

See you next time,

Amy Melenboer ♥

Sources:

http://www.designboom.com/architecture/central-park-1000-foot-glass-walls-new-york-horizon-yitan-sun-jianshi-wu-evolo-skyscraper-competition-03-25-2016/

http://www.evolo.us/competition/new-york-horizon/

MUJI: a ground-breaking playground

Geplaatst op 22 november 2015 door amylifeinstyle

As a little child it was not always that fun, shopping with your mother. One will remember that eye-opening moment when walking into a shop. Nevertheless, you were not allowed to touch a thing (Read: literally nothing). How awesome would it be, if one has permission to touch e-ve-ry-thing?! MUJI, a Japanese brand, released a new shop in New York which enables to make this shop a little playground.

MUJI 5th Avenue

The essence of MUJI

On November the 20^th of this year, the Japanese brand MUJI introduced their new flagship store MUJI 5^th Avenue. The store is at the opposite of the New York public library. MUJI opened a shop which happens to be one big experience for the customers. One can say that it can be categorized as a playground, since there is so much to do and even more to see. For instance, they invented the embroidering station, where visitors can pick their favorite design to ornament their MUJI product for only $3.

Embroidering station

Why is MUJI ground-breaking?

A marketing duo

As the economy is growing, the marketing is changing gradually. MUJI combines different phases of marketing such as a flagship store, a living room society and a way to customize the products. The shop is a place where visitors get to know each other, since they share an experience entering the shop. Besides, MUJI 5^th Avenue is purchasing Japanese teas, plants, books, skincare, luggage, underwear and so on. Overall, homeware is covered in many different products.

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Moreover, there is also the opportunity to create your own MUJI products by personalizing it. For example, the embroidering station is a combination of the basic product made by the producer and the additional design chosen by the customer. Furthermore, there is a MUJI for you section, where customers can customize products like notebooks and shopping bags by adding stamps and stickers. This cooperation is a nice way to personalize, since both parties include their own part.

Customizing: shopping bags

Joining in

Just by looking to the pictures, one will recognize that MUJI adapts to an experience economy. The whole shop is based on using your sense organs to get involved completely. For example, there is space which is called the ‘Aroma Labo’. Visitors can choose between 48 different blends of essential oils for $18, and while waiting, you will be surrounded by a fragrant, cloudy mist. Here you can see Aroma Labo:

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Escaping the reality

As many people are having a look at this ‘little playground’, it is a great opportunity to escape in a huge building of experimental products and services. It is a fact that the world of today is much more intense than it used to be. This intensification brings along more problems than we think, and sometimes is it valuable to outbreak this situation of being inline and just enjoy the beautiful, little things in life.

To conclude, MUJI is a shop in New York where people can experience other services and products than we used to. Do you think MUJI is worth visiting?

Mon-Sat 10am- 9pm

Sunday 11am- 8pm

MUJI 475 5^th Avenue, New York, NY 10017

See you next time,

Amy Melenboer ♥

Sources:

http://ny.racked.com/2015/11/20/9768750/muji-fifth-avenue-now-open-nyc

http://www.coolhunting.com/design/muji-fifth-avenue-new-york-store-opening-2015

https://www.instagram.com/p/-Rbq3muPVQ/?taken-by=coolhunting

http://www.wallpaper.com/design/muji-opens-nyc-flagship

Open-heartedness: influencing the society

Geplaatst op 5 november 2015 door amylifeinstyle

Hello everyone,

This blogpost is about more signals, in contrast to the blogposts so far. I’ve found a few signals that I could combine, so I created a blogpost that is worth reading!

What is it about?

Previous week I saw a programme on the Dutch television called ‘Pauw’. One of the guests was Anke Laterveer, whom is a Dutch comedian. She spoke about a moment in her life which she cannot forget, namely that somebody unknown tried to rape her. However, the main concern is that the police didn’t do a thing with the declaration. That’s the main reason she wanted to make raping and sexual assault bookable. She decided to think of a way to get more attention about this problem, and invented the Dutch #zeghet on Twitter (which means #sayit). After this invention the #zeghet was going viral and a large amount of people picked up this hashtag.

