The Idea Swap. Emerging Trends. 32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow - Interactive Feature. Buy Own Day - Make a day your own! Former Walmart in McAllen Is Now an Airy Public Library. Abandoned Wal-Mart Transformed Into A Functioning Library. The International Interior Design Association recently selected the McAllen Public Library as the winner of their 2012 Library Interior Design Competition. The city inherited the former Wal-Mart after the retailer closed the store and abandoned it. The decision was made to reuse the structure and create a new main library within. Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd. of Minneapolis were selected to design the interior of the building which the city required to be functional, flexible and affordable to construct.
For a library, the existing 124,500 square foot space is huge. That’s the size of about 2 1/2 football fields making the new library the largest single-story location in the US. Before the renovation. MSR began by stripping out much of the old ceiling and walls left in the space. New Entry Service Spine A centrally located area painted bright orange contains all the service amenities and separates adult’s and children’s collections. Area 3918 Main Aisle Photos by Lara Swimmer. The World's First Vertical Forest Is Growing Sky High. Did you know that Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Italy?
Apparently urban sprawl and increased emissions are major causes for slumping air quality in the international fashion capital. So Italian architect Stefano Boeri has formulated an unusual plan to give the city back what it’s lacking: namely, some greenery. Bosco Verticale is Italian for “Vertical Forest.” The project took inspiration from traditional Italian towers covered in ivy. Though Harvard Design Magazine called the project “dreamily utopian,” this tower is no fantasy. There’s lots of science behind the project to prove that it’ll actually improve the city atmosphere, and not just the skyline. The diversity of the plants and their characteristics produce humidity, absorb carbon dioxide and dust particles, producing oxygen and protect from radiation and acoustic pollution, improving the quality of living spaces and saving energy.
Aquatic Village Proposed by Reusing Abandoned Oil Rigs. With all of the controversy now surrounding off shore oil exploration, we're hoping to see more and more oil rigs become obsolete. But what can be done with these massive structures after they are no longer pumping out fuel? This provocative proposal, which was one of the finalists for the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper competition, takes an old rig and turns it into renewable energy equipped aquatic villages.
The idea is not new. In fact, the (disputed) world’s smallest country is an old oil platform. In the design by Ku Yee Kee and Hor Sue-Wern, the reclaimed oil rig is layered in rings of habitation units sharing center common and recreation areas. The stacked units share an incredible view of the vast ocean. Beneath the water are circular labs for marine research. Via eVolo. 99U - It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. Reimagining Recreation. There was a child went forth every day, / And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder, pity, love, or dread, that object he became, / And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1856 Mid-1970s I’ll pin the blame on Robert Moses for this one. After all, it was one of his playgrounds, one of the safe, drab, battleship-gray ones whose WPA-era design had changed little since Moses assumed power as New York City’s parks commissioner in 1934 (during his twenty-six-year reign, 650 playgrounds were built).
The banal swing-set. The bone-jarring seesaw. The galvanized slide. Satisfied customers at Richard Dattner’s West 67th Street adventure playground, 1966. Throughout my childhood, as I recall it, my parents would take my sister and me on periodic expeditions—every few months, it seemed—to check out the newest adventure playground to open. M. Stranger: The what? Ideas by Creativity Pool.