Perfect for a pop-up market in Seoul that appears only overnight and on weekends, these collapsible and stackable structures take up little space when not in use and can be deployed and stored quickly and easily.

Designed by Motoelasico for the capital city of South Korea, the temporary tents provide space for craftspeople and designers to set up shop and sell wares. Then, during the week, the units can be left on site without taking up public space.

Two site-specific variants were developed for two locals along the Han River. One site is narrow and long, and its design solution consists of a series of foldable ‘V’ structures on wheels covered with orange tarps.

Each unit houses three vendor booths with roll-up sides to for visibility and ventilation. The fronts and backs are open allowing views through to the river behind the sellers as well.

The other site is a broader and more built-up area of benches and greenery, and its solution draws on the model of stackable supermarket carts. Booths are independent and pyramidal, but can be slid into one another for storage.

These yellow-clad units have more flexibility in this less-linear space, able to be arrayed around corners and arranged in different ways depending on demand.

While both are responses to a particular place and set of needs, they also serve as a useful model for other cities looking to create open-air markets — simple, durable, practical but also fun, colorful and inventive.

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.

A lone Ukrainian park bench has become the unlikely star of a decade-long drama, much more by chance than by design, thanks to a photographer’s unplanned project to document the lives of those who use it.

Yevgeniy Kotenko never meant On the Bench to be a series or body of work. He simply began to take pictures of people on and around a bench outside his parents’ window, capturing everyday scenes — people picnicking, children playing and old men sitting. He also photographed more fraught encounters —  lovers quarreling, drunks passing out and emergency service workers tending to an injured man.

“I wasn’t thinking of making a series or a project,” Kotenko told Colossal. “I didn’t select any particular time frame or set of situations to capture. Not until 2012 did my friends tell me that I should put together an exhibition of these photos.

“I never invested the photos with any particular intention or idea of what I wanted my audience to see,” Kotenko says. “They will see what they want to see. These photographs are more like a documentary.” And they document everything under the sun (and moon), showing what Kiev life is like from day to day and season to season.

In a way, the project recounts works of found or everyday-object art, or series like People of New York, where normal passersby become parts of a grander narrative about city life. Kotenko has since moved out of the neighborhood, but says that his experiences looking at the window and documenting life shaped his perspective growing up, showing him examples of who he might want to become, or not become.

We all want to be smiling when we go but if you’re “going” at one of Okinawa, Japan’s cute and creative public restrooms, grinning comes with the territory.

Flickr member Okinawa Soba (Rob) has a thing for public restrooms – not that there’s anything wrong with that – and he also has a camera. The combination is unexpectedly serendipitous, though the photographer deserves full credit for employing the latter with great discretion when exploring the former.

Based in Okinawa, a southern Japanese island prefecture rich in culture, history and tragedy, the photographer snapped most of his posted public restroom shots over the past decade. Take the so-called “Tangerine Toilet”, photographed in late 2015 and located in the mountain village of Izumi. Some say the restroom is modeled after a pumpkin but unlike our familiar Halloween jack o’lantern squash, Japanese “kabocha” pumpkins are only orange on the inside.

Angler of the Dangler

That’s NOT water under the bridge – it just sounds like it. This decidedly fishy public toilet is located in Nago, a city of just over 60,000 in northern Okinawa. Like many of the island’s mimetic public restrooms, this koi-shaped toilet appears rather sun-faded and soot-streaked, indicating appreciable age. Like most of Japan’s public restrooms in general, however, it’s well-maintained and surprisingly clean on the inside.

The Write Stuff

Situated near a small park in Okinawa City, this pencil-stub-shaped public restroom reflects some of the cultural norms of the island in that the urinal is doorless while the toilet (an old-fashioned “squat” model) lies behind a stout metal door. Photographer Okinawa Soba (Rob) snapped the literary loo in April of 2015.

Smells Finny

This gorgeous public restroom located in Okinawa’s Awase district is THE place to pee, er, be if you’re in the neighborhood and hear nature’s call. Heck, we’d visit it whether nature’s calling or not! Designed with color-coded entrance ways for each gender, this bright and beautiful public toilet features both traditional and modern commodes to suit any preference.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Going In Style Cute Creative Public Restrooms Of Okinawa

Most porta-potties hide in plain sight at construction projects, public events and music festivals but these outdoor loos stick out like sore bums, er thumbs.

Porta-potties are big business (they even have their own magazine) and they’re often deployed en masse for the largest public events. Take the January 20th, 2017 inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, declared by former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to be “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period”. Actual numbers aside, ANY presidential inauguration means a LOT of butts in the seats, so to speak, and that translates into a windfall for whichever porta-potty company lands the gig.

For 45’s big day, the contractor was Don’s Johns… not THAT Don but A Don (Don’s Johns is a family-owned concern founded in 1964). Coincidence? Certainly, but that didn’t stop event organizers from taping over the logo on as many Don’s Johns porta-potties as possible… which only served to highlight a non-issue. Guess nobody on the transition team ever heard of the Streisand Effect. Kudos to Flickr members bill.I.am, Joshua Yospyn, and Tania Gall for snapping the above photos.

Move Your Boels

Netherlands-based Boels Verhuur B.V. is the largest rental company in Europe’s BeNeLux region and among the over-2,500 products available for rent are porta-potties. Some, like the above examples from Eindhoven, have been creatively painted though it’s not certain if the painters were contracted by Boels or are the unauthorized work of local graffiti artists. One would hope they restricted their “painting” to the exteriors.

As for the above photo… who among us hasn’t had a case of “Upset Boels”. No doubt the site’s construction workers were a tad upset as well. Flickr member oerendhard1 captured these portable toilets in 2012 and 2008, respectively.

Bigger in Texas

“The Painted Potties of El Paso, TX” may not have the cinematic cache of “The Bridges of Madison County” but hey, each to his or her own.

Flickr member oniram posted their images of El Paso’s artistically enhanced portable toilets over the long hot summer of 2007.

It’s said that every rose has its thorn, so be careful where you sit. As for a rose by any other name still smelling the same, well, in this case that’s debatable.

Throne Muses

It’s a testament to how willfully invisible portable toilets have become: the logo of Woburn, MA-based The Throne Depot graphically depicts some generic dude conducting business, as it were, in public. Throne Depot takes the ol’ hiding-in-plain-sight game a step further by constructing many of their porta-potties from purple and orange plastic.

The above photo, taken in 2009 by Flickr member klausness, features a row of four Throne Depot porta-potties outside Boston’s much-reviled, Brutalist concrete City Hall. Some might say that’s perfectly appropriate.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
What A Dump 15 Out Standing Porta Potties