Shellmex House
20/20 Optical Store
Heal's
Just outside the office
It's kind of useful not to have to expose my wrist to the elements but still have an idea of what the time is. It got me thinking about urban utility and how it's good when buildings (or the general environment) perform other tasks than the one that they were ostensibly built for. Clocks are a great example of this, but what else?
It seems as though advertising is the only other dual purpose that street furniture and buildings can find (bus shelters, phone boxes). I'm not saying we need to start some São Paulo-style advertising ban, but I would be interested to see what extra utility could be bought to the urban environment. Does it even have to be useful information? And in some instances could advertising provide that utility? I liked that AEG advert in Shoreditch last year that measured and displayed the decibel level (you can see it here via Laughing Squid) - and in a double win surely something that has a direct relationship with it's environment is more relevant and therefore more noticeable. We can't turn the filters off when we're being faced with useless facts can we? Or is that just me?
A bit of a ramble, but I think there's something in this urban/environmental utility and I'm sure some clever architects somewhere have got it all worked out.
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