protein journal 9
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The Travel IssueTRANSCRIPT
Protein Journal # 9 The Travel Issue
Free
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Welcome
Addie Chinn
Editor
Max Reyner
Head of Insight
Freddie Janssen
Creative Director
Chloe Rahall
Art Director
Adam Pasulka
US Editor
Jonathan Fagan
Insight Analyst
Sarah Pearson
Insight Researcher
Ian Sen
Editor-at-Large
Joe Iley
Editorial Intern
Viv Vadoliya
Production Intern
Contributors: Stephen Fortune, Emmajo Read
Andreea Vrabie, Kemi Fatoba, Sinnika Heden
Siobhan Spence-Edwards, Alex Tieghi-Walker,
Dominique Lecchi, Helen Ralli, Kat Chan,
Annalisa Merelli, Tom Cantwell
Cover image: Shaun Fennessy
The Travel Issue
Proust once said that ‘discovery is not seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.’ We think this captures the current mood
amongst today’s travelers: that while racking up a list of foreign lands adds depth to our understanding of the world (although go
easy on the carbon footprint), it’s how we ensure that each trip is culturally rich and inspiring that really matters.
The traditional do-this-do-that guide book is no longer enough. Today, people want local, authentic, culturally-engrained, culturally-
curious trips. We know this because we asked our Protein Audience – a slice of today’s 18-35 year old early adopter consumers
– what’s important to them when travelling. Around 66% responded saying that, above all, they want to digest new culture. And a
further 68% state they want this to be as authentic as possible. So we thought it was about time to explore this a little further, and
dedicate a whole issue of the Protein Journal to the topic.
In this issue we speak to the people, start-ups and brands that are helping to address this need for real experiences. One of these,
Wander, is transforming discovery though its digital platform, which lets people find new destinations and places through social
sharing. Others, too – from digital guides to innovative hotels – are making the travel experience all the more local. We explore
why this is happening in our Cultural Escorts Briefing. Plus we profile the brain behind one of the instigators, Plus One Berlin, in a
Profile piece, and investigate the hotel’s unique offering whereby travelers are paired with local insiders for the duration of their stay.
Suddenly hotel concierge looks pretty inept.
Locals aside, in our other Briefing, we explore how, in our time of GPS technology and mobile maps (and knowing exactly where we
are at all times with a simple swipe and click), some innovative thinkers are turning this efficient technology on its head, and bringing
back simple serendipity and the old fashioned ability to ‘stumble upon’ the unknown.
We also speak to nomadic publishers Boat, who do editorial correspondence the right way: by relocating their entire team to the
city that the forthcoming issue is covering. And we let travel site Touris.ms take over our gallery section, with a series of inspiring
photos from their beautifully-documented visual travel guide.
Lastly – and you’ve probably noticed it by now – this issue of the Journal has received a pretty substantial re-design. We’ve changed
up our identity, altered the layout and added a rather nice salmon pink to help our denser editorial stand out. It’s the first part of a
wider Protein rebrand, which will see us refresh our whole outward-facing identity as well as relaunch our website. Keep your eyes
peeled for the new look.
We hope this issue provides a thorough and informative snapshot of what’s new and next in travel – as well as offer some inspiration
for how you’ll explore and discover during your next trip away.
Addie Chinn
Editor
Editorial Publishers
William Rowe
CEO & Founder
Jo Jackson
Managing Director
Kirsty Dare
Commercial Director
Neil Lazaroo
Ad Director
Sales
Richard Robinson (London)
Grace Davies (London)
Gin Trewhella (London)
Bridie Woodward (New York)
Nate Tower (New York)
William Buckley (New York)
Nardjisse Ben Mebarek (Paris)
New York
72 Allen Street,
3rd Floor,
New York,
NY 10002
London
18 Hewett Street, Shoreditch,
London
EC2A 3NN
Paris
35 Rue d'Hauteville,
Paris 75010
Melbourne
285 St Kilda Road,
Melbourne 3182
Berlin
116 Chausseestrasse,
Berlin 10115
Hong Kong
2410 Fortis Tower,
77-79 Gloucester Road,
Wanchai, Hong Kong
Contact
General: [email protected]
Editorial: [email protected]
Sales: [email protected]
Distribution: [email protected]
Jobs: [email protected]
Photo: Valet
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FEEDThe internet is a pretty hefty beast. The Protein
Feed is a daily selection of the very best the web
has to offer. For this issue we've gathered our
favourite travel stories from the past few months.
Read more at: http://prote. in/feed
Singapore’s New Majestic Hotel recently turned their
lobby into a pop-up dedicated to local culture. The
Space Program (opposite), initiated by Foreign Policy
Design Group, consolidates some of the city’s most
compelling art and retail into a destination experience
for hotel guests and visitors.
Of course The Space Program is only meant to be a
primer to the city. The New Majestic envisions The
Space Program popping up in other locations in the
near future, inspiring wanderlust foreigners to book
their next trip to Singapore.
Submitted by Adam Pasulka
The Space Program
Photo: Jovian Lim
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Photo specialists The Impossible Project have announced a
new initiative, The Instant Lab, which would allow analogue
Polaroid photos to be created from smartphones.
Best known for saving the last Polaroid production plant from
closure, The Impossible Project’s latest idea is a simple one:
to create a device which would seamlessly allow smartphone
photos to be printed in a polaroid style format.
The product involves a specially designed iPhone cradle, which,
when used with a specialised lens, would expose the film
and print the digital photo onto it. Unlike Polaroids, however,
where half the fun is seeing how the photo turns out, the
accompanying app would permit editing and cropping to create
the perfect print.
While the project isn’t quite a reality yet (the funding has,
however, just been completed on their Kickstarter page), it's a
great example of a concept that bridges the divide between the
analogue and digital worlds.
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
The Instant Lab
Feed
Dutch design firm Droog have recently opened the Hotel
Droog in Amsterdam. The concept of the hotel is somewhat
a twist on your typical experience. As far as real estate goes,
Droog has given priority to amenities that most hotels consider
secondary, such as the store, gallery, dining room, and garden.
In fact, they’ve dedicated so much space to the above, there’s
only one hotel room in the entire 700 square metre remodeled
17th century building.
"The concept of a hotel has been reversed," says Renny
Ramakers, co-founder and director of Droog, on the
unorthodox allotment. "Whereas a hotel is usually mostly about
sleeping, we have enlarged and emphasized all the aspects
that many hotels also offer and made them central to the hotel
experience."
Submitted by Adam Pasulka
Hotel Droog
Set half an hour from Helsinki, Muru Pops Down in Tytyri
is a subterranean temporary dining experience (or ‘pop-up
restaurant’, as we used to call them) taking place 80 metres
below ground in a functioning mine, hosted by one of Finland’s
leading restaurants.
For two weeks, guests were invited to dine on a menu of dishes
such as a fennel risotto entrée served with escargot flambéd in
Pernod, and roasted veal tenderloin and hanger steak served
with bearnaise. But even more interesting for us is the digestive
subterranean saunter, which dropped dinner guests down to
350m in the KONE elevator test tower.
On the one hand, Muru’s ‘pop down’ is a witty enough inversion
of the usual pop up. But the project also riffs nicely on the quest
for modern restaurateurs and marketeers to draw diners in with
increasingly unique environments..
Submitted by Addie Chinn
Muru Pop Down
Travelling on planes can often be a long, boring and wholly
uninspiring affair. But no longer. Iceland Air aims to change that
with their new concept product called _scape, an inflight book
inspired by Iceland’s nature, sounds and smells.
On boarding the flight, each passenger receives a vacuum-
packed object which opens to reveal an organic shape‚ inspired
by Icelandic rock‚ which functions as a book with many layers to
explore. When opened the package releases the scent of vetiver,
a traditional Icelandic root, while further within an mp3 device is
revealed which transmits tranquil sounds. With a multi-functional
design, the book can be used as headphones, or as a soft head
rest.
Created by Central Saint Martin students Leslie Borg and Anita
Silva, the project uses multi-sensual experiences to guide
passengers on a sensory journey and encourage them to break
away from the confinement of their seat.
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
_scape
Photos: Catherine O'Gorman
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During the early 20th century, when artists, intellectuals and
the jet-set used to travel on steamships and meet in luxurious
hotels all over the world, it was common practise for the staff
to attach beautifully designed labels on to the guests' trunks.
Although their main purpose was advertising, as every label
told an adventurous story, travelers often held onto them for
nostalgic reasons.
Gaston-Louis Vuitton, the grandson of Louis Vuitton, collected
around 3,000 of these vintage hotel labels throughout his life.
Over 1,000 of them can now be found in the Parisian fashion
houses latest release, 'World Tour, Vintage Hotel Labels'. Written
by Fancisca Matteoli, a passionate traveler and author of travel
stories, the book opens the doors to these glamorous, faraway
places most people could only afford to dream of. With 21
stopovers from Paris to Rio and London to Tokyo, the book
follows the routes of steamship travellers, crafting nostalgic
stories about a bygone era.
Limited editions of the English, French and Japanese versions
are available in Louis Vuitton stores worldwide. The boxed set is
complete with a notebook, a map of the world and, of course,
self-adhesive hotel labels. It’s a great example of a luxury brand
engaging with their audience by celebrating their heritage.
Submitted by Kemi Fatoba
World Tour
The entrancing way in which a synesthete experiences
the world is no longer such a mystery to the rest of
us. Hideaki Matsui and Momo Miyazaki, students at
the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, have
developed an instrument to make sense of colours,
both visually and audibly.
