Painted patterns turn ordinary sidewalks and other urban surfaces into geometric artworks, creating a level of creative interaction as well as domestic intimacy in public spaces.

European artist Ali (Arthur-Louis Ignoré) takes cues from ancient decorative rug design traditions as well natural and geometric forms from other ornamental sources.

Using simple white-on-gray, the drawings themselves can be simple at times, or playful. Their contrast with monotonous paving stones and asphalt brings dull areas to life with a bit of unconventional decor.

Some span entire alleys, streets or even rooftops, reaching up to 10,000 square feet in size, and spanning cities in France, Finland, Canada and the United States.

But while these larger works are impressive, there is something simple and subversive about sketching out, using simple lines and patterns, a little cozy place-making rug on a street for all to share.

Cryptic ‘House of Hades’ linoleum tiles inspired by mysterious and anonymous Toynbee Tiles are cropping up on The Big Apple’s paved streets.

The so-called “Toynbee Tiles” are mosaic messages cut from colored linoleum floor tiles and ingeniously set into asphalt-paved urban streets. The tiles – made and installed by a still-anonymous person – began appearing decades ago in cities from the U.S. east coast west to Kansas and as far south as Santiago, Chile. Most of the original Toynbee Tiles have worn away and are preserved for posterity through photographs taken by aficionados such as Flickr member Brecht Bug, which describe new Toynbee Tiles placed as recently as 2016.

The artist’s carefully guarded anonymity has inspired at least one copycat who signs their work “House of Hades”. Besides not having to deal with copyright issues, copycats are able to stoke public interest in their own work by creating uncertainty in the public mind… is this a copy or a work of the original artist? House of Hades tiles greatly resemble the original Toynbee Tiles (example above) in style and construction though their inherent and obvious messages are quite different… and often quite weird.

No Happy Media

House of Hades’ most commonly expressed sentiment is a vitriolic hatred for the Mass Media – sometimes called out in person, i.e. the New York Post. He (or She – we’ll go with the male pronoun for the sake of flow) often refers to himself as “one man against the media machine”. The laying of these tiles seems to constitute a vengeful vendetta on one level; a warning to society on another.

Angry New York State of Mind

House of Hades tiles can be found from Buffalo, New York (where they may have originated) down through Pittsburgh and Philadelphia but they may be most common in New York City. Flickr member Brecht Bug has uploaded over 300 photos of NYC-area House of Hades tiles, often returning to the same tile to highlight the tiles as they gradually decay in the Big Apple’s punishing urban environment.

The Only Living Tile in New York

The tiles are not alive, of course, but they do have lifespans which vary depending upon their location, amount and type of traffic, and other such factors. In 2009, Brecht Bug was serendipitously fortunate to find a newly-installed House of Hades tile located near Broadway & Houston. The tile was so new, its tar paper cover was completely intact.

Like the original Toynbee Tiles, House of Hades tiles are made of cut linoleum set mosaic-style into a tar base, then covered with a thin sheet of tar paper. The cover protects and stabilizes the tile until solar heat and the weight exerted by passing traffic conspire to press the tile into the pavement. Ingenious… and that doesn’t even take into account how the artist performs installations in the middle of NYC’s infamously busy streets.

The photographer was able to snap the newly-laid tile on August 21st of 2009, four days later as the tar paper had partially worn off, fully exposed on September 1st, and yet again in early April of 2010 as the tile was crumbling away. It’s the Great Circle of Life, tile style!

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Toynbee Too Cryptic House Of Hades Street Tiles

Developed by Wattway and deployed on the streets of Tourouvre-au-Perche, a 1,000-meter-long solar-paneled roadway in France is the first stretch of a 1,000-kilometer endeavor.

The technology along this initial pathway is designed to generate enough energy to light up the streets of a 3,400-person town, and it is just the first step in a five-year plan.

France ultimately aims to pave 1,000 kilometers of solar roads over the next half-decade, supplying renewable energy to 5 million people (close to 10% of the population).

The flat and smooth surfaces of existing streets are perfect places to serve a double function and harvest clean energy as long as the issue of durability is taken into account.

The solar brick-like sheets are covered in multiple layers of silicon resign designed to allow light to pass through while protecting the panels from damage. The panels are engineered to withstand the weight of six-axle trucks and to stick directly onto existing road surfaces.

The goal for this first phase is to produce 280 megwatt hours of power per year and to test the durability of the tech under real-world experimental conditions. Under controlled conditions, the panels survive a “cycle of one million vehicles, or 20 years of normal traffic a road, and the surface does not move.”

“We are still on an experimental phase,” says the company. “Building a trial site of this scale is a real opportunity for our innovation. This trial site has enabled us to improve our photovoltaic panel installing process as well as their manufacturing, in order to keep on optimizing our innovation.”

In a city with over a half-million open potholes, one artist is helping address the problem and raising awareness by installing his own creative patches, filling them piece by piece with colorful tiles.

Jim Bachor has been making mosaics for years, and has turned his craft toward the pressing and persistent problem of dangerous potholes in the Chicago area, particularly bad after an especially cold winter.

Variations on the colors and overall design of the Chicago city flag frame text and digits, from self-titled ones (reading simply ‘POTHOLE’) to phone numbers of local car repair shops or individual identification strings.

At dozens of dollars per fix, the work itself is hard to scale but does bring the broader problem to the attention of passers by, as well as the city itself as the project makes its way into the media.

Oh yes, you read it right: breaking ground was meant in the literal sense – think Sandworms from Beetlejuice, chewing through asphalt on their way to attack and nature’s own bright orange warning color.

Epos 257 is an urban artist with many tools, techniques and approaches, but few are quite so attention-getting as a presumably-rogue pipe (or mythical snake) that bursts up from the cobblestones or concrete right at your feet.

The creatures comes straight out legend, leaping into view in modern form: the Mongolian Death Worm is the creature of nightmares, spewing flesh-eating acid as it terrorizes a population. To this day, scientists cannot say of the stories are based on fact or fantasy.