Originally appearing in 1926 to the design of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, with changes over the years, there were more than 70, 0000 of the iconic red phone boxes up and down Britain in the 1970’s and also in Malta, Gibraltar and Bermuda, and examples can be found across the world, for example in Portugal and even Cuba.  Today, with the advent of mobile phones, they have shrunk in numbers.  Podworks is adopting 300 of them as private secured individual offices, accessed on a subscription membership, to provide wifi, scanner, electrical and usp connections, colour printer, voip phone to UK numbers and coffee/tea maker.  Tourists appear to be taking the lead in enquiries – as a good way to keep in touch with home.  Available 24 hours, if you can sleep upright, they may have another use after a late night party.  

A win-win, the funding allows British Telecom to maintain these iconic boxes and it gives them a new lease of life in the 21^st century.

Cuba has entered the technological age with 135 wifi hotspots, mostly in open areas in Havana, where the users have to sit on the kerb, the pavement or other makeshift furniture, with no privacy and little shelter from the rays of the hot sun. The designers Luis Ramirez and Michael Aguilar have developed proposals for Parawifi, a system of modular pods, reminiscent of modular furniture, on show at the London Design Biennale at Somerset House, to provide individual spaces powered by photovoltaic cells that could be combined with other uses to create internet villages.  A great idea, but while it provides security and comfort, would it really provide much protection against Cuba’s hot climate?  

At 100% Design this week, the company Framery has been showing its new individual spaces designed for comfort, privacy and silence in offices, a contemporary equivalent of the iconic telephone box, with the option for larger double-size ones which provide a desk and are less potentially claustrophobic. 

Three different responses to the issue of private flexible internet space.  As Framery says on its website “Great thoughts thrive in silence”.

The photograph of the “Muscovite Eiffel Tower” by Pavel Golovkin is one of twelve of the best photographs selected from “Aperture” in New Scientist which has, for five years, published challenging, news-worthy and beautiful photographs of nature, space and technology here on Earth.

The ambition to explore and control space and to develop nuclear technology is reflected in Edgar Martin’s photograph of the dressing room at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre with empty gloves and space suits awaiting their occupants and Danila Tkachenko’s photographs which reflect back to the Cold War, including the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 aircraft designed to take off from water and destroy US submarines, of which only two were ever built in the 1970’s, while Enrico Sacchetti has recorded the two mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope on the top of Mount Graham in Arizona as two eyes looking out into space – two 8.4 metre wide mirrors which collect and combine light as if a single 11.8 metre mirror, making it the largest optical telescope in the world, used to examine dust particles around far-distant stars and planets to understand their atmosphere.

Going up into space and looking back at Earth, the European Space Agency’s Sentinels have taken stunning photographs of different landscapes arising from farming and other activities and of climate change, often unconsciously creating unique artistic images.

In the USA, grids are created by land divisions of modern farming while, in an entirely different environment and climate, agriculture clusters surround the Liwa Oasis in United Arab Emirates with use of drip irrigation and greenhouses and, in Saudi Arabia, a landscape of circles is created by the central-pivot irrigation system around wells, while the sand seas of the Namid Desert, a popular tourist area, create a sculptural landscape around the dry riverbed of the Tsauchab.

In colder environments, there is a different agricultural landscape in the snowy environment of Kazakhstan ploughed in the 1960’s while Antarctic Peninsula has become one of the key research areas on climate change as the ice shelves shrink and break up into icebergs. 

Meanwhile, up in space, ESA astronaut Tim Peake gives a quick wave to NASA astronaut Steve Kelly carrying out electric maintenance and DIWATA 1 – the first Filipino micro-satellite launched from the International Space Station in April 2016, one of its roles being to monitor climate change. 

New Scientist Live is grouped into themes of the Cosmos, Technology, Earth and Brain & Body, each with its own open theatre running an extensive programme of talks and presentations.