The concept behind their cross-sensory system is
that each base colour (red, green, and blue) can be
assigned to a different musical note (A, D, and F). A
webcam then detects the colour and size of a liquid
drop and translates it into sounds. When the primary
colours are mixed to make purple, teal, or brown, the
software generates new notes (C, E, and G).
It’s interesting to see how technological tools can be
designed to reflect the full-sensory mode in which
we perceive the world, as well as to enhance our
awareness.
Submitted by Andrea Vrabie
Audible Colour
Feed
Created by Jonas Breme at the University of Applied Science
in Potsdam, Listen Carefully is an interactive design project that
addresses an issue that Jonas believes is serious: that listening
to music has switched from being an active to a passive
activity. Frustrated by the fact that music has become for
many the backdrop to their lifestyles, Breme designed a pair of
headphones that puts music firmly in the foreground.
His custom ‘sensitive’ headphones force users to focus purely
on what they are listening to by turning the music off if the
user moves. Equipped with a built in acceleormeter, a digital
potentiometer and an Arduino Montor, any movements picked
up by the headphones causes the playback volume to drop,
forcing the user to sit still, relax and enjoy.
While the headphones may be the wrong choice for listening
to dance music or taking to silent discos, the project is
an interesting concept which ties into the trend of Digital
Downtime and helps us question our current forms of
consumption.
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
Listen Carefully
For most travellers, a certain level of immersion in local culture
has become just as paramount as visiting renowned tourist
sites. The Urbanauts project, based in Vienna, hopes to change
our perception of the hotel room as a place removed from
this culture. Created by Austrian architects Christian Knapp,
Jonathan Lutter and Theresia Kohlmayr, Urbanauts offers
accommodation with many of the usual amenities being
instead outsourced to the local community.
The converted loft space provides a bed, minibar, iMac and
two bikes; all other facilities are located throughout the
nearby neighbourhood. Visitors are served breakfast at the
local café and a neighbouring hammam becomes a spa
for guests to relax. The team aims to provide travellers with
hospitality that extends past the building they are staying in.
Read more about this insider-led travel project in our Briefing
on Cultural Escorts (p.36).
Submitted by Dominique Lecchi
Urbanauts
Mulberry have recently launched Brilliant Britain, an online and
print guide aiming to celebrate the charming peculiarities and
time-honoured traditions of the UK.
The luxury brand worked with consultancies Construct
and Applied, and called on the taste and expertise
of people such as Alexandra Shulman and Alain de
Botton to help them pick the most interesting and
undiscovered people and places to grace the land.
The public are also encouraged to submit their own
photographs and recommendations via the Your Brilliant Britain
section, encouraging user engagement and interaction.
Brilliant Britain is a lovely celebration of craft and heritage, and
demonstrates how old and new media can work together.
Submitted by Emmajo Read
Brilliant Britain
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Studio Elmo Vermijs' Buijtenkitchen is a conceptual mobile-
restaurant that explores locality in food, and the relationship
between the city and farmland. The mobile hut, fitted out with
not much more than a sink and a wood burning stove, travels
around to local areas in the Netherlands offering up fare from
the surrounding seasonal produce. Rather than importing
produce from elsewhere, Buijtenkitchen's mobility allows it to
harnesses the local and immediate ingredients of a place to
produce area-specific, seasonal cuisine.
As the mobile kitchen roams around the Dutch landscape,
local, regional and national cooks, will be invited down and
challenged with uncovering new methods of wood-fire
cooking, and sharing their knowledge of the surrounding
produce. With the ability to pop-up anywhere, Buijtenkitchen's
constant access to the local harvest means it will always have
the freshest of ingredients.
Submitted by Jonathan Fagan
Buijkitchen
Feed
Neuroscientist, Greg Gage, sparked a good deal of controversy
earlier this year with his ‘Cockroach Beatbox’ amputating a
cockroach's leg and attaching electrodes to produce a sound
from the firing neurons.
His projects all attempt to bring neuroscience to the masses,
and his latest offering follows a similar suit. With Insane in the
Chromatophores, Gage triggers the longfin inshore squid’s
color-changing membrane using music. Specifically Cypress
Hill’s ‘Insane in the Brain’.
Squid (like many other cephalopods) are able to quickly control
pigmented nerve cells called chromatophores to reflect
light. Gage and his team hooked up the wiring from an iPod
(which uses the same electrical impulses) into the squid’s
nerve, and when the iPod sent bass frequencies the axons in
the nerves had enough charge to fire, causing the muscles
in the chromatophores to contract. The end result is visually
compelling, but obviously raises a few ethical questions.
Submitted by Adam Pasulka
Insane in the Chromatophores
When heading to a foreign country, it can be hard to avoid
from the regular tourist destinations. While many new travel
services such as insider hotels have sprung up to encourage
fresh exploration of cities, it’s still been hard to explore on a
larger scale. A new app, Roadtrippers, aims to change this by
offering driving directions through the USA, based, rather than
the most direct route, on the most interesting.
Users can plug in a ‘start’ and ‘end’ destination, and the site
will generate a number of routes to take. Drivers can alter
the distance they would like to travel and what kind of things
they want to see (everything from accommodation to natural
wonders, restaurants or abandoned buildings). ‘Bucket list’
routes can be saved for a later date, or users can search
through a list of key destinations suggested by local experts.
Read more about this in our Undermining Urban Efficiency
Briefing (p.38).
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
Roadtrippers
Gallivant is a new US travel guide for men, offering a curated list
of the places ‘real men’ should know about when in a new city.
Sponsored by Cadillac and created by the guys behind Uncrate
and Devour, the new site features awesome photography and a
whole host of off-the-beaten-track destinations.
With food, drink, hotel, retail and event recommendations for a
bunch of cities around the world, you’ll be hard pressed not to
find somewhere new you want to go to.
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
Gallivant
Photos: Palph Kamena
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Best of the Network
Functional Posters
Product designer Finn Magee has created a series of posters which smartly function like the object
they portray. Starting with Flat Light, the series now includes Flat Time and Flat Sound, featuring
the world’s thinnest commercial speaker.
Source: HUH / www.huhmagazine.co.uk
Khor 1
A pop-up theatre installation in The Netherlands makes actors out of the audience. The concept
space is designed for guests to perform a play without any guidance, simply by reading a script
incorporated in the installation.
Source: Arch Daily / www.archdaily.com
READERThe Protein Networks bring together some of the world’s most respected
publishers, influential bloggers and cultural innovators to extend engagement and
activation for brand campaigns. Our premium Ad Network spans an ever growing
selection of music, fashion, culture and art & design publishers, including the likes of
Fact Magazine, Trendland, Lookbook.nu and Vimeo. Here are some of our favourite
stories from the Network over the last few months.
Read more at http://prote.in/reader
X3
Armed with the same set of materials and tools, a workshop and six hours, graphic design agency
CR&D invited 3 furniture makers down to London Design Festival to each make a bespoke chair.
Source: Design Milk / www.design-milk.com
Mouth Factory
A series of functional machines, including a chewing drill, teeth lathe and tongue extruder have
been designed to be operated by the mouth, exploring human enhancement and the aesthetic of
production.
Source: Today & Tomorrow / www.todayandtomorrow.net
Song Reader
Musician Beck is making fans work to hear his new album by publishing his latest album as sheet
music. The process enlists the listener in the tone of every track, making the experience more
personalized than traditional formats.
Source: It’s Nice That / www.itsnicethat.com/
Video Game Music
The influence video game music has had on the producers of today is huge, from electro to white
noise to grime. Dummy explores some of the impact these revolutionary sounds have had on
underground musicians.
Source: Dummy Magazine / www.dummymag.com
Russian Pavillion
An interactive QR exhibit at Venice Biennale forced viewers to actively explore their surroundings.
Visitors were encouraged to access the digital information through their mobile devices as they
moved around the space.
Source: Dezeen / www.dezeen.com
An Imagined City
A situation-specific art installation in Stockholm turns an old dilapidated post office into a haunting
immersive experience. A non-descript building in the daytime, the space is transformed into a
seemingly black hole at night.
Source: Superfuture / www.superfuture.com
The latest project by artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez explores digital aesthetics and the latest
consumer technologies in 3D printing by taking everyday objects, scanning them, and printing
them out.
Source: Mocoloco / www.mocoloco.com
Digital NativesCarnivore
Celebrity chef Michael Symon upsets vegetarians everywhere with his brand-new, meat centric
cookbook, sharing his wealth of knowledge and an abundance of recipes for steaks, chops and
lesser-known cuts.
Source: Trendland / www.trendland.com
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SOMETHING & SON
Profile
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Photos: Teddy Fitzhugh and Mitan Mistry
When you think of a luxury sustainable spa destination, Barking — the suburban town in North-East
London — is probably the last place that would spring to mind. This summer, however, it became
home to the Barking Bathhouse, a sustainable spa and bar created by East London design practice
Something & Son. Boasting a beach, sauna and ‘cucumber canopy’, its design and concept has
been heralded from The Dagenham Post through to design press such as Wallpaper and Dezeen.
It’s not unusual for the design studio Something & Son, (made up of Andy Merritt and Paul
Smyth), to subvert expectations. Their previous projects, including Dalston’s Farm:Shop — a
fully functioning aquaponics farm built inside a small café — have certainly broken the mould of
conventional sustainable design. What ties their projects together, they explain, are their values
and ethos. “There are always two aspects that underpin a Something & Son Project,” explains
Andy, “It considers how to be social and environmental. Not necessarily both, but it’s always at
least one of them.”
