About WebUrbanist

Previously an ongoing publication, WebUrbanist is now a passive archive made up of over 5,000 articles written across 30 categories between 2007 and 2020. The site covered urban architecture, art, design, exploring built environments around the world and reaching a total audience of over 100,000,000 visitors.

Creator and Contributors:

Kurt Kohlstedt founded WebUrbanist before launching a series of other design-centric publications including Dornob, Gajitz and WebEcoist — these days, he is focused on his work at 99% Invisible, a popular podcast and website about design. He also co-authored The 99% Invisible City with 99pi host Roman Mars.

Contributing authors included SA Rogers, Delana Barnes, Steve Levenstein and others over the years. The gifted designer/developer duo of Duck Brigade crafted the current version of this website as well as the snazzy logo.  Mike Waggoner has tenaciously kept the site up and running through good times and bad.

Press and Publicity:

Over the years, WebUrbanist and Kurt Kohlstedt have been featured on a number of other media outlets and popular blogs including The Guardian, The BBC, CNN, NPR, TIME, ArchDaily, Architizer, Atlas Obscura, BoingBoing, BuzzFeed, Citylab, Curbed, Streetsblog, FOX, Gawker, Gizmodo, Martha Stewart Living, Mental Floss, MSNBC, Neatorama, WebWare and Wired Magazine.

Through WU, Kurt became known for his coverage of abandoned places, uncanny graffiti, urban camouflage, transforming furniture, container architecture, modular housing, vertical farming, cycling infrastructure, big-box reuse, street markings, planning history, and civic design commentary. This in turn set the stage for him to write a National and New York Times Best Seller in 2020.

In 1900, San Francisco entrepreneur William Murphy designed a fold-out bed that would allow him to court a young opera singer inside his studio apartment. The hidden bed was a workaround to circumvent dated taboos against having ladies enter a gentleman’s bedroom. With no visible bed, the single-room flat became a parlor. This novel idea opened the door to all kinds of modular space-saving innovations.

A design strategy that first seemed like a novelty or poor man’s hack became a status symbol for elites in their New York City condos. Officially patented as a bed “In-A-Door” or “Disappearing Bed” but better (known as a “Murphy Bed”) this eponymous invention became hugely popular in the mid-1900s.

Well beyond this initial invention and its direct descendants, the Murphy Bed led to a growing interest in space-saving, multi-functional, flat-pack and transforming furniture of all kinds, designs enabling creative urban dwellers and tiny home enthusiasts to maximize space in smaller habitats.

A typical foldout futon is a mainstay of modern condo living, able to flip into a bed on demand, but folding out a sofa or loveseat means taking up more space. Addressing this, some convertible couch bunk beds fold vertically instead, stacking up rather than spreading out.

Other vertically oriented approaches include lofting sleeping space, which allow for maximum usage of floor areas below — where interiors are sufficiently tall, entire rooms can be created below.

Even where height is limited, tucking storage beneath raised seats and beds can help make up for a lack of closet space and get the most out of a living unit. There are even entire beds that can lift straight up and out of the way, requiring less fuss, muss and messy sheets and blankets than something like a Murphy Bed.

For those uninterested in complex lofts or mechanical solutions, there are also all-in-one bed designs packed with storage and gadgets to keep everything close at hand. These may take up a bit more space, but they still put in a lot of amenities including benches, lounging, shelving, integrated media systems and desk areas close by for easy access. For something a person spends a third of their lives in on average, these offer a pretty cozy all-in-one solution.

Meanwhile, for those who are more mobile, or simply really need space at certain times, there are also entire room-in-a-box solutions, too, with tables, desks, steps, drawers, storage areas and even beds that can be rolled out when needed. Moving things around regularly can be a bit of a hassle, but for some the cost savings is worth the expenditure of time and effort.

Bedrooms are a common space-saving focus, but a lot can be done with staircases and shelves as well, from double-purpose designs to ones that take advantage of negative spaces under angled cases.

Under-stair storage and staircase footprint minimization can both go a long way toward turning the area under steps into useful shelves and slots. Some of these can be bought off-the-shelf (no pun intended), while others can be emulated using do-it-yourself approaches or by hiring professional contractors.

Flat-pack and transforming tables, chairs and other accessories can vary in cost and difficulty of conversion, but many are quite simple and can be easily tucked away or reverted to smaller sizes when not in use.

