Read for free
From this week onwards, we are making one article from each of our weekly update for free. No sign-up or purchase of subscription needed at all, just click to read! We are also making the best article from each of the past few weeks available to all of you. These free articles are marked by our logo at the bottom right corner like this:
Here’s a list of the free articles that are online now. We hope you enjoy the read!
Volume 1 Issue 1- DEATH
Looking after death - We follow a funeral director through the final rites of a muslim burial
Kims pyongyang - A peek into the architecture of North Korea
Volume 0 Issue 2- EVERYONE (II)
Future asian city - We imagine what this might look like
From the ground up - We profile some grassroots initiatives that are reclaiming the city for all
Volume 0 Issue 2- EVERYONE (I)
The last lap - As its city grows on land, Brunei’s biggest water village fights to stay afloat.
A visibly invisible community - The Gurkhas are protectors of a city that they are not a part of.
We welcome new faces to the FIVEFOOTWAY contributors network
FIVEFOOTWAY is made by a core team comprising myself, Adib (chief/designer), Justin (editor) and Mark (designer) and we are supported by a network of wonderfully talented people including programmers, illustrators and writers. To keep the magazine evolving into a better form, we are always looking to improve the team and we are pleased that over the past few months, we’ve had more amazing people come forward to join us and today, we welcome a few more names into our network.
THE ADDITIONS
We begin by welcoming Rachel Koh to the team as Editor. Working closely with our other Editor, Justin Zhuang, Rachel will bring her laser-sharp editorial skills and scour the articles for grammar and punctuation crimes while looking out for ways to tell the story better. She also brings her experience in the publishing world to the team and we think the magazine will have much to benefit from having her around.
You can also expect to see a few new names in our contributors list over the coming weeks including the likes of photographer, Philip Aldrup and Writer/Researcher, Shirley Surya as we file stories from various parts of Asia.
CONTRIBUTORS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
We are very interested to know more about our immediate neighbours so if you are based in, or have an interest in the various cities of South East Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, the Phllippines, Vietnam, etc), we would like to hear from you. We know that there are a lot of stories from our Asian cities that are yet to be told and you might have a gem in your hands.
If you have browsed the magazine, you will know that we are open to various story-telling formats including prose, infographics, photo-essays and we are even looking at publishing some fiction/poetry in the near future. So if you think you have something to contribute to FIVEFOOTWAY, do write to us at hello@fivefootway.com with a short intro of yourself and writing samples if you have any.
Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy the things that we will be serving up in 2012.
-Adib
In November 2011, we organised Surprise Stove Singapore with our friends JongArsitek and KeukenBdg. Here’s the footage that you’ve been looking forward to.
FIVEFOOTWAY at Kennel
We will be at Kennel’s YAL Mashup this Saturday, 2pm. More details here.
The presentation will see Editor-in-chief, Adib Jalal and Editor, Justin Zhuang share some of the ideas that are being experimented with at FIVEFOOTWAY and also presenting the “Instant Asia” series, a regular feature in the magazine that was conceived in collaboration with Prof. Thomas Kong. Through short interviews with a cross section of people living, working, studying in various Asian cities, the series explore ideas about the inclusive and open city where plurality and differences are recognised and accepted via a bottom-up process of continuous negotiation, adjustment and accommodation.
FIVEFOOTWAY will bring this series to Kennel by inviting visitors to write their own reflections of their city on the walls of the room and also contribute to a mega graffiti sketch where we will all collectively explore what the future Asian city could be.
Fivefootway V1.0 Beta 2
It’s been a great one month at the new FIVEFOOTWAY and we want to say thank you to everyone who have supported us thus far. It has been really humbling to hear all the enthusiasm shared by our readers, the kind words and constructive comments about this magazine that we are building. All of this is powering us on to keep up the momentum and we are slowly getting better each day.
When we flicked on the switch to the new Fivefootway on 9/10/11, we told you that we were already hard at work on the next update and today, we are excited to share with you that we have pushed some of this out to the main website.
Now serving: Excerpts
One of the biggest change out our doors today is the way we handle non-logged in visitors. Previously, if you were not logged in and had tried to access our articles, you were faced with a Sign-Up/Sign-in page. However, starting today, we will instead serve you an excerpt of the article so that you can get a meaningful preview of the piece.
This is great because not only can you now get a taste of FIVEFOOTWAY without committing to our very short sign-up form that gives you a full 30-day access, it makes it a lot easier for you to share the article to your friends who have not yet discovered the awesomeness of the magazine!
And just like all our articles which have been individually designed so that they can tell the story in the most meaningful manner, each of our excerpts are also carefully crafted so that you get a ‘lite’ version of the piece without getting weird truncated sentences.
Other website updates include:
- Resolving thumbnail error during Facebook sharing.
- Moving to a new webhosting service so that we can serve up the website faster and more reliably.
- A whole new “Back Issue” system for our Magazine section
- Improvements to our member subscription management system
- Improvements to our online Shop
If you discover any bugs or weird website behavious on the site, please let us know so that we can resolve it as fast as we can. We are also constantly trying to improve the website experience for you so if you have any suggestions, or would like to join our IT team, please contact us via Twitter, Facebook or email.
Reclaiming public space with food
Surprise Stove #4 - with Chef DJ Melody, Dapur Iga, Juicide, JongArsitek!, We Made This Stuff from Keuken Bandung on Vimeo.
Let’s keep this one short. We’ll be doing a special edition of Surprise Stove right here in Singapore in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, watch the video and find out more about it at http://www.keukenbdg.com/. You’ll hear more from us soon.
And we are Live!
On Sunday, 9/10/11, we flicked the switch and unveiled the new FIVEFOOTWAY.com. The Magazine has been given a major overhaul, our Broadcast element and our various Programmes now have a home in the setup and we’ve also launched our own online Shop, all of which will get even better in the coming weeks. We’ve worked hard over the past few months to make this a great digital magazine about Asian cities and we are excited to have you experiencing it. Many have asked what exactly we mean when we said we were going to create a different kind of online magazine with a unique slant on architecture and urbanism, and we think the best way to answer that is to show it to you.
We’ve prepared 8 great stories for you, each one individually designed to do justice to the written word, photographs and illustrations. We’ve also made sure that it looks amazing on desktop and tablet devices and we are working on a version that will look gorgeous on your phones. We will start serving up our daily updates on Broadcast from next week and our weekly updates of the Magazine will start the week after.
This very soft launch will allow us to test our systems, adjust our workflow and identify all the areas which we need to improve on. We are going to need your help to do this so if you notice any bugs, have comments or suggestions, do send it our way by Twitter, Facebook or via trusty email.
Enjoy the read.
Peace,
Adib and the FIVEFOOTWAY team.
Peek:the new Fivefootway
