Category: Projects

Design · Projects · Social/Politics · Technology

The Drone Survival Guide

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Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them. This survival guide is an attempt to familiarize ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment.

This document contains the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the near future. Each indicating nationality and whether they are used for surveillance only or for deadly force. All drones are drawn in scale for size indication. From the smallest consumer drones measuring less than 1 meter, up to the Global Hawk measuring 39,9 meter in length.

Concept and design by Ruben Pater.

The Drone Survival Guide

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Human-ities · Projects

UTA flight 772 Satellite Memorial in the middle of the Sahara

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On september 19th, 1989 UTA flight 772, scheduled to operate from the republic of congo to paris, was attacked and exploded over the Sahara desert, an international tragedy which resulted in the fatalities of all 170 people from 18 different nationalities on board. Eighteen years later, Les Familles de L’attentat du Dc-10 D’uta — an association of the victims’ families — resolved to collaborate in a monumental, on-site memorial for those deceased. A team of both relatives and local inhabitants journeyed to the remote crash site, settled along a barren stretch of the desert.

For its construction and realization, a significant circumstance was location. Wanting a memorial that could be visited and viewed forever, but limited by its inaccessible locale, the association set out to build a massive monument on the surface of the sand that could seen and accessed thorough the satellite view of google maps. 16°51′53″N 11°57′13″E are the coordinates of the commemoration, whose 200-foot diameter laid upon the expanse of the earth is clearly and fully visible from the sky. It is made up of large dark stones positioned in the outline of an airplane, fitted inside a massive compass. 170 broken mirrors are laid around the circumference, each representing one victim, while a plane wing stands upright, emerging from the sand and bearing a plaque with the names, ages, and country of origin of each person lost.

Text and Images (© Aviation Sans Frontières & Sahara Conservation Fund) via Designboom

Book-Text-Read-Zines · Performativity · Projects

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land Project: An online exhibit/performance project devised by Christopher Domig and Daniel Domig

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“The Waste Land”, an exhibit/performance project, is a collaboration between artist Daniel Domig and actor Christopher Domig. T.S. Eliot’s work has been an inspiration for both artists over the years in their individual disciplines. This current collaboration will create an experience that is both a fully realized exhibit during the day and a complete theatrical performance at night, occupying the same space.

Eliot’s “The Waste Land” lends itself ideally for this endeavor, as it was written as a poem (neither an actor’s script, nor an artist’s playground). It is precisely due to its poetic form that other disciplines have, and continue to approach it with the same degree of alienation and familiarity, a dynamic that has been the catalyst to new work ever since it was published in 1922.

“The Waste Land” will be exhibited and performed in a neutral space (neither the artist’s white box, nor the actor’s black box). The space will be large enough for visitors to walk among the installation during the day as well as move around the space during the performance. The ability to move freely throughout the experience mirrors the poem’s inherent fragmentation (a literary, artistic and theatrical device mainly familiar to us due to Eliot’s use of it in his poem)

Follow The Waste Land Project on Facebook and Tumblr.

Photographics · Projects

Matchboxes from the Subcontinent

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Matt Lee: “Walking around Bangalore city where I live, one comes across matchboxes everywhere. Cheap and disposable, they litter the highways and footpaths, often to be found scattered around any roadside chai stall or cigarette kiosk.

In my travels across India I have collected over 600 matchboxes. Each design has come to signify a personal memory. Collectively, the visible scars of the battered boxes tell a story, mapping the places I have been and the experiences I have had.

The visuals that adorn this ongoing collection include historical and religious iconography, Indian pop culture, appropriated western imagery, mundane objects, and various animals. As an outsider, the disparate juxtapositions created through this series of designs have come to encapsulate quite perfectly the heterogeneous and hybrid visual culture of modern India.”

A project by Matt Lee. See the whole collection THERE

Art/Aesthetics · Design · Projects

A Dolls’ House. 20 Starchitects and designers build a dolls’ house for KIDS

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20 of the world’s best architects and designers build a dolls’ house for KIDS, an organization working with disabled children, young people and their families. HERE is where you can find details on all of the dolls’ houses, the architects behind these unique creations and place your bid.

