Hasta La Ideas

This weekend in Brooklyn, New York, McCarren Park. UPPERCASE will be there! We hope you will be too.

And if you wish you were here, enter the code “renegade” in our online shop for 10% off this weekend.

(Photos: UnBeige)

When Bingo Bango, an inflatable character who resembles a cheerful mitotic cell, waves his red-mittened hand at you, it is impossible not to smile. And so it was a grinning group that gathered on Tuesday evening to celebrate the opening of Section 2 of the High Line, New York’s elevated freight rail turned sky park. Installed in the shadow of the new section, which runs from West 20th Street to West 30th Street on Manhattan’s West Side, is Rainbow City. The 16,000-square-foot wonderland of 40 inflatable structures—including a mushroom-shaped bouncey house, a 40-foot-tall figure who occassionally emits a puff of steam from his cylindrical nose, and massive striped orbs that several of the youngest partygoers declared the “funnest punching bags ever”—is the colorful creation of FriendsWithYou, the Miami-based art and design team of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III (pictured below), and is presented by AOL as part of its ongoing creativity-boosting initiatives. Borkson and Sandoval were inspired by Holi, the Hindu spring festival during which revelers throw colored water and powder at one another, to create what they describe as “a vibrant landscape of responsive, air-filled sculptures that addresses the potency of interaction, ritual, and play.” Think Tinkertoys meets Candyland crossed with a whole lot of hot air. The installation is open to the public through July 5, and those who want to take home more than memories (and a photo with Bingo Bango and friends) can pick up Rainbow City merch at the on-site shop designed by New York-based architecture firm HWKN.

(Photos from left: Billy Farrell Agency and Erika Velazquez)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

IDSA Wisconsin is hosting a 1.5 hour webinar on modern digital concept visualization. Unlike many demos, this one goes back and forth between raster and vector, 2D and 3D programs, building off the strengths of each. It should be a fun session to follow along with, and it’s free to boot!

The session will be July 12th, 12pm – 1:30pm CST (that is Wisconsin time). Register >>> HERE

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Join Core77 friend and director of Doors of Perception John Thackara for a three-day conference that explores and celebrates the finalists of this year’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Besides Thackara’s keynote address tonight, the four finalists will present their projects: Ocean restoration and initiatives to protect coastal livelihoods; the protection of indigenous knowledge; combating women’s illiteracy; and software that turns a laptop into a mass messaging hub that connects the remote developing world to the communication grid. Thursday’s program includes a roundtable conversation, Visionary Strategies for the Future of Cities, commencing Friday with the full announcement and celebration of this year’s winner.

As we’ve reported in the past, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge is the world’s only large prize program rewarding integrated, whole-systems approaches to solving the world’s sustainability crises. The winner will receive a $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of their strategy to solve humanity’s complex and entrenched problems.

Architecting the Future
June 8-10

CUNY Graduate Center
Elebash Recital Hall
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016

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In case you missed it last Thursday, Barack Obama returned to Chicago on one of the rare occasions that a sitting American President has spoken at an official award ceremony for the annual Pritzker Architecture Prize, which you’ll recall went to Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura this year. Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s appearances were brief, just long enough to stop by to make a statement, which you’ll find in full below. The Chicago Tribune picks up on the rest of the politically star-studded evening (at least locally star-studded, though Frank Gehry was also in attendance). Here’s the President’s speech, with the remainder after the jump:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please — please, everybody, have a seat.

Well, thank you, Tom, for that introduction. Thank you to the entire Pritzker family for your friendship and incredible generosity towards so many causes. I want to welcome as well the diplomatic corps that is here, as well as Secretary Arne Duncan.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.