You don’t need to be an architect to love cool architecture. Urban planning and building design is an interdisciplinary passion, attracting the likes of art enthusiasts, engineers, history buffs, designers and travelers. Chances are that at least one person on your gift shopping is among those.
With that in mind, here’s our roundup of seven inexpensive—and one not-so-much—gifts for architecture enthusiasts. For this review we specifically excluded architecture magazines and books (of which there are a huge and excellent variety to choose from). We also nixed items used by working architects in their craft, like drafting tables or home design software.
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Time was that products and materials were either recycled or not. These days, “upcycled” products are becoming increasingly popular. The difference between “upcycling” and “recycling” being that the former involves reusing a material without degrading its quality or composition. So, used beer bottles being turned into jeans or asphalt or new beer bottles are examples of recycling (because the old beer bottles are melted down into cullet before being reused). But used beer bottles being turned into, say, a Thai temple is an example of upcycling.
In the increasingly diverse (and, some would say, nutty) language around eco-friendly concepts, other terms for reusing material emerged. One can not only recycle or upcycle but also downcycle, freecycle, precycle and e-cycle. But there’s only one other -cycle we’re concerned with for this post: Hipcycle.
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People who love photography tend to really love photography. They also tend to already have all the cameras, lenses and bags they need (or can afford). So here are 8 relatively inexpensive gifts that the photographer on your gift list is likely to appreciate and not already have. Of course, you should feel free to give any (or all?) these to yourself too.
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