Three stories this week, and a common thread we only noticed at the end: all of them take something we usually walk past, a roof, a train, a shop sign, and make us stop and look again. Here is the week on Feel Desain, in case you missed it.
A roof you can climb in Shanghai
Snøhetta has done it again: after letting Oslo walk on the roof of its opera house, the Norwegian studio gives Shanghai a white roof that opens like a fan and doubles as a public staircase over the Huangpu River. No ticket needed to go up, only good shoes. Read the story.
The New York subway parks in Amsterdam
For decades Henry Chalfant photographed New York’s painted trains one car at a time, so that nothing would be lost when the cleaners arrived. At STRAAT in Amsterdam those pictures come back at the size of the train itself, and the effect is a little like standing on the platform in 1980. Read the story.
An Olympic slogan with strip mall manners
Los Angeles could have gone for Hollywood glamour. Instead LA28 dressed its Olympic slogan, Stars Align, in the lettering of strip mall signs and the colours of the desert superbloom, a choice that feels much closer to the city people actually live in. Read the story.
Coming up
Next week opens with Oxford Street, which is getting its first brand, and continues on Tuesday with a guitar amp from Teenage Engineering that has a space for your drink. See you on Monday.