The Williams’ Formula 1 car, which races at a speed of “only” 200 mph is also on show, as is Land Rover’s America’s Cup BAR 20ft catamaran, with BT demonstrating their innovative digital communications, while other cars focus on a future without oil and diesel, such as the hydrogen fuel Mirai from Toyota and the electric Models X and S from Tesla, along with Shell’s exploration of alternative fuels. 

Robots are everywhere, of course, with those at Imperial College being integrated with computers to create the artificial intelligence of the future, customer-friendly “social” robots from Emotion Robotics and “Graffititizer”, the brainchild of Goldsmiths’ Daniel Berio, a wall mounted robot that creates computer-generated graffiti images.

There are other universities in addition to Imperial College and Goldsmiths’.  King’s College London is demonstrating the latest in forensic science and Goldsmith’s is bridging science and art with William Latham’s “Organic Art VR”, in addition to several Japanese universities who perhaps reinforce the need for the UK Government to repeat what it has done for medical science in the Francis Crick Institute in other sciences, taking the example of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST ) in Japan, a new international multi-science research university with almost half of the 500 researchers from outside Japan, supported by scholarships, housing and other initiatives.

The “Cosmos” area would not be complete without space travel and exploration including the International Space station and travel on Mars from the European Space Agency while “Brain and Body” looks at diet, growing food in innovative ways, Alzheimer’s disease and medical research at the Francis Crick Institute in St Pancras, London, along with many other research organisations.  Perhaps in future years, Virgin Galactic will also join “Cosmos”?.

In the future, will two-dimensional selfies be a thing of the past?   Backface uses 96 cameras to create a 3D computerised selfie that can be reconstructed by a 3D printer in a variety of sizes.

Art and Science are not only combined at Goldsmiths College.  Photographs show the beauty of the natural, technical and scientific and world, while others look down on Earth from space, visitors can use their hands to recreate stone-age paintings, a giant E-Coli sculpture by Luke Jerram and commissioned by the University of Sheffield hangs over the exhibition, and sound artist Ray Lee has created “Chorus” to explore the invisible forces that are all around us, 

Crucially, to be successful, the development of new ideas and inventions need the infrastructure and support provided by organisations such as Innovation UK.  Sometimes they can also require a change in culture.   While the Bloodhound could travel from London to Aberdeen in 30 minutes, trains in southern England seem unable to run on time or, based on experience last week, just disappear into the ether while passengers have to wait half an hour for the next one. 

Putting that to one side, scientific research and innovation is essential, and hopefully Live New Scientist will grow and flourish in future years. 

Designed by the Austrian firm, Delugan Meissl architects, the interior is described as series of free-flowing spaces that move from one to another and unfold, like sequences in a film, with changes in light, volume and atmosphere.

At the heart of the building is a multi-purpose arena space with a café/restaurant on the waterfront terrace which, from inside, proves expansive views out across the river through full-height glazing, while stepped seating rises up to exhibition galleries and the largest cinema above.  Cinematic-inspired light fittings were designed by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Downstairs is an exhibition area, “Panorama”, on film history including a green screen, mini-cinema booths, historic film equipment and 360 degree space which has a changing sequence of almost 100 different fragments of films from the 40,000 in the museum’s collection, arranged by theme.  Throughout the building there is also other material on the history of film.

The EYE Film Institute Netherlands preserves and presents Dutch and international films, with a collection of over 40,000 film titles, 60,000 posters, 700,000 photographs and 20,000 books going back to the birth of the film industry in the Netherlands in 1895. The new building was opened by Queen Beatrix in April 2012.

Meanwhile, in London, the British Film Institute has started moving forward with its new International Centre for Film, TV and the Moving Image on the Hungerford Car Park Site on London’s South Bank, with funding support so far of up to £87million towards the £130million needed.  The new building is planned to be opened in 2022, a decade after that in Amsterdam and will also see an extension to the landscaping of Jubilee Gardens, thus increasing the amount of public space on the South Bank.  With such a great location, there is an opportunity to achieve a work of world-class architecture.

