Wallpaper's Who's Who 2007

I went into crisis mode when I couldn't see "Australia" on the page... then my mouse clicking OCD kicked in as is always does when I find a new webpage to play with and discovered that the designers of the page had, in accordance with its antipodean location in the world, put Australia at the bottom left hand corner, assessible via a down pointing blue arrow.

for the sake of reflection

mir·ror (mĭr'ər) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A surface capable of reflecting sufficient undiffused light to form an image of an object placed in front of it. Also called looking glass.
2. Something that faithfully reflects or gives a true picture of something else.
3. Something worthy of imitation.

A quick and interesting read on mirrors from the fabulous people at designboom

An inspiring bit of subdivison

solar powered kettles in tibet

"In Rizhao City, which means City of Sunshine in Chinese, 99 percent of households in the central districts use solar water heaters, and most traffic signals, street and park lights are powered by photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. In the suburbs and villages, more than 30 percent of households use solar water heaters, and over 6,000 households have solar cooking facilities. More than 60,000 greenhouses are heated by solar panels, reducing overhead costs for farmers in nearby areas... The fact that Rizhao is a small, ordinary Chinese city with per capita incomes even lower than in most other cities in the region makes the story even more remarkable. The achievement was the result of an unusual convergence of three key factors: a government policy that encourages solar energy use and financially supports research and development, local solar panel industries that seized the opportunity and improved their products, and the strong political will of the city's leadership to adopt it..." Read more

Meanwhile in Australia...
"There is no technical reason why Australia could not produce a very high proportion of its electricity from renewable sources, backed up by natural gas as a transitional fuel. All that is lacking is political will." Greens energy spokesperson Senator Christine Milne. Read more

via renewable energy access

Prada Prototype Auction

Prada has recently added a feature to their website, an online auction of exclusive collectible pieces by the fashion house, initially created for the catwalk, the pieces have never appeared or been produced with the specific colour or material and some pieces have been made specifically for the auction.

makes me wonder if other design professionals - architects, landscape architects, graphic designers and the like - should or could do the same with their "prototype designs" aka unbuilt or unapproved schemes, many of which are often the designer's best and most inspiring work.

via designboom

Inside out Bears

What can I say, I love ugly soft toys. No hello kitty for this small asian girl. It all started with the one eyed, three legged "teddy bear" in Monsters Inc which was followed by a brief obsession with Uglydolls. These inside out bears are by Kent Rogowski. They also remind of my brother, who has a habit of stuffing the arms, legs and head into the body of all soft toys that cross his path - ye, he's definetly the Bart Simpson variety of older brother.

via Designboom

Choose your own adventure Stencil...

"The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. It is told in a new medium of storytelling that uses spraypainted stencils connected to each other by arrows. The streetscape is used as sort of an illustration to accompany each piece of text.

Its a love story with 2 characters who start in different locations. His story starts at 16th and Valencia, in front of the Crown Hotel / Limon Restaurant with the text "He Leaves his Lonely Apartment." Her story starts at 21st and Guerrero in front of a stunning mansion with the text, "She Leaves her Lonely Apartment." Eventually their paths merge, at the point where they meet, and their paths travel together until drama pulls them apart.

Their are two possible endings, happy and tragic, and two other points where the story can end unexpectedly if the viewer chooses the wrong ending. All in all, there are 4 possible endings."

I can see lots of other applications for this...

via boingboing

A skull a day

It appears death is in fashion this year.
Designer Noah Scalin is creating one skull image per day for a year.

via The Underwire

Type in the Sky

Despite going to a Luthern High School and studying German for two years, I still had to resort to bablefish to understand the bare bones of this - it appears this is part of a school project done by Lisa Rienermann. She photographed buildings from below, using the sky between towers to find letters in the alphabet.

via designbooom

iTunes U

A little while ago i was musing about how good it would be if Melbourne uni architecture podcast its lectures (the law school does this already). Well well, iTunes has now launched iTunes U: the campus that never sleeps with Stanford, UC Berkerly, MIT and other institutions setting up shop.

“iTunes U makes it easy for anyone to access amazing educational material from many of the country’s most respected colleges and universities,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “Education is a lifelong pursuit and we’re pleased to give everyone the ability to download lectures, speeches and other academic content for free.”

No students will ever attend lectures again.

iphone daiquiris

from my other favourite geek in the WWW who is alledgedly "busy" being a full time lecturer and finishing his phd. "Everybody knows that the iPhone can make phone calls, play movies & music, surf the web, and a lot more. But, Will It Blend? That is the question." i want this blender.

'inversion' 'tunnel' 'vortex'

'inversion' by dan havel and dean ruck, 2005
two wooden buildings used for over thirty years to hold exhibitions and art classes years by Art League were converted into a 'vortex' like installation for the last few months before their demolition. read more

i would love to see photos of the construction process of this...

via designboom

Hello, world!

