Planning Pool

Oversized Shell Toe Adidas shoe sculptures are located at the corporation’s North American headquarters. For Adidas, the art is the foundation of a publicity stunt and multimedia ad campaign. (The left shoe was painted by artists from the West Coast, while a New-York-based collective provided decoration for the right shoe.) For residents and visitors of Portland, the shoes might represent conflicting meanings: love of skate shoes; East Coast-West Coast rivalry; a splash of colour in the urban environment; an irritating corporate intrusion.

Meanwhile, a huge sculpture of a drill bit looms outside a big-box power centre on the side of Vancouver’s Grandview Highway. Shavings embedded in surrounding landscaping are engraved with Canadian Tire advertising keywords like “fixing” and “driving”. The municipality required this development to include a public art component as a condition of site rezoning. Apparently, the developer’s plan promised artwork … Continue Reading

The City Fix just posted a really interesting video about an advertising campaign in Sweden that hoped to get drivers to take the bus. The campaign started with an installation on the side of a busy highway of bus made out of 50 crushed cars. The installation created such a huge buzz on local media that it became viral, spreading to other media channels and eventually the internet.

Probably the most interesting part of the campaign is the website that the advertising company set up. The site (unfortunately there isn’t an English version but check out this site anyways – it has some really interesting pictures and graphs) has a video of the road where the advertising installation is located. A camera counts the number … Continue Reading