The Bathhouse project, backed by Dagenham Council, was conceived to create a focal place for
the community — an enjoyable and luxurious retreat to spend the day, whether in the relaxation
areas, ice rooms, saunas or bar. The concept’s origin comes from Barking’s heritage and also its
future. A popular bathhouse once stood as the centre of the community, and the council were
looking for ways to re-engage Londoners to appreciate this quiet pocket of East London.
The spa idea seemed a natural fit. “We tried to find something that had a universal appeal;
something people would travel to,” the pair explains. Despite the luxury concept of the spa, the
design of the space has a laid back and welcoming atmosphere, which, coupled with reduced
prices for local residents, makes it a popular place for all types of people: “We were trying to bring
back the everyday experience of a spa, rather than the expensive elitist thing. The Bathhouse has
been designed to be a more sociable space, to normalise the whole ‘spa’ idea.”
The design is strikingly simple with towering dark wooden walls and a winding maze of corridors
and rooms, inspired by both Barking’s industrial heritage and the beach huts on the nearby Essex
coastline. “We’re always thinking about how we can pair everything down to form a simple
experience,” Paul explains. “We tend to over-spec and over-design things in this country whereas
the most important thing in a sauna experience is a hot fire in a room. And that’s really simple.”
Most importantly, the space is designed to function as far more than a traditional pop-up, instead
leaving a lasting legacy for the community. “We wondered whether it was enough to do an art
project for a short period of time and then let it disappear,” explains Paul. “We think there’s always
an opportunity to leave something behind.”
In this instance, they’ve teamed up with the council to allow five local practitioners to continue
running their own businesses off the back of the Bathhouse, be it in health and beauty or
construction. Moreover, the buildings have been designed so that they too can have an after-life,
with each element of the space constructed on sleepers so that they can be easily transported to
a new location. As they aptly put it: “Good design is sustainable design now, they’re not separate
issues. You can’t design something that’s not going to function long term in society.”
It certainly seems like engaging with local communities is an important part of every project, from
the Farm:Shop to their latest 3D printing project, a community collaboration in association with
Manor House council to develop, ‘the first info-sculpture in the world.’ “We always aim to get the
masses on board,” explains Paul. “We’re not interested in communicating with just designers or
artists.” And as they succinctly conclude, “We think you can make a design that is both fun and
beautiful but also serves a purpose. Our ethos is that we have to try to make the world a bit better
and raise some issues that need to be raised. But we don’t think you have to make it boring or dry
to do that.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Submitted by Sarah Pearson
“We think you can make a design that is both fun and beautiful but also serves a purpose. Our ethos is that we have to try to make the world a bit better and raise some issues that need to be raised. But we don’t think you have to make it boring or dry to do that.”
Profile
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BOAT MAGAZINE
Profile
“This is a passion project, both for us as a studio and as human beings. At its heart, it’s about two people who want to explore the world a bit more.”
This is the kind of unerringly inspirational pronouncement that seems to define so much that
Erin and Davey Spens do. For both them, their Boat Magazine, and its precursory design studio, it
seems there are more important things on heaven and earth than an overflowing bank account.
And in an age so often defined by the battle for profit and fiscal growth, it’s an attitude that is
unsurprisingly compelling.
Nomadism is a term that gets bandied around pretty freely in travel publications. But when Boat
Magazine defines itself as “a nomadic biannual” the phrase is used with somewhat greater weight.
Twice a year, the husband and wife team (and, more recently, their young daughter) up sticks and
move to a new city for a whole month. Every issue, a new city. Every city, an entire month. And
from the house or apartment that they rent for themselves and the writers and photographers
invited to join them, they work to dig beyond the usual tourist fodder and armchair-journalist
stories. “Trying to give these cities which are so interesting and rich and chaotic more of a
platform,” says Davey.
“What we try and do with the magazines," he continues, "is to go to a place that is misunderstood.
When we Google Mapped Sarajevo for our first issue, we got a dot and it went no further than
that. It was a telling observation that the internet is great at shining a spotlight on parts of the
world that are tech-savvy and the rest are pushed further into the background.” Sarajevo, Detroit
and London were the magazine’s first issues. Athens is underway. The list of future subjects is, in
their own words, endless. The Middle East, Japan… the world is their literary bivalve mollusc.
On the one hand, Boat Magazine was evidently borne of the couple’s shared desire for adventure
and a little, good old-fashioned job fulfilment. On the other, more practical, hand, it has also been
beneficial for the magazine’s sister design studio, also called Boat. “As a design studio, we’re often
asking clients to do brave things with their money,” Davey observes. “So we thought the best way
of asking them to do something brave was to go a step further and do something ourselves –
something that might not make any sense to do, but that we’re really proud of.”
The gambit seems to be paying off. The slew of “interesting conversations” they’ve been having as
a result of their publication are already leading to fresh client projects, the new Temper Trap album
artwork among them.
Even the origin of the ‘Boat’ name is in itself interesting. Before the magazine was even a glimmer
in the pair’s editorial eye, it was chosen for the nascent design studio as a nod to their desire to
remain small and nimble; crewed by never more than six or seven; flexible, fluid, and navigable on
the changing tides of the modern economy. The very antithesis of the cumbersome, bureaucratic
organisations upon which they had cut their respective creative teeth – Davey in the world of
advertising, Erin in the world of fashion. “As someone who enjoys making things, spending 80% of
your day in meetings doesn’t get the best out of people,” is how Erin puts it, no doubt to murmurs
of agreement from many frustrated creatives.
When Erin and Davy speak about their magazine and its MO, it’s hard not to be caught by their
trenchant frustration with the often vapid school of modern travel journalism.
“It just seems funny that sometimes cities can be consumed in such lazy ways,” explains Davey. By
‘funny’ he clearly means ‘infuriating'. “There’s become this habit of arriving in a place to get what
you came for and then leaving. Without ever stopping to listen. Without getting to know that city
and letting it tell you its story. Rather than you recycling the same 140 characters.”
Photo: Addie Chinn
20 21
Profile
“There’s become this habit of arriving in a place to get what you came for and then leaving. Without ever stopping to listen. Without getting to know that city and letting it tell you its story.”
“We have a general rule,” adds Erin, “that if you can find it on the first page of Google then you
probably need to dig a bit deeper.”
It’s a technique central to countless forms of cultural fieldwork. This notion that it takes trust and
acceptance and a real investment of time to break beyond the shield that we all naturally raise
with strangers. “Trying to learn something,” as Davey puts it succinctly, “rather than telling people
all the time.”
As an example of this ‘learning not telling,’ when the pair arrived in Sarajevo to begin work on the
magazine’s inaugural issue, a taxi driver met them at the airport. During the long drive to what
would be their home for the next month, he began pointing out all the war sites along the route:
the scars and tortured memories burned into the landscape. Because that’s what people came
to Sarajevo for. That’s what all the tourists wanted. ‘War tourists’ is what Erin calls them. “And
whenever you approach a city that’s known for something awful in its past like that, there’s a kind
of cynicism around your motives for being there. Tourism,” she sighs, “comes with a reputation.”
As well as allowing themselves the time to get to know their temporary hosts – to be known by
them, to have their motives better understood – another point of difference is their endearing
openness and willingness for adventure. Another way of putting that might be their charming
proclivity to navigate by the seat of their proverbial undergarments.
So while the couple were being driven from the airport in Sarajevo – the house booked, the dead
of winter curling around them, no writers or photographers actually confirmed, the first issue of
this as yet undefined publication before them – they had only one name on their contact list.
One name through which they hoped to unlock the door to an entire culture. A musician, as it
happens. But they met him for a drink, and he opened up his little black book to them, and off
they went. It’s a technique that they have come to rely on and relish since then: letting the city tell
its own tale rather than applying their own preconceived editorial agenda.
“With Detroit it was easy in some ways,” Davey says, “because all we had to do was stop and listen.
With London it was harder because we lived here.” This was the period when the 2012 Olympics
were omnipresent. The city was being portrayed globally through endless imagery of pomp and
ceremony and the unrelenting language of nationalistic purpose. “And we thought: that’s not our
London. So we tried to go a little deeper and show some of the seven million faces that London
has, rather than the one that was being presented to the world.” And write it they did. With an
introduction by Nick Hornby to boot.
“There’s a general notion that print is dying,” says Davey. “There’s a new article published every
six weeks that says so. But the depth you get with a magazine like ours is special. I was listening
to Tim Hayward from Fire and Knives talking the other week, and he said that his ‘environmental
policy’ is simply to make a product that doesn’t get thrown away. And there’s something to that…
We want to make something that has a longevity beyond just being a magazine.”
With every issue, their global sales shift around the world, evidently engaging with the locals
whose stories they tell as much as any foreign audience. Something like 80% of the sales for the
Detroit issue came from the U.S. alone, for example. And a core reason for this must surely be the
magazine’s accessibility: that balance between macro and micro, between news stories and long-
form travel articles, between them and us.
But also, it’s hard to believe that its success doesn’t owe something to their contagious optimism,
a literary frontierism that is joyous and endearing. Take Erin and Davey’s approach to growth:
“As a studio you can get stuck in a rut by doing the same thing over and over.” There can’t be a
creative on Earth who doesn’t agree with that. “By picking ourselves up and moving to a different
environment entirely,” Davey continues, “we force ourselves to be in some uncomfortable
situations. Our story as a studio is that the only real way to grow is to overstretch yourself. It’s hard
sometimes to recognise the signs of growth. But when you’ve overstretched your credit card and
you can’t pay for the postage for your magazines, you know you’re probably growing as fast as
you can. And that’s alright.”
And with that, we defy you not to feel that tingle of contagious inspiration; the urge to book
yourself a ticket to such an ‘uncomfortable situation’, ears open and ready to listen.