The online site will be frozen at 12pm on Monday 11th November and further bids taken only at the auction event that evening. Highest bidders will be invited to attend the event or offered the opportunity to make a proxy bid. For further clarification on the bidding process, please contact info@adollshouse.co.uk

AMODELS. Creative architectural model makers

ADJAYE ASSOCIATES. In collaboration with Base Models and artist Chris Ofili

DRMM. In collaboration with Richard Woods Studio and Grymsdyke Farm

ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS. Internationally renowned, award-winning architects

See more houses THERE

Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Projects · Technology · Videos

Copenhagen Suborbitals: DIY Space Exploration

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Copenhagen Suborbitals is a suborbital space endeavor, based entirely on private donators, sponsors and part time specialists

According to them: “Our mission is to launch human beings into space on privately build rockets and spacecrafts. The project is both open source and non-profit in order to inspire as many people as possible, and to involve relevant partners and their expertise. We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project. We are working full time to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles – designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft. The mission has a 100% peaceful purpose and is not in any way involved in carrying explosive, nuclear, biological and chemical payloads. We intend to share all our technical information as much as possible, within the laws of EU-export control.

They work in a 300 sqm storage building, called Horizontal Assembly Building (HAB), placed on an abandoned but yet historic shipyard in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The areas around HAB provides them with enough space to test their own rocket engines, and being situated close to the harbour of Copenhagen makes it easy for them to go into sea for our sea launch operation.

They have no administration or technical boards to approve our work, so they move very fast from idea to construction. Everything they build is tested until they believe it will do. Then they (attempt to) fly it!

Some of their main design drivers are:

– Keep as much work in-house as possible
– Choose mechanical solutions over electrical
– Use “ordinary” materials for cheaper and faster production
– Cut away (anything), instead of adding

Images and Text via Copenhagen Suborbitals

Architectonic · Art/Aesthetics · Projects · Public Space

Concrete Mushrooms

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“Concrete Mushrooms” is a project initiated as an idea for research by two Albanian graduate students at Politecnico di Milano, and the purpose was to emphasize the appreciable assets of Albania such as bunkers which are vast in number and across all the rich and beautiful landscape of Albania. Apart all the studies done about the history of Albania, the reason of building the bunkers all over the country, how the people of Albania nowadays coexists with them, how and why do they use them, it is also thought of how the remaining bunkers can last their lives without being totally disappeared and can become the icon of a paranoid past transformed to the symbol of a bright future of the landscape of Albania. Bunkers seem to be happy of being born and living in Albania, and above all proud to be Albanians. But in fact their happiness masks an enormous sorrow of the past which would be recovered by their contribution to Albania.

Any of the “tourists” interested in adventures and nature, can enjoy natural resources of Albania by passing their nights in local at the same mobile cheap hostels without being obliged to carry their camping tents.
Cheap hostel – that’s what the future function of the bunker could be having the same commodity anywhere in Albania, there is not just one, there are supposed to be around 750 000 bunkers in Albania.

The priority of “Concrete Mushrooms” project is facing the symbol of xenophobia (bunker) with deliberate awareness for the purpose of inverting its meaning, the preservation of the memoir of a significant period of the Albanian history, giving bunkers value instead of having them as burden and as a result the promotion of an underdeveloped touristic sector such as Eco-Tourism which has an enormous potential at the same time growing the financial viability, social and environmental sustainability.
The project aims to create an institutional support for initiating the first steps of realizing it, the designed website will be a significant tool for any information related to the bunkers, to the implantation of network of transformed bunkers, the possible itineraries around them and great possibility for hunting and recording the number of the rooms of this huge hostel already built in Albania.

Production by Elian Stefa & Gyler Mydyti. Text and Images via Concrete Mushrooms

Architectonic · Art/Aesthetics · Projects · Public Space · Social/Politics

Recover the Streets

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Recover the Streets arises from the need to interconnect different European projects that work with urban art in their respective cities; the need to offer artists the possibility of interacting with other European creators, of improving their visibility and finding new expression formulas; the need to boost urban art as a regenerator of new city visions; to create participative processes that bring culture, and in this specific case, urban art, closer to population sectors that do not normally participate in cultural events.

Recover the Streets is a collaboration project between five European cities that, using urban art as a tool and common language, purport to interconnect artists and cultural agents from all these cities, promoting the exchange of artistic and social experiences; recovering, in each one of them, a debased space by means of a collaborative process that engages the social agents of the neighbourhoods where the activity takes place, and providing citizens with a new perception of urban art and its ability to activate social and cultural dynamics.
A project that will last for 8 months, which has united a total of six cities from different parts of Europe, where institutions and cultural agents have committed to promoting urban art, thus offering an open and diverse collaboration framework which has already given rise to sporadic collaborations outside the programme, among some of the cultural agents involved:

• Zaragoza (Spain): Sociedad Municipal Zaragoza Cultural
• Besançon (France): Association Juste Ici
• Toulouse (France): Mairie de Toulouse
• Colonia (Germany): Association artmx e.V / Cityleaks Festival
• Zagreb (Croatia): Association Centralna Jedinica

Know more HERE

Blog-Sites · Projects · Public Space

Playgrounds For Everyone: A community-edited guide to accessible playgrounds

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Why Accessible Playgrounds?