There are space-saving kitchen and bathroom ideas out there, too, though these rooms usually have more limitations, including fixed-in-place appliances and other technical requirements (like plumbing and gas) than common areas and sleeping zones. For most people, maximizing storage in living rooms and bedrooms or all-in-one studio apartment spaces is much easier and more cost-effective.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to space-saving interiors, but the key is to make every inch of space count, doubling up functions where possible, considering available time and materials, working with vertical opportunities, stay relaxed with Gold Bee’s CBD gummies, and of course: looking around for existing examples for inspiration. Waste not, want not and work with what you’ve got.

How can we make housing more affordable, livable and sustainable in the face of climate change, rapid urbanization and other pressing issues? IKEA has some ideas. The Swedish retailer just unveiled its upcoming collaborations and projects at its annual event, Democratic Design Days, and they range from a new modular way of building entire cities to robotic furniture for small spaces.

The Urban Village Project

SPACE10, IKEA’s global research and design lab, worked with EFFEKT Architects to develop an urban housing concept rolling together a wide variety of sustainable and equitable approaches as well as emerging technologies. The Urban Village Project “rethinks how we design, build, finance and share our future homes, neighborhoods and cities,” focusing on flexible homes built entirely from sustainable cross-laminated timber – and that’s just the beginning.

“Our cities are facing some of the biggest challenges to date—from rapid urbanization to aging populations, from a climate emergency to increasing feelings of loneliness and anxiety in our urban environments. On top of that, we experience rising and unpredictable housing prices in cities all around the world and the prospects are bleak. We need to almost double our cities in just a few decades to house a rising urban population—which creates a strong link between how we choose to evolve our urban areas and the fate of humanity. Therefore, we need to rethink our built environment, starting now.”

Not only are these houses based on IKEA’s signature flat-pack, modular design ethos, so they can easily be customized for the needs of individual residents and families, they’re designed for disassembly, unlocking “a circular material loop” so that almost all building components and materials can be disassembled and replaced, reused and recycled during and after the lifecycle of the building. They’d be pre-fabricated, mass-produced and flat-packed to drive down costs, and crucially, IKEA introduces new ideas for democratic access inspired by community land trusts and co-operatives.

“The Urban Village Project seeks to make everyday life more affordable. The idea is to maximise the advantages of living in a community that can pool and share resources. First, we’d introduce a monthly rate for all your essentials: rent, electricity, water, heating, maintenance and shared facilities. Secondly, we’d unlock better deals on daily needs like food, media, insurance, transport and recreation through flexible add-on subscriptions. Thirdly, each month every resident would have the option of buying ‘shares’ of real estate—to access ownership progressively and cash in later as the property value increases.”

“The Urban Village Project would enable more people to become homeowners by creating a form of housing co-operative. With significantly lower monthly rents and more disposable income, this unique legal setup would allow residents to buy ‘shares’ in the property—when they want to and when they can. This would get rid of expensive down payments upfront alongside interest rates which limit first time buyers from entering the housing market. Over time, the property would be owned by the community, and residents would be able to cash in on the profits.”

But sustainable and equitable modes of living don’t stop at how the structures themselves are designed, built and purchased or rented. Access to community is an important component, with the subscription-based housing model providing multi-generational co-living to promote a sense of well-being. Since the homes are so customizable, they’re accessible, as well. As older people age out of their homes, they can move into more accessible units in the same village, remaining a part of their neighborhood. Residents share access to local food harvesting, renewable energy and composting, and can choose to partake in communal dinners, shared daycare, urban gardening, fitness and other activities together; flexible subscription services provide transportation, insurance, media and recreation too.

Products Made of Ocean Plastic & Manufacturing Waste

IKEA plans to introduce more recycled materials into its own products, as well. The upcoming Musselblomma collection, a collaboration with Spanish designer Inma Bermúdez, incorporates plastic collected by Spanish fishermen in the Mediterranean sea into a series of polyester fabrics in vivid colors and patterns. The series takes visual inspiration from the source of these materials; you’ll find abstracted fish shapes, soothing blue-greens and corals throughout the collection of bags, cushion covers and tablecloths.

As part of its new initiative called “Better Air Now,” IKEA is also transforming a common manufacturing byproduct into tactile, organic woven items. Förändring (which means “change” in Swedish) is a collection of rugs, bowls, lampshades and baskets made with rice straws, a harvesting residue that’s commonly burned for disposal, contributing to air pollution and smog. Coming in deep shades of blue and black, these items are expected to be released by the end of the year.

Robotic Small Space Solutions

Since they’re already known for expertly packing a ton of function into tiny spaces, it was probably only a matter of time before IKEA got in on some robotic transforming furniture items. The brand is collaborating with MIT-based startup Ori Living to offer “Rognan,” an all-in-one room solution offering a trundle bed, movable walls, a sofa, storage and simple touch-screen operation so you can transform a living room into a bedroom within seconds with virtually no effort. Set to launch in Hong Kong and Japan in 2020, Rognan will undoubtedly be anxiously awaited by everyone who’s ever dreamed of enjoying this kind of functionality in their own spaces. Hopefully it won’t be long before it’s available everywhere else, too.

