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In 1982 and 1983, native New Yorker Ken Stein worked as a staff reporter for a community newspaper in the Bronx. Just 17 years old, he hit the gritty streets of 1980s New York to document the world around him. Through his work he managed to capture the spirit of a New York quite different than the one we currently know, one with an undertone of danger and edge that has transformed over the past few decades. Stein shares, “The city was different back then. I think it was quieter, the street lights were darker, there was more room to walk and more places to wander—often everything seemed new and the different areas of the city were just that; different.”

Shot on slide film, Stein recently began scanning his work, allowing us a glimpse inside the pulse of the city. Images range from candid snaps to engaging portraits. “Taking pictures was always thrilling and I loved the way it made me feel,” Stein recalls. “It felt at times I was the only one taking pictures—I think that’s why people let me take their photos. It was a rare occurrence and I was bold as f**k back then.”

With rampant crime on the subway and a lack of police presence, Stein’s teenage confidence gave him an adventurous spirit beyond the risks. His images represent a time capsule, allowing us to reflect on what was. See more of Stein’s images on Flickr.

Ken Stein: Flickr
via [Gothamist]

As technology continues to become lighter and faster, innovations have found their way into timeless designs. The bicycle seems like something that’s nearly reached its peak of modernization, but as VELLO demonstrates, it can be pushed further. Founded by Valentin Vodev and Valerie Wolff, they’ve produced the world’s first lightweight bike that folds into thirds and harnesses self-charging electric energy.

Called VELLO BIKE+, the most intriguing feature is its capacity for storing generated power. To do this, you simply ride the bicycle—as it travels, the kinetic energy produced is then converted into electricity and recharges the lithium-ion battery. The BIKE+ can also be plugged into charge like any conventional device.

The boost of electric power is marketed towards urban cyclists. This extra energy will make travel faster and it easier to trek up hill. With a fully charged battery, VELLO says that you’ll have about 20 miles of pedaling assistance.

The bike’s folding mechanism uses a magnetic locking system for easy transport—once compacted, it becomes small enough to fit in a suitcase. “A self-locking magnet allows hands-free folding,” Vodev told Dezeen, “which makes it very different from a typical folding bike with complicated hinges to open.”

VELLO BIKE+ is now available for pre-order through Kickstarter.

VELLO: Website | Kickstarter | Facebook | Instagram
via [Deezeen]

Amsterdam’s Volkshotel commissioned nine designers to creatively customize nine new rooms at the 172 room hotel. The nine architects and designers were allowed to let their imaginations run free in order to create eclectic spaces that encompass a wide range of styles. Cozy hunting lodge, Japanese spa retreat, futuristic space with Max Headroomesque projections—there’s something for everyone.

From a pool of 40 designers, the nine most original designs were selected. Volkshotel deliberately chose to work with a mixture of young talent, more experienced designers, and even the hotel’s toilet attendant. Each was on hand every step of the way to ensure their vision was executed proper.

The hotel, which is located close to the Amstel River in the De Pijp neighborhood, has a history of interesting creative initiatives. Formerly home to the De Volkskrant newspaper, the building’s interior embraces that history with magnified newspaper cut outs. A green entrance canopy that rotates yearly and windows painted by artist Mickey Cohen are just some of the projects that help keep the hotel, which has double rooms from €69, fresh and current.

Above image: You Are Here
Created by Experience by Art (Swaantje Nijkamp, Linde Ex and Ella Gil) and designed by Elwin van Heyningen. This room lights up in several different ways and features an interactive map on the wall that allows you to select a point on it and have footage from that place projected onto the walls.

Bathing Bikou

Designed by Hanna Maring. Transporting you to Japan, the space features a traditional tub in the middle of the room, separated by a sliding pink screen. Minimalist in detail, it offers a calm oasis.

Cabin in the Woods

Designed by Gabor Disberg. Here guests sleep in a cabin-like treehouse, with a hammock available for lounging. Greenery in the bathroom rounds out this nature lover’s haven.