Submitted by Addie Chinn
22 23
Profile
PLUS ONE BERLIN
Drawing on both personal experience and her years spent with Condé Nast Johansens and
Design Hotels, 30-year-old Clare Freeman pieced together the wonderfully simple and timely
concept of Plus One Berlin.
“I’ve always travelled on my own and lived in different cities,” she says. “But when I was staying in
Buenos Aires, I thought to myself that the city would be so much more amazing if only I had a real
connection to the local scene. Plus One Berlin is merely a way of giving people access to all the
cool stuff they wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise.”
It works like this: visitors to the city become the ‘plus one’ of a culturally-engaged local while
staying in a hotel-apartment in the burgeoning neighbourhood of Kreuzkölln (so-called because of
its location between Kreuzberg and Neukölln). Guests get to pick one of a growing group of locals
prior to their stay and, depending on individual preference, book them for up to an hour to get
a tailored low-down on where it’s all at, or opt for the longer experience and hang out with their
local for 3-5 hours or longer. It’s not unknown for the tryst to evolve into entire days and nights…
So who are these locals? “They’re a total mix of nationalities and professions,” says Clare, “and
are really reflective of the melting-pot nature of Berlin. There’s Maria, a Serbian astro-physicist;
Antonio, a Spanish DJ; Claudia, who owns a vintage shop and knows all the gallery owners; Ingo,
founder of the street art collective, Klub7; my Italian friend, Christina, is an expert on coffee and
Berlin’s cafés.”
The recruitment process is relaxed, to say the least. There are no official criteria. Instead Clare
meets with individuals who are interested in becoming a local partner, and “we just have a chat. As
long as they’ve lived in Berlin for a while, and know lots about the city, it’s fine. But that may need
to change that if the project continues to grow,” she laughs. Apart from the obvious gratification
involved in showing a wide-eyed new-comer the pleasures of the city you call home, locals also
often benefit from making contacts that are willing to reciprocate the hospitality.
Plus One Berlin is very much Clare’s baby. In addition to operating the business single-handedly,
she can often be found rummaging through architectural salvage warehouses for materials for the
hotel-apartment, or sanding down various pieces of wood in a carpenter’s workshop. Plus there
are plans to extend the concept to other cities (Barcelona and London are top of the list), but not
before cementing its foundations in Berlin a little more. “Someone who’s really big in travel in the
UK was interested in getting involved – but they had huge plans to take it everywhere. I felt like it
was trying to run before it had really learned to walk.”
Simple ideas are often the best and those things worth knowing about generally don’t require
profligate promotion: “I used to work in PR,” Clare adds, “so people assume that’s all my doing.
But it’s really all happened very organically. I only pitched it a little. People have just heard about it
through blogs and word of mouth.”
Plus One Berlin isn’t the first idea Clare’s had. “I’ve always been entrepreneurial and had different
business ideas – a gelataria in London; a location-based dating website called Eye Candy; a greasy
spoon in Berlin called Bubble and Squeak; a website selling design-focused gadgets for the elderly.
But Plus One Berlin got really strong feedback from my friends so that’s why I decided to pursue
it… I still think the gadgets for the elderly has potential, though.”
Her fondness for concepts rooted in going back-to-basics extends to an intrigue with farm hotels,
too. “I’m from a farming family so I’m always interested to see where farming culture is going. In
the future, we’re going to increasingly look for places where we can totally disconnect and switch
off from technology. And I think farm hotels have a unique place in that.”
Beyond getting a thumbs-up from friends, Clare instinctively felt that the Plus One model had
particular relevance in Berlin at this point in time. There’s a duality in the way the openness of
Berlin and its inhabitants facilitates the concept’s success whilst at the same time, Plus One
captures Berlin’s zeitgeist. “There are so many creative people, and so many initiatives popping up
because it’s so easy to bring an idea to life here. The idea behind Plus One Berlin is simply to make
travelling more fun and authentic by offering guests an inspiring and stylish place to stay, along
with the opportunity to have one-off experiences and make new friends and contacts.”
Submitted by Emmajo Read
“People are looking for travel that teaches, travel that is driven by experience and authenticity.”
Photos: Grey Hutton
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NEW YORK FOOD & DRINK
Guide
3. Mission Chinese
Why Mission Chinese? Because Danny Bowien’s trice cooked
bacon with rice cakes dish is fucking amazing. We dream of
those rice cakes.
Mission Chinese: 154 Orchard St, NY, 10002
www.missionchinesefood.com/ny
Over the last year, we've been settling in to our new office in New York. So
this issue’s city guide is dedicated to our favourite (mostly new) food and
drink spots in New York. Consider this your passport into the best the city
has to offer. And we'll catch you at the bar.
4. Booker & Dax
Dave Arnold is a mad genius. And anywhere that insists on liquid
nitrogen-cooling its glasses gets our vote. Ditto heating its warm
drinks with a lightsaber.
Booker and Drax: 207 2nd Avenue, NY, 10003
www.momofuku.com/new-york/booker-and-dax
6. Reynards
Anyone familiar with Marlowe and Sons near the Williamsburg
bridge will already know how good chef Sean Rembald is.
Anyone who doesn’t needs to find out right now.
Reynards: 80 Wythe Avenue, NY, 11249
www.reynardsnyc.com
2. Pok Pok Ny
With a list of press recommendations as long as their extensive
menu, this restaurant offers a Thai cuisine with an authenticity
unmatched anywhere else in New York.
Pok Pok Ny: 127 Columbia St, NY, 11231
www.pokpokny.com
5. Vinegar Hill House Wine Bar
Quiet and unassuming, it wouldn’t be hard to miss this little
cobble-stoned eatery could be easily missed. Don’t though,
because missing dishes like its Wild Boar Shank would be tragic.
Vinegar Hill House: 72 Hudson Avenue, NY, 11201
www.vinegarhillhouse.com
1. The Dead Rabbit
The name comes from a 19th Century street-gang fictionalised
in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The design looks suitably nails.
Plus, Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry are cocktail legends.
The Dead Rabbit: 30 Water Street, NY, 10004
www.thedeadrabbittavern.com
9. Roberta’s
If the fact that they have a pizza called ‘The Thunderdome’
doesn’t convince you this place is worth visiting then the
throngs of people queuing outside every night, desperately
trying to get in, certainly should.
Roberta’s: 261 Moore St, NY, 11206
www.robertaspizza.com
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1
4
2
5
8
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7. Do Or Dine
They describe their menu as ‘drunk food’ but with dishes as
enticing as ‘Nippon Nachos’ or ‘Fois Gras Doughnuts’ rest
assured you can still enjoy a meal here if you’re sober as a
straight-edge, Mormon judge.
Do or Dine: 1108 Bedford Avenue, NY, 11216
www.facebook.com/DOorDINE
8. The Shanty
Specialising in gins, the cocktails on offer would be impressive
anywhere, but the fact that the spirits are cooked up in the next
door distillery make this bar really special.
The Shanty: 79 Richardson Street, NY, 11211
www.nydistilling.com
3 6
26 27
TOURISMSIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then each post on Tourisms would be the equivalent of a
full-sized travel guide. Taking a refreshingly simple, yet effective approach to travel blogging, the
Melbourne-based site collects photographs from contributors around the globe, and, along with
simple ‘Bother’ and ‘Don’t Bother’ lists, manages to create a real sense of place without taking the
word count beyond double figures. Lying somewhere between a holiday brochure and a personal
travel diary, each entry is packed with far more information than its minimal presentation may
suggest. From Norwegian mountain hikes to the Fried Carrot Cake of Singaporean street hawkers,
Tourisms is not only able to share unique, personal holidays but also make the knowledge relevant
and applicable to aspiring travellers.
Gallery
Russ Tannen
28 29
Matt Martin
Joe Skilton
Gallery
David Cooper
Luke Byrne
30 31
32 33
Sean Fennessy
Gallery
Russ Tannen David Cooper
David Cooper
34 35
Profile
As technology evolves at a dizzying pace, our online identities continue to become increasingly
complex. Whereas, in the past, our options were limited to, say, a few social-networking sites,
there are now a plethora of services that digitize a specific aspect of ‘who we are.’ From personal
appearance to music preference to visual inspiration, we have the ability to flesh out a digital self.
But as Jeremy Fisher sees it, one aspect of identity is still underrepresented on the internet. And
with his new service, Wander, he’s hoping to put that on the map.
New York native Jeremy Fisher was an analyst at Morgan Stanley before embarking on his career
change. His old job no doubt included a fair amount of daydreaming, some of which may have
inspired Jeremy’s first serious tech endeavour. Launched in 2010, Dinevore is a digital platform
for writing and sharing restaurant recommendations – not dissimilar to Yelp, Trip Advisor, or
Foursquare. A closer look at the peer recommendations within those services led Jeremy to the
idea for Dinevore. Specifically he came to the realization that people were using those sites, in his
words, “as blogging platforms,” or “ways to express themselves.”
Jeremy says this happens for two reasons. The first is that “place acts as a good prompt for what
to write.” Blank postboxes on sites like WordPress and Tumblr can be daunting, whereas reviews
are much more guided. “If you say, ‘Write about a place you’ve been,’ that’s made the infinite
universe of things I can write about much smaller and more manageable.” The other reason users
are surprisingly prolific on review sites is that they’re connected to heaps of preloaded information.
“Structured data gives you an audience based on quantity and doesn’t just rely on quality,” Jeremy
says. “The more places you talk about, the more people are going to see what you write. And that
sort of feedback is really rewarding.” So sometimes abundance trumps substance.
