Skateistan is Afghanistan’s first dedicated co-educational skateboarding school. The school will engage with the growing numbers of urbanised youth in Afghanistan through skateboarding and provide new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction and education. Students will be selected from a range of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

Student capacity will be developed in skateboarding, skateboarding instruction, project management, life skills and English. The aim of Skateistan is to develop a program that empowers youth to take leadership on issues important to them and build networks that will counter current ethnic barriers.

The ‘European Design Training Incubator’ (EDTI) is a new 24-month (Jan 08 - Dec 09) EU network project within the Leonardo da Vinci programme. EDTI covers the whole range of learning focused on professional practice in design.

By benchmarking design education and training in the context of the lifelong learning, the core idea behind EDTI is to establish a common European platform where design-related organisations can audit existing training provision, identify needs and share and coordinate training development and its implementation.

The extensive redesign of the Cologne Cathedral and Cologne Train Station Plaza directly across from the historically protected "Alter Wartesaal" has resulted in the creation of a new room.

The Banana shaped foundation that is built under the new "Freitreppe" with its cylinder shaped, colossal windows makes this new room an optic spectacle and an unusual location. Hans Jörg Przygoda, cologne architect at "pH-129" designed the interior.

German architects Christian Dieckmann and Robert Wetzel want to reawake the awareness for the significance of the "Colonius", Cologne´s TV tower, which is distinctive for the cityscape of the city.

During the PLAN08, the panel for architecture in Cologne/Germany, taking place from 19 - 26 Sept, they tranformed the TV tower by illumination and caused a lot of attraction.

Whether in the USA, Britain, or Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, or China: everywhere, cities are shrinking.

The dramatic development in eastern Germany since 1989, which has led to more than a million empty apartments and to the abandoning of countless industrial parks and social and cultural facilities, has proven to be no exception, but a general pattern of our civilization.

Shrunken cities contradict the image, familiar since the Industrial Revolution, of the "boomtown", a big city characterized by constant economic and demographic growth. Shrunken cities spur a reconsideration not only of traditional ideas of the European city, but also of the future development of urban worlds.

REDLIGHT FASHION AMSTERDAM

Who could imagine buying the latest couture party dress in the Red light district?
As from January 2008, it is possible. Next-door to the Amsterdam girls of
pleasure, fashion design will be displayed in the windows.

The Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project originates from a collaboration
between the municipality of Amsterdam, NV Stadsgoed and HTNK, consultancy
and recruitment agency of the fashion industry. In order to redevelop the centre,
NV Stadsgoed bought several brothels. For the period of one year these
buildings will be loaned to Dutch fashion design talents and used as shop-
windows, workshops and living areas.

DESIGNSPOTTER.com is going to embark on a great journey in cooperation with the Canadian Tourism Commission CTC and the host destinations Alberta and Ontario to discover the "wild west".

Our Lifestyle-Tour is presented by cleverwomen.de and will show Canada from its young, fresh, wild, modern and stylish side, giving the viewer an individual and intimate view of the design-orientated Canada of today.