Danny the Deer

Designed by Eva van Halewijn. This is toilet attendant Eva van Halewijn’s first foray into interior design. A whimsical space, the room is named after the deer occupying the space. The brightly colored ceiling and walls enhance the vibrant energy of the room, which is accented with typically Dutch touches.

White Bike Room

Designed by Thijs van Oostveen. More than an ode to the Dutch bicycle, the room is also a nod to the Provo movement—an anarchist subculture from the 1960s that famously proposed a free ‘white bicycle’ sharing scheme. Sleep in an authentic bakfiets (bike cart)—the designer rode it to the hotel—and enjoy sweeping views across the city.

Edmund

Designed by Jasper Eustace and Jos Blum. The space was named after Edmund Hilary, the first person to climb Mt. Everest, hence the mountainous central structure that guests climb to arrive at a bathtub. The walls were patterned after abstract Alpine scenery and dazzle camouflage—a technique used on ships during World War I.

Cinema Boudoir

Designed by Maja Markovic. A romantic space ripped from the silver screen, the room has an intimate feel. The black, red, and white color scheme help set the mood, and your laptop can be connected to project films onto the wall, which can be watched either from the bed or the large soaker tub.

Johnny Jukebox

Designed by Remco Gonggrijp. DJs will feel right at home in this room, which has integrated music throughout the space. There are ceiling-high speakers in the walls and a large speaker above the bed. Visitors are encouraged to create their own music from their laptop or iPod, but can also play tracks from the Johnny Jukebox music collection full of records, CDs, and old cassettes.

Soixante Neuf

Designed by Rosa Lisa Winkel. Winkel set out to create a sensual space, with a steel hanging bed and epoxy floors that reflect shape and light. The sleek, minimal design leaves little to the imagination and is intended for adventurous couples.

Volkshotel: Website | Facebook | Instagram
via [Contemporist]

All images via Mark Groeneveld.

Starting on January 1st, 2017, the Scottish government is giving a generous birthday gift to the parents of all newborns: a Baby Box full of diapers, books, clothing for all seasons, teething toys, and blankets. Once the cardboard box is emptied of its goods, the small container transforms into a safe, padded sleeping cot for baby. Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is putting the next generation in the forefront of her mind and ensuring a good upbringing for each and every one. “We have to get it right for every child,” she proposed at the Scottish National Party this week.

The Baby Box has been practiced in Finland for over 80 years, which has the world’s lowest infant mortality rates. In the past, Finnish babies slept in the box for up to the first eight months of their lives. Mothers find the box’s small size prevents babies from rolling onto their stomachs, which can cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Sturgeon explained at the SNP conference last week that her plan to provide Baby Boxes for all is a major priority. She said, “The baby box is a powerful symbol of our belief that all children should start life on a level playing field. That’s what inclusion means in practice.” She went on to say that giving every child an opportunity to be successful is her “personal defining mission.”

In an update, Sturgeon also added that next month, a competition in partnership with the V&A Museum of Design in Dundee will be launched for the box’s design. You can be sure that on New Year’s Day, Scotland will be able to wish a very safe and stylish “Happy Birthday” to the new babies of 2017.

The Baby Box Co.: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
via [Good News Network]

All images via The Baby Box Co.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 competition recently announced its prestigious winners. Hosted by London’s Natural History Museum, the annual event showcases the beautiful diversity of our world, exploring large and small creatures on the ground, in the sky, and underwater. This year, a judging panel of international experts sifted through nearly 50,000 entries that were submitted by photographers spanning 95 countries.

Photographer Tim Laman took the top prize for his image titled Entwined Lives. It features a critically endangered Bornean orangutan as it ascends high above the Indonesian rain forest. The photo is stunning in its visual depth and conveys an intimate solitude that’s rarely witnessed in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. To capture it, Laman spent three days rope-climbing an almost 100-foot-tall tree to place a series of GoPro cameras that were triggered remotely. One of these devices caught the triumphant composition.