Because kids in wheelchairs can’t play on playgrounds covered with wood chips. And children with muscular disabilities can fall out of swings that lack sides and backs. Or a child with vision or hearing problems can benefit from equipment specially designed for play alongside friends, siblings or any other child.

New federal requirements define playground accessibility as a civil right. And under those rules, playgrounds built or altered after March 14, 2012, are required to have wheelchair-friendly surfaces and equipment that helps kids with physical challenges move around.

You can Help HERE

Architectonic · Human-ities · Projects · Public Space · Social/Politics

The Informal City Dialogues

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The Informal City Dialogues is a year-long project supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and conducted by Forum for the Future. It homes in on six cities: Accra, Bangkok, Chennai, Lima, Manila and Nairobi. In each of these cities, it aims to foster a conversation about the informal urban realm, and how it can be cultivated and harnessed for the benefit of all.

These informal realms, from single-chair barbershops to nine-passenger vans to sprawling settlements, are propelling the explosive growth of the urban Global South. They are the neighborhoods, economies and systems that exist beyond the reach of government: the slums, black-market industries and undocumented businesses that fuel these cities’ growth. They’re split off from the formal city, and often neglected or harassed by local authorities.

And yet the informal aspects of these places are also intricately intertwined with the formal. Indeed, many residents have one foot in both worlds: the slum dweller who commutes to her job at a major hospital, the unlicensed microbus driver who lives in a condominium highrise.

Text and Images via The Informal City Dialogues

Performativity · Projects

Extreme Kidnapping: A company that offers a kidnapping service to those who want to know what it feels like

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Why on earth would someone pay hundreds of dollars to fly halfway across the country for the pleasure of being abducted by thugs, handcuffed in a basement for hours, and forced to pee into a Gatorade bottle?

“I was duct-taped to a chair in three separate places: at my ankles, my thighs, and my chest. There were two henchmen flanking me. Romeo, on my right, was a black guy in a ski mask and no shirt. His torso was larded with tattoos and tiny pockets of baby fat, as if he’d never picked up anything heavier than five pounds. To my left was a white dude named Cody, who sounded like every grown man named Cody.

In front of me was a table piled with assorted instruments of torture—a blowtorch, a drill, a stun gun—plus two glaring floodlights. Romeo had removed my blindfold temporarily so that I might have the privilege of staring directly into those floodlights. Behind the floodlights was nothing but darkness, and a voice.”

Excerpt from an article written by Drew Magary at GQ. Continue HERE

Extreme Kidnapping: Customers Pay to Be Abducted

Projects · Sonic/Musical

POSTCARDS | Entertainment for the braindead

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entertainment for the Braindead is a Berlin based one woman lofi orchestra. Since 2007 she has been writing and publishing songs, gathering guitars and banjos, ukuleles, flutes and other little items to accompany her voice in fragile arrangements.





Photographics · Projects · Social/Politics

Temporary Shelters by Henk Wildschut

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Close to the port of Calais there is an area encompassing a few hundred square metres that is known as ‘The Jungle’. The people occupying this area have travelled many miles to get there, and their journey is still not at an end. Calais is the departure point for the final and most desirable crossing. There are thousands of people from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, all in search of a better life in Britain, the destination of their dreams.

While they await the opportunity to make the great crossing, they build temporary shelters: tent-like structures made of waste material from the immediate surroundings of the camp. In the best cases, the cultural characteristics of the country of origin can barely be distinguished in these.

The way in which the primary requirements of life are manifested in such shelters forms the leitmotif of this documentary photography project, for which I travelled extensively to Calais, the south of Spain, Dunkirk, Malta, Patras and Rome. For me, the image of the shelter – wherever it is in Europe – became the symbol of the misery these refugees experience.

