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A view from a window looking out onto a neighborhood and sea beyond
Courtesy Window Swap

A Website That Lets You Enjoy Rooms With a View

Aileen Kwun

August 29, 2020
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Our summer quarantine days have far too often been spent gazing at web browser windows—far and away from vacation views, sadly. For the moment, we’re finding solace in Window Swap, a mash-up of the virtual and physical. Designed as a “quarantine project” by creatives Sonali Ranjit and Vaishnav Balasubramaniam, a husband-and-wife duo based in Singapore, the website invites “all travel-hungry fools” to submit videos of the views from their windows “to help each other feel a little bit better until we can responsibly explore our beautiful planet again.” A recent visit to the site yielded scenes and sounds of tropical leaves swaying in the breeze in Chiang Mai, Thailand; clusters of dense high-rises in an overcast skyline view of Hong Kong; and a serene clip of a dog slumbering in the sunlight, as cyclists pass by an apartment in Copenhagen. The globetrotting assortment is an ever-evolving balm for our escapist impulses. Transporting and mesmerizing in all of their mundaneness, these views vicariously offer a surreal and welcome peek into the homes of others.

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