Knit the streets

Shauna Richardson

In the cold Christmas time knitting is one of the favourite hobbies of our grannies.  But instead of socks and scarfs today’s knitters and crocheters are more inclined to its modern form. Urban knitting is one of the most incredible trends of the digital decade. No other housewife craftmanships has become as prominent in the street art scene and more discussed in blogs and social media as knitting and crocheting. The smart-urban-stage.com magazine has created an interesting challenge between graphic design guru Mario Lombardo who asked several urban knitters and chrochet artist to create a new surface for the city of the future. Look at some of the amazing art pieces here and vote here for the best answer.
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smart urban stage Frankfurt – the Party

Imagine a trip to the land of the future. Where a princess plants trees, lamps are enlighted by the wind, streets are painted in joyful colors by millions of childrens and supermarkets are places where people come together to share food and love. These are just a few of the participating projects of the smart future minds award that took place in the 12th and final smart urban stage in Frankfurt.

We had an incredible experience getting to know the people behind these projects and meeting bloggers from all over Europe. We were really moved by the spirit of the heartfelt responsabilty for a better future. We were happy and proud to be part of the smart urban stage project right up from the start here in Berlin until its culmination in Frankfurt. The first prize went to The People’s Supermarket from London: A supermarket serving as a transparent food supplier and a meeting place for the local community.

After the jump you’ll find our photos from the event and after party and the list of amazing bloggers we met on the smart urban stage.

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The Future of the City…

How will the future of your city look like? Are we going to live in giant auto-sufficient and closed malls. Are we going to go back to nature cultivating tomatoes and salad on our rooftops? Will there still be an offline communication? Will there still be normal streets, playgrounds, parks and everything that makes our city unique?  Or will Europe become one giant city? A neverending concrete desert without a single tree in sight? These are a few of the questions the event series and online project smart urban stage tries to investigate. Starting last year  in May here in Berlin it now will find its grand finale this month with the last smart urban stage in Frankfurt. We are looking forward to go there to find out which are the best and most innovative ideas from eleven European metropolises. Check out the smart urban stage website to find out more and watch a sweet little teaser video after the jump to get the feeling for the project.
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Sweaty Gonzales

Future Mins Award at Smart Urban Stage

Last Thursday the days of the Smart Urban Stage came to an end with the award ceremony of the Future Minds Award. My instincts to choose the Food Parcours project for my guest post at the Smart Urban Blog was pretty good I think. The jury seemed equally enthusiastic about the concept of urban farming as they chose The Prinzessinnen Gärten as the winner of the competition. Read more about that here.

To make the event a very special highlight the organiziers invitied Chilly Gonzales to play some tunes at the piano. Just recently I saw this musical genious in Peaches Christ Superstar. But now I was even more impressed seeing him play right in front of me. He stunned the audience with his improvisations, gave a little music lesson and forced an unwilling guest to play while he was rapping. As Thursday was one of the hottest days in this summer he the sweat was dropping from every single lock of his curly head. But as one bystander wanted to help him out with a towel he just threw it right away saying he prefers for people to see when an artist makes a hell of an effort. More impressions of a hot night with dripping sweat, flowey summer dresses and pretty girls.

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Style & the Blogger Family Tunes

Style & the Family Tunes Party

Wednesday’s Style & the Family Tunes release party at the Smart Urban Stage turned out to be a big get together of fashion bloggers from Berlin. Sipping the wine and flipping through the new issue of Style Mag I discovered the who-is-who of the fashion blog world: the lovely Julia from Germany’s number one fashion blog Lesmads, sweet Dario from Stil in Berlin, the beautiful redhead Anna from Reigen, the hunky Paul from Be my own stylist, dandy David from Dandy Diary, and of course the all the monkeys from our modest little blog that is iHeartBerlin.de… Did I miss anyone? Look for yourself after the jump.

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