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Augmented (hyper)reality

Leon — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:15:53 +0000

The Swedish paradox

Leon — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:02:59 +0000

One of my favorite blogs is Yimby, short for Yes In My Backyard. The blog discusses the urban development of Stockholm, and as you would expect it's always a two-front discussion between progressiveness (represented by architects and urban planners) versus conservatism (represented by politicians and "concerned" citizens).

It's easy to summarize the Swedes attitude towards urban development:

They say they want this:

… but in their hearts they actually want this:

That's probably the reason why there are no noteworthy architectural projects going on in Stockholm, only bland bloxes for sleeping and fucking (image how houses would look like if Volvo designed houses). There's of course nothing wrong with the dream of village cosiness (referred to as mysighet in Swedish), but meanwhile the absence of true urbanisation in terms of density makes housing prices skyrocket to international levels while salaries remain domestic.

It's time for people to decide whether they want to live in a village OR city. You can't have both.

How cliché

Leon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:25:25 +0000

When I lived abroad, I got the funny question from Germans whether people in Sweden actually throw out Christmas trees on the street. Apparently this was a reference this old IKEA ad:

Here's the proof that Christmas trees are actually thrown out on the streets en masse. And not only that – in the design-and-environmentally-conscious Stockholm they stack the old trees in a neat line so that they can be loaded onto the recycling truck with maximum efficiency.

St Eriksplan this morning. Sorry for the blur.

Probably the worse of two worlds

Leon — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:27:02 +0000

Last Thursday me and an agency project manager had lunch at Grodan, a place located in Östermalm. This is a district in Stockholm known to most Swedes for being poshy and upper-class. Whilst eating and discussing about diets, we get interrupted by a 60-plus gentleman by the table next to us. He introduces himself as a senior physician (“överläkare”) slash consultant to the business elite (in the realm of industrialist Peter Wallenberg himself apparently) and briefly explains to us how diets work. What then comes as an unpleasant surprise is that the doctor starts making super-derogatory remarks about women. Not in a subtle way, but flat out in every other sentence.

Fast-foward one hour, we are in Tensta doing some fieldwork for a supermarket pitch. Tensta is the opposite of Östermalm: a low-income suburb with high levels of unemployment, social decay and where the majority of people are of Middle-Eastern or African descent. As it happens, it’s also a place where the supermarket has a Halal-section that we were interested in. So, we’re standing outside the supermarket at the town square and interviewing customers. Suddenly and out of the blue a hostile voice behind us tells us to stop filming. The guy, who is probably not older than 18 but big as a house, totally aggressive (and probably pumped up with steroids) tries to provoke us into giving him a reason to fuck us up. We manage to calm him down, and so he leaves but tells us to go back to where we came from.

Obviously, there are idiots in every segment of society, regardless of education and background. But I cannot stop asking myself: why do people keep defining themselves and others categorically and in a simplistic way when they could be better off by avoiding contextual pigeonholes?

Choice is underrated.