architecture
The cutaway
I love diagrams like this—this one happens to be of G.I. Joe’s underground headquarters:
There’s got to be a tumblr full of these somewhere, right?
Floating blade of water
This is futuretastic. Like @jonahlehrer says: “reminds me of those ‘arcologies’ in Sim City 2000.”
Where’s the spawn point?
Places that look like levels from first-person shooters:
- This new water filtration plant on San Erasmo Island in Italy.
- Sutro’s Scepter. Er, I mean. Sutro Tower. (See also.)
Other nominations?
Glacier, island, storm
BLDGBLOG seriously lives 5–10 years in the future, and 5–10 degrees deflected over into a parallel dimension. I mean that as a high compliment. He’s running this course at Columbia this spring:
The purpose of this studio is to look at naturally occurring processes and forms–specifically, glaciers, islands, and storms–and to ask how these might be subject to architectural re-design. We will begin our investigations by looking at three specific case-studies, including the practical techniques and concerns behind each. This research will then serve as the basis from which studio participants will create original glacier/island/storm design proposals.
This is basically Hogwarts for science, technology and architecture nerds. Amazing!
Monday tab dump
Some things worth sharing:
- These photos by Ruben Brulat are like Where’s Waldo meets The Road.
- The blogpost-of-fragments is actually not an easy thing to pull off! At least the BOF that does more than coast on the fake revelation of juxtaposition. Tim Maly pulls it off here. “Gradual calamity!”
- Who knows what the future holds… but I bet Geoff Manaugh could make a pretty bad-ass movie. It would take place in NAKATOMI SPACE.
- I like what the New York Public Library is up to with Candide here, though I haven’t found the bit that really clicks for me yet. I’m going to keep an eye on it as they add more. Also: It reminded me of Rachel Leow’s wonderful Google Map charting the Travels of Marco Polo.
- You might have seen this already: Al Gore’s eye for typography. I just wanted to add that this jibes precisely with my experience of him; he has an incredible eye for detail, and in the, like, actually-cares-about-cool-stuff way, not the crazy-famous-person way.
- Google Street View update (previously): Hmm, perhaps they’ll sell virtual billboards composited into Street View space.
- A very cool new track from The Knife and some collaborators that are new to me: Mt. Sims and Planningtorock. I love it that, in 2010, this is almost pop music. It’s from an opera about Charles Darwin.
- (Wait… The Knife made an opera about Charles Darwin?!)
- Broadband yes; toilet no. (Via BA.)
Voilà!
Under the rotunda
This smattering of rotundas caught my eye. But I’m not sure how I feel about rotundas, actually; they’re awe-inspiring, but awfully cold and remote. Can you really love a rotunda? I guess part of the problem is that they’re always floating above such flat, empty surfaces.
I’ll take my distant, soaring ceilings like this, please.
The tao of Lego, part two
Tim Maly commented on my previous Lego post, and it’s worth spotlighting at this level, too: He did some recon (which included the actual purchase of an actual Star Wars Lego kit!) and discovered:
On the box, it appears to be made of all-kinds of single-use bits. Building it tells a different story. The feet of the walker are the same part as the bodies of the Droids. Some of the joints are are re-purposed guns. There are dozens of little clever uses of bricks and as you follow the instructions, there is moment after moment of discovery. “Oh, I can to THAT with that part?”
Ah, so that’s the antidote to the curmudgeon reflex: just go try it!
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker
Given access to a super-precise, industrial-strength, programmable robot arm, what would you do with it?
In the 21st century, we will all be called upon to answer this question.
Me, I’m imagining the coolest ice cream shop ever.
Databar
Check out this wee guest postlet I wrote for Tim Maly’s terrific blog. (This is the new workflow in 2009: Tim was in San Francisco, I happened to spin this out in conversation, and he said, “write that for my blog!”) It’s a sketch of an imaginary bar that I wish existed:
So, this is what it’s like to visit Databar:
You walk in and draw a tiny RFID tag out of a black top hat—there’s one hat for men, another for women. Stick it in your pocket, pin it to your skirt, tie it to your shoelace, whatever. Just keep it with you.
First glance: It’s a plain white space, shadowed to indigo and beige. Throw-lights in Nintendo colors show, by relative brightness, where the men and women are. Over there: a gaggle of girls framed by a bright splash of blue. Opposite them: a row of quiet dudes, talking in pairs, silhouetted in red. Other corners are a violet mix.
And so on.
Putting Databar into the context of smart architecture writ large, Tim writes: “I mean, it’s not going to be ALL jackboots and mind-control fungus, is it?”—and it’s only Monday morning, but I think that’s already a candidate for sentence of the week.