All photos and text by Henk Wildschut. See project HERE

Bio · Human-ities · Projects · Science · Technology

The Human Brain Project

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The Human Brain Project’s first goal is to build an integrated system of six ICT-based research platforms, providing neuroscientists, medical researchers and technology developers with access to highly innovative tools and services that can radically accelerate the pace of their research. These will include a Neuroinformatics Platform, that links to other international initiatives, bringing together data and knowledge from neuroscientists around the world and making it available to the scientific community; a Brain Simulation Platform, that integrates this information in unifying computer models, making it possible to identify missing data, and allowing in silico experiments, impossible in the lab; a High Performance Computing Platform that provides the interactive supercomputing technology neuroscientists need for data-intensive modeling and simulations; a Medical Informatics Platform that federates clinical data from around the world, providing researchers with new mathematical tools to search for biological signatures of disease; a Neuromorphic Computing Platform that makes it possible to translate brain models into a new class of hardware devices and to test their applications; a Neurorobotics Platform, allowing neuroscience and industry researchers to experiment with virtual robots controlled by brain models developed in the project. The platforms are all based on previous pioneering work by the partners and will be available for internal testing within eighteen months of the start of the project. Within thirty months, the platforms will be open for use by the community, receiving continuous upgrades to their capabilities, for the duration of the project.

The second goal of the project is to trigger and drive a global, collaborative effort that uses the platforms to address fundamental issues in future neuroscience, future medicine and future computing. A significant and steadily growing proportion of the budget will fund research by groups outside the original HBP Consortium, working on themes of their own choosing. Proposals for projects will be solicited through competitive calls for proposals and evaluated by independent peer review.

The end result will be not just a new understanding of the brain but transformational new ICT. As modern computers exploit ever-higher numbers of parallel computing elements, they face a power wall: power consumption rises with the number of processors, potentially to unsustainable levels. By contrast, the brain manages billions of processing units connected via kilometres of fibres and trillions of synapses, while consuming no more power than a light bulb. Understanding how it does this – the way it computes reliably with unreliable elements, the way the different elements of the brain communicate – can provide the key not only to a completely new category of hardware (Neuromorphic Computing Systems) but to a paradigm shift for computing as a whole, moving away from current models of “bit precise” computing towards new techniques that exploit the stochastic behaviour of simple, very fast, low-power computing devices embedded in intensely recursive architectures. The economic and industrial impact of such a shift is potentially enormous.

Text via The Human Brain Project

Architectonic · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Projects · RESPONSES · Technology

STORMPROOF: Open International Design Competition for Building Resilient Cities

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ONE Prize Award aims to explore the social, economic, and ecological possibilities of urban transformation. This year’s competition is set in the context of severe climate dynamism. How can cities adapt to the future challenges of extreme weather? The ONE Prize is a call to deploy sophisticated design to alleviate storm impact through various urban interventions such as: protective green spaces, barrier shorelines, alternative housing, waterproofing technology, and public space solutions. We wish to reinvigorate infrastructure and repurpose spaces towards environmental adaptation in order to put design in the service of the community.

The ONE Prize seeks architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds.

How can urban ecosystems be enhanced to prevent flooding?
What can restore Rockaway Beach social infrastructure and public space?
When can the New Orleans community change to accept storms without losing character?
What can protect Asian Coastal Cities against the unforeseen?
Where can shorelines be storm surge barriers as well as interactive zones?
How can storm proofing be seen as an opportunity to rethink the future of our cities?

The ONE Prize Award is an international competition and it is open to everyone from professional to students. The teams can have one or more members. The proposals can be for real or speculative projects, at one or more actual sites. Projects can be located either in the U.S. or abroad, but should be applicable to the U.S. Proposals need not be generated exclusively for this competition, provided that they address the intent of the competition.

PRIZES

Since 2010, One Prize has awarded over $40,000 in in prize money. We continue to promote all the winning projects and explore the possibilities of implementation in New York City and around the world.

1st place US $5000
2nd place US $2000
3rd place US $1000

Press coverage by One Prize media sponsors.
Presentation of Designs at Lectures and Exhibitions.
Prominent Year-Long Exposure on the Competition Website.

Early Registration by June 30, 2013
Registration and Submission by August 31, 2013

Text and Image via ONEPRIZE

Animalia · Eco/Adaptable · Photographics · Projects

Balsa de los Sapos by Peter Lipton

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“According to UNESCO, Ecuador has the world’s highest level of biodiversity based on it’s geographical size. In the Amazonian rainforest of this small South American country, more species of trees grow within one hectare (2,5 acres) than in the entire North American continent. Ecuador also boasts 460 species of amphibians, almost 9 percent of the world’s total.”

