Moving Walls Transform Apartment: Four Minutes of WOW! (VIDEO) A year ago we wrote about Gary Chang's Domestic Transformer, an incredible 344 square foot apartment that could change into any of 24 different designs. We showed pictures and plans, but more than any house I have seen, this one needs a movie. Planet Green visited it for the World's Greenest Homes, and it is truly four minutes of wow. Get a bigger version on Planet Green.I repeat the plans below the fold for reference while watching.... all photos: Marcel Lam for The New York Times One learns a lot from the video that we didn't know last year- that swinging hammock is really in the center of a huge home theater setup. The wall units, which are suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling, seem to float an inch above the reflective black granite floor. A simplified drawing of the apartment from AFP. Chang also explains why this kind of design is so important in a world of diminishing resources, particularly when one of those resources is space: Plans of the uniit:
The swirling maelstrom of the sun, pictured in outstanding detail during the Transit of Venus by one dedicated space enthusiast By Eddie Wrenn Published: 17:28 GMT, 22 June 2012 | Updated: 18:27 GMT, 22 June 2012 It is difficult to think of the sun as anything more than how we view it from Earth - a great, bright ball, uniform in appearance as it placidly heats our planet. But seen in close-up, the view is startling - a raging sea of fire, as the hydrogen fuel of the sun burns away in a five-billion-year explosion. The artistic, and out-of-this-world photographs were taken by sun enthusiast and solar photographer Alan Freidman, from the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, California. The sun the day before: Alan set up his solar equipment at Mount Wilson the day before the Transit of Venus and ran a test to make sure that everything had survived the trip and was working well The detail captured by Alan is stunning: Far from being the placid, uniform ball we see each day, the sun is a raging and turbulent ball of flames For more of Alan's stunning work, visit his blog, Averted Imagination, here.