Remember our December Special? New subscribers to Volume magazine were in the running to win a unique Worldmoon jewel designed by DUS Architects. Watch the official lottery drawing by our Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman and find out who’s the lucky winner!

International conference and workshop, 14-17 February, 2012, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. Visit socialcitiesoftomorrow.nl for more information.

Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can we use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech?

This international conference brings together key thinkers and doers working in the fields of new media and urbanism. Keynote speakers such as Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko and Dan Hill will speak about the promises and challenges in this newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of urban design. The keynotes will be accompanied by presentations of ‘showcases’ from various disciplines, such as architecture, art, design, and policy.

Social Cities of Tomorrow explores how urban designers, interface developers, app builders, policy makers, housing coorations, artists, scientists and others can use digital technologies to organise citizen engagement, and to contribute to our social cities of tomorrow.

Mapping the Earth is a classic problem. There’s no right way to do this perfectly in a way that depicts the shape and size of the surface in a proper way, argues Jack van Wijk, Full Professor Visualization at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). To explore new ways of unfolding the Earth Van Wijk developed a series of myriahedral projections.

“Why not just take a map of a small part of the earth, which is almost perfect, glue neighboring maps to it, and repeat this until the whole earth is shown? Of course you get interrupts, but does this matter? What does such a map look like?”

Click here for the full series.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has witnessed a big break-through in 2011. With our wonderful Volume #28: Internet of Things, we have done our part of the job to understand the impact of this new technological frontier for urban life. Therefore it is interesting to start this year with a retrospective to the projects that shaped the development of the Internet of Things in 2011. IoT website Postscapes presents the Internet of Things Awards 2011, let’s say the Oscars for geeks. Over 100 projects have been sent in and over 16,000 people have voted for their favorite projects in different categories such as ‘consumer products’, ‘design fiction’, ‘DIY projects’, and ‘environmental implementation’.

The list is absolutely worth scrolling down, as the projects give a good glimpse of what the IoT could mean to our future lives. From earthquake alarm systems to a talking tree. And from wireless winegard monitoring systems to Rymble, an object that brings your social network to the real world, and won the award of best consumer product.

What’s your knowledge about famous architecture? In the Covers/Versiones project by artist Luis Urculo, famous architectural sculptures are rebuilt by daily familiar objects like, books, cups, knives and matchboxes. Although the project is pretty much of an artwork, it works like a guessing game. Can you recognize the building before that name is displayed? It is certainly not a cinch, but therefore more fun if you guess the right one. To warm you up a little here is a present to clarify the idea.

Number 10: WoZoCo by MVRDV in Amsterdam