Dessin 3D. Current-Powered ‘Reeds’ Illuminate Urban Waterways. © Pensa Although you might not want to swim in them, many large cities are centered around one or more major waterways. Whether it's the San Francisco Bay, or the Hudson River, these bodies of water provide a refreshing change from the hustle and smog of the inner city, and many people like to walk, jog, or simply sit beside them. Come nightfall, however, these areas require costly electric lighting in order to keep people safe and comfortable. Nothing ruins the natural ambiance faster than an orange street light flickering above your head.
Designed to be reminiscent of plants you might see growing in the shallow waters of a pond or creek, these "Light Reeds" provide a calming glow throughout the night without using any electricity. Unlike traditional street lights, which are a rigid interruption of what might otherwise be a pleasant experience in the natural world, the Light Reeds are designed to bend and sway in the wind. NOTCOT.ORG. Lessons From The Past: How Living Like Great Grandma Is Green. © Matt's backyard circa 1913. Gardens, root cellar, chicken coop, dog house, well, cistern, and outhouse all worked within the patterns of nature. Steve Mouzon has noted that everyone used to be green: Originally, before the Thermostat Age, the places we built had no choice but to be green, otherwise people would freeze to death in the winter, die of heat strokes by summer, or other really bad things would happen to them.
At the Old House Web, Matt Grocoff writes a wonderful piece about how people lived in the house he is in now, before the Thermostat Age. A photograph of our backyard, taken circa 1913, documents several ways in which the Gauss family lived within their means in an elegant cradle-to-cradle, closed loop pattern. They didn't have indoor plumbing, but "of course there was the lovely outdoor compostable toilet, also known as the outhouse.
" But the fact of the matter is, these lessons from the past can be templates for the future. Concertina Skyscraper idea. | DETAIL daily. Images: David Giraldeau and Alexandre Guilbeault It has long been realised that financial centres, are bleak and often miserable places at night and weekends when the office workers have gone home. Using buildings for just a fraction of the day is not efficient, yet even pulsing mega-cities in the far east, where people sleep in capsules and live in hutches, accept this inefficiency as a by product of the wealth that is created in those towers. In a tongue in cheek proposal for the 2012 eVolo Sckyscraper Competition, David Giraldeau and Alexandre Guilbeaulthave proposed collapsible towers that can be put away when they are not required.
The idea is that the towers would collapse or expand in response to their occupation, weather, programme or other criteria to be defined. The proposal raises a scenario of a city skyline as something like a 3d graph of the city’s spatial occupation. Comment briser la monotonie | Lucie Lavigne | À bien y penser. L'architecte Olivier Bourgeois a conçu cette habitation de 6 m de largeur sur 10 m de profondeur, à Québec. Photo: Alexandre Guilbeault pour Bourgeois/Lechasseur Architectes On peut dynamiser une façade haute et étroite tout en la rendant fonctionnelle et originale. Exemple à l'appui. Dans un secteur protégé du quartier Saint-Sacrement, à Québec, l'architecte Olivier Bourgeois a fait preuve d'imagination pour construire une maison hors du commun malgré les contraintes et la réglementation.
«J'avais plusieurs limitations, dont l'utilisation obligatoire de matériaux nobles pour les quatre faces de la construction et le respect des marges latérales du terrain de neuf mètres de largeur», explique l'architecte, qui fait maintenant partie de l'agence Bourgeois/Lechasseur, à Québec. Une propriété à étage de six mètres de largeur dotée d'un garage en sous-sol a été réalisée. Caractère distinctif? Photo: Alexandre Guilbeault pour Bourgeois/Lechasseur architectes Au-delà de la brique. Experts Warn Urban Expansion Puts Humanity at Risk. James Cridland via Flickr/CC BY 2.0 With 7 billion people on the planet, things have already begun to feel a bit hot and crowded, particularly in swelling urban centers -- but researchers warn that we've ain't seen nothing yet. Over the next 38 years, Earth's population is predicted to balloon to 9 billion, with most of those new additions taking up residence in our increasingly crowded cities.
But not only does such an outlook of expanding sprawl spell trouble in terms of city planning, say experts, its environmental toll could put humanity itself at risk. Given current estimates, around 1 million more people will be added to Earth's population each week between now and 2050 -- and most will be looking for a place to live in cities. Scientists say that if current trends of urbanization continue, cities across the globe will likely need to expand into an area comparable to France, Germany and Spain combined. MIT Slows Light To Absorb And Generate Energy. MIT/via Reducing the speed of light using nanotech could lead to new ways to generate electricity, say MIT researchers. A paper about to be published in the forthcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters describes the creation of a “metamaterial” that promises much more efficient absorption of a wide range of light, which the researchers say could lead to a new generation of highly efficient solar cells and light bulbs as well as devices for generating electricity from heat—by actually reducing the speed of light.
