Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed CCCP | freakARQ. THE BI BLOG — one topic, two points of view. A 7-Mile Rainbow for Kim Jong-il. [Image: Assembling the 7-mile rainbow one ring at a time, by Ben Masterton-Smith]. Ben Masterton-Smith, recipient of the inaugural RIBA Norman Foster Traveling Scholarship in 2007, visited North Korea for a period of architectural and spatial research. One of the many outcomes of that trip was Ben's diploma project, part of which proposed a farcical realization of a 7-mile rainbow reportedly seen on the occasion of Kim Jong-il's birth. [Image: Assembling the rainbow; images by Ben Masterton-Smith]. Truckloads of vinyl are delivered to the capital city; teams of "volunteers" pump vast amounts of air into the unfolding structures—the imperial inflatable as architectural type; and, lo, the titanic pink and purple form ascends to its nostalgic place in the public firmament, assembled ring by ring across the sky.
[Image: The glorious 7-mile rainbow takes form]. [Images: Rainbow diagrams by Ben Masterton-Smith]. [Image: The rainbow under construction; image by Ben Masterton-Smith]. INTRO. Ivan Leonidov and the Russian utopias. Ivan Leonidov lived from 1902 to 1959. He was a constructivist architect, but also a painter, urban planner and a dreamer. From all of his works he only was able to build this staircase on a hillside in Kislovodsk: From the review of the book Ivan Leonidov , we can quote: “It is sad that the vast majority of sketchbook plans and competition entries reproduced in this album were never built. Ivan Leonidov was surely one of the most innovative and humanistic architects to come out of early Russian modernism.
His Constructivist-inspired projects embody the same revolutionary spirit as Vladimir Tatlin’s celebrated 1919 tower. Palace Proletarian Cultural District. From the wiki : “In 1919 Léonidov attended the Svomas free art studios in Tver. Lenin Institute and Library: In the first half of his life, Leonidov’s work quickly became widely known. A complete selection of Leodinov’s works can be visited here . Like this: Like Loading... Advanced Utopian Martian Communities, 1911. JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 904 This futuro-Utopian homage to ET-civilizations and space travel was written just too early to have been sucked up by period-appropriate script raptors. Reading it is a little out of the question and left to the domain of sci-fi archaeologists; the book is stuffy and dry and very stiff (brittle !) Without being terribly interesting and doesn’t stop for the right word when four will do. (See below for an example of the writing.) The ideas though lurking beneath the surface though are pretty good for its time, though they are hardly the great undertow that rips you away and out of the clutches of the stuff that make this a pretty object rather than a book.
To Mars via the Moon, an Astronomical Story. written by Mark Wicks and published in 1911, left the Moon quite behind in its literary assault on a super-advanced civilization that the space travelers find on the red planet. Notes. 50 Posts About Cyborgs: Archive. Tierra X, Universo X y Paraiso X - Marvel - MF. 0to255.
Ìîñêâà íåâîïëîùåííàÿ/Unrealised Moscow. Cloud Skippers. Utopia Forever. A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. —Oscar Wilde The cities in which we live today are unfortunately not the cities that we need for a humane and sustainable tomorrow. Societies and politicians are desperately looking for solutions and ideas for the urban areas of the future. That is why the development and discussion of utopias are–next to sustainability–the most current topics in contemporary architecture. We have learned from the 1960s and 1970s that utopian visions are one of the most important catalysts for fundamental change. Modern wind farms for generating energy, for example, were initially contemplated at that time and are now permanent fixtures in our landscapes. Whether created by established architects and artists or new talents, the projects in Utopia Forever are radically shaping our notions of life in the future.
Related Gestalten.tv Videos. UTOPIA FOREVER. Visions of Architecture and Urbanism. Un mapa del mundo que no incluya la utopía ni siquiera merece la pena mirarlo, ya que deja fuera el único territorio en el que la humanidad está siempre desembarcando. —Oscar Wilde. Las ciudades en que vivimos hoy no son, por desgracia, las ciudades que necesitamos para un futuro más humano y sostenible. Las sociedades y los políticos están buscando desesperadamente soluciones e ideas para las zonas urbanas del futuro.
Es por ello que el desarrollo y discusión de las utopías es, junto a temas de sostenibilidad, el más actual de la arquitectura contemporánea. Hemos aprendido de los años 1960 y 1970 que las visiones utópicas son uno de los catalizadores más importantes para un cambio fundamental. Entropica | A Spectacular Machine. Entropica is an interactive multimedia installation which I realized together with dpr-barcelona for the international architecture festival “eme3“, happening in barcelona in these days. The installations consists in a platform for augmented reality, a technology which can visualize a 3d model in a real scene thanks to a webcam reading a graphic code.
The installation warns us about how careful we should be in the moment of starting a building process, making us considering the irreversibility of our actions. At this purpose, the floor is covered with glasses and a caterpillar is visualized over them using augmented reality. The scene lies beside the spectator, who will find him or herself alone in the middle of the glasses, covering the role of the caterpillar, in the moment of stepping over the code generating the augmented reality.
Here are the concept of the installation (in spanish, english available here), a diagram explaining visually our idea and few photos of the happening: Netherlands Architecture Institute - Item. The NAI collection consists of a couple of million drawings, sketches, floor plans, photographs, letters and other documents, and more and more pieces are being digitised. Every two weeks, a special item from the collection will be on display. Download, collect and share them all!
[Click to expand image] M.A. and J. van Nieukerken. Staircase for Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, The Hague, 1917. View all items presented in the showroom You can order reproductions of all collection pieces, from small prints to poster formats. Extra: New Babylon. January 26 and 27 the organisation LINK organised a seminar on Constants' dream of the 'unitary urbanism' at the Delft University of Technology, with the aim of investigating its background and its relevance for todays' architects.
The organisers summarised it like this: "A search for the significance of the ideological, social and polemical dimension of architecture, the value of critique and the integral vision of man and the built environment. " It got clear we are looking at a project which surpasses both our wildest dreams and nightmares. Also, through a series of contributions by Adolfo Natalini, Elia Zenghelis and Peter Cook it became clear how much has changed in the approach towards architecture today. On the occasion of the start of the symposium 'special guest' Simon Vinkenoog offered a short and blazing argument, which ended with the statement: 'Let's start a revolution for fun!
' Day 1: New Babylon and the end of the avant-garde Day 2: Utopia and the city of tomorrow. 18 Cool Inventions From the Past. The time between the wars – the Great War and WW2 was one of great loss and uncertainty, but also one of invention, creativity and new ideas. The horrors of WWI shattered enlightenment belief that progress would continue and reason would prevail. New ideas and patterns of life developed in the 1920′s and in the way that people looked at the world [1]. The fast pace of technology change in the 20′s brought us the lie detector, traffic signal, bubble gum and Penicillin.
An all-electronic moving-image television system somewhat similar to that used today was invented and demonstrated in 1929 [2]. The 30′s were not less invention-intensive bringing us the jet engine, helicopter, tea bags, sticky tape, ballpoint pen and the first photocopier [3]. However, somewhere between these great world-changing inventions there were some fun and sometimes even hilarious inventions the world has forgotten. Bike Tyre Used As Swimming Aid (Germany, 1925) One Wheel Motorcycle (1931) Radio Pram (USA, 1921) But does it float.