In this video she declares that Spain’s mortgage law is ‘criminal’, as is the expert banker who said this law was ‘stupendous’. She then added: ‘I assure you, that I did not throw a shoe at this gentleman, cause I believe I had some important things to say today here in parliament’.

According to the Financial Times:

Under Spanish mortgage law, which is among the most stringent in Europe, a borrower in default loses their home, and is then liable to repay all of the debt, with the creditor having rights over the debtor’s future income until the debt is settled.

Ada Colau believes that the banking system has destroyed Spanish economy, which is leading to human rights concerns when there’s people commiting suicide as a result of legislation. And why do governments help and finance bankrupt bankers and not the people and companies that can’t pay the costs anymore?

The unemployment in Spain reaches 27% of the population. And there are about 500 ‘desnonaments’ as they call evictions in Catalonian, a day now.

According to BBC Brasil:

Between 1997 and 2007 were built 390 000 homes a year in Spain, and property prices have increased by 200%. Today, homes are left empty.According to preliminary data of the National Statistics Institute (INE) for the Census this year, between 5 million and 6 million houses in the country would be empty, which represents 20% of the residential housing stock.

The Washington Post explains what are the goals of the Plataforma:

“The party system is completely discredited because the parties don’t respond to current reality,” says Colau.

She accuses both the ruling Popular Party and the Socialists of neglecting the plight of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards who are struggling to pay off their mortgages, and whose homes are now often worth less than their debts.”

In an attempt to force parliament’s hand, the Platform collected more than 1.4 million signatures for a legislative initiative that calls for a deep overhaul of mortgage regulations and an end to Spain’s famously draconian approach to home buyers who fall behind on their payments.

The proposal would make it much harder for banks to evict troubled mortgage-holders. Crucially, it would also prevent banks from demanding full payment of the mortgage once a house was repossessed. This would, in effect, allow heavily indebted homebuyers simply to walk away from their property if they could no longer afford their mortgage.

“It cannot be that the most vulnerable people are made to live with the consequences of their actions until their death, while the big companies take no responsibility and are bailed out with public money,” says Colau.

At the very least, she argues, nationalized lenders such as Bankia should have been forced by the government to convert empty flats into social housing and to accept a moratorium on house evictions.

Noting the recent wave of corruption scandals, Colau points out that Spain offers leniency to bankers and politicians, who benefit from a relatively generous statute of limitations in corruption cases, but none to small mortgage-holders: “Some pay and others don’t. The more you steal, the more they forgive you.”

The Platform’s proposal is fiercely opposed by both the government and the Spanish banking sector. Few believe it has any chance of passing through parliament in its current form.

via The Washington Post, KRO Magazine, BBC Brasil

Chevrier creates portraits of women using comic books for collages and painting. Superman, Wonder Woman cover eyes, noses and become skin of mysterious females.

via Ilovefakemagazine

Last year PayPal – ebay’s online payment method – tested QR codes for window mobile shopping, partnering with several offline businesses to offer consumers the possibility to purchase items by scanning a QR code on the store window.

Amsterdam’s popular shopping district, De 9 Straatjes (The Nine Streets) was part of it, watch the video:

The soon to be launched digital touchscreen window is part of the company strategy to become closer to offline consumers using mobile technology.

eBay’s CEO John Donahoe believes that mobile shopping “is clearly changing how consumers shop and pay”. “It’s not just to shop or make payments but the whole flow”, he says.

“We see a world where consumers will be multiscreen and access the Web in multiple places,” he said. “We’re building mobile applications that are seamless across those screens.”

Watch the interview here.

via PSFK and Techcrunch

via PSFK

It is called ”19 characters project” and belongs to the advertising agency TBWA Lisbon which transformed the agency 19 windows in the world’s first “Urban Twitter”.

Messages like “smiling does not pay income tax” or “cold? hug someone” make the 36m long tweets extremely popular. Portugal is going through its most severe crisis, politics, taxes, Europe, troika are the hot topics for Portuguese society. But the giant tweets are not only about that… watch the video bellow:

via P3

To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world’s “Blue Zones”, communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. In his talk, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.

via Fullinsight

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a transparent house? Well, the couple living in House NA probably know it first-hand, as the home, designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects pretty much breaks all the rules of privacy.

In a total of 914 square feet, the house is a series of 21 floor plates at varying heights that give the feeling of living in a tree and satisfy the couple’s desire to feel nomadic in their home.

“I have always had doubts about streets and houses being separated by a single wall. That is why life in this house resembles to living among the clouds. A distinct boundary is nowhere to be found,” Fujimoto said.

I tend to think that people can pretty much live in anything, and as stunning as this project is, it’s also challenging.

That said, this house is still a compelling and smart project where the boundaries between inside and out begin to erode while the hierarchy of floors (first floor, second floor, etc) has almost completely dissolved.

Check out the video to see how they move about the space and what they do at night:

via FullInsight

Kijk voor eerdere trendletters hier in ons Trendletter Archief!

Wil je je ook (gratis!) aanmelden voor onze trendletter, dat kan hier www.secondsight.nl/trendletter/

Veel leesplezier!

Last week Dove launched a video on youtube called Real Beauty Sketches. A former forensic artist drew various women without seeing them, based only on their self-description. Each woman was asked to meet one of the other participants, before hand, who they had to describe to the forensic artist.

Watch Dove’s video and check the results:

Here’s the male version parody:

via Daily Life

Roosegaarde Studio is developing a business suit that will expose dishonest people… to nudity!

Daan Roosegaarde revealed in a recent interview at Design Indaba Conference 2013 in Cape Town, that he is taking the Intimacy project to a whole new level. This project consists in dresses that become transparent when the wearer’s heartbeat increases.

“Technology is our second skin, our second language, in the way we communicate our experience, our information. But why are we looking at these bloody iPhone screens the whole day? Why can’t it be more tactile, more intuitive?”

“Right now we’re also working on a suit for men, especially for the banking world, which becomes transparent when they lie. Let’s see what reality looks like then”, he says.

Roosegarde also speaks about his Smart Highway project, read more here.

Watch the interview bellow.

“We’re working on a suit that becomes transparent when you lie” from Dezeen on Vimeo.

via Design Indaba