 |
|
|
|||||
Watching the side of a mountain get blown to bits in the new documentary Architecton, the shock is not just from the explosion but also from the quotidian end result of such brutal force. The film by director Victor Kossakovsky shows the industrialized violence involved in creating concrete, the most widely used building material in the world, tracing it backward from building to mountain source. [Image: courtesy A24] Released in U.S. theaters on August 1 by A24, Architecton is a mostly dialogue-free film that documents the often-unseen production chain of concrete. It turns the process of creating concretethe quarries, rock crushers, conveyor belts, and glowing furnacesinto spectacle. But it’s a spectacle with a high cost. Kossakovskys dazzling shots have almost no measurable scale or frame of reference. They are reminiscent of the classic 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi or the photography of Edward Burtynsky. Like those works, Architecton uses its stunning visuals to comment on humanity’s remaking of the planet, revealing what it takes to create the modern world we inhabit. A short-term solution The scenes in Architecton that show the slow transformation from mountain to rock to concrete are counterbalanced with shots of buildings made of raw stone. Roman-era marble columns and rustic stone buildings in centuries-old villages serve as Kossakovsky’s rebuttal to the modern way of building with concrete. Typical concrete buildings can last less than a hundred years. Kossakovsky calls them ordinary and ugly. “We have a history of architecture [dating back] thousands of years. We can open a book and say that’s a beautiful building. Why don’t we put it in our city?” Instead, he says, “We build strange rectangles from cement.” Kossakovsky says the film was inspired by the Alexander Column in the main square of his hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia. Made from a solid, monolithic piece of red granite measuring more than 83 feet and weighing 600 tons, the column was erected in the 1830s in a feat of human engineering. The filmmaker says he asked architects around the world why we don’t build things this way anymore, and walked away disillusioned by their focus on speed, economy, and subservience to the will of developers. One architect, Italian designer Michele De Lucchi, stood out. A member of the famous Memphis design group of the 1980s, De Lucchi is a proponent of building with stone, and he plays a kind of starring role in Architecton, which features him having a stone circle built into the ground of his backyard and visiting massive stone megaliths from ancient history. [Image: courtesy A24] An unsustainable cycle Architecton presents stone building as one solution, but the main focus for Kossakovsky is the problem: heavily polluting, energy intensive, and short-lived concrete. “The two biggest poisons of our time are sugar and concrete, in my opinion,” Kossakovsky says. To underline the problems he sees with concrete, Kossakovsky’s film shows cities around the world where concrete apartment blocks have been turned to ruins, from earthquake epicenters to war zones. The film opens with a long sequence of aerial footage in bombed-out cities across Ukraine, including one devastating pan showing the side of an apartment building ripped open, exposing floor after floor of bisected living rooms. Concrete is not the perpetrator of this particular brand of war crime, but Kossakovsky’s film hammers the idea that buildings made from concrete simply aren’t able to withstand the ravages of time. Tearing down these buildings after a few decades only to rebuild them for another few decades, the film argues, is part of the reason the climate has gotten so out of whack. [Image: courtesy A24] One poignant scene shows caravans of trucks hauling the wreckage of demolished buildings into a dump site that sits immediately adjacent to a mountain being quarried for the raw materials that will be used to rebuild. The cycle is not sustainable. But concrete is cheap to build with, and Kossakovsky says that’s what keeps the cycle in motion. “For whom is it cheap? For us it’s cheap. For our grandsons it’s expensive, because our grandsons will demolish it and build again,” Kossakovsky says. Building from stone, he argues, may cost more up front but will last for generations, and create a deeper connection between buildings and the people who inhabit them. The impact on the Earth will be less violent than what’s required to build the world with concrete. “If you build something from stone,” Kossakovsky says, “you only demolish the mountain once.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Since its founding in 2004, the trampoline-based indoor play space Sky Zone has turned the idea of going into a room and jumping around into a thriving business. Through franchising, the company has expanded to more than 200 locations and has more than 40 million visitors per year. But recently, executives at the company have been hearing from parents that while the jumping, bouncing, and inevitable falling is great for energy-filled kids and adolescents, it’s all a bit of a hazard for the youngest children. “Something that kept popping up was parents of the littlest of our Sky Zone jumpers being a little uncomfortable at times in our parks,” says Caitlin Shufelt, SkyZone’s former head of strategy. Sometimes trampoline parks like Sky Zone can be more than uncomfortable. Thousands of injuries have been reported at trampoline parks, from bumps and bruises to broken bones and brain injuries. Some personal injury law firms even specialize in trampoline park accidents. Sky Zone does have safety regulations, including minimum weight requirements, for its attractions, but accidents happen. This got Sky Zone’s leadership thinking about how to better serve the toddlers who might not be ready to ricochet off an angled trampoline or do a backflip into the Foam Zone. That led the company to create Cloudbound, a new indoor playspace for children 6 and under. A spinoff company now led by Shufelt, Cloudbound will open its first two locations later this year. There appears to be room for growth in the indoor playspace market. A report from Allied Market Research estimated the global market for trampoline parks at about $885 million in 2023, and growing to $1.5 billion by 2035. Family entertainment centers are expected to