The intriguingly named metamaterials are a new class of extremely thin artificial nanotech substances with properties unlike anything found in the natural world. Because they are created from the atom up, they can be perfectly engineered for any purpose by designing functional materials that interact with light in unconventional ways. MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering lead author Nicholas X. Metamaterials also have the potential to be very cheap. The paper by Nicholas X. Video: One World Trade Center 2004-2012. Architect Rem Koolhaas in The Simpsons. In The Simpsons last episode, Rem Koolhaas made a brief appearance where he is shown teaching to a group of students. As Metropolitan Monk noted in Archinect.com, to appear in The Simpsons episode is the most unchallengeable proof that you have achieved Starchitect status. The Scene, described by Archinect.com: “Rem Koolhaas is working – on a cruise ship notabene – as an instructor – probably in iconographic buildings – in KIDZONE ELITE.
The ship, just like CCTV, is an emblem of closure. The architect is holding a couple of lego-bricks in his left hand while seeming to fix something to the back of the tower”. With the excitement of seeing Koolhaas on television, which architect would you like to see on a future episode? Via www.archinect.com.
Lunar Rethinks Rock Climbing Walls, Making Them Slicker And Smarter. Few things say filthy rich more succinctly than an indoor rock-climbing wall. But even those lucky enough to have them, must contend that the hulking structures don’t match their surrounding décor. As Lunar Europe puts it, “Pro gear is out of place. Since it lived in the gym, no one has re-considered the design.” That is, until the Munich-based design studio decided to put its spin on the climbing wall, transforming the standard pebble-like holds into a wall art comprised of indented ripples.
The concept, called Nova, is the second in Lunar Europe’s series of home-gym upgrades. The conceit behind Nova--to make gym equipment less of an eyesore--is smart. // De retour d'un. Building of the Year Awards 2011: The Winners. Architecture Inspire Us. LEGO, the LEGO logo, DUPLO, LEGENDS OF CHIMA, MINDSTORMS, MIXELS and the Minifigure are trademarks and/or copyrights of the LEGO Group. ©2014 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved. Use of this site signifies your agreement to the terms of use. Graffiti Cafe by Studio MODE. Archdaily. Danish architects BIG have just shared with us the Cross # Towers, their latest project in Seoul. BIG’s residential towers in the Yongsan International Business District revitalize the Han riverfront into a new commercial and residential center for the citizens of Seoul. More images and information after the break. Situated at the south-east edge of the Yongsan master plan designed by Studio Liebeskind for the Korean development group Dreamhub, BIG’s Cross # Towers will contribute to the developing skyline of Seoul and become a recognizable marker of the new cultural and commercial center of the city.
BIG was selected to submit a design proposal for Yongsan International Business District among 19 international offices, including SOM, Dominique Perrault, REX and MVRDV. The 21 000 m2 site is positioned next to the existing urban fabric in the future development zones of the Yongsan master plan. BIG’s design includes two elegant towers with a height of 214 and 204m. Volkswagen’s Autostadt, Engineered for a Good Show. The monumental strain modernists divined in the seemingly ponderous infrastructures at the beginning of the last century would inform the design of Depression/wartime-era public works, which married the efficiencies of engineering with a highly keen sensibility for spectacle and drama.
The aesthetic would become exhausted to a great degree by late modernists and even moreso by the high-tech architects like Foster, Rogers, and the whole gang who favored structural legibility (i.e. stylization) over necessity and spawned the flashy ilk of corporate architecture that rules our cities today. All these tendencies are evident in the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany, Volkswagen's production facilities park-cum-theme park that offers tourists an aestheticized industrial experience. Add To Collection Save this image to a collection Photo: Motortrend [via that's like whoa] M3A2 Cultural and Community Tower / Antonini + Darmon Architectes. Architects: Antonini + Darmon Architectes Location: 6 Rue Marguerita Duras, Paris, France Area: 550 sqm SHON Cost: 2,5 M euros HT Finished: November 2011 Photographs: Luc Boegly The buildings of the cultural and community premises of Paris Diderot University fit into the undeveloped, southwest area of the Flour Market which was recently converted by Nicolas Michelin and Associates Agency.