Jeremy Fisher’s latest venture, Wander, received an abundance of attention before any of
its substance was revealed. Websites like Betabeat and Wired covered, “The Most Ridiculous
Marketing Strategy Ever,” which included an Utterly Pointless Leaderboard where visitors to
onwander.com received seemingly useless points for spreading the word about Wander through
social media. When asked if he was worried that Wander wouldn’t live up to the pre-launch buzz,
Jeremy responds: “It’s a good problem to have. If nobody ever hears about your service, it doesn’t
matter how good it is. Nobody’s succeeded just by being good in this space.” Wander debuted
this past summer, though it’s hard to measure the site’s success as visitors are still required to
request an invite.
For those fortunate enough to be invited into the fold, TechCrunch describes Wander as, “a love
child between the information of Yelp and the beauty of Pinterest, but for all places.” Users curate
a Wanderlog, or collection of photos with a snippet of copy overlaid. Ideally these places all hold
some personal significance.
Location is the common engine that drives both Dinevore and Wander, but where Dinevore is
about actually going to places, Wander is much more aspirational. As Jeremy explains it, “I buy
a guidebook for Paris when I’m already going to France. But where’s the stuff that leads up to
that? We don’t think that that part of it has been digitized yet.” He continues, “Wander is about
sitting at your desk or waiting at the doctor’s office and saying, ‘I wish I were somewhere else.’ We
think that people have that feeling all the time, and we want to be the next best thing to actually
travelling.”
And travelling is about more than just escaping your current coordinates. As Jeremy puts it,
“Places are rich signifiers of identity.” And that applies to restaurants as much as it applies to foreign
countries. “When people use Dinevore they’re saying, ‘I’m the person who goes to Per Se for
dinner,’ versus ‘I’m the person who goes to Burger King for dinner.’” Where we’ve been, where we
are, where we’re going, and where we want to go all say something about who we are. And since
we can’t change our location as easily as we can change the clothes we’re wearing or the music
we’re listening to, Wander is our outlet.
Jeremy’s work on Dinevore gave him another important insight that he applied to Wander. “I
was the core demographic for Dinevore. I’ve been to thousands of restaurants and I’m really
into recommendations, but we don’t care about that sort of data. That’s secondary. Really,
recommendations and the social stuff is all about relationships, people, and expression.”
If it sounds like Wander is trying to bring a little substance to ‘social,’ that’s the point. When I asked
about the emerging trends that Wander’s tapping into, Jeremy responded, “We’re building for what
we call the ‘emotional web’, so thinking about nostalgia, aspiration, connection. When was the last
time a website made you cry? Compare that to other media and it suddenly seems pretty deficient
in that regard.” He mentions the Pair app and Timehop service as occupying a similar space.
It’s easy to continue the line that connects Dinevore and Wander to see a whole suite of similar
sites, dedicated to other pillars of culture. And although identity outlets like music, art and fashion
might not hinge as much on location, each do indeed come with a few good prompts to get the
conversation started.
Submittd by Adam Pasulka
WANDER“Where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going, and where we want to go all say something about who we are.”
36 37
Briefing
Photo: Addie Chinn
36
Cultural Escorts
When Lucy Honeychurch from E.M Forster’s A Room With a View first lands in Florence, she clutches her Baedeker tour guide with a shaking fierceness, indicative of just how travel worked back in 1908: by the book; always by the book. The story progresses to unravel a more liberated Lucy as she abandons her hardback friend, submitting herself to local navigation by more seasoned travellers, cultural escorts even, aware of the lay of the land and eager to offer a more updated counsel. Fast forward to today: the enormity of the world has formed a hunger to conquer each one of its destinations, and we’re laden with untold tips and best kept secrets. We crowd-source on Facebook – consulting all six degrees of our connections – but what we want is a live version of all the content we access online, much like Lucy, feverish to experience everything. Enter the Cultural Escort: our expert and knowledgable personal guides to the parts of the city only the locals get to see. When we travel, the power of personal recommendations, no matter the medium, is still a central force as shown by the pillars-of-mass sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor and discovery tool Wanderfly. However each one is rife with a sea of anonymous (and thus unreliable) postings. “People are looking to trusted sources to help make sense of the world around them”, explains Jason Clampet, Head of Content at travel startup Skift.com, a daily news resource that aggregates data, trends and insights from the industry’s large and small players. “For the last few years they’ve been charmed by the benefits of user-generated content on sites like Yelp. But user generated pluses are severely limited and the amount of garbage they generate is astounding”.
Travellers are seeking out experiences they can trust to be authentic, and recommendations from those who really know the destination, locals with shared interests, can offer visitors a taste of a city that they can’t get from traditional resources.
One company who have built around this idea is Sidetour. During a six month around-the-world trip with his wife, Founder and CEO Vipin Goyal, found that encounters with locals consistently formed their most poignant memories. He returned to New York eager to replicate what he had learnt, and defend the notion that our own cities can offer us the same level of curiosity and sense of fulfillment that he found on his trips to three continents, but only a subway ride away. “We’re reinventing the old-world behavior of making real-life connections in the digital age”, says Goyal. And through their online platform Sidetour offers unique, hard-to-reach, and authentic experiences hosted by passionate experts wanting to share their knowledge and love for their city. It could be a craft-beer tour of Brooklyn, a trip around the 5Pointz Aerosol Art Center with a graffiti connoisseur, or dining with an investment banker-turned-monk in an East Village monastery. “People hosting guests for a ‘local experience’ is as old as humanity itself ”, he explains. And by connecting individuals (and cutting out the middle-man) the site is reinventing the process of engagement between a ‘visitor’ and ‘local’.
Boutique hotels are also adopting these concepts, and offering one-of-a-kind insights into life in a city that only locals get to see. Ecological hotel-apartment, Plus One Berlin (see p. 22) offer a buddy-system for each guest where they can partner with a ‘plus one’ during their stay. Once booked, guests then hand-pick one of twenty eight passionate locals, with varying professions and areas of interest, who act as personal concierges. In either a 30 min advice session, or a 3-5 hour tour these ‘cultural escorts’ provide visitors with an authentic and bespoke guide into activities beyond the usual tourist traps.
In a regenerated shop-front, decorated by the city’s finest artists, the Urbanauts project in Vienna is another hotel-apartment taking a local-insider twist. For guests, all the traditional hotel amenities are dispersed within the local neighborhood: breakfast is served in Cafe Goldegg down the road, spa facilities are in the space adjacent, and dinner can be had at the restaurant next door. By interacting with the local infrastructure of the city, visitors are able to integrate with the locals and get an authentic experience of what it would be like to really live in that city, rather than being simply a tourist. That’s what ties these ideas together: the offering of an experience to understand a city or place like only a local could, and what simple research beforehand can’t deliver.
Classic corporate hotel brands are also catching on to this sense of bringing the exterior culture within their walls. Converging local culture with the design layout of the hotel lobby, Le Méridien Hub launched last year, providing a ‘welcome zone’ for guests to immediately engulf themselves in the local culture amidst large scale artwork and sensory points administered by sound, light and even scent. Similarly, The Space Program, at Singapore’s New Majestic Hotel, brought some of the city’s most compelling art and retail into a destination experience for hotel guests and visitors. Another example is Dutch hotel chain, CitizenM who designed a program of events during the London Olympics, including talks by street-style photographers and local food vendors.
Although it’s mostly independents that are leading the way, leaps and bounds have been made by brands regarding the travel consumer. They’ve read the blogs on who’s who, translated the traditions of the travel guide and packaged it well. But Jason Clampet still believes that most are merely reacting to the current climate and not necessarily leading the way. “People now know much more about their destinations before they arrive, but they’re still eager for a local’s advice”, he says. And he believes this leaves a big void for trusted, expert voices to fill, and that there is still an opportunity for smart brands, aware of this consumer desire for the local and authentic, to carve out their niche.
Providing natural dialogues between consumers on the ground and city locals is one unique way for brands to nurture personal experiences. Whether it’s a digital resource, the context of the accommodation, or real people, brands can embed themselves in the idea of cultural escorts, thereby acting as the catalyst that brings consumers directly to the actual experience – and consequently the magic of seeing a place like a local. Breaking down the barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’ now arrives in the form of the cultural escort: our ultimate local friend, who can take us on a nuanced journey through a destination, instill an appreciation of exploration and true authenticity, and offer us an experience we couldn’t get anywhere else.
Submitted by Kat Popiel
“For the last few years, travellers have been charmed by the benefits of user-generated content sites like Yelp. But user-generated pluses are severely limited and the amount of garbage they generate is astounding.” - Jason Clampet, Skift.com
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Despite being a born-and-bred Londoner and an avid cyclist, my sense of direction, even here in my home city, is notoriously dire. That gag about not being able to find your way out of a brown paper bag? If behind every joke there really is a kernel of truth then, where exiting paper bags is concerned, I’m that kernel. Or at least that was the case until 2008, when the iPhone came into my world. Within days my hardwired sense of direction was upgraded. And since then, all those old excuses for getting lost or being late have been rendered null and void (save the odd drop in network or an unforeseen loss of power).
Yet I find myself burdened by a nagging concern: has this upgrade actually been such a positive transformation? Did I not maybe, just maybe, lose something precious – a strange form of innocence perhaps – in the process?
Amidst the furore of last month’s Apple/Google Maps debacle, it became apparent just how reliant the technophilic world has become on mobile mapping. Every iPhone user I met became outraged recently when they found themselves burdened with iOS6’s new (flawed) native mapping system – many of them the kind of folk who, in the pre-iPhone days, could have been counted on to always know which way was North, that this was the right road to take. Such is the power of the demure, all-knowing, ever-present digital map.
