Design
Finding Playful New Uses for Boring Street Infrastructure
Designer Thor ter Kulve transforms garbage cans into communal fire places, lampposts into swings, and more.
The Dutch really know how to celebrate New Year's – by blowing up every non-living thing with fireworks. The nation's pyrophilia burns so fiercely that municipal crews have to fan out on the streets to remove trashcans, mailboxes and other fun-to-explode objects.
How bad does it get? At the end of 2010, firefighters had to extinguish hundreds of flaming garbage bins in Amsterdam alone, leading authorities to impose huge fines for incinerating trash bins. But designer Thor ter Kulve thinks he's found a way of engineering revelers to act more responsibly. Why not transform the garbage boxes into heaters, he wonders, so that when they're set alight they actually perform a productive social function?