for two weeks they have set up a temporary office provided by Artkitchen and worked with different people, such as sociologists, photographers, architects and designers. after this they re-appropriated the empty square and opened it up for the general public in collaboration with Esterni as a part of Public Design Festival.

Makerlab reflected upon their actions by answering to following questions: why to engage the public, why to do it in the public space, why use local resources and why to do it again. you can also read more detailed dairyabout their stay in Milan.

Makerlab will also have the great opportunity to explore design for Human Rights at the centre of DMY International design festival on 350 square meters. join them on the planning party.

more pictures on flickr.

MUMBAI · Sasha Perera, PLATOON member #3209 and singer of Berlin's super trio Jahcoozi, a.k.a. DJ Mother Perera is doing a short tour in Asia. so far she played in Mumbai, Delhi and in Bangalore.

her very special experience was to play in the Tihar prison (largest in South asia) in Delhi, where she grabbed the mic together with the bboy kids from SlumGods. they played to male prisoners, who are waiting up to five years for their trial. 

the idea is to raise cash to build studios for the prisoners. a band from the prison played too. "spending five years waiting for so-called justice can be made a little easier if you can make tunes. i hear that," Sasha said.

Mother Perera gave also an interesting interview for Indian-Polish blog Imported Go(o)ds. here is a short teaser.

IMPORTED GO(O)DS: if we’re not mistaken, this is at least your second visit to India? last time was in november 2011 with the full Jahcoozi trio, and now you’ve been on a short solo run DJ’ing. how’s India treating you?

SASHA PERERA: i love coming to India! although the truth is that i have a love-hate relationship with India – love the vibes but hate the elitism and the skin and vagina bleaching wash! it was great to play here for the first time in november – i’d never played for a whole club of South Asians who look like me. of course, clubs in India tend to be much more elite than in Europe and Berlin in particular. a drink costs about 3 times the price that it does in Berlin and for us it’s very odd to find ultra posh lobster restaurants in clubs here. we never play in places like that in Europe but we were playing at the Blue Frog in Mumbai and I swear people were eating lobster! i’m patient though and i wanna play here nonetheless. hopefully there is gonna be more music and less lobster here at some stage!

read the full interview.

BERLIN · almost everyone has a blog and almost everyone is taking pictures. why not, it is simple. fair enough. but when we strive to get the best out of our daily dose of information, we appreciate to have profiled gatekeepers, who keep an eye on the quality of the content.

one of them is Brenna Urban #6005, founder of the well respected blog Urban Art Core, an independent street art, urbanism, graffiti and urban exploring magazine. the enthusiastic blog was founded in 2009 and until now Brenna established him as a so-called power blogger with a lot of daily up to date insider information.

But Brenna is also a passionate photographer. since 2006 he closely works with known street artists, such as Buff Diss, Morten Andersen, FinDAC, Rallito X and Danny Doom #5860. as things developed within time, the artists have let him to capture them in the most intimate movements. they gave him access to their studios or took him along, when they at night went on the streets to do some actions.

Brenna's latest photo projects is called "On the shoulders of giants" - two giant paintings by american urban artist James Bullough. they are located on Torstrasse 111 in Berlin Mitte, upcoming contemporary art space restored by art and studio house Torstrasse 111 and Co Verlag. the opening ceremony will take place on friday, 27th of april.

over the time Urban Art Core became one of the voices of Berlin's and also international creative urban/graffiti scene. get your daily dose now.

CHICAGO · the mantra, how technology is making our lives easier and our work more efficient, is going on constantly. this can be true to some degree, but there is still a large part of the world's population, although they have access to this technology, who lack the most basic infrastructure and in the end the technology is not working for them.

imagine a situation in Africa. a woman calls a doctor and orders the medication for her sick child, but she needs to walk few hours every week before she gets there. in remote areas she is also sometime unable to do so.

Arturo Pelayo, PLATOON member #5911 along with an international team have come up with a concept called Matternet. Arturo and the team met at NASA Ames Research Park in California where they came up with the idea together at Singularity University, which is hosted inside the Research Park. along with ARIA and Matternet, Arturo also founded Ocean University, a cruising academy for thinkers, designers and entrepreneurs where the goal is to bring principles of Design aboard the ship and engage in week-long projects.

With ARIA, Arturo sets his sights even higher this year, working towards the development of a new roadless transport system, which will be a revolution in logistics and will provide a more democratic way to gain equal access to isolated regions all around the world. this is the vision of Matternet.

Matternet, as a technology concept, integrates a network of grasshoppers, a small autonomous flying transport vehicles to deliver various loads to a specific destination. with applications such as food and medicine delivery, courier services, mountain search and rescue applications and many others in isolated regions around the world that are now inaccessible.

the cost-cutting remote aircraft could easily recharge at solar power stations. these stations could in turn also serve as cultural centers to share knowledge and resources with the local and international community.

we are very interested to know more about the end results of the project and to see how the idea will materialize. read the article by BBC and the Q&A we did with Arturo below.