FAKE trees

Indeed. why leave it up to nature to decide what trees should look like...

P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S design the Fake Plastic Trees in Hollywood

"Following the lineage of the Schindler house as an experiment in modern living in close relation to nature, our proposal "Fake Plastic Trees" is an attempt to investigate the formal, spatial and atmospheric potential of a vertically sustainable garden in synch with the most advanced technology for plant growth. The garden is composed of a branching circuitry network made of plastic PVC tubes. These tubes circulate and distribute water with a nutrient solution that nurtures aerial vegetation of different kinds. The section of the tubes diminishes as the trajectories they describe move up and away from the ground. The flow of water is induced by water pumps from several reservoirs located in the ground. Water is distributed directly to the plants base by pumping up from the reservoirs or indirectly down by dripping from the upper branches and then moistening down. Depending on the section of tubes, their capacity to carry more or less water, different scale of plants can grow from and within them. The artificiality of plants growing directly on water, the modulation and scaling of them as they detach from the ground, the dynamism of the branching and choreographed vegetation and its likely wind induced oscillation, and the occasional forms of animal life negotiating temporary shelter within the garden, amounts to an advanced living ecosystem that both challenges and amplifies the assumed relations between the architecture of The Schindler House and its surrounding “natural” environment."

via World Architecture News

Luna-resonant streetlights

i LOVE this idea by the Civil Twilight Design Collective that street lights can be ephemeral and respond to the the moonlight! this would be perfect for a water front project to highlight the connections to tidal movements and the moon etc... and it saves energy, bonus!

The idea won this year's Metropolis Next Generation ideas competition.

via The Underwire

the POOP house

In the Architect's (Andrew Maynard Architecture) words...

"No matter which way you look at it, building a house is never green. It takes vast quantities of materials with high levels of embodied energy and water and it creates a lot of waste. Even houses constructed from recycled materials often have an incredibly high embodied energy to implement. So we at Andrew Maynard Architects asked ourselves "what's the greenest building" and we concluded that the answer was "no building at all". But rather than be nihilistic about it we decided that a house should build itself through a lengthy period of assembling house hold waste. Through adopting similar structural logic employed at Stanford University the Poop house is a water structure that, over time, takes all household bio-waste, including human excrement and food, and slowly constructs the walls and roof. "...more here

Sounds fantastic in principle... but the ‘yuk factor’ is hard to overcome ... a bit like drinking recycled sewage - no scientific or health reason for it not being ok, just yuk.

pro·cras·ti·nate

pro·cras·ti·nate /proʊˈkræstəˌneɪt, prə-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[proh-kras-tuh-neyt, pruh-] verb, -nat·ed, -nat·ing.

–verb (used without object)

1.	to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.

–verb (used with object)

2.	to put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

The Procrastinator's Creed

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.

2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.

3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.

4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.

5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.

6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.

7. I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitesmally small, is not exactly zero.

8. If at first I don't succeed, there is always next year.

9. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.

10. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.

11. I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.

12. I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/plan/plan.

13. I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.

14. I will become a member of the ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator's Society) if they ever get it organized.

The Park at the Centre of the World

Five very delectable possibilities for Governer's Island in New York. The title of the competition amuses me, i always remember one of my friends telling me (after having lived in both countries) that Americans think they are the centre of the world and Australians think they are the only people in the world.

More here...

Avant Garde Dating

Why moms always think its a bad idea for their daughters to date artists....

"AVANT-GARDE DATING is a new experimental dating service for artists.

In contrast to traditional dating services, the primary aim of AVANT-GARDE DATING is not to match artists looking for a romantic/sexual relationship but to match artists who are interested in investigating issues associated with relationships.

In order to apply, individuals must explain how they will explore the conventions of monogamous love, challenge the idea of artistic collaboration and/or explore one of the other numerous stereotypes of human pairing.

Based on the application, the Dating Board will match artists with each other and three outstanding 'couples' will be rewarded a 1-week exhibition during the Art Forum in Berlin (Sep-Oct 2007) to further explore the concept of human partnering.

AVANT-GARDE DATING is a project by Wooloo, an artists-run organization based in Berlin, Germany."

via guerrilla innovation

Vision of Excess

Incredible photos from the Industrial Scars series by J. Henry Fair for Harper's Magazine

via the underwire

Global Cities at Tate Modern

"Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Exploring each city through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form – the exhibition draws on data originally assembled for the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2006 Venice Biennale. This unique show presents existing films, videos and photographs by more than 20 artists and architects to offer subjective and intimate interpretations of urban conditions in all ten cities.

As Global Cities takes place in one of the focus cities, the exhibition uses London as a touchstone for comparison. New commissions by a group of six artists and architects – Nigel Coates; Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher; Fritz Haeg; OMA*AMO/Rem Koolhaas; Nils Norman; and Richard Wentworth – explore the local context through issues such as sustainability, public space and social inclusion.

Density – the number of people living in a given area, usually expressed as people per square kilometre – is at the centre of public debate on the future growth of cities. Used as a planning tool, awareness of density can help to curtail over-development and overcrowding, or ensure that scarce urban land is not under-used, especially in areas with good public transport and social amenities. High density does not mean high-rise; large numbers of people can be accommodated in five- or six-storey buildings arranged in a compact and efficient manner, creating congenial places for living.

Good design can produce desirable neighbourhoods in cities across the world by balancing dense development with access to open space and good transport. Dense urban environments can create sustainable cities; more dispersed developments use up more land and need more infrastructure – water, gas, electricity, roads – with negative impacts on the environment. High density housing can be associated with poverty and overcrowding, especially in the slums of developing countries. However, good design can produce desirable neighbourhoods in cities across the world by balancing dense development with access to open space and good transport – as evident in some of the most successful neighbourhoods in London, Paris and New York.

The four models shown in this section compare, at the same scale, the number of people living within the administrative boundaries of four of the ten cities featured in the exhibition. The peaks show the highest residential densities, with the largest number of people concentrated in a square kilometre. They range from the high-density of Cairo and Mumbai to the more dispersed, but bounded London (contained by the Green Belt) and the sprawling Mexico City."

via Creative Review

09 “Shibuya was like a stroke.” — Alice.d

hitotoki|hee toe toe key|

noun 1. a single moment; one’s moment; a point in time.

hitotoki.org is a new literary site collecting stories of personal, singular experiences in cities worldwide.

Interesting idea, i would love to see a sister site to this called...

wabi sabi

a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centred on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" (according to Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers)

"My emails have a life of their own"

ANYMAIL

Design & Concept: Carolin Horn Code: Florian Jenett Institute & Advisor: DMI Boston, Prof. Brian Lucid. Abstract "Anymails is a visualization of my received emails.

I have investigated how I can use natural metaphors to visualize my inbox, its structure and attributes. The metaphor of microbes is used. My objective is to offer the user another experience of his email world.

The project was developed during the MFA thesis “Natural Metaphor For Information Visuzalization” (thesis.zip, PDF, 7mb) at the Dynamic Media Intitute Boston in 2007.

The emails used in the prototype are read from the users local Apple Mail database. The prototype was built with Flash and Processing. The Anymails source code (OS-X 10.4.9 ppc) is available for download (2.5mb)."

via the underwire

Gorbachev is new face of Louis Vuitton

Following on from the simpsons in harpers bazaar... Gorbachev as the face of Louis Vuitton (!!)... soon, incoming world leaders will have to sign contracts with a life time ban on advertising.

via the underwire