When it comes to Lebedev's designs, one would do well to reserve judgement until seeing the final result.<p>For example, Lebedev designed bus stops for the city of Perm with tremendous fanfare, see here: <a href="http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/perm/bus-stop/" rel="nofollow">http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/perm/bus-stop/</a> . There were hundreds of press articles about it, which is surely unusual for a bus stop design.<p>It then turned out that the bus stops could not be built with rounded corners with the specified materials (<a href="http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/000220ap/" rel="nofollow">http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/000220ap/</a>), and that lighting couldn't be connected to most of them, and that the benches are too high and narrow (<a href="http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/0001h036/" rel="nofollow">http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/0001h036/</a> - this is called "the Lebedev pose"), and that the flat roofs are inappropriate to the climate and now look like this: <a href="http://denis-galitsky.livejournal.com/33098.html" rel="nofollow">http://denis-galitsky.livejournal.com/33098.html</a> .<p>It doesn't help that Artemy Lebedev is a giant, giant douche nozzle - if you read Russian, you can convince yourself of this by browsing his blog.
Wow, as an Istanbul native, I'm surprised that the city govt is doing it right by handing design to a design shop. I like how it looks, it's odd and quirky, but I think it somehow fits with the city. For the record, Isik + lar means "lights" (the suffix is a pluralizer), and I'm guessing the "us" is the generic latin name suffix?!
It's too bad that traffic signals don't make their state available via some sort of radio link. Then we could have cars that provide the driver with an optimal target speed to get through a series of intersections without stopping.
As a passenger of a Dolmus(Turkish taxi bus), scared by their driving style, I heard a joke a while ago: "In France, traffic lights are mandatory. In Italy they are optional. In Turkey they are decorative". It looks they took it seriously.
I was in Istanbul a few months ago and the traffic was the craziest I've ever seen. It didn't really seem like anyone paid attention to the traffic signals anyway. I don't see how a new design would help fix that.
Check out the process page
<a href="http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/isiklarius/process/" rel="nofollow">http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/isiklarius/process/</a>
I really like the ones by Ji-youn with a triangle for stop, circle for orange and rectangle for green. You can see some serious effort went into this
Since each color is an LED display and can display shapes it'd be cool to use the traffic lights to direct people to detours when a road is closed or over capacity.
I think in short time this light colors would go black with exhaust smoke. And as someone who drives in Istanbul some time to time, I think what Istanbul needs is strict control and huge fines. Traffic is full of aggressive *astarts who does not respect any pedestrian or other drivers.
Quite a beautiful design but I would question the durability of the wood-veneer model. That finish is generally more suited to interior use and would start to look pretty tatty in a couple of years I expect.<p>That said, I want them for my city immediately.
Reading this got me thinking about the sound signal schemes that traffic stop devices - sometimes the lights, sometimes the push button boxes - emit to aid those with visual impairment.<p>The Swedish system is a mechanical ticker placed inside the push button box, like a very loud clock that ticks slowly at one tick about every other second during red/yellow, and then picks up pace to about 7-8 ticks per second during green, cleverly aimed towards the listeners' intuition, telling them to "slow down" and "hurry across". I remember how this even served a good purpose and reminder for me as a kid, when I was too young, too impatient and too reckless to pay attention to the streeth lights - but the loud and clear sound signal and its intuitive meaning never escaped my attention.<p>What's used where you live?
never liked anything from that studio. but then, i don't like Dyson too...<p>but this proves my point about art lebedev. they got an assignment to redo traffic lights, and just made then square. ...oh, and use the newest led tech buzzword! don't forget the latest led tech buzzword.