Opened in 1997, it has been a great success and is now the fifth- most visited museum in the Netherlands; sitting above a road tunnel which goes under the harbour, it seems to rise out of the water. 

The main activity is inside.  There is a frenetic, noisy and vibrant atmosphere with young people taking part on a huge variety of scientific experiments, some apparently quite frivolous, some like the laboratory, some quite serious, all arranged around a central staircase which everyone hangs around to watch the physics demonstration on the ground floor.  There is one area of historic scientific equipment, more of a museum.  If there is a way of encouraging children to have a future career in science, this is the place.

The building is effectively a flexible warehouse in which exhibitions can change, while the exterior and the image continues regardless and will encourage future scientists – something the UK needs to do. 

A few years ago the house was reconstructed to show how it would have looked in Rembrandt’s day. Adjoining (and linked to) the house is a modern building where work of Rembrandt is on display, mainly etchings along with part of his art collection of that gave him inspiration.

A fascinating house both in regards of how Amsterdam citizens lived in the 17^th century, but also as regards Raphael and his life.  At the top floor there is an exhibition of the first edition of RembrandtLAB where contemporary designers Maarten Kolk and Guus Kusters have investigated Rembrandt’s use of colour and reinterpreted it in ceramic form. They see their work as the “poetry of nature, history, colour and landscape”. It is intriguing to see how Rembrandt’s influence continues into the 21^st century.  

“Colour and Vision” at the Natural History Museum charts the 565-million year journey through the eyes of 350 specimens from the Museum’s collections, ranging from fossils of the first organisms with eyes, 565 million years ago to beautiful birds, animals and landscapes of today.   

Colour is artistic, protective, psychological and functional: human emotions are influenced by colour and there are good reasons why traffic lights are red, amber and green.  Going back millennia, animals have not always had eyes enabling them to see colour, though many had photoreceptors which enabled them to discern light and dark.  Life 565 million years ago was bland, monochrome and pretty boring.  As animals developed, so did their eyes.  A “Wall of Eyes” of 112 species of fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals shows the diversity of natural eyes, alongside a screen of changing human eyes from today. 

Colour in peacocks, plants, butterflies, shells and hummingbirds are shimmering, glowing and bright, while animals have stripes, spots and changing colours to disguise and conceal them in the long jungle grasses or trees, enabling them to avoid predators.  Danger in some animals like ladybirds and tarantulas is signalled by increasingly bright colours, rings and spots while different sexes have different colours for example in the diadem butterfly where the male is blue and the female is orange, and where generally the plainer sex is the one who choses their partner. 

So much for animals, what about humans?  Visitors are invited to place coloured markers against characteristics – predictably Danger is red and Masculinity is blue, while the exhibition ends with a multi-screen video showing different viewpoints against stunning photographs, including views from those who cannot visually see colour and have to use sound to understand colour. 

A fascinating exhibition that provides an introduction to a large subject, and which should be seen before visiting other areas, in particularly the Geological Museum with brilliantly-coloured coral, minerals and stones.

Across the city, the modern-classical Neue Nationalgalerie by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is being restored to designs by David Chipperfield Architects (also the architects for the reconstruction of the Neues Museum and for the James-Simon-Galerie).

Opposite Museum Island, the new Humboldt Forum, with a budget of 590 million euros plus additional privately-funded options of 28.5 million euros, is one of the largest projects in the city, being developed in the shell of the former Berlin Palace adjacent to Humboldt University of Berlin which is a partner in the project, along with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Berlin State, to create a new international multi-discipline centre for art, culture, science, and learning, a place for debate and discussion on past, current and future world issues and how to enable different cultures and nations of the world to live and develop together in harmony.

Designed by Italian architect Franco Stella, following an international architectural competition, three of the original baroque facades and the dome are being reconstructed while the riverside facade has a modern classical rhythm. The interiors will be modern, with perhaps a few of the historic rooms recreated if private donors can be found, and a public arcade running through the building, thus providing an interplay between historic and modern and connectivity back out to the city itself.

