D E S I G N /// ck

...Nice song. Digging the wood planks around the bed visually and the cello musically.

originally posted at wigsphere.com...

Furthering the discussion from yesterday's post, I thought I'd show here what I thought a comprehensive bicycle lane system in Knoxville would look like. The current piecemeal approach has left us with good bike lanes that go nowhere:


I know funding has been a limiting factor, and also that some roads don't have much room (see Kelley Segars's comments) but what should we be aiming for? As the city redevelops major streetscapes (like the upcoming Cumberland Ave. Strip makeover) bike lanes need to be included by default.

Hall of Fame Blvd. is good example- great bike lanes, but they don't push through and connect with downtown, Broadway, or the Magnolia Ave. bike lanes. Actually making a comprehensive system will mean threading sometimes difficult connectors between paths, at expense of (gasp!) automobile traffic. The new Henley Street Bridge bike lanes are great, but what happens when you reach the end of it and plunge into that snarling mass of automobiles? What if it was more like this:


1) Extend the Hall of Fame bike lanes to Broadway and to the new transit center.
2) Extend the current Magnolia bike lanes to Broadway
3) Extend the Central St. lanes to the Old City
4) Introduce new bike lanes on Western Ave./Summit Hill to make a main east-west route. (Jackson Ave. could be an alternate if Summit Hill is unfeasible.)
5) Introduce bike lanes starting on Chapman Hwy. from Disc Exchange to Henley St. and up Broadway to Hall of Fame, creating a main north-south route. (Gay St. could be an alternate, but it doesn't really need lanes since it's the most bike-friendly street in the city.)
6) Introduce bike lanes on Cumberland Ave extending all the way to downtown. Make a connector to Western Ave. via 17th St.
7) Make an east-west connector to the new transit center on Church St. through the middle of downtown.
8) Tie in Sevier Ave to Gay Street and the Henley St. Bridge lanes

One could bike into downtown from Parkridge, 4th & Gill, Old North, Mechanicsville, Fort Sanders, the UT campus, and the South Waterfront on a dedicated bicycle infrastructure. I know this won't happen immediately, but all these roads will need to be rebuilt at some point. We need a city policy that includes these lanes into street design by default, not just as an incidental extra if its convenient. If there's no more right of way, we need to consider putting our roads on a "diet" eliminating wasteful lanes. Central St. was trimmed down from a four lane highway to make room for parking and bike lanes and seems to be working beautifully. I think many routes through downtown are eligible for similar diets. What do you think?

"You can come out when you can properly explain the differences between Modernist architecture and postmodern ornamentation."

It's like looking into my future.

(via Unhappy Hipsters)

High speed rail lines in America: read more here.

...are awesome. I use one everyday. And they make even more sense in the third world as a sustainable solution to transport.


That's a nice lookin' cargo bike. Very cool!

World Bike is helping get intelligently designed solutions to people that need it. Check it out

Right now I'm helping the Friends of Fort Liberte, the non-profit I work with in Haiti, rebrand its identity. I started with an icon of the town, the entry arch, and abstracted it into a logo that hopefully will translate equally well into web, print, and apparel. Below is the second draft:


There's been positive feedback on Facebook, and lots of people seemed to like the font I used so I thought I'd put some info about it here. It's called "Sugo" and it's available for free at dafont.com. Dafont has been the best typeface resource I've been able to find on the interwebs. Most of the stuff uploaded there is terrible, but there are many diamonds in the rough. I'd recommend to anyone working on graphics to look through their catalog- and you can't beat the price!

Enjoy.

...discovered at quantum level!

"Here the tension comes from the interaction between spins causing them to magnetically resonate. For these interactions we found a series (scale) of resonant notes: The first two notes show a perfect relationship with each other. Their frequencies (pitch) are in the ratio of 1.618…, which is the golden ratio famous from art and architecture." Radu Coldea is convinced that this is no coincidence. "It reflects a beautiful property of the quantum system -- a hidden symmetry."

Or not so hidden...

(via ISO50)