“One third of Ecuador’s amphibian species are endangered. This prompted the creation of a research and conservation program at the Catholic University of Quito in 2005. The program, named ‘Balsa de los sapos’, spanish for ‘Life raft of the frogs’, aims to collect, reproduce, and return endangered amphibians to their natural habitat.” — Peter Lipton

Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Performativity · Projects · Technology

IFOs: Identified Flying Objects

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A collection of IFOs (Identified Flying Objects) by Giesbert Nijhuis who after being paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury caused by a car accident designed his website using a head pointer, an on-screen keyboard and his Mac. Learn more about him HERE. According to him: “IFOs (Identified Flying Objects) have nothing to do with UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). My definition of an IFO: A disc shaped aerospace VTOL craft made by humans. It should have these flight characteristics: Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), hovering, and flight in any direction.” See more IFOs HERE

Similar to the XM-3, the XM-4 was also a small two-passenger saucer-shaped aircraft. Encouraged by his earlier success of the XM-2 and XM-3 construction of this model began in 1970. The XM-4 featured eight Fichtel-Sachs rotary engines which surrounded the passengers in a circular pattern and debuted in 1974.

The Vought-Zimmerman V-173 “Flying Flapjack” or “Flying Pancake” the Vought-Zimmerman V-173 designed for the USN in the 1940s. The V-173 also demonstrated poor low speed performance compared to other fighters of the time. Due to this, the role of the aircraft became a proposed VTO (Vertical Take Off) recon machine with the blades replaced by tilting rotors.

The Lippisch Aerodyne. Application: unmanned reconnaissance flight – land and ship-based. The craft is remotely radio-controlled. First flight: 18 september 1972. Experimental study of the Aerodyne principle on behalf of the Federal German Ministry of Defence. According to A.M. Lippisch, an Aerodyne is a wingless, unmanned vertical take-off aircraft. Testing of the Aerodyne E1 experimental unit was completed successfully on 30 November 1972. An Aerodyne combines lift and propulsion generation in a single structural unit, the inner flow channel, which is an annular wing with a fan. Without any change in its configuration, the Aerodyne is capable of stable flight through the full range from hover to maximum speed.

AVROCAR VZ-9AV. National Air and Space Museum. Avrocars ended up in the United States. The first remained at the NASA Ames facility after the project was cancelled. The second aircraft that flew the limited flight tests in Canada eventually arrived in Virginia at the U. S. Army’s Ft. Eustis Trans-portation Museum east of Richmond, Virginia. In April 1966, the U. S. Air Force contacted the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to say that the VZ-9AV at NASA Ames was available. In 1975, the National Air and Space Museum took possession of the first Avrocar, serial number 58-7055. The museum currently stores the aircraft at the Garber Restoration Facility at Silver Hill, Maryland.

Opération Alizé (2005-2008). A French lenticular dirigible by Pierre Balaskovic. A helium balloon rises due to the difference in the atmospheric pressure between its top and bottom. This buoyant force acts naturally on everything immersed in a fluid in a gravitational field, not just on lighter than air volumes. Also on your body, so your scale is not exactly right, you’re a bit heavier. An aircraft that flies on buoyant lift, must be huge and very light in order to gather enough upwards force. Some gasses are very light, lighter than air, like helium or hydrogen. Gas can be made even lighter per volume by heating it, expanding it.

GFS Projects Limited. Above: Geoff Hatton with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), a.k.a. Drones. If you take a piece of paper up to your lips and blow over the top the paper will lift. The reason for this is that the air velocity you create by blowing over the top creates a lower atmospheric pressure on the top than on the bottom, thereby creating lift. This is known as the ‘Coanda Effect’. By creating an air velocity in the center of the craft with the aid of a fan and then directing the air flow out of the outlet it will follow over the curved surface. The amount of lift generated is dependent upon the velocity, mass and density of the air.

All text and Images via Giesbert Nijhuis at LaesieWorks IFOs

Also on Wanderlustmind:

Unknown Fields, Roswell to Burning Man Festival
Burtynsky’s drone | Primary Landscapes: An Interview with Edward Burtynsky

Art/Aesthetics · Digital Media · Projects · Public Space · Technology

The OpenPositioningSystem: an approach of building an open navigation system run by people like you

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At the moment, we are bound to the americans military GPS and network companies. As we are using digital maps empowered with GPS, which are curated and therefor have impact on our navigation and experience of our environment, we also have to think about the given technology. The technology is closed at the moment and can be curated or shut down at any time.