There were 100 winners selected in the 52nd annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. These images will be on display at the Natural History Museum starting October 21, 2016 and will later tour the world. Check out ten of them, with captions from the competition, below.

Above: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016: Entwined Lives by Tim Laman / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“High in the canopy, a young male orang-utan returns to feast on a crop of figs. Tim knew he would be back. After three days of climbing up and down himself, he hid several GoPro cameras in the canopy, triggering them remotely from the forest floor when he saw the orang-utan climbing. He had long visualized this shot, looking down on the orang-utan within its forest home.”

Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016: The Moon and the Crow by Gideon Knight / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Catching sight of a crow in the park, Gideon thought the spindly twigs of the sycamore tree ‘made it feel almost supernatural, like something out of a fairy-tale’. But the bird kept moving, making it difficult to keep it silhouetted against the Moon. Finally, just as the light was failing, Gideon turned an ordinary moment into something magical.”

Winner, Impressions: Star Player by Luis Javier Sandoval / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“As Luis slipped into the water, curious young sea lions came over for a better look. Grabbing a starfish, one of the pups started throwing it to him. ‘I love the way sea lions interact with divers,’ says Luis. Shooting towards the dawn light he created an artistic impression of their playful nature.”

Winner, Details: The Sand Canvas by Rudi Sebastian / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Pristine, white sand is blown into vast crescent-shaped dunes along Brazil’s Atlantic coast. During the rainy season, an impermeable layer below the sand causes thousands of lagoons to form. Algae and cyanobacteria tint the water with countless shades of green and blue, while streams carrying sediment from the distant rainforests run across in rusty veins.”

Winner, Birds: Eviction Attempt by Ganesh H Shankar / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“The parakeets were not impressed. They had returned to their nest to find a Bengal monitor lizard had settled in. The birds immediately set about trying to evict the squatter: biting and hanging off its tail. This went on for two days, giving Ganesh several chances to capture the fast-moving action.”

Winner, Single Image: The Pangolin Pit by Paul Hilton / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Nothing prepared Paul for what he saw, or smelled. Some 4,000 defrosting pangolins hidden in a shipping container behind a façade of frozen fish. This was one of the largest seizures of the animals on record. ‘Wildlife crime is big business,’ says Paul. ‘It will stop only when the demand stops.’”

Winner, Urban: The Alley Cat by Nayan Khanolkar / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“With growing human-leopard conflict grabbing the headlines, Nayan was determined to show things could be different. Positioning his camera trap so a passing cat would not dominate the frame, the wait began. After four months, he finally captured this unique human-leopard co-existence as this big cat weaves its way silently through the alley.”

Winner, Invertebrates: The Dying of the Light by Angel Fitor / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Struck by their uniqueness, ‘like a living island,’ Angel waited three years for a lone jelly on a calm night, when the sunset was at its best. A bubble of trapped air under the umbrella of this one, from being flipped in the wind, meant it couldn’t dive and so wouldn’t survive for long.”

Winner, Plants and Fungi: Wind Composition by Valter Binotto / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Using a long exposure to capture the drifts of pollen and a reflector to highlight the catkins, Valter took many shots of this hazel tree before the wind finally delivered his desired composition. ‘The hardest part was capturing the female flowers motionless while the catkins were moving,’ explains Valter.”

Winner, Underwater: Snapper Party by Tony Wu / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“Tony was surprised there weren’t many photos of the two-spot snapper mass spawning – until he hit the water. The currents were strong and unrelenting and his first attempt failed. But by positioning himself so the action came to him, Tony captured this dynamic arc of spawning fish in the oblique morning light.”