be a $100 billion market by 2032. Focusing on providing open, unstructured play that’s developmentally appropriate for very young children, Cloudbound’s playspace is a whimsical jungle gym with spaces and structures that small children can crawl through, climb up, and slide down. Shufelt calls it “a playground crossed with a children’s museum.” To come up with the design approach, Sky Zone’s team worked with museum and experience designers JRA Design, part of the entertainment-focused design group RWS Global. Together they developed a concept and theme that imagines children playing up in the sky. [Rendering: Cloudbound] The playscape has four zones, each with elements that will be accessible to children across the 6-and-under age range. The first area is referred to as Rising Above the Clouds, where children enter the cloud theme through a hot air balloon. There’s also a climbable treehouse, a “weather zone” featuring sensory experiences like a wind wall, and an obstacle course they call the Castle in the Sky. The space will have no trampolines. The overall design aesthetic is clean, pastel, and modern, which Shufelt says is an intentional difference from the more activity-centric indoor playspaces on the market. It’s also a design choice that aims to appeal to an often overlooked customer base: parents. “Between snack times, nap times, and temperamental little kids, parents are looking for an option that they can spontaneously drop into, and then also not feel miserable while they’re there, with chaos, wall-to-wall older kids jumping around, and a vomit of primary colors on the walls,” Shufelt says. Cloudbound’s design prioritizes safety, sightlines, and crowd control, and augments the parent experience with a café and abundant seating both inside the play area and on its edges. The space includes party rooms, nursing rooms, family restrooms, a quiet room, and stroller parking. Cloudbound’s playspace makes up about 60% of the space. Rather than segregating activities by age range, Cloudbound differentiates its offerings by four developmental stages, each of which may be reached at different ages, depending on the child. Shufelt refers to the stages as crawlers, walkers, little climbers, and confident climbers. “As long as they have the physical ability to do it, they can,” she says. “It’s safe for any age.” This approach was developed in consultation with Jennifer Jipson, a professor of child development and psychology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who advises companies like Nick Jr., Fisher-Price, and Magna-Tiles. “We have to trust children and families to kind of find their own path in those settings. If an area feels overwhelming or unsafe, they’re going to gravitate towards a different area,” Jipson says. “It doesn’t have to be the designers who regulate that.” Cloudbound’s design is intended to create opportunities for children to play and explore while pushing their own limits. The sky theme is a layer on top of the physical play elements, rather than a set storyline or sequence children must follow. “It’s a very hard thing to be intentionally unstructured,” Jipson says. “With younger kids, I think it’s very, very important to think about subtle behind-the-scenes guidance, so that it’s guided, playful learning in a way where the guidance isn’t suffocating.” The first two Cloudbound playspace locations are now under construction, in New Rochelle, New York, and Washington D.C., and should open this fall or winter. Two other projects have signed leases, but the company isn’t yet revealing their locations. Like Sky Zone, the plan is to refine the model and then franchise the Cloudbound concept across the country. Pricing hasn’t yet been finalized, but will likely run on a monthly membership. Shufelt says the hope is that Cloudbound becomes a place families with young children come to again and again, instead of just as a one-off for a birthday party. “Novelty grabs attention but familiarity drives skill progression. The more comfortable a child feels in a certain setting, the further they’ll push themselves,” she says. “We’ve designed Cloudbound to be inviting for all developmental maturities and stages.”
Category:
E-Commerce
McDonald’s ended its drive-thru-only all-drinks-and-snacks store concept CosMc’s in May after less than two years, but the experiment wasn’t a waste of time. McDonald’s announced that later this summer, it’s rolling out a selection of CosMc’s drinks with names like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and Sprite Lunar Splash to 500 McDonald’s locations in Colorado, Wisconsin, and other states, with a plan to eventually take them worldwide. “This first test in the U.S. market is a big step in our global direction,” McDonald’s beverage category lead Charlie Newberger said in a statement. [Image: McDonald’s] CosMc’s launched as a concept restaurant in 2023 with just five locations between Illinois and Texas. The sub-brand was a play for Gen Z consumers and an attempt to get McDonald’s’ foot in the door of the speciality beverage category. Gen Z customers are “turning to cold, flavorful drinks as a go-to treat,” McDonald’s chief customer experience and marketing officer of McDonalds USA said in a statement, and with a menu packed with sugary frappés, fruity energy drink, iced teas, and lemonades, CosMc’s was designed to lure consumers away from chains like Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Black Rock Coffee Bar for their drink fix. Taco Bell followed last year with Live Más Café, its own speciality drink store. [Image: McDonald’s] CosMc’s is one of many new store concepts that quick-service restaurants have experimented with in recent years. As the industry has adapted to changing consumer habits, chains have opened mobile-only locations and spin-off brands like KFC’s Saucy. While these concepts haven’t all taken off, like Starbuck’s no-seating pickup stores, which the company announced it will phase out by next year, they have provided chains with valuable insights they can fold into the main brand. McDonald’s won’t be opening any new CosMc’s locations, but it doesn’t have to. After demonstrating proof of concept for its menu of speciality drinks, the company is prepared to take the bestsellers to hundreds of existing stores before scaling it even further. CosMc’s was a test case, not a failure.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||