I was doing some research on crop circles and the like for a project out in Berwick where I am proposing rooftop agriculture (can't wait for the community feed back when it goes into town planning) and came across this interesting geeky project...

In the artist's words
"“Hello, world!” is a real installation for the virtual globe of the software Google Earth. A Semacode measuring 160 x 160 meters was mown into a wheat field near the town of Ilmenau in the Land Thuringia. The code consists of 18 x 18 bright and dark squares producing decoded the phrase “Hello, world!”.

More images here

The Cloud by Atelier Hapsitus

TA DA... the latest in dubai's proposed absurdities... The Cloud is a speculative design for a resort city elevated 300 metres in the air above Dubai and supported on slanting legs resembling rain. Designed by Nadim Karam of Lebanese architect Atelier Hapsitus, the concept was presented at the International Design Forum in Dubai last month.

In the archtiect's words
"The Cloud, the Desert and the Arabian breeze
At the forefront of the few cities today experiencing exponential growth, Dubai is the ultimate city of mutation. Within its constantly-changing scenery and infinite growth-scale, Dubai needs a dream expressing its current transient phase. If cities can dream, does Dubai have a dream?

The Cloud of Dubai is one of a series of Gulf region projects created by Nadim Karam and Atelier Hapsitus. It is inspired by the nomads, whose lives were defined by the rigours of their relation to sun, water and sand, and whose travels followed the borderless movement of clouds. The Cloud is a trip, a playful adventure in the city. It is a horizontal presence on an elevated platform, an antithesis to the sum of skyscrapers spreading over the entire region. The Cloud is a dream, suspended between artificiality and reality.

An essentially sustainable project standing at a height of approximately 300 metres, the Cloud is a 20000m2 landscape-in-the-sky comprising a lake, gardens, rotating bridges, spiraling walkways and terraces, an auditorium and sky-sports platform. The Cloud is approached on ground level from an esplanade with a pool reflecting a forest of inclined columns reaching up to the huge, translucent floating island. Access to the Cloud is gained through a few non-inclined tubular shafts, which double as structural support. In collaboration with ARUP AGU (Advanced Geometry Unit), significantly creative technological solutions are being developed for its realization."

Interesting that its an "essentially sustainable" project, nobody told me there were different categories of sustainability now! isnt that like being "a little bit pregnant"??

via design boom

what is normal?

An interesting diagram from the National Climatic Data Centre.

via Beyond the Beyond

passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers

I have been looking for a new housemate recently, terry who has been my rock-who-i-can-poke-with-my-index-finger-when-i-am-bored has moved to less green pastures with his brother garry-stabby-mac-stab-stab. In the last two weeks I have interviewed 14 people and have crossed real estate agent and HR manager off my list of possible career changes. By No.5 I was starting to wonder if there had been an government exodus of normal people from melbourne which i hadnt heard about and by No.10 I was wondering if I was the un-normal one?! Then I found passiveaggressivenotes and decided I was perfectly fine and if all else fails, the extra rent is about what I spend on clothes and shoes each month so its not THAT bad...

Haramaki!

Finally... A viable solution to Melbourne's infamous "Muffin Top" problem.
Haramaki, japanese belly warmers - available here (for the i-can-read-japanese readers)

via PingMag

Social Suicide

I LOVE this.
If I were a man, I would buy Social Suicide's entire collection. Heck, if the suits came in my size I would buy the entire collection.

via PingMag

take-g toys

I was playing with a friend's almost-two-year-old a couple of weeks ago when i discovered that A. the friend has an obsession with buying timber toys for his son and B. his latest aquisition was a timber LOGGING TRUCK. I have been looking for dreadlocked dolls (preferably also timber) at the right scale to chain the the truck's wheels ever since with no luck. But in the process i came across these beautiful toys by take-g made in japan.

when milk meets coffee...

In the artist, Irene Müller's, words
"These are the first splashes of this kind I've tried so far. I hope you like them and thanks for looking.
I've now added some images showing milk splashing into a cup of coffee to demonstrate how tiny the splashes really are. BTW, I don't use any sound/photogate triggers for my high speed photography.
Just my camera, a pipette or syringe, good eye/shutter finger coordination and patience, patience, patience....."

via boing boing

Imagini

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

I remember when one of the girls at work started her Masters her supervisor sent her some learning styles surveys, one of the questions was "At a party, do you remember people by their names or their faces?" and I responded "What they are wearing!". Anyway, this comes through in my VisualDNA which basically tells me that I am superficial and materialistic, but in a nice way.

Imagini
A completely new way of communicating using images