In city environments, the visual clutter of streetlights, phone poles, utility boxes, electric poles and cell phone towers is just something that we’ve learned to accept and, for the most part, ignore. But Vancouver writer and artist Douglas Coupland thinks that our cities deserve better than that, so he’s redesigned the way that urban utilities interact with the urban environment. The V-Pole (V for Vancouver, of course) is a surprisingly stylish utility pole encompassing just about everything the modern city dweller needs.

Each pole is connected to underground optical wiring. Different utilities can be included in the poles, depending on what is necessary for that area, with modular pieces. Thanks to a new technology developed at Bell Labs, those gigantic utility boxes we are used to seeing can now be replaced by compact devices the size and shape of a Rubik’s cube. That is really the driving technology that allows the V-Pole to squeeze so many utilities into such a small space.

Besides the LED streetlight at the top, a single V-Pole can provide mobile network coverage, wi-fi, electric vehicle charging, parking transactions, and neighborhood bulletin board services. It’s way more energy efficient and and cheaper than current versions of all of these services, and because they are all combined visual clutter is dramatically decreased. Thanks to its modular nature, it will be expandable for future generations. Eventually, we may even be able to forget that urban utilities used to take up so much space in our cities.

The post Vancouver Utility Pole Concept is Compact, Full of Services first appeared on Gajitz.

Designer Moritz Menacher stepped outside of the sporting goods design box in the design of this lightweight city bike called Rollin’. Instead of looking for inspiration from other bicycles, Menacher looked to contemporary furniture design.

The bike’s particularly lightweight frame is made possible by its composition of a single piece of laser-cut aluminum. The aluminum is folded origami-style into a strong and stable shape, then welded in six places.

The Rollin’ city bike is meant for short commutes of up to 3 km (a little under two miles) and features a disabling lock built into its frame. Its stylish looks and light weight make it ideal for city dwellers who just need a simple set of wheels to get to and from work or school every day.

The post Lightweight Folded Metal Urban Bike Inspired by Origami first appeared on Gajitz.

Cars are seen by many as a mounting problem: they create congestion in the streets, danger for pedestrians and other drivers, and a growing environmental impact. One of the holy grails of industrial design is coming up with a car that will solve all of these problems while still letting us get around with ease. Terreform‘s answer is to approach the car problem not from an angle of urban design or even transportation, but of architecture.

Discussed in length at Inhabitat’s 2007 Postopolis event, the S.O.F.T. (Sustainable Omni Flow Transport) Car design incorporates an entirely new way of thinking about transportation into a distinctive and decidedly unique car design. According to Mitchell Joachim of Terreform, we no longer need cars to be built of heavy, labor-intensive materials. The biggest reason we use them is to protect drivers from other cars, so if everyone simply drove vehicles made of softer, more environmentally-friendly materials, we wouldn’t need to put so much work into protecting ourselves from each other.

The concept cars are something of a revolution in the way we think about car ownership, as well. Cars would be shared – more like public transportation, but on a more personal level. Each car interacts with and responds to its environment, its driver, and other drivers in a way that current cars simply can’t. The “brains” of the car are taken out from under the hood and put into the omni-directional wheels, and programmed speed caps would help to keep pedestrians safe.

Of course, for such a large change to ever take place in transportation, it would have to take place simultaneously across the board. We couldn’t have some drivers in large metal cars and others in small, vulnerable soft cars. There is still the issue of inter-city travel, as well; traveling long distances at higher speeds would be much more dangerous than city driving, and a soft car wouldn’t protect the driver in the case of a rollover accident or collision with a deer on the highway. Still, changing the way we look at car design is the first step toward making cars that work with the urban environment, not against it.

The post Driving Design: Safe, Eco-Friendly, Soft-Body Urban Cars first appeared on Gajitz.