

Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights - lucianof
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/isiklarius/

======
yaakov34
When it comes to Lebedev's designs, one would do well to reserve judgement
until seeing the final result.

For example, Lebedev designed bus stops for the city of Perm with tremendous
fanfare, see here: <http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/perm/bus-stop/> .
There were hundreds of press articles about it, which is surely unusual for a
bus stop design.

It then turned out that the bus stops could not be built with rounded corners
with the specified materials
(<http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/000220ap/>), and that
lighting couldn't be connected to most of them, and that the benches are too
high and narrow (<http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/0001h036/> \-
this is called "the Lebedev pose"), and that the flat roofs are inappropriate
to the climate and now look like this: <http://denis-
galitsky.livejournal.com/33098.html> .

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.

~~~
jsrn
"[...] if you read Russian, you can convince yourself of this by browsing his
blog."

there is an English version of it here:
<http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/>

which is a translation of <http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/sections/>

(I don't know if this is the blog you were referring to)

~~~
yaakov34
No, that's not it at all - I am referring to his main blog at
tema.livejournal.com. It's a profanity-laced display that really needs to be
appreciated in the original to be believed. E.g. his response to the bus stop
fiasco was along the lines of - I am translating liberally here, and you may
want to cover the eyes of any small children reading along with you - that as
a designer, his ass doesn't get fucked with this, and it's the builder who
takes it up the ass for anything not built to his sketches.

That's a pretty original concept of industrial design - all product designers
I know follow the product from sketch to engineering drawings to casting molds
to the prototype to the production line, to make sure every little squiggle is
just right. Now, if he wants to be a sketch artist, as opposed to a product
designer, that's fine too, but that's not what he gets hired to do.

You may remember the disaster of the "Optimus Maximus" keyboard - this is the
$1500 keyboard with LCD displays on all the keys. It ended up being years late
and looked nothing like what was promised - he couldn't handle the engineering
of placing the LCDs on the keys, so the keys became transparent with the LCDs
under them. Now, that was a privately-developed product, but he's done this to
paying customers any number of times as well, leaving them with a misdesigned
product and late to the market. He then explains in his charming manner (see
above) that this is all their fault.

He is a fantastic walking self-promotion machine, which is why the studio
seems unsinkable despite being kind of lousy in terms of actual product design
firepower.

------
makmanalp
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?!

~~~
simanyay
Yes, Artlebedev studio ends most of its products with generic latin name
sufix.

------
jrockway
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.

~~~
dmazin
Some cities in America have traffic-synchronized streets where a driver going
a certain (indicated all along the street) speed should hit the greens every
time. The problem one one street I've seen it used for is, the sign is very
vague about when this system is active "during peak traffic hours" so I do not
know when to go the suggested speed or not.

~~~
ojilles
Pretty common elsewhere in the world too. In the Netherlands they call it the
"Green Wave", and marketed as such. I suspect b/c speeding in those area's
really doesn't buy you anything. So when traffic is light, they double as a
"speed bump" :-)

~~~
eru
Common in Germany as well.

------
tchvil
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.

~~~
wizard_2
I always got a kick out of these buses. From
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F>

    
    
      These share taxis depart from the terminal only when a sufficient amount of passengers have
      boarded, and the name is derived from Turkish for "apparently stuffed" for this reason.

------
docmarionum1
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.

~~~
gst
I just wanted to post exactly the same. I haven't yet seen any other city with
a traffic as bad as in Istanbul: Drivers typically don't care about traffic
lights and drive without braking and just honking over pedestrian crossings,
even though they have a red light and there are pedestrians on the street. In
case of traffic jams drivers just continue driving on the sidewalk. I saw
deadlock situations on crossings multiple times a day, because drivers just
continued to drive into crossings, even though they had a red light and/or the
crossing was blocked. Police does not seem to care at all.

I don't see how new traffic lights would change this.

~~~
mindcreek
I think you are talking about somewhere in India or Thailand or something, I
drive in Istanbul for the last umm, 12 years and never missed a red light
intentionally and saw maybe ten or fifteen idiots that does not care about the
red light.

Btw did you visit Istanbul in the end of 80's I believe it was the only time
The city was packed enough and that situation maybe seen because I can
remember those times, now its different though many of the traffic lights have
cameras that trigger with a red light pass, even there were accidents the
first few months cameras were installed people were braking harder than usual
to make sure they stop :)

As for deadlocks, Istanbul transport authority changed thousands of streets to
one way or changed the rules of many areas to stop that in the last 5 years,
when were you last in Istanbul seriously :) ?

And police does care, if you are involved in a red light violation and police
is around you are not screwed but definitely get a ticket.

