Portuguese architectural illustrator André Chiote decided to create these colorful posters to celebrate some of the most impressive libraries that he has visited on his travels.
After a long haul flight, the last thing I want to imagine is living in an airliner. Spending my days inside of a plane seems like a bad dream, but Bruce Campbell has apparently made a comfortable home out of a retired Boeing 727. After purchasing the former Greek airlines in 1999, Campbell installed the plane in the woods near Portland, Oregon. You can check out the cozy cabin in the short video below and read all about the project on Campbell’s blog.
Last year, I posted on the surprise discovery of a previously unknown annotated map of Middle Earth that J.R.R. Tolkien had created while working on the 1970 reissue edition of The Lord of the Rings (Allen & Unwin). The map had been hidden away for forty-five years in an unrelated novel owned by Pauline Bayes, who illustrated the 1970 edition of LOTR for Tolkien.
Last week, it was announced that the Bodleian Library at Oxford University had purchased the map with grant funds to prevent it disappearing into a private collection. Now we can all enjoy it.
No one seems to know who is behind The Canvas Project, which inserts figures from famous paintings into real world situations, but you can follow along with the rest of us on Instagram.
The grand Musee D’Orsay in Paris was a train station in its first incarnation. It seems quite fitting that images of art work from the popular museum are now gracing French trains. SNCF, the state-owned railway, is covering the walls and ceilings of regional train cars with graphic film copies of great works of impressionist paintings, as well as images from Versailles,the Cinema Gaumont, and Musee D’Orsay decoration.
Beginning on May 8th, the air will be just a little bit cleaner in Paris—at least on Sundays. The French capital’s government will ban automobile traffic along the famed Champs Elysées and on nine other roads. Another four areas of Paris will be pedestrianized on Sundays during the summer months, adding to 13 zones already designated as car-free. Tourists will be happy to discover that the Quartier du Marais and the Quartier Saint-Martin will be part of the Paris Respire project, at least for this summer season.
Rumia, Poland is a small city just outside of Gdansk. When the local government decided to revitalize the old railway station, they decided to incorporate the public library in the project. The combined transit station/cultural center has now won the 2016 Library Interior Design Award for interior space use.
The building renewal, carried out by Gdansk-based design studio Sikora Wnetrza, cleverly connects the three story library directly with the station waiting room to encourage passengers to borrow books, or just hang out and read.