This navigation system is open. Which means it is not run by companies nor control. The goal is to gather interested people on the web platform openps.org to develop the necessary software, hardware and testing processes. Anybody who is interested, from beginner to professionals can participate and contribute their knowledge to the community and this system.

To use given things in cities and reuse them for the projects needs is one aim of this project.

The idea is to use seismic frequencies, produced by generators in power plants, turbines in pumping stations or other large machines running in factories. These generators, machines etc. are producing seismic activity, distributed over the ground.

The sensor prototype can detect seismic waves on the ground, walls or anything with enough contact to the ground. At the current stage of this project the sensor can detect and collect different frequencies.

To calculate the noise in a city out of the received signals from the ground, the sensor has to be tuned into a specific frequency. To get a specific frequency from one machine, turbine etc. the sensor has to be as close as possible to the seismic source to receive a clean and strong signal at least once.

When at least three signals and their positions on a map are known, one can calculate the position within these three signals.

In this early stage, the project will still rely on GPS and maps. With the process of expanding the new network of seismic sources, it can be possible to build an own positioning system.

Text and Images via http://openps.info/

Architectonic · Art/Aesthetics · Blog-Sites · Book-Text-Read-Zines · Design · Projects · Social/Politics

What is the future of architecture?

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“The future of” is a participatory book project initiated by Crap is good which tries to provide an insight into the future role of architecture. Realizing the problematic nature of the simple question ‘What is the future of Architecture?’ we feel it is still somehow relevant in describing the architectural practice of today.

Every architectural attempt starts by making a representation of an imaginative situation or design, which will happen, or could happen in the future. In many cases an architectural design remains a future plan, and in times of economical and political crisis, the question of what comes next, gains relevance. So, while architects shape the future, this book is concerning about the future of architecture.

Architectonic · Blog-Sites · Performativity · Projects · Public Space

Awkward NYC: A Map of Awkward Social Interactions in Public Spaces

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Awkward_NYC, or The New York City Map of Awkward Social interactions in Public Spaces, is a collaborative online map for reporting social accidents and small interpersonal traumas that occur unexpectedly in public spaces. The map pinpoints sites in the New York Metropolitan area where misunderstandings, outbursts, physical altercations, arguments between friends or strangers, and romantic spats or break-ups have occurred. These mishaps are characteristic of the human urban experience– they’re unsettling, often comic, strangely powerful mini-narratives and dramas that would otherwise go untold, but may linger in memory for months and years, as we move through the same urban landscapes, day in and day out.

Anyone can add a story to the map; the project is fully web-based and participatory. The map taps into the confessional, voyeuristic, narrative impulses that typify online behavior and subverts the notion of mapping as reductive, objective, and authoritative. As stories are added to the map, a series of data visualizations depicting the emotional terrain of the city will be generated.

Text and Image via Awkward_NYC

Art/Aesthetics · Human-ities · Projects · Social/Politics

Artist statement, 2012 by Lenka Clayton from Artist Residency in Motherhood.

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Artist statement, 2012 by Lenka Clayton from Artist Residency in Motherhood.

Architectonic · Bio · Design · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Eco/Adaptable · Film/Video/New Media · Projects · Public Space · Technology · Videos

UNDER TOMORROWS SKY: Speculative visions of a future city

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Under Tomorrows Sky is a fictional, future city. Speculative architect Liam Young of the London based Tomorrows Thoughts Today has assembled a think tank of scientists, technologists, futurists, illustrators, science fiction authors and special effects artists to collectively develop this imaginary place, the landscapes that surround it and the stories it contains.

In online and live discussions held during the past months the think tank came together to design this future city and discuss the possibilities of emerging biologies and technologies. This time there are no dystopian visions of the future, we’ve seen enough of those. Under Tomorrows Sky imagines a post-capitalist urbanity full of optimism and joy, full of life and aspiration.

It is a city of extraordinary technology but at first glance appears indistinguishable from nature. It is an artificial reef that grows and decays and grows again as the city becomes a cyclic ecosystem. A city as a geological formation of caves and grottos covered by a thick layer of soil and slime, a biological soup of human and non-human inhabitants. The city and us are one, a symbiotic life form. The city grows and we grow with it. Together we form a giant complex organism of which ecology and technology are inseparable parts.