~~~
inconsequential
I've lived in Istanbul for 11 years and you must have had your eyes shut mate.
3 lanes of traffic becomes 5; it's all about nosing in and cutting up; red
lights are often rushed through for a few seconds after they change (if not
more), pedestrian crossings are of no use whatsoever.

As for traffic violations and police stops, don't make me laugh. Driving in
Istanbul is carefree - do whatever you want whenever you want (which is why
there are so many road deaths... I don't think I know a single Turk who
doesn't know of someone relatively close who has been lost in a traffic
accident). You'll rarely if ever be stopped by the police. The only time I've
been stopped or seen people stopped is by late night alcohol checks or trafik
polis running spot checks - both of which you can always pay your way out of
(and I have).

I know Turks are generally nationalistic and proud, but please learn to have
some introspection, look inwardly, critcise and laugh. Too many subjects on
the internet concerning Turkey or Turks get mobbed and trolled by Turks trying
to put a positive spin, just because they don't want to see their country
portrayed in any bad light internationally.

------
yread
Check out the process page
<http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/isiklarius/process/> 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

------
gnubardt
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.

~~~
forbes
More likely the STOP will be used to display advertising while people wait.
8-) "McDonalds in 200m"

------
mjs
"Isiklarius is equipped with a system developed in our studio that detects
visually impaired and handicapped pedestrians."

How does that work??

~~~
ars
It doesn't. This is imagination, not an actual product.

------
afsina
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.

------
forbes
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.

That said, I want them for my city immediately.

~~~
umtrey
Also, from a design standpoint, the idea of using LEDs is being challenged -
while the designer mentions a lack of snow build-up, the traditional lights do
a good job of emitting enough heat to melt snow drift:

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34436730/ns/us_news-
life/t/energ...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34436730/ns/us_news-
life/t/energy-saving-traffic-lights-blamed-crashes/)

It's not an entirely obvious problem, but one that is being dealt with often
in colder climates. Unintended consequences of design.

~~~
Cushman
There must be cheaper ways to get rid of snow than _incandescent lightbulbs_.

~~~
reemrevnivek
This doesn't seem immediately obvious to me. Care to explain? Incandescent
lightbulbs are a time-proven technology with economies of scale behind them.
They generate heat and light, which is what's required here. Seems ideal for
the application.

~~~
Cushman
Really? Even assuming that we absolutely need to heat up the lights to solve
this problem, we only need to do it when there is enough snow on the light to
be a problem, which means _at most_ only during snowfall, realistically much
less frequently than that. Even in New England during winter, you've gotta be
talking under 10% of the time that this has to happen.

You seriously can't come up with a better way to solve this problem than
replacing a very efficient, very robust light source with a very inefficient,
very delicate one, secure in the knowledge that as it runs all year round,
some tiny fraction of the huge amount of waste heat it generates will go
towards melting snow?

Although I'll note in your defense that "incandescent lightbulbs" are more
accurately described as "heat lamps", and one potential solution might well
involve a specialized heat lamp which only activates when the light itself is
obstructed.

~~~
ars
Don't forget you need some kind of snow sensor - or at least a temperature
sensor.

Or some kind of centralized switch.

Totally doable of course, but it does make them more complicated, more
expensive and less reliable.

You would need to calculate the tradeofs. It's not automatic either way.

~~~
Cushman
A traffic light is already half of a snow sensor by virtue of being a _light_.
If it's covered with snow, the snow will reflect light back. Add a few
photoresistors and you're in business. It'd be the cheapest part of the whole
project.

------
hackermom
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.

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.

What's used where you live?

~~~
jevinskie
My university (Purdue, USA) has an audio countdown with a seconds tick.

------
gcb
never liked anything from that studio. but then, i don't like Dyson too...

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.

~~~
ZoFreX
If you read their earlier post on it, the squareness is far from a quirk and
actually a very well thought out design decision. Obviously design is a matter
of taste, but like them or no, their method is a lot more than just being
quirky or using buzzwords.

~~~
gcb
I'm not disliking based on aesthetics.

but because 100% of traffic lights were i live are square. nothing new.

also, besides being square, they have sensors in the asphalt that detects cars
(and bikes in bike lanes) toadjust for optimum wait time.

~~~
ZoFreX
Where do you live? They're all round here (and often barely visible, judging
by the number of times I've almost been on the receiving end of a bumper...)

------
ahmetalpbalkan
wow some Turkish stuff on HN. nice to see.

~~~
ansgri
More Russian than Turkish though. art.lebedev studio is russian.

