Heavyset

History affords a glimpse into the future. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it really isn’t. For example, history can be used to legitimize an architectural agenda in order to project it into an alternative realm. We like to call this mode of writing “operative history”—a kind of history writing that looks to contemporary architecture to make a claim as to what building will and should be. This kind of writing has been a staple in architecture schools for decades and continues to provide designers, educators and scholars with a fulcrum with which to leverage their own thoughts about the built environment.

From the review of Interactive Architecture by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp on A456

The sweater tree is an example of a growing urban phenomenon called yarn bombing, aka yarnstorming or graffiti knitting. Yarn bombing is believed to have its roots in Texas, where it was invented as a way for knitters to creatively utilize their unfinished knitting projects.

via Kottke

Washington, DC gets a bike station:

That’s right, as of today the not-exactly-progressive town has something New York is sorely lacking: a bike station. Funded by the District and the U.S. Department of Transportation and built by Mobis/Bikestation, the 1,600-square-foot facility offers secure parking for 130 bikes, a changing room, lockers, rentals, and repairs. (via Metropolis POV  » The Street View: D.C. Envy)

Motorway documentation by Rasmus Norlander

“We try to have minimal bureaucracy. Usually, what I’ve found over the years is people like to make up rules, partly because they don’t want to take responsibility. If there’s a rule, they don’t have the burden of making a decision. ‘I did that because that’s the rule.’ When I see things like that happen, I intervene [and tell them] ‘we don’t have a rule, because if we did I’d have made it up, and I didn’t. You have to make a good choice and I won’t make that choice for you.’”

-Rick Rashid of Microsoft

via Businessweek

Good IxDers borrow, great ones steal ….:

When you’re knee-deep in wireframes or CSS it’s all too easy to end up in a bubble of IxD books and blogs. One option is to take inspiration from vintage art and nature, but what about what other smart people are doing in their respective disciplines? In other words, why not steal from them.

via Johnny Holland

WoodWorks challenges you to get your tools out and set your imagination free  for the Copenhagen International Wood Festival – the first of its kind in Denmark.

Favorite Game: Crayon Physics Deluxe for the iPhone. (via christmasgorilla)

In the earliest laboratory notebooks, the wall-mounted m echanism shown in this image was simply called “the pinball machine.” In the published output of the research program of which it was a part, it wen t by the more dignified appellation Random Mechanical Cascade, yielding a catchy acronym: RMC. Around the lab, however, the device was known affectionately as ­Murphy, since if anything could go wrong, it would. (via CABINET // Games of Chance)

“Schools are woefully unconnected to the idea of the profession being entrepreneurial. We were all graduating and trying to get into employment right away. This generation is very different, because they’re paying off their debts. In my day in London, it was still very much in the grant system. Your education wasn’t a noose around your neck in terms of repayment. It was almost like free, and you were very ready to take on the world and come into the world. There was more risk-taking.”

– David Adjaye on imbuing the entrepreneurial spirit, in The Architect’s Newspaper

Jaime Lerner on revolutionizing bus transit:

From Planetizen:

Jaime Lerner was governor of the state of Paraná, in southern Brazil. He is renowned as an architect and urban planner, having been mayor of Curitiba, capital of Paraná, three times (1971–75, 1979–84 and 1989–92). In 1994, Lerner was elected governor of Paraná, and was reelected in 1998.

During his first term, Lerner implemented the Rede Integrada de Transporte (also call for Bus Rapid Transit), and continued to implement a host of social, ecological, and urban reforms during his ensuing terms as mayor.As Mayor, Lerner employed unorthodox solutions to Curitiba’s geographic challenges. Like many cities, Curitiba is bordered by floodplain. While wealthier cities in the United States such as New Orleans and Sacramento, have chosen to build expensive, and expensive-to-maintain levee systems to build on floodplain. In contrast, Curitiba purchased the floodplain and made parks. The city now ranks among the world leaders in per-capita park area. Curitiba had the problem of its status as a third-world city, unable to afford the tractors and petroleum to mow these parks. The innovative response was “municipal sheep” who keep the parks’ vegetation under control and whose wool funds children’s programs.

TED Blog: Sing a song of cities

555 KUBIK | facade projection

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.

on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game w/ Freebords (via FreebordMfg)

This is an AR-based experiment that enables the user to lift textures from real-world objects in live video and apply them onto 3D objects that are overlayed on top of them. Only box primitives are supported here, but the general idea could be extended to other types of 3D primitives or potentially even more complex objects with some clever image compositing and UV mapping (a-la Photosynth, I guess). (via zero point nine  » Blog Archive  » Augmented Reality Texture Extraction Experiment)

Herkko Hietanen of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology tells his audience at the Berkman Center that “television is really broken.” The medium isn’t rising to its full potential, isn’t providing consumers with programs when and where they want them. To set the scheduled for what you want to watch, you need to be at your television. And there are frustrating geographic restrictions on programming – Herkko wonders why it’s hard to watch Finnish TV in the US. Television was created to be consumed – it lacks interactivity with broadcasters and other viewers. It forces consumers to sit through irrelavent commercials.

via My Heart’s In Accra

Tagging with Scent:

During Mitchell Heinrich’s artist residency in Vienna, he developed a new kind of “smell graffiti”. Using essential oils and refillable atomizing spray cans, Heinrich introduces incongruous smells such as dirt and grass into urban spaces. With the aim of uplifting and embellishing repellent spaces, he believes scent can be a powerful artistic force (and a lot less permanent – it disappears in 20 minutes to an hour) (via Mitchell Heinrich: Tagging With Scents – PSFK)

Axe Day & Night “SMS”

The agency Lowe Ginkgo, from Montevideo, has created an ad for the Ax Day & Night where the image of a girl appears incomplete in the magazine and the title invites the person to send an SMS after 21h, if you want to see the advertising track.

“Whatever may have been the causes which have operated in the past, and are operating now, to draw the people into the cities, those causes may all be summed up as “attractions “; and it is obvious, therefore, that no remedy can possibly be effective which will not present to the people, or at least to considerable portions of them, greater “attractions ” than our cities now possess, so that the force of the old “attractions” shall be overcome by the force of new “attractions” which are to be created. Each city may be regarded as a magnet, each person as a needle; and, so viewed, it is at once seen that nothing short of the discovery of a method for constructing magnets of yet greater power than our cities possess can be effective for redistributing the population in a spontaneous and healthy manner.”

–

Ebenezer Howard, from Garden Cities of To-Morrow

“In a way, human beings have never been part of the natural order; we’re not biological in the normal sense. Normal biological animals stop eating when they’re not hungry and stop breeding when there is no sense in breeding. By contrast, human beings are what I think of as “biomythic” animals: we’re controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order. For a long time, our unnatural beahvior didn’t threaten the natural world, but now it does.”

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Renewing Our Sense of Wonder :: An Interview with Sam Keen

Visualize Urban Complexity:

Several visualisations done in an elective course in spring 2009 at the Chair for Information Architecture at the ETH, Zurich.

(via lukastreyer)