At this moment the phase of creation has begun. An intricately detailed miniature model of this future city will rise under tomorrows sky and come into being at MU in the upcoming weeks. Between August 10 and October 28 all involved with the creation of the model will develop a collection of fictions based in the city. The model will be the backdrop for animated films and a stage set for a collection of stories and illustrations. The audience will also be invited to contribute their own narratives to the city through a series of workshops. Under Tomorrows Sky will be the starting point of a new ecological urban vision. The city of the future is not of a fixed time or place but it will emerge through the help of many.

Text and Image via Under Tomorrows Sky

Animalia · Performativity · Photographics · Projects

Maddie the Coonhound on Things

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According to Amazon Books: Maddie is a sweet-tempered coonhound who accompanied her owner, Theron, on a yearlong, cross-country trip while he worked on a photojournalism project. In his spare time, Theron took photos of Maddie doing what she does best: standing on things. From bicycles to giant watermelons to horses to people, there really isn’t anything that Maddie won’t stand on with grace and patience. The poignant Instagram photos of this beautiful dog and her offbeat poses have captured the imagination of all those who long for a road trip with a good dog for company. Maddie on Things celebrates the strange talent of one special dog and will resonate with any dog lover who appreciates the quirky hearts (and extraordinary balance) of canines.

More photos at MADDIE THE COONHOUND

Art/Aesthetics · Design · Digital Media · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Eco/Adaptable · Education · Human-ities · Projects · Social/Politics · Technology

cyberGARDENS Summer School

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A Summer School focused on the future of food consumption, its new urban landscape, environments of novel culinary exploration, hybridization of traditional practices, rites and festivals with contemporary digital design technologies, prototyping protocols and bio-gardening techniques.

The teaching model of this Summer School is grounded on the experimental tradition of the Architectural Association and on the design philosophy of ecoLogicStudio, that will curate the event and co-run the design workshop. After setting up our Urban LAB in the SPAZIOFMGperl’architettura gallery [sponsored by Active], we will embark in a series of exploration trips and “gardening” experiments around the emergent bio-farming network of Milano Parco Sud, site to 2015World Expo; inspired by the achievements of the Slow Food movement, we will radicalize their efforts through the deliberate contamination of the traditional and the futuristic, the natural and the bioengineered. Our ambition with AA Italy ‘cyber-GARDENing the city’ is to enjoy 10 intense days within the country with the highest concentration of culinary traditions and learn new cutting edge design techniques to manifest the possibilities of a radical interpretation of such traditions as new global bio-lifestyles. The aspiring cyber-gardeners will be able to explore and invent new hybrid design practices by combining Applets design with distributed urban sensing and mapping, computational parametric design with hydroponic cultivation, and cutting edge digital animation with journalistic and critical narrative. These tree design clusters will be interfaced and interrelated during the workshop giving to all participants the opportunity to experiment with multiple techniques and challenge different aspects of the brief. This final outcome will be a single 1:1 prototypical space to be set up within the lobby of our urban LAB; a space embedded with biological life, sensing potential, ecosystem narrative and real-time social networking interface; a space for the discussion and re-definition of urban agricultural services and supply chain.

Text and Image via cyberGARDENS

Architectonic · Human-ities · Performativity · Projects · Public Space · Social/Politics

Understanding the Child-Scale in the City

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“The acquisition and use of environmental knowledge are key aspects of a child’s socialization and experiential data of this is important; we can collect and interpret it with a measured confidence because we are human ourselves.”

What is the child-scale? How can we begin to understand it? How can this experience inform building and design ideas and practice?

Play is intensely important. Start developing an idea of (non)designing for playing. The walk that this extract depicts brought forth ideas of grain/granularity of street surfaces (materials), balance and tracing (paths, curbs), humble events, routine/ritual, liquid (refreshment, ballistics, power)… for a start.

Text and Images from a-small-lab, a project by Chris Berthelsen. Based in Tokyo. Continue to project HERE

Performativity · Projects · Technology

How to Build a Flying Saucer

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At the end of the nineteenth century, the most distinguished scientists and engineers declared that no known combination of materials and locomotion could be assembled into a practical flying machine. Fifty years later another generation of distinguished scientists and engineers declared that it was technologically infeasible for a rocket ship to reach the moon. Nevertheless, men were getting off the ground and out into space even while these words were uttered.

In the last half of the twentieth century, when technology is advancing faster than reports can reach the public, it is fashionable to hold the pronouncements of yesterday’s experts to ridicule. But there is something anomalous about the consistency with which eminent authorities fail to recognize technological advances even while they are being made. You must bear in mind that these men are not given to making public pronouncements in haste; their conclusions are reached after exhaustive calculations and proofs, and they are better informed about their subject than anyone else alive. But by and large, revolutionary advances in technology do not contribute to the advantage of established experts, so they tend to believe that the challenge cannot possibly be realized.