Centuries ago, when Medieval cartographers where drawing up maps of the cities that were blossoming around them, they were seeing the world from a perspective that was essentially untenable save for God-on-high himself. Yet at the close of the 1970s, from the vast windows of New York’s World Trade Center, this was precisely where the French philosopher and social scientist Michel de Certeau stood for his seminal The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), holding just that perspective: deific, all seeing, profoundly elevated. As he looked down upon Manhattan, he perceived the totality of the urban sprawl spread out beneath his feet. And that totality spoke to him. The passage of the many ant-like people that scurried around the squiggled streets below became a text for him to translate; the city’s living signature scribbled by the men and women at ground level, blind to the wider pattern and structure seen from above. A self-styled Icarus, de Certeau’s new-found height had made, in his words, “the complexity of the city readable.”It is this synoptic stance, de Certeau argued, which is the viewpoint of urban organization.
It is the perspective of governments and city planners: everything in its place, tidy, connected, colour-coded. And for today’s consumers, it has become the ever-accessible view offered unto us by Google Maps. (And Apple Maps. When it works.) We now see the city around us in terms of lines and grids. We have become, as far as the urban sprawl is concerned, as gods.
But back when de Certeau was looking down on Manhattan, he saw too that there was a beauty in the blindness of street level interaction. He saw that we navigate the planned and structured city every single day in a manner inherently different to that of the all-seeing eye above. Where the city from on high is a thing of organization and permanence and ‘strategy’, for us down below it is a place of individual personalization and ‘tactics’ – we make of the strategized city what we will. We take shortcuts in the face of institutionalized planning. We discover. We revisit. We reshape. We get lost.
Or at least we used to…
With the help of ever-accessible mobile mapping services, our cities have become hyper-organized landscapes built up on a foundation of efficiency. It could be argued that the ubiquity of live mobile mapping with its ‘locate me’ and ‘find destination’ and ‘plan route’ has cured our wonderful street-level blindness; it has nullified so many of those tactical shortcuts and serendipitous discoveries that otherwise allow us to softly subvert the strategies of the urban structure. And when you put it like that, it’s hard not to yearn for a little serendipity.
Projects like Dazed & Confused’s Secret History have sought to address exactly this. By reintroducing the human element into the rigorous landscape of East London, Secret History is one part of the publication’s recent mission to “take stock of how much the area’s creative scene has changed in the last 15 years.”
Spurred into action by the Olympic village that began rising over London’s horizon last year, Secret History is an interactive online map, populated by a selection of “artists, musicians, designers, publishers, movers, shakers, and assorted dreamers” where users plot their personal memories onto the East London map. The aim, according to the site, is to create “a permanent
“To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. … To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.” - Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Undermining Urban Efficiency
Briefing
38
archive that highlights the key moments in the grassroots, underground creative scene(s) that have made the area so exciting.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the memory map that results is inhabited largely by squat parties, gigs, student halls, lost loves and gallery openings. But then that’s part of the wonder of subverting the objective landscape and injecting a little humanity back into the machine: things become unpredictable, meandering, impermanent, and above all personal.
Secret History is a leading example of how real memories can be used to reshape our environment. Once accessibly documented, they become ethereal waymarkers, reminding us of the emotional power of our surroundings. So how do we reawaken this in our everyday travel, rather than just the landscape of past memory (which is what Dazed addresses)? Is it even possible to reinsert such humanity into the living present without recourse to ditching our mobile maps entirely?
A smattering of new mobile services which are taking an alternative look at ‘efficient’ travel might hold one solution. Justin Langlois, artist and Research Director at Broken Labs, is one of the brains behind Drift, a “new app which encourages urban exploration.” Drift guides users through their urban environment using randomly assembled instructions, urging them to engage with objects that would normally remain hidden or unnoticed. For Justin, the project was born of a desire “to explore the possibilities of using smart phones for similar psychogeographic or algorithmic walks; to create a way for users to engage in activ ely being somewhere rather than just passing through it.” Drift is a tool, in other words, that gives the pleasure of ‘being lost’ back to its users, allowing them to reclaim their journey as an experience rather than merely something to be endured.
Another approach to disrupting the efficiency of ‘Google Map Syndrome’ lies in two other iPhone apps: Serendipitor and Roadtrippers. Serendipitor offers a service “that helps you find something by looking for something else,” while Roadtrippers has created what its founder, James Fisher, endearingly dubs a “serendipity engine.” For both, users plot their start and end points, then the respective apps algorithmically generate journeys (the former for pedestrians, the latter for US-based drivers) which include a variety of otherwise overlooked interests ranging from abandoned buildings to natural wonders, via the more usual (useful?) array of restaurants, bars and hotels. For Roadtrippers, the emphasis is on a nationwide escape from the beaten track, while
for Serendipitor it is more about introducing “small slippages and minor displacements within an otherwise optimized and efficient route.”
“I think it’s all too easy to get from one destination to another,” says Drift’s Justin Langlois, “in such a way that you can remove yourself from actively being on that journey. But the more time we spend trying to efficiently get from one place to another in our everyday lives, the more I think we’ll wish for those serendipitous moments when we’re away.”
Perhaps this gentle yearning for serendipity, for accident and chance, is a natural response to the rigours of organisation. And if that’s so, then with the growth on growth of Google Maps and its ubiquitous kith, perhaps it is of ever greater importance that we allow ourselves to remember the benefits of getting a little lost – if only once in a while – rather than always yielding to the siren song of efficiency. With the slight shift afforded by this generation of an urban navigation apps, that’s now somewhat more attainable. If only to a point. But the inherent irony of using technology to interact more with the world around us is hardly a unique one.
“Technology can both help and hinder serendipity,” warns Roadtrippers’ James Fisher. “To help, it can point you in the general direction of what you would find serendipitous, to increase your odds. But there needs to be a moment where you switch off too – an information blackout at the right moment to allow for that serendipity to occur.” There is an obvious limit, in other words, to how much an app can actual enable us to put our iPhone down and look around us. It can point the way. But it’s up to us to stop and smell the proverbial roses. Or at least notice that they’re there in the first place.
Submitted by Addie Chinn
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Forum
The Future of TravelOur New York Forum series opened with a unique look into the future of travel. From modern hotels to the latest iteration of the online community and the ever-intriguing concept of the ‘cultural escort’ (see page 36), we explore exactly how the landscape of travel is changing for our audience – and precisely what that means for us, as travellers and businesses alike.
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Protein: You talked about the services that you didn’t like that inspired you. What about the stuff that did work that inspired your projects?
Jeremy Fisher: There are a couple of trends I think are interesting right now, and one is what we are calling the emotional web. When was the last time you cried when you looked at a website? I don’t think I’ve ever done that. People have not been building emotional experiences for the web, and one of the trends we’re most fascinated by is companies that are doing that. One start up, called Time Hop, takes what is colloquially known as your ‘data exhaust’ – all the content you put on Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram or texts – and they send it to you a year to the day later. So everyday I wake up to an email that tells me what I did year ago, giving me the ability to re-live the road trip that I took from SF to NY to start my first company. So I wake up to this pretty emotional experience where I’m like wow, three years ago today I was in Kansas eating BBQ food, driving to start the company that changed my life. That’s amazing. All you have to do is get one of these emails to realise that potential.
Another one I think is cool is Pair, an app for couples. It sounds stupid: another app to just chat with your partner. But they have well thought out details that make it a magical experience. It’s better than Path. This seems useful, but it’s also powerful. We’re trying to build these same emotional experiences for people through Wander, and try to think about how that works on the web. Those are things that inspire us right now.
Vipin Goyal: When we think about experiences and authenticity, a natural inspiration has been AirBnB. What’s interesting is what they taught us about their business: they talk about experience. The other thing is Wanderfly. When it first came out I was excited about the idea of going somewhere inspiring, by throwing a bunch of words into something, seeing what pops up and buying a ticket there. It never quite achieved that for me as it was about flights and hotels, and less about experiences. The way I travel now is buy a flight from one site, go to Valet to get our hotels, and then there will be a long lag until the day before when we look on wiki-travel, pick up Lonely Planet. I would like Sidetour to be the third leg of that trip. But I would like that to become the first leg of that process: let’s hold off on flights; let’s see what we want to experience and then get the flight.
Audience: Jeremy, do you perceive Wander as a place to begin an action? For example, you dream about Paris through Wander, and that leads you to check it out on Sidetour, which then turns into an action.
JF: Absolutely. Everybody starts halfway through the funnel, thinking ‘I want to go to Hawaii’, without thinking of why you think that in the first place. It’s a natural next step to add the ‘book this experience’ on Sidetour button to a Wanderlog. So you’re following an individual who you love but why stop at reading it? Why can’t you have her be your tour-guide? That’s whats great about APIs. We have an API and Sidetour does too. We don’t need a formal partnership but I could click a button on their site and add the ‘book on Sidetour’ button to Wander. So it could even be that anyone can book and get a discount at the hotel someone is talking about through Valet. That’s something we’re absolutely thinking about.
Audience: As you all become more successful how do you maintain your sense of exclusivity and social community? How do you manage that and make an individual feel special?
Josh Spear: For us it’s easy because you have to apply, like you apply for a credit card. And we’re not a social network so people can’t see each other, so we don’t have scale problems. Also, we’re not trying to reach the masses.
VG: We’re not trying to be exclusive in any way. Every Sidetour experience is designed for a small group of 8-12 people, so the nature of the experience is intimate. We believe we curate the hosts and there are hundreds of thousands of hosts, each of which share what they have with small groups.