Immediately adjacent to the building site is the Humboldt Box, a taster for the new project with rooftop café and meeting and exhibition spaces designed by Berlin architects Krüger Schuberth Vandreike. Spread across five floors, the striking geometric structure provides a testing ground for the collaborative interaction between the partners as they develop programmes for the Forum itself, including the National Museums in Berlin whose non-European collections will go on display at the Forum, the Association Berliner Schloss, which has campaigned for the reconstruction of the palace for twenty years, the Berlin Palace – Humboldtforum Foundation, the official commissioning body of the Forum building, and Humboldt University itself, founded more than 200 years ago (just before University College and King’s College in London) and one of the most prestigious universities in Germany, being in the top 50 of the THES world university rankings 2016, with a reputation for pioneering the close relationship between research and teaching that is followed across the world,and with 29 Nobel prizewinners.

The Humboldt Forum will open in 2019, around the same time as the masterplan work on Museum Island and the refurbishment of the Neues Museum will be complete, three projects that will further enhance Berlin’s position as a world centre for culture, research, learning and debate, the city’s equivalent to London “Olympicopolis” at Stratford.

There is, however, a sinister side to social media.   Anyone who has ever tried to delete an account will know the immense hoops they have to go through to do so (which is why so many people who have died continue with an eternal digital life).  While the impression is of transparency, in reality social media companies are mines of data and information on the lives of their users, and apparently there are whole gangs of workers monitoring the media for unacceptable images and words, the former likely to be deleted, the latter perhaps ending up with a visit from the security services.

Eva and Franco Mattes at Carroll/Fletcher in London in “Abuse Standards Violations” explore how social media accounts are censored by the underground army of IT specialists who will censor and delete unacceptable uploads, with no open control over their decisions.  As with any such censorship, sometimes it goes beyond common standards to political deletion and control. 

Downstairs at Carroll/Fletcher, Joshua Citarella in “Planetary-scale Computation” explores other aspects of digital media including the feasibility of underwater data centres (with excellent environmental control), the ventilation systems for which are drawn out on the floor, and where a new world would inhabit the bottom of the oceans, plus the use of coltan, a metallic ore mined primarily in Rwanda, a material which most people will never have heard of but is a key material in the capacitors that are found in almost every electronic device, and is therefore extremely valuable both for good and for evil for those who would wish to use it for financial and political advantage.

Social and digital media will provide a rich source of inspiration for artists now and into the future, as they investigate both positive and the negative aspects.

It is the final week of Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition across Victoria Miro’s two venues at Wharf Road and also in Mayfair.

At over 80 years old, and arguably Japan’s best-known contemporary artist, Yayoi Kusama has continually invented and reinvented her style, with her last major exhibition in London being at Tate Modern in 2012.   She has become something of a showman and the long queues are not here to see her paintings, but rather her mirrored-bronze pumpkin sculptures and three rooms, in which apparent infinity is created in relatively small wooden enclosures that can only house 2 or 4 people at a time, hence the resultant queues.   Light and mirrors are used to create infinite and immersive reflections of pumpkins, chandeliers and rays of light though it is a pity that the experience is, by necessity of popular demand, so short.

Outside in the garden 873 stainless steel spheres from 1966 float serenely on the canal waters, a permanent feature at the gallery, slowly changing their form as the water moves while reflecting the buildings, trees and skies around them.

Upstairs, in the top floor gallery, the room is filled with Kusama’s recent Infinity Net paintings, each exploring with one predominant colour her ongoing pre-occupation with dots, made into cloud-like patterns suggesting the infinity of the sky, while at Mayfair paintings from her ongoing series My Eternal Soul seem to focus on the essence of life, their earthy, naturalistic, almost aboriginal appearance a complete contrast to the light and glitter of the mirror rooms at Wharf Road.