Designing Idle Time for Public Transit
How might we design this inescapable “idle time” to be enjoyable, accessible, and inclusive?
In this post, you’ll find inspiring examples from around the world that show us how aiming for three specific objectives can improve the quality of urban life—and the public transit experience—for all.
Article published on Method’s blog.
Image from Matter-Mind Studio.
Unearthing “The Blindspot”: An Emotion-centered Approach To Design
A pitch article for NEW INC, the New Museum’s creative incubator on the topic of emotion-centered design, a concept coined by Matter-Mind Studio.
Photo by Charles Forerunner.
The Silence of Silicon Valley
“Since its rise in the ’70s, Silicon Valley has become the synecdoche for the U.S. high-tech sector. It is the breeding ground of innovation, and simultaneously, of a toxic “bro” culture that perpetuates a variety of systemic issues related to gender. Last year, many women spoke up about sexual harassment and sexism in Silicon Valley, including Susan Fowler who disclosed her appalling experience at Uber.”
Image from @livetinted.
Tinting A Community For "All The Shades In Between"
“To anyone growing up feeling excluded from the traditional Western beauty standards because of their skin color or struggling to find the right beauty products for their skin tones: TINTED welcomes you.
Co-founded in January 2018 by beauty influencer and social media producer Deepica Mutyala and her cousin, serial entrepreneur Neilesh Mutyala, TINTED creates a vibrant beauty community for everyone who feels underrepresented in the traditional beauty campaigns because of their darker skin tone.”
Photo by Antoine Merour.
Inside Jordan's Refugee Camp
“Sitashma Parajuli is rethinking a system that connects different needs across populations, without excluding her own. Can the refugee crisis be tackled in a more creative way with both economic and civic empowerment initiatives, which will not only benefit refugees, but also lay out new possibilities for a more just and sustainable political-economic system of the host country?”
Featured on The Flying Dutchman, March 15, 2018.
Image source: Hip-hop Nevadie.
Rap/Hip-Hop: the Rising of Underground Music and Youth Culture in Vietnam
A research paper investigating the history and cultural/political influences of underground music in Vietnam.
Photo by Josh Appel.
Dancing with the multitudes
“I was empowered by the offer of chaos, chance, coincidence, and humanness at public spaces in Buenos Aires and New York City. Creating public venues that can bring people together is vital for the building of community, and challenging structural systems of power and conventions in the fabrics of everyday life. Facilitating the convening of the selves is nurturing the commons for a sustainable future.”
Photo by Annie Spratt.
Yesterday I met Grandma in my dream
Published on Emergent Literary’s launch issue.
EMERGENT LITERARY is an assemblage of Black and brown work, a digital living room for gathering and collaboration.
This launching issue comes at the heels of emergency. It embodies care, the work of healing ourselves, the pain of memory and collective grief, inheritance, and what we pull out of our past in order to progress.
“Here is what I find unsatisfying though: my family is hurting but I am hurting too. Why do we have to ask each other to make ourselves disappear into the people we love? Why do we ask for sacrifice over acceptance and co-existence? Is it possible that as a family, when we show love to each other, we somehow project our desire to possess them and what we think is best for them instead of really listening to their needs, aspirations, and pain?”
Photo by Ralph Velasco.
The number one scissors of Quang Trung
“Father agrees that it might be the right call to clear out the sidewalk as a part of urban planning. He just wonders about the drifting destinies of the street vendors and their customers. I, however, do think that the sidewalk culture, along with its non-bourgie essence, is a part of our city’s identity. It’s hard to imagine an ecosystem of economic and social exchange solely existing behind storefronts. Until when will the sidewalk be able to claim its public, and the city to consider the drifting and displaced constituencies on its growing agenda?”
Photo by Monika Grabkowska.
Dear Fiona,
“I feel hysterically sour. Nothing new. Bodies that don’t matter, wholesale hostility birthed from whitelash, organized racism, police brutality, unjust power claimed from fear and hatred––what kind of society are we living in that continues to tolerate violence and injustice to such a blatant extremity? White supremacists are energized; they organize, and they are heard. They celebrate their bodies and power on marginalized bodies and struggles, history, legacies, unity, until the only response we have left is either silence or violence.”
Photo by León Busy in 1915.
Tooth Blackening Ritual & Sociocultural Boundaries
In Southeast Asia, especially in Vietnam until the late 20th century, a blackened set of teeth, which comes from the ubiquitous ritual tooth blackening (tooth lacquering), determined traditional beauty standards, gender roles, social structure, and national identity.