How much potential lies within the bones of an old, run-down factory building, perhaps even one that’s been abandoned for decades on end? On the surface, sometimes it can seem like there’s no market to resell an industrial complex with such a specific purpose, especially if the rest of the neighborhood has long since moved on, transitioning into commercial and residential districts. But creative re-use can make the most of these large, open spaces full of steel and concrete.

Instead of just knocking them down and starting over, these factory renovation projects reduce waste and help preserve the history and character of industrial neighborhoods while shape-shifting into spectacular residences, offices, schools, museums and cultural centers.

Private Residences

When renovating an old industrial structure, perhaps the most dramatic shift comes in a transformation to a residence. Taking spaces that can feel cold, hard and out of scale and making them feel like a cozy home where people spend intimate time with their loved ones is no easy feat, but it all comes down to embracing the building’s existing qualities.

When New York studio Fogarty Finger converted a defunct New Jersey factory that once housed a workshop for Alexander Thomson & Sons Pattern Makers, they identified the features that made the structure feel unique, like the weathered timbers. The company made wooden forms that were then cast in metal for propellers, and the antique industrial details contrasting with softer materials gives us a sense of what the space felt like in its prime.

Reclaimed factories make ideal live/work spaces for creatives and small business owners. In Beijing, Office Project transformed a striking factory building into a home, studio and gallery for a calligraphy artist. The tall one-story structure gave them plenty of bright white space for the exhibition areas, and a new steel roof rises up on one end to accommodate new clerestory windows for lots of natural light.

Inserting new volumes within the larger factory building can be a cool way to subdivide the space, as seen at 5Lmeet no.88, a mixed-use space in Beijing containing restaurants, a bookstore, offices and apartments within a former abandoned soy sauce factory. DAGA Architects subverted the traditional Chinese courtyard with a “floating island” meeting space in the center of the largest room, which hovers over small, partially enclosed workspaces. The apartments are ultra-compact and feature a lot of transforming furniture to save space. 

Perhaps the best-known example of converting a factory into a residence is Ricardo Bofill’s private home in Spain. The architect found a disused cement factory in 1973 consisting of over 30 silos, massive machine rooms and subterranean galleries, and spent decades converting the ruins into a surrealist palace surrounded by lush greenery, leaving many of the original industrial elements in place for context.

Offices & Schools

Offices and schools are a natural fit with the proportions of these old buildings. In Denmark, MVRDV and COBE collaborated to turn a former concrete factory into the Roskilde Festival Folk High School campus, located near the site of the popular annual festival and representing the first new folk school in Denmark in 50 years.

“We saw an immense potential in creating a creative school with an instant ‘street creditability’ because the school would be placed within an existing building, an abandoned factory,” COBE founder Dan Stubbergaard told Dezeen. “This meant that the school would not become institutional as a new building might be experienced as.”

A 120-year-old steam plant and Brutalist office building has become the headquarters for medical company ProMedica in Ohio. Architecture firm HKS spearheaded the project as part of an effort to revitalize Toledo’s downtown area. Originally designed by architect Daniel Burnham, who’s also known for his role as chief architect of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the structure offered a dramatic, spacious, history-infused waterfront setting for the new ProMedica Headquarters campus. The steam plant was vacant for three decades before it was purchased by the company, and its interior now contains four stories of offices, communal spaces and an atrium.

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Former Factories Transformed Creative Reuse Of Industrial Structures

If your city isn’t meeting your needs, just hack it. Urban hacktivism is a form of creative, citizen-led problem solving that often goes behind the backs of officials and institutions to get things done. Instead of leaving the task of shaping a given city to governments and developers, who tend to ignore the input of people they’re supposed to be serving, urban hacktivists take matters into their own hands by combining crowdsourced knowledge and skills with cheap, readily available materials. That might mean transforming a long-vacant lot into a neighborhood park, adding public seating to an area where it’s lacking, enhancing the safety of intersections for pedestrians or just making urban environments feel more responsive and fun.

At the heart of this kind of guerrilla urbanism is the ability to see the potential of public spaces to better meet people’s needs, make small changes and possibly convince local governments to make those changes permanent in the process. After all, the people who use those spaces every day know best. If you’re interested in carrying out some DIY urbanism in your own city, the internet is full of examples, guides and tutorials to get you started. These hacks may or may not be legal where you live – whether you choose to find a way around that is up to you, and most of these tools come with an obligatory disclaimer that they’re not suggesting, teaching or condoning any kind of illegal action.