JF: For us it’s through a follow button. So you create your own experience, and if you find that you’re following someone you don’t like you unfollow them. If you look at Twitter, or Instagram, its fascinating to be able to set up a query and see ‘what were all the tweets in the LES today’ and when you do that you see a different perspective to your own Twitter feed, making you realise Twitter isn’t the place that you thought it was. That’s the beauty of the follow model, that it seems like a different place and has a different function for everybody. Thats what fascinating. Once you get to the 100 million user range, people are doing everything on these big networks but it doesn’t feel like that to individuals.
Audience: You’re talking about three interesting start-ups to do with destinations and experiences, and have all clearly travelled a lot. What insights or changes would you make around the actual travel experience, around the airlines say?
JF: I’d love to see the Danny Myer of airlines – the restauranteur behind Shake Shack and 11 Madison & Park. What’s fascinating about that is that he’s taken this model that started out at the high end restaurants, and brought the same ethos to a fast food restaurant. The staff are trained in hospitality at Shake Shack even though food costs the same as McDonalds. The closest that I’ve seen to that in travel is Virgin, but I think there is a lot more they could do, or an airline could do, towards that model. The little things make a huge difference – being hospitable, doing the right thing – and there are huge rewards for that.
Protein: Sidetour, since this whole thing is about emotional experiences, how do you find people that are adventure-curious, and maintain that authenticity?
VG: So that’s our secret: to figure out how to identify the most creative, interesting below-the-radar people in NY that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. And that can craft great experiences around their expertise. Almost everybody on Sidetour has an online presence already, so you can find them because of their expertise if you know where to look. Secondly, curated doesn’t mean inauthentic. An experience depends on the people that take part in it; the guests make it as much as the host. Our famous ‘investment banker turned monk’ has held 50 sidetours in the past year, and every one is different. There’s no trickery here - he is just a special person, great at listening, and the people he’s with make it different. I believe it’s secretly one of the best ways to meet like-minded people around a shared interest: people have dated, or got jobs as a consequence.
Audience: Do you all use each others services?
JS: I’m actually a Sidetour investor!
Audience: What similarities do you think you all have as companies?
JS: One of the unspoken themes of the three of us – even though they seem a bit exclusive – is that they’re all about the democratisation of travel experiences. If you worked at Goldman Sachs you could get these hotel deals, but most people don’t work there. Those who need deals the least get the discounts. But with Valet, sure you have to pay, but you make back the membership on the first hotel. What Sidetour offers to everyone is what billionaires could do before when they hired their assistant to find that New York monk. These businesses work by opening and democratising access.
Also, If you haven’t got the luxury of being able to travel, you shouldn’t be able to not get inspired by it. So if you’re a 14 year old kid in the basement of your parent’s house, you can get inspired and experience the culture of the world. I think that ‘pinning’ something is almost as good as owning it. If we can expose people to interesting travel experiences at their desk, hopefully they get some of those benefits we all get from travelling.
Speakers
Josh Spear, ValetAs well as being founding partner at Undercurrent, Josh is CEO and founder of new
travel platform, Valet: a membership service which offers curated insider city guides
and discount hotel prices to global creatives
Vipin Goyal, SidetourHaving previously worked at MTV and Joost, Vipin Goyal is CEO and co-founder of
Sidetour, a new community marketplace where people can discover, book and host
unique experiences and activities
Jeremy Fisher, WanderJeremy Fisher is CEO and co-founder of Wander, a new website for people to
share the places they’ve been, the places they want to go, and the places they are
connected to. For more see our Wander Profile (p.34)
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ILUZJON
Gallery
Iluzjon is an exhibition that took place at our 18 Hewett Street gallery in London in association
with Eye Sea Posters that showcased the very best of Polish film and theatre posters from the
1960s and 1970s. Commissioned by state controlled film and theatre institutions during the
communist era in Poland, these posters were created as alternatives to the foreign originals
that were deemed inappropriate. Often they had little visual reference to the film itself when
creating the alternatives, resulting in off the wall and seemingly unrelated imagery. It provided
an opportunity for some of the most revered national artists of the time to showcase their skills
in conceptual design.
Polish poster design has since gained international acclaim for its distinctive graphic style –
bold, colourful, surreal and often with a satirical sense of humour or subversive theme – making
them highly collectable and increasingly sought after. At the exhibition, rare examples were
displayed by renowned designers including: Wiktor Gorka, Waldemar Swierzy, Franciszek
Starowieyski, Andrzej Krajewski, Jerzy Flisak, Maria Ihnatowicz, Jan Mlodozeniec and more.
Waldemar Swierzy, 1971
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Gallery
Krzysztof Nasfeter, 1975 Andrzej Krajewski, 1973
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Gallery
Franciszek Starowieyski ,1969 Jan Mlodozeniec 1969
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THE SHELFStore
Our coffee shop Protein by DunneFrankowski – which has been fueling staff, local creatives and
the occasional city boy for almost a year now – has just received a new feature this November:
The Shelf. It’s a tightly curated selection of the best arts and food publications money can buy,
many of which are UK exclusives.
Have a browse the next time you drop in, or – if you’re not local to us – head over to the online
store: http://prote.in/theshelf
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. This Page: Gather Journal A new bi-annual recipe-driven food publication devoted to not just cooking and eating, but to what those acts inspire: the bringing together of people. By Michele Outland and Fiorella Valdesolo, Gather
began, 'due to a shared love of food and cooking, and a desire to create a magazine that you could return to again and again. www.gatherjournal.com/ (12.50)
Opposite Page: 1. Lucky Peach (Issue 1) A journal of food writing, published on a quarterly basis by McSweeney’s. It is the creation of David Chang, the James Beard Award-winning chef behind the Momofuku restaurants,
Momofuku cookbook co-writer Peter Meehan, and Zero Point Zero Productions – producers of the Travel Channel’s Emmy Award-winning Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. www.mcsweeneys.net/luckypeach (£7.99) 2.
ACQTASTE (Issue 1) Toronto-based ACQTASTE (Acquired Taste Magazine) is dedicated to showcasing food culture from around the world. ACQTASTE takes you through that intersection where food culture meets design, art,
architecture, fashion, film and music with behind-the-scenes films, dynamic photo essays and interviews with the food world's greatest. www.acqtaste.com/ (£12) 3. Wilder Quarterly (Vol.1 Issue 3) Run from Brooklyn NY, in Wilder
Quarterly magazine you'll find green thumbs, rooftop gardeners, foodies and chefs, seed savers, architects, hobby farmers, horticulturalists, innovators, amateurs, and experts. Wilder is ‘life through the lens of the growing world’,
published seasonally for this generation of growers and the next. www.wilderquarterly.com/ (£12) 4. The Gourmand (Issue 1) The Gourmand is a new food and culture journal that binds inspirational words, images and ideas
with the humble and universal subject of food. Based in London, The Gourmand is inspired not only by a true passion for food and dining but by the exciting influx of new restaurants, bars, cafe’s, stalls and ingredients that are
increasingly available to us. www.thegourmand.co.uk/ (£9) £7.99 5. Swallow Magazine, The Mexico Issue (coming soon)
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Survey
London
Tell us about yourself.We write and publish guides to interesting places, influenced by the witty and opinionated travel
guides of the 1950s and 1960s.
Why did you decide to start making the maps?Our first publication, which was in April 2010, was a guide to places to meet and work. We had no
office, so it was a response to that. We sold a few. Then we thought we’d do another. Then we
just carried on going.
How do they differ from other travel guides?They contain far fewer things to see and do, but what we do include is all great. Before Herb
Lester, when we travelled we’d carry around these doorstop guides only looking at a handful
of entries. Our guides are the opposite of that. We hope also that they’re amusingly written and
beautifully designed.
Why did you decide to make physically printed maps?Because it’s the medium we prefer. There are many digital travel guides, some quite good, but
none excite us like an old copy of The New London Spy.
Are your guides aimed at travellers or locals looking to gain a richer knowledge of their own city?Both. The London guides in particular work for locals – we have a couple of historical guides
which might make more sense if you know the city already.
Do you think people are now looking to sidestep traditional tourism?There is certainly a group of people who want to have an experience different to that which they
have at home. We see little point in going to a branch of H&M while you’re on holiday.
How important is the experience of travel over the actual destination?Unless you’re on a wonderful train or driving a particularly glorious route, travel for us is a means
to an end.
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?People seem to be travelling more. I’m not sure they travel differently, but the experience of
arriving in a foreign city is very different than it was. The rise of global brands mean that you see
the same familiar places almost everywhere you go. Our guides are for people who want to seek
out what’s particular to a city, to have a meal, drink or experience they can’t have at home.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?Fortunately we are not in the business of forecasting. It’s hard enough planning the next few
months for Herb Lester!
www.herblester.com
SURVEYAccording to our own research, almost 70% of our audience are searching for
authenticity above all else when they travel. As a generation, we are interacting with
the world around us like never before. And this means the world of travel media is
evolving too. Gone are the traditional guide books and generic listing sites. Instead
people are seeking local, authentic, culturally relevant publications, sites and apps
to inspire and inform them. We've selected our favourite new publishers and asked
them what they make of the future of travel.
Ben Olins and Jane Smillie / Herb Lester
Tell us about yourself.I’m an Editor, Publisher and Controlled Adventurer from London currently based in Melbourne.
I launched Tourisms, a Compendium of Photographic Travel Guides created by photographers
from around the world as a counterpoint to the Lonely Planet-style, broad guide. Tourisms hopes
to emulate the personalised experience you get from sharing travel stories with a friend.
