A friend posted on FB a few photos from Brisbane, Australia, from the late 1980s / early 1990s. I was surprised to see a pose with a local phone box. I don’t know the women but they certainly present a good vision of the fashion I was into at the time. I hope they had a good night out.
Have I posted these before? Anyway…
In Hampsted, London, these beauties have been repurposed into food stalls.
Thanks to Donna for the photos.
Here are some non-fictional places:
A friend sent me this image of ‘Gods Own Junkyard’ in Walthamstow, London. I’ve discovered ancestors who lived there in the late 1700s-mid 1800s. When things open again I’ll go visit.
We just started watching ‘Your Honor‘ and this shot appears in the first 10 minutes or so. I love the way it’s constructed, with balance and form and colour.
Not a new idea but nice to hear about how communities are keeping an icon relevant…
BT is putting 4,000 phone boxes up for adoption. Many have already been turned into libraries, defibrillator stations, even tiny art galleries.
Name: Red telephone boxes.
Age: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s original K2 design dates from 1924, but his smaller K6, from 1936, is the the more widespread.
Appearance: Iconic.
Purpose: Depends.
You mean it depends on the nature of the telephone call you wish to place? Of course not – nobody uses phone boxes to make calls any more.
Why not? Because everybody has a mobile now. Only about 7,000 traditional red phone boxes across the UK even work, but more than half lose money and calls continue to decline by 20% a year.
What other purpose can an obsolete phone box serve? A lot of them get turned into libraries.
Aren’t they a bit small for that? They’re very small libraries – basically community hubs where books can be donated and exchanged.
I suppose it’s better than no library at all. Precisely. When mobile library funding was cut for Westbury-sub-Mendip, Somerset, the parish council bought the local phone box and slung up some shelves.
Bought it from where? From BT. Since 2008, its Adopt a Kiosk scheme has allowed communities to purchase its redundant phone boxes for £1.
Is the scheme popular? Yes. So far 6,600 phone boxes have been adopted, and BT just announced another 4,000 are to be made available.
That’s a lot of tiny libraries. They’re not all full of books. Some of the kiosks were turned into information centres or mini-museums. In Cheltenham, nine disused boxes have been transformed into single-occupancy art galleries.
What a lovely idea. If there’s a downside to cutting vital community services to the point where they can fit inside phone boxes, I can’t see it. Well, some of the library boxes have had to be temporarily shut because of Covid.
I suppose there may be a risk there. And someone has been leaving erotic fiction in the phone box in Hurstbourne Tarrant, Hampshire.
Office phone boxes may be the new trend
The boxes themselves are a little too simplistic in style for me but I love the idea of bringing the traditional functionality inside. Especially good for open plan offices when you need some privacy. In these pandemic days they’d need to be cleaned regularly though.
Cross post from de zeen
Soho office phone booth by Meavo
Dezeen Showroom: booth and pod brand Meavo aimed to combine high-quality construction with an affordable price tag in its Soho office phone booth, which provides privacy in the workplace.
Soho is a sound-dampening booth that offers acoustic and visual privacy for one person at a time.
It is designed to fit with the interior style or colour scheme of any office and can be customised in any colour at no additional cost.
The Soho office phone booth includes a small worktop, LED lighting, and ventilation to freshen the air. It can also be configured with power sockets, USB charging ports, wireless charging and HDMI ports.
To reduce environmental impact, Meavo uses recycled plastic bottles for Soho’s acoustic felt lining, with each phone booth containing over 800 bottles.
For every booth sold, the company also promises to plant 50 trees and provide two solar lamps to families in Zambia.
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Tagged design, urban