
16.07.2012 / Technology
Relics
Small, cramped, hot like a sauna in summer and ice-cold in winter, and yet so useful when you wanted to take refuge and escape from the crowd, maybe to be engaged into a love conversation or to talk about something embarassing in private – over the telephone.
Today, telephone booths are the relics of a time when we were not compelled to eavesdrop the cellphone conversations of our train neighbors. In other words, a dying species – not just in Italy, where they have never been what you would call pictoresque, but even in England, where those charming and oh-so-British red boxes designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott have been dismantled to a large extent.
Luckily, though, someone is objecting to this “slaughter” commited in the name of mobile telephony – after all, those good old telephone booths might still play a role. All it takes is an alternative use or some sort of an updatingOnly a few days ago, the city of New York announced the launch of a program to bring free public Wi-Fi to payphones across the city.
Something quite similar has already happened in Paris with the participation of France Telecom, and even in Turin, where the first prototype of a “smart booth” – offering additional facilities such as wi-fi connection, tourist information and online services for students -has been installed close to the Polytechnic Institute.
A solar panel set up on the roof provides energy both to the booth and to the neighboring charging station for electric bycicles and scooters.
Yet, when it comes to reusing old telephone booths for brand new purposes, there are far more “creative” examples - like the small and lovely “library” built inside an old red telephone box in a North Yorkshire village, or the “community book drop” booths designed by John Locke in New York City.
Links
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-11385062
http://gracefulspoon.com/blog/2011/07/06/dub-002/
http://www.comune.torino.it/cittagora/article_10715.shtml
http://parisisinvisible.blogspot.it/2010/05/rebirth-of-phone-booth.html