A break between the Flour Market and the new building is preserved. It respects the existing building and accentuates the slenderness of the tower. The two, independent buildings coexist completely. The signal-like extension stands out of its context by means of its evolving shape. It is a sensitive, delicate object, treated simply to avoid rivalry with the strong presence of the Flour Market. . * Location to be used only as a reference. Architects Directory 2011. Billboard House / Apostrophy’s. Architects: Apostrophy’s Location: Bangkok, Thailand Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Courtesy of Apostrophy’s The “House Prototype” Design competition for “Baanlaesaun Fair 2011” was hosted by Baanlaesaun Magazine the 17-25 December, 2011 at Challenger Hall, Muang Thong Thani.
This year Apostrophy’s the synthesis server, Thai multi-disciplinary design firm won the competition. We considered “Billboard house” the perfect combination between O.D.M. (Outdoor Media), the representative of “Capitalism” and “House” the basic need of human being. Billboard house inspired form the progression of the capitalism that contributes higher competition on advertising media especially O.D.M (Outdoor Media) which are located around the big cities separately.
Sometimes their huge structure causes the visual pollution or harms the neighbor accidentally. However they are still be used in advertising industrial because of several advantages as following. 1.The Variety of Technique 2. Design Element. Charette 2011 - projets. Dans un premier temps, les membres du jury souhaitent dire ‘’bravo’’ à l’ensemble des équipes qui ont participé à cette 17ième Charrette du CCA et profitent de l’occasion pour signaler le fait qu’en 17 années de charrettes, quelques 700 équipes, plus de 2000 étudiants (es) et récents (es) diplômés (es) ont consacré plus de 80,000 heures d’enthousiasme et d’idéation à la cause de notre environnement bâti et à son avenir, ce qui représente un investissement intellectuel majeur et une richesse sans précédent.
Dans un monde où tout se compare, nous irions jusqu’à dire que ces 80 000 heures d’idéation représentent aussi 8M $ d’investissement sur le marché de nos disciplines. Dans cette perspective du réel, la cohorte 2011 aura investi quelques 600 000 $ d’imagination et d’engagement concret vis-à-vis de notre monde. C’est aussi dire l’importance que cette libre entreprise représente. On leur en doit bien une…et à tous ceux et celles des années passées. Encore bravo! Poster Video Poster Video Video. Part Two of the High Line Opens / Field Operations + DS+R. New Yorkers can’t get enough of James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro‘s High Line as millions meandered along the refurbished rail tracks enjoying spectacular views of the skyline. And yet, the opening of the High Line in 2009 offered a mere preview of the project’s total grandeur as parts two and three of the 1.45 mile project were still to come. Today, the second phase of the High Line has opened to the public – a section which stretches from West 20th up to West 28th Street.
This segment includes a hovering frame that will display people’s silhouettes against the evening sky, an elevated pathway which brings visitors to the level of the trees’ canopy, and a Great Lawn which will be perfect for sun-bathing and a summer time picnic. After the break you can find a great set of photos from Iwan Baan, via the High Line Facebook Page, and some more information about the project. Aerial View, from West 30th Street, looking West toward the Empire State Building.
Architecture. HTC's Wicked Micro Arc Oxidation Finishing Process. SOM Architects Call for a 100 Year Vision for the Great Lakes. 'Future Self' Is A New Light Installation By RAndom International That Interacts With Dancers Choreographed By Wayne McG... - #47901. Google – The first Google image for every word in the dictionary. Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto. Axial Symphony By Design Systems. PHOTOS: Inhabitat Spends the Night in Quebec's Hotel de Glace Ice Castle! | Little Shining Man by Heather and Ivan Morison | BING BANG POUF. "MMOV", distributeur de mapping ambulant. A BIG Heart for Times Square. Manhattan Carves a New Subway, Part 1: Jake Dobkin's Underground Photo Essay. CreativeApplications.Net | Apps That Inspire... Neri Oxman: On Designing Form. Un quatrième gratte-ciel proche du Centre Bell annoncé lundi | Maxime Bergeron.
CONTROLLED COLLAPSING INTERIORS for FRAME Magazine « REMED. Board Members / Membres du Conseil. Museo de Artes Infantil / Work AC. A Mechanical Roof Tweaks Concert Acoustics In Real Time. City Confluence by *AlexandreGuilbeault on deviantART. Wikiweb - A Delightful Wikipedia Reader. Scientists Discover That Tiny Fractal Trees Could Hold Key to More Efficient Solar Cells. Moliner House by Alberto Campo Baeza. Flight Assembled Architecture by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello d’Andrea. TEDx: Hedonistic Sustainability / Bjarke Ingels. St-Hyacinthe Aquatic Centre / ACDF*