Why did you decide to start it?Being a recent emigrant myself, and collaborating with the immense and far- reaching community
of photographers and creatives at the Hard Workers Club, starting Tourisms was just a natural
development.
What types of people submit photos?I think that the majority of our contributors want to share an insight to their homelands and
places they’ve connected with through their medium, sharing a personalized guide to a specific
destination.
How would you like the site to be used?I’d like Touris ms to be all things to all people. Each guide is so different to the next, often one
inspires an interest in the other. And I think that’s the best outcome.
Why did you choose a visual guide format?I definitely prefer to look at content rather than reading it. As much visual aid as possible is a great
entry point in considering something foreign. Being a digital platform, we’re blessed with the
majesty of ‘linking’ everything, which is as nifty a cheat as exists for saying everything whilst not
saying very much at all as exists.
How important is the experience of travel over the actual destination?I’ve travelled alot, backpacking and on longer journeys, and for me its all about the destination. All I
want is to get to a place and be in it. However I realise that to be fully affected by a destination you
have to acknowledge the distance from home you’ve travelled.
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?Not that much. Although the internet has changed the way people prepare for a trip and decide
where to go, Teletext, Condé Nast or National Geographic were doing that before anyway.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?I hope that more places in the world become more accessible, and that more people get out
and see these places. I’m extremely grateful to even my small amount of travel experience when
coming across so many people who have never left their country.
www.touris.ms
Joe Miranda / Tourisms Melbourne
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Tell us about yourself.As well as being an architect at AAVA in London, I work with old friends Dave and Nick, on Pannier
– a new resource for the travelling cyclist. We present a visual and location specific collection of
cycle-friendly places to stay along major cycle routes and cycling events, connecting the growing
number of cyclists with local businesses.
Why did you decide to start the site?Having understood what a fantastic way cycling was of seeing and experiencing places (and
given that there wasn’t a website that made the planning of cycle travel straightforward), the idea
behind Pannier was to make cycle touring more accessible to cyclists of all levels. For us, ‘Pannier’
represents cycle travel and staying away with your bike. We believe it’s not about the bike you ride,
it is about the journeys you make on one.
Why do you think cycling has had such a resurgence in recent years?Without being clichéd, the three S’s: Simplicity of life on two wheels, Sustainability, and Success in
recent sporting events. In consumerist yet austere times, a bike has become another ‘must have’
for people, with many resorting to two wheels as a new way of saving on transport costs.
Do you think cycle travel has become more luxury in recent years?The number of bespoke bike manufacturers and high-end apparel brands are making cycle travel
more indulgent. However, technology is quickly alleviating the ‘what if…’ factor that might put
people off – resources like ours are making the concept of cycle travel more accessible to cyclists.
Ultimately luxury has to be determined by each individual.
Do you think hoteliers are increasingly catering towards cyclists?Absolutely. From our research and feedback, many of our hosts have witnessed the increase in
cycle tourism and have subsequently aimed to cater for cyclists. Pannier aims to cajole this trend,
especially given the number of innovative cycle storage solutions. When we set up, we were really
keen on establishing a network for both cyclists and hosts which we would then broadcast via the
website.
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?Yes. We are able to travel to more remote places, more frequently, for shorter periods of time.
However, importantly, we are combining travel with challenges or goals. And with price such an
issue, we are now much more open to other forms of transportation. In an age of austerity, thrift-
based travel seems quite trendy.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?The ability to research and share travel exploits with others will improve our vision and scope for
matching experiences. Oh, and everyone will be arriving by bike.
www.pannier.cc
Stefan Amato/ Pannier
Survey
London
Tell us about yourself.I am a graphic designer from Singapore. I recently started Terroir, a bespoke bi-annual magazine
that seeks to collaborate with and showcase Singaporean perspectives on travel.
What makes it stand out from other travel magazines?The magazine is more like a snapshot of personal travelogues, curated in such a manner that the
content complements one another. There are no must-visits, lists or tips.
Why did you decide to start the magazine?I have been dreaming of starting a magazine for the longest time, but just didn’t know what sort of
magazine it ought to be. Everything else on the market seems to have been done before. I started
travelling again at the end of 2010 after an 8-year absence, and an idea for this magazine just
popped into my head. Rachel (a collaborator for Issue No. 1) initiated a collaboration and the rest
is history.
What is the importance of self-publishing, printing and hand stitching each issue?Self-publishing the magazine is a result of circumstance. I had a look around the various digital
publishing options online and even bought sample copies to get a feel of them. Ultimately, they fell
short of expectations. The feel and smell of the paper, choice of typefaces and colour reproduction
all contribute to making the magazine feel ‘complete’. I was adamant that the magazine could lie
flat on a table when opened and so other types of binding were also ruled out.
What is your vision for the project?The ultimate goal would be to release ten issues of the magazine. By that time, I hope the local
creative scene would be more receptive to initiatives generated from the ground-up and not from
the top-down.
How important is the experience of travel over the actual destination?I do believe that one must like the destination before one can start experiencing the trip. That said,
the mode of travel is also very important – packaged tours are the bane of truly experiencing a
place. Get off that bus and start walking on the streets!
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?Definitely. The emancipation of air travel, coupled with the rise of Asian economies has made the
nature of travelling very different from the way it was just 15 years ago.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?Not very much. Not unless mankind is on the cusp of discovering new modes of transportation.
That would be exciting.
www.terroir-mag.com
Singapore
Benjamin Koh / Terroir
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Tell us about yourself.We are a design and publishing family business based in Berlin.
What is Endless Magazine?Endless is a new high end and sophisticated modern travelling magazine with a very personal
approach. The came during a family road trip some years ago. Blogging then was not as big as
it is today - at least not in our lives – but we made a personal mailing list with frequent illustrated
updates on our trip. The mailing list included some editor friends, and we got great feedback, with
some people even asking for a book of our diary. Some years later we managed to turn this idea
into a new form of travel magazine.
Why did you choose to focus on travel?We realised that there were very few independent travel magazines on the market. Travelling is
such an important factor for everyone – not only for the creative industry. We all have to be quite
mobile in our business life, and travelling is very important for inspiration, research and generally
keeping your vision broad. It’s the most efficient and holistic way to get inspired.
How important is the experience of travel over the actual destination?Travel is experience. Any travel. As long as it involves a certain amount of openness towards
change. Change is good. There are amazing places on this planet that should not be missed. And
even if you make it around the world and need to start over again, everything would be different.
That´s why the world is endless.
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?The possibilities for travel have changed. With the internet you have the feeling you don´t need
to physically travel to see and do. I think the process of travelling has also changed, with far less
reliance on travel agents. People now rely on sources they trust to give them curated information
about where to go.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?Catalyzed by the internet I believe it will become a more personal experience and will become
even more social than it is today. You just need to look to the success of sharing platforms such as
Airbnb, which provides a new dimension of social interaction in regards to hospitality to see how
this will evolve.
www.endless-magazine.com
Berlin
Marcus Gaab / Endless Magazine
Survey
Tell us about yourself.I’m 24 and a London-born writer. I recently started Anywhere Anywhere, a site focused on travel,
food, cities and people – people who shape the places in which they live, and the places that,
in turn, shape them. It’s partly a journal documenting both my travel experiences and those of
others, and partly an ever-expanding directory of places to eat, sleep, drink and shop, all around
the world.
Why did you decide to start the site? And why now?I’m constantly giving and seeking recommendations for great places to go in London. But I
couldn’t find anywhere that offered an edit of destinations that was to my taste. Most guides are
too expensive, or just full of generic, regurgitated advice.
How are travel guides changing?I think that, in an age of information overload, a personal voice is of more value
than ever. People are interested in personal style, personal routines, meals, ways of working. They
want to see inside other people’s homes and wardrobes: It’s a way of feeling a human connection
through a dehumanising medium. It makes sense that this need for a connection might extend to
lifestyle and particularly to travel.
How important is the experience of travel over the actual destination?I’m a big believer in travel for travel’s sake. Even if it’s just jumping on a train and going to the
nearest town, the experience of leaving your day-to-day surroundings might not necessarily be
enjoyable, but it will nearly always be challenging, enriching and inspiring. I think travelling is an
invaluable way to sharpen your thoughts and gain fresh perspective on your life at home.
Do you think people are travelling differently nowadays?People may have had to cut back on holidays as a luxury expense, but I think that has led to many
looking to their immediate surroundings for new experiences. The internet has both broadened
our understanding of the wider world and homogenised our cultural experience of it. As such,
travellers might have a better idea of how girls dress in Stockholm, or how people eat in Los
Angeles, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to go to these places and have the ‘real
life’ experience for themselves.
How will the travel experience evolve in the next five years?In an attempt to escape the numbing effects of technology and social media, people will seek
more extreme destinations in the hope of discovering something totally new and unseen.
‘Authentic’ travel experiences will become increasingly popular, and untouched, unspoilt
destinations will also be of greater appeal.
www.anywhere-anywhere.com
Los Angeles
Phoebe Lovatt / Anywhere Anywhere
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Data
A HANDSOME ATLASAs a result of its Civil War, the USA spent much of the latter half of the 19th century in a state of
social reconciliation. This led to a series of wildly comprehensive, detailed censuses conducted
across the country. The information lay largely undiscovered in the US library of congress until
Jonathon Soma of the Brooklyn Brainery gathered the data into an accessible and fascinating
collection of pie charts, bar graphs and treemaps, presenting statistics on things as diverse as the
1000% rise in the Chinese population of California over 30 years to the literally-off-the-chart spike
in cotton prices in the 1860’s. For more awesome data go to http://prote.in/data
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