Winner, Black and White: Requiem for an Owl by Mats Andersson / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
“In the first light of dawn, Mats used black-and-white to capture the melancholy moment following the death of this pygmy owl’s partner. The pair had accompanied Mats on his daily walks through the forest during the early spring. He recalls how ‘the owl’s resting posture reflected my sadness for its lost companion’. Soon after he found this owl dead too.”

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Website | Facebook
Natural History Museum: Website | Facebook | Instagram

The soaring French Gothic architecture of Paris’ Sant-Eustace church is impressive in its own right, but it has been taken to new heights thanks to Miguel Chevalier‘s newest installation. As part of the annual Nuit Blanche, an all night arts and culture festival, the celebrated artist, whose work focuses exclusively on computers as an artistic means of expression, used the church’s ceiling vaults as his canvas for an array of mapping projections. The work is titled Voûtes Célestes, or Celestial Vaults, and throughout the course of one evening, more than 10,000 visitors watched as the naves and transepts of the church morphed into changing skies.

This generative and interactive virtual reality artwork functions in real time, as the imaginary sky charts change shape following visitors’ movements—its dynamic choreography dancing along the vaults. Visitors were encouraged to look up toward the heavens in order to enjoy the experience, a symbolic gesture in this religious space. As they did so, they discovered a multitude of colored networks of light that spread out in the form of sinuous webs. The 35 colorful universes took form and then lost their shape, dissolving into each other.

The entire experience was enhanced with music—musical improvisations played by Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvrard and repertoires performed by Les Chanteurs de Saint-Eustache. Chevalier, who is no stranger to installations in Gothic interiors, highlights the impressive architecture, while at the same time creating a mesmerizing, immersive experience. The final effect is a virtual stained glass that merges nature, technology, and architecture.

Miguel Chevalier: Website | Facebook | Instagram

My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Miguel Chevalier.

Iconic American author Mark Twain, best known for his stories about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, has more than just books as a claim to fame. A lesser-known aspect of Twain—whose real name is Samuel Clemens—is that his former residence is haunted.

Between the years 1874 and 1891, Twain lived in a 25-room Gothic-style mansion in Hartford, Connecticut. (It’s here that he penned classics The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.) The author commissioned New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design the house but did the actual building himself. Louis C. Tiffany & Co. decorated the walls and ceilings of the building’s public spaces.

Twain and family initially left the house to go on a speaking tour in Europe. While away, his daughter, Susy, died of meningitis, and he never returned to his mansion—it was too emotionally painful. The home was subsequently sold in 1903 and was converted into a boarding school and library before becoming a museum about the author. It’s then that the paranormal activity started. As far back as the 1960s, staff members reported “presences” looming, as well as things that couldn’t be explained—like the smell of cigar smoke in the billiards room/office and visions of a woman in a white Victorian nightgown—said to be Susy.

For those interested in finding apparitions, the mansion offers the opportunity to do so. Visitors can tour the house during the Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours all during October, the spookiest month of the year.

Mark Twain House: Website
via [Home Crux]

Renowned for its world-class collection and dedication to preservation, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood offers a nostalgic look at Great Britain’s cultural heritage. Recently, the institution loaned a dozen of its prized dollhouses to the National Building Museum in Washington DC for a special show titled Small Stories: At Home in a Dollhouse.

The exquisite exhibition features twelve dollhouses, offering a range of “country mansions, the Georgian town house, suburban villas, newly-built council estates, and high-rise apartments.” The miniature homes are curated chronologically to represent a period of 300 years and highlight the changing tastes and defining styles of each period. Complete with mini figurines, tiny furniture, and even original wallpaper—as in the case of the beautiful Tate Baby House (a delightful dwelling from 1760). Expertly crafted, beautifully designed, and demonstrating a high attention to detail, each residence proves that dollhouses are so much more than mere toys.

Small Stories has made itself at home at the National Building Museum—a site dedicated to “telling the stories of architecture, engineering, and design”—where it will reside until January 22, 2017.

National Building Museum: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram 
via [Arch Daily]

All images via Victoria and Albert Museum, London.