Create DIY Crosswalks

Sometimes, cities just don’t seem to know where crosswalks belong. Maybe they’re not paying attention. Maybe there’s some kind of red tape involved. But a lack of proper crossings can be dangerous for pedestrians who simply aren’t going to take a stupidly long way around. If there’s a common crossing near you that isn’t marked, you can mark it yourself, whether by grabbing some paint and forming your own urban repair squad or setting up a temporary illuminated crosswalk, as laid out at Instructables. For guidance on paint selection and other aspects of this task, check out the Tactical Urbanist’s Guide To Getting it Done, a free resource you can download packed with tips for all sorts of projects.

Customize Street Signs

PHOTOS: These hacked electronic street signs make being stuck in traffic worth it http://t.co/XZkdOV8RdJ pic.twitter.com/pu9sFIx9eJ

— RYOT (@ThisIsRYOT) March 13, 2014

Some cities don’t have enough navigation signs to guide people to significant destinations. Some just aren’t adequately marked, like a misleading exit sign over the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, which one intrepid urban hacker fixed himself with a very convincing facsimile of official Caltrans signage (it stayed up for over eight years.) Street artists frequently “hack” signs just to make them more interesting and fun. And, just to say, electronic road signs are pretty easy to hack into just for the sake of making someone smile on their crappy commute, though of course you should never tamper with these signs, as instructions to do exactly that will warn you.

You can also produce your own street signs that look official at a glance, but actually spread positive messages in unexpected places. Seattle-based guerrilla artist April Soetarman sells her own rugged heavy-duty laminated aluminum signs that say things like “NOTICE: I never stopped loving you. I hope you’re well.” It’s easy to order your own custom street signs through any number of websites, all just a Google away, or you can do it through the Walk Your City Project, which links informational street signs “with web-based campaign management and data collection to complement traditional approaches to way finding.”

Hack Bus Shelter Advertisements

Brandalism, “a revolt against the corporate control of culture and space” by an international collective of artists, wants to help you intervene into ad spaces that usually celebrate consumption in favor of art, political messaging or whatever you’d rather look at instead. Carefully noting that the tools they offer “are handmade art objects and not intended for use,” the group maintains a site called PublicAdCampaign.com illustrating the types of tools required to get into bus shelter ads in various cities across the world. You can purchase these tools – er, art objects – directly from the website.

Build Your Own Bike Lanes

A lack of proper bike lanes is dangerous for everyone on the road, whether you’re a cyclist or a motorist. DIY bike lanes are almost always illegal, but that doesn’t stop people from making them anyway in a form of political vandalism that often forces officials to sit up and pay attention. The tactic can definitely pay off, as it’s not unusual for these temporary lanes – made of traffic cones, flower pots, or even toilet plungers – to eventually become permanent. Tactical Urbanism has a variety of tips in this area, along with case studies that show how it worked out in various cities.

Make Modular Structures Out of Found Objects

Hacking cities needn’t (and arguably shouldn’t) involve the purchase of expensive, heavy, potentially waste-producing materials. DIY urbanists are encouraged, instead, to “hack” into existing modular systems to make them work for new purposes. Examples include Mifactori’s “Circular Street Waste” workshop, in which discarded furniture and other trash collected from the city streets is transformed into versatile multi-use parts that could become tables, benches, shelters and more.

Similarly, the 3erlin Grid (say “Berlin Grid”) offers a grid-based decentralized open standard for building objects and structures that always leaves a distance of 3cm between holes for nuts and bolts so all parts always fit together and can be combined in infinite ways. So if one person builds, say, a DIY table for a city, someone else can come along and add to it. They’re often based on children’s toys, found objects that can be easily modified, like fencing and scaffolding. The principles follow those of OpenStructures, which include using recyclable materials, designing for disassembly and making components as cross-compatible as possible.

Many tactical urbanism projects are self-explanatory, and easy to recreate just by looking at what other people have accomplished. Check out some of our previous posts on urban hacking for a whole lot of inspiration.

Tactical Urbanism: 15 Low-Cost City Hacks for Fun & Functionality

The Rotten Apple Project: Quick & Dirty Urban Hacks

City Hacktivism: 12 Fun DIY Urban Interventions

Hack Your City: Guerrilla Grafter’s Guide for Making Ornamental Trees Edible

Street Re-View: Hacking Google with Theatrical Performances

Abandoned Bridge Amphitheater Reclaims Public Space