Besides, the NOS news programme announced that Essena O’Neil, an Australian Instagram-model with half a million followers, decided to quit with Instagram because it is fake, straight nonsense and absolutely not real life. Essena was too obsessed with her ‘perfect life’ by getting more and more followers. For instance, she was also being paid for wearing a dress she doesn’t even like.

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– Essena O’Neil

Moreover, I was searching for more of these open-hearted stories, and found on Youngworkers.com an article about ‘perfectly imperfect’. This movement is tending to say that young people are done with the advertising about perfection, such as having the smallest size or the prettiest face. One of the innovators of this countermovement is Shaun Ross, an African guy who is an albino and started his own movement called #inmyskiniwin. Ross: ‘Beauty is you and what you make from your confidence in your own perfectly imperfect body. Together, if we encourage others to love what they see when they look at themselves, we can win in our skin’

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The movement #inmyskiniwin by Shaun Ross

The reasons for an overload of awesomeness

But, why is this combination of stories that awesome? First of all, it is about the courage that people have and the risk they take when they tell such personal stories as these. There will always be laggards, people with a conservative view on the world, who don’t give their approval to these sophisticated and ground-breaking announcements. That’s why I find this people incredibly powerful. In addition to this, these stories are related to different subjects of the trend involvement.

Authenticity

The first trend I want to maintain is authenticity. All these personal narrations are about being honest and open-hearted, so that people can (finally) tell the truth and the essence of their background. For instance, Shaun Ross is being bullied in former times, but now found the strength to make his opinion public. It is about transparency, no longer hiding information or forge aspects of life. Just like Essena O’Neil, who fooled the whole world with her falsified pictures on Instagram. Nevertheless, we all like to pretend that we have a great life by posting only images which are often photo shopped, revised and even more importantly: which are fake. Essena had the intention to inspire people by taking them back to reality, which Instagram is absolutely not.

Moreover, even Dutch fashion brand Esprit is trying to make this work. As Esprit is inspired by the ‘perfectly imperfect’ movement, they wanted to think of something cool as well. For that reason the winter campaign of 2015 includes a photo gallery with the hashtag #ImPerfect, where everybody can hand in their picture. This is really innovative and creative at the same time.

#ImPerfect – by E S P R I T

Flawsomeness

Secondly, showing your flaws is turning into something fascinating. In a world where everybody wants to be seen by being beautiful and more outstanding than others, there is now a turning point. Nobody has to be perfect, because showing your imperfections is way cooler nowadays. The movement #inmyskiniwin from Shaun Ross is an example of these imperfections, whereas pictures are showed of albino’s and people with vitiligo (a skin disease).

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– Shaun Ross

The trend which is of longer existence is intensification. This includes a world which is focussing on ‘the bigger, the better’; a world of great acceleration and progress. The trend flawsomeness contains criticism about the intensification, while sometimes the slogan ‘’less is more’’ will clarify this.

Cool Curation

There are a few more trends that I haven’t discussed yet. These trends aren’t all easy to understand for everybody, and there neither is a relation to every signal. The Dutch comedian Anke Laterveer introduced the #zeghet, whereby she was the first woman who posted a Twitter post with this hashtag, with the intention to make this story of big interest. She wanted others to do the same, and accordingly to help each other. This has a correlation with the trend cool curation, whereas Laterveer wishes to interact with people. People to the people is the slogan!

Clearly, the #zeghet was going viral on Twitter. This picture will show you the impact of the #zeghet going viral!

Wonderlust

As the technological developments increase, the world was seem to be influenced by this. Social media is growing incredibly fast, and is becoming a huge part of our lifestyle. The counterpart of this growth is that we now see extremely obsessed people who can be brainwashed by the internet. And I do not exaggerate. Instagram-model Essena O’Neil is a very clear sample of this obsession. She wanted to ‘break free’ and quitted all of a sudden. This is related to Wonderlust, what can be explained as escaping the internet and creating time to appreciate the little things in life. Here’s a video from Essena about the reasons why she deleted her social media accounts:

As you can see, stories may differ, but in the end everybody wants to be loved for who he or she is. People want to be unique in their way to show their flaws, and be extraordinary with their own personal story. Are you in?

Close your eyes and shut your mouth, Nothing is Impossible

– Shaun Ross

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