Creative Consulting

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

New ways to use the Ipad

Four Amazing Mini Libraries That Will Inspire You to Read

Libraries are among the most important of human institutions, warehousing knowledge accumulated over centuries, nay, eons. Libraries are also very alluring places, often built with ornate and cavernous reading rooms, vertiginous shelving for book storage, and winding secret passages. Originally built to protect books from ruin, libraries are generally gigantic bunker-like buildings. Inwardly focused, they restrict access to their treasure troves to those who whisper and can thrive without sunlight.

With the advent of the internet, however, all of the world’s knowledge is available instantly to anyone who desires it. Books are no longer precious for the information within them, but rather for their physicality: you can’t hold the internet or turn a webpage (discounting the swipes of an iPad). This frees libraries to pursue another of their functions: to foster dialogue and investigation. To accomplish this task, libraries themselves have had to get smaller, and more mobile. More accessible to a larger population than a classic library, the Pop-Up Library preserves the intimacy and experience of the book. Below are some great examples of this new species of institution.

Levinski Library by Yoav Meiri Architects

The Levinski Library, also known as the Garden Library for Migrants and Refugees, was designed to provide escape from worldly troubles within the pages of books. Located in Tel Aviv’s Levinski Park, this pop-up library features a collection of books from around the world, in languages from all continents. Yoav Meiri Architects write that they wanted the library to be approachable by all people, at all hours of the day, so that it could be used without fear by its intended audience: illegal immigrants. It is composed of two sets of bookcases, one tall and meant for adults, and across from it, a child-height shelf filled with children’s books. The doors to the children’s shelves fold down to create a play floor, while the doors to the adult shelves lift up to create a canopy spanning the distance between the two halves of the project.

Artist Massimo Bartolini’s entry for Ghent’s "Track: A Contemporary City Conversation" festival is composed of two summertime favorites: wine and books. The installation, entitled "Bookyard," features twelve rows of bookshelves, each aligned with the rows in the vineyard of nearby St. Peter’s Abbey. Visitors are invited to donate, borrow or purchase this pop-up library’s books as they sit on the grass of the surrounding fields and sip the monastery’s wine. This installation, like many pop-up structures, is temporary and will be taken down at the end of the festival this September.

Photos by Massimo Bartolini

Pay phones are an obsolete, if ubiquitous, technology, and with 13,659 of them, New York is letting tons of potentially useful public space go to waste. Or it was, until an architect named John Locke (can this really be coincidence?) and his group, the Department of Urban Betterment, stepped in. No, they didn’t create a "taskforce" or appeal a zoning decision or anything that might be in any construed as "bureaucratic." Rather, they started converting payphones into mini-libraries. Their custom-made shelving fits over the existing phone infrastructure, requiring absolutely no fasteners or glues. The phones are still operable, in case any cellphone-less soul has an emergency. Now the pay phone kiosks return to their intended use as urban social infrastructures, as neighbors share books and other media.

Photos and drawing courtesy of Department for Urban Betterment

Fundación Alumnos47, a Mexican cultural literacy organization, was seeking a way to engage residents and students in Mexico City with the arts and to teach them about visual culture. However, many of members of their intended audience either didn’t have time to go to a library, or didn’t have enough money to get there. So Alumnos47 decided to enlist architecture firmPRODUCTORA to design a mobile library; if you can’t get to the library, let the library come to you.

The shelves of the Biblioteca Móvil A47 are raised on overhead trays, freeing the floor for public gatherings. The floor itself is composed of stackable platforms, enabling a variety of spatial formats for different types of events. The doors of the Mobile Library are translucent when closed and allow for seamless connection with surrounding urban contexts when open. Thus, the library is at home wherever it goes.

Photos courtesy of PRODUCTORA

This post is part of the GOOD community's 50 Building Blocks of Citizenship. This week:Get a Library Card. Follow along, join the discussion, and share your experience at#goodcitizen.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

9 Rules for Success by British Novelist Amelia E. Barr, 1901

by Maria Popova

“Genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”

The secret of success — like its very definition — remains amorphous and forever elusive. For Thoreau, it was a matter of greeting each day with joy; for Jad Abumrad, it comes after somenecessary “gut churn”; for Jackson Pollock’s dad, it was about being fully awake to the world; for entrepreneur Paul Graham, it’s aboutpurpose rather than prestige; for designer Paula Scher, it means beginning every day with a capacity for growth. But perhaps, above all, success is about defining it yourself.

Still, those who have succeed — by their own definition, as well as history’s — might be able to glean some insight into the inner workings of accomplishment. From the 1901 volume How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves (public library; public domain) comes a wonderful essay by British novelist Amelia E. Barr (1831-1919) who, the despite devastating loss of her husband and three of their six children to yellow fever in 1867, went on to become a dedicated and diligent writer, eventually reaching critical success at the age of fifty-two.

At the end of her essay, under a section titled “Words of Counsel,” Barr offers nine tips for success, echoing some familiar themes — Tchaikovsky’s insistence on work ethic over inspiration, Ray Bradbury’s case for perseverance in the face of rejection, the importance of having a good routine and working with joy, and the necessary reminder that success requires a deliberate investment of effortand good writing takes time.

Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.

Success is the reward of those who “spurn delights and live laborious days.” We learn to do things by doing them. One of the great secrets of success is “pegging away.” No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.

No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?

A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment — “make the iron hot by striking it.”

Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.

Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, “Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman.” Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee.

Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.

It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.

INTUITION

me behave! seriously?

As a child I saw Tarzan run around naked; Cinderella arrived home after midnight; Pinocchio told lies; Obelix took performance enhancing drugs; Aladdin was a thief; Batman drove over 200 kmh; Snow White lived in a house with 7 guys; Popeye smoked a pipe and had tattoos; Dennis the Menace was a bully; PacMan ran around to digital music eating pills that enhanced his happiness; and Shaggy and Scooby were mystery solving hippies who always had the munchies. Thank you to Wake Up Tiger. Blogspot

A Defense of Comic Sans

Luminous Lost Souls in Site Specific Places by Photographer Celine Artigau

Saturday, 9 February 2013

New York Animation

New York Biotopes from Lena Steinkühler on Vimeo.

Friday, 8 February 2013

Batelco - INFINITY

Getting Wisdom

Management consultants are very insecure inside but are trained to hide their true feelings. Right after our company was acquired by this large company, I noticed several of those ex-consultants updated their linkedIn profile -- they all removed what year they graduated from colleges because that would have made them look too inexperienced. Unbelievable!

Repost from: I am tired and sick of management consultants. geekmba360.com