Excerpt of “How to Build a Flying Saucer After So Many Amateurs Have Failed: An essay in Speculative Engineering” by T. B. P. Continue reading HERE

Recently declassified records from the Aeronautical Systems Division, USAF (RG 342 – Records of United States Air Force Commands, Activities, and Organizations) reveal some surprising, perhaps never-before-seen images.

Via Michael Rhodes at NDC Blog

The Avrocar S/N 58-7055 (marked AV-7055) on its rollout.

The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Aircraft Ltd. (Canada) as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War. The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single “turborotor” blowing exhaust out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft to provide anticipated VTOL-like performance. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer.

Originally designed as a fighter-like aircraft capable of very high speeds and altitudes, the project was repeatedly scaled back over time and the US Air Force eventually abandoned it. Development was then taken up by the US Army for a tactical combat aircraft requirement, a sort of high-performance helicopter. In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in September 1961.

Through the history of the program, the project was referred to by a number of different names. Avro referred to the efforts as Project Y, with individual vehicles known as Spade and Omega. Project Y-2 was later funded by the US Air Force, who referred to it as WS-606A, Project 1794 and Project Silver Bug. When the Army joined the efforts it took on its final name “Avrocar”, and the designation “VZ-9”, part of the US Army’s VTOL projects in the VZ series.

Text via Wiki. Continue reading HERE

Bio · Design · Games/Play · Projects · Public Space · Vital-Edible-Health

The Universal Tea Machine

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“Universal Tea Machine” is a gargantuan cross between a tea-making device, a primitive computer and a pinball machine. As tall as a giraffe, as long as a double-decker bus and as colourful as a fun fair, the UTM is a playful new way to engage with London’s rich and vibrant history.

The UTM is a computer that relies on teamwork and calculation to produce the perfect cup of tea. By pulling a sequence of handles, you release a series of balls from their caddies at the top of the UTM. Through a simple set of commands, engaging the binary calculation of an adding machine, you then instruct the making of your ideal cuppa.

Silly and serious, interactive and spectacular, modern and historic, calculating and fantastical, the UTM encourages kids of all ages – from 1 to 100 – to engage with London’s dynamic history of trade, calculation and tea-drinking.

Text and Images via The Bartlett School of Architecture

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Eco/Adaptable · Projects · Technology · Vital-Edible-Health

DON’T WORRY, DRIVE ON: Fossil Fools & Fracking Lies

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In recent months we’ve seen a spate of articles, reports, and op-eds claiming that peak oil is a worry of the past thanks to so-called “new technologies” that can tap massive amounts of previously inaccessible stores of “unconventional” oil. “Don’t worry, drive on,” we’re told.

But as Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg asks in this short video, what’s really new here? “What’s new is high oil prices and … the economy hates high oil prices.”

Via Post Carbon Institute

Animalia · Architectonic · Performativity · Projects · Sculpt/Install

SpiderFarm: Animal technology for human practice

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SpiderFarm: Innate creation, life coming into being by itself: this fascinates me, as it symbolizes the essence of creation in my view. As a designer I am always searching for new ways of producing things and question existing processes, as well as my own role.

In the spider factory nature’s perfect balance is reproduced. At the same time the system is intended to evoke a strong awareness of nature’s vulnerability.

The factory mimics the natural setting in which spiders live in the wild, recreating the essential aspects that allow them to prosper. In this setting – a factory as an imitation of nature to facilitate the production of spiders – the animals are stimulated to produce silk for human use. Eventually the system might create a material, and objects, with an as yet unrealized potential.

Text by Thomas Maincent

Architectonic · Art/Aesthetics · Design · Performativity · Projects · Social/Politics

The Grand Domestic Revolution

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The Grand Domestic Revolution (GDR) is an ongoing ‘living research’ project initiated by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht as a multi-faceted exploration of the domestic sphere to imagine new forms of living and working in common.

Inspired by US late nineteenth-century ‘material feminist’ movements that experimented with communal solutions to isolated domestic life and work, GDR involved artists, designers, domestic workers, architects, gardeners, activists and others to collaboratively experiment with and re-articulate the domestic sphere challenging traditional and contemporary divisions of private and public. Now GDR goes on, evolving in different scales and extensions, taken up and transformed in different cities, sites and neighborhoods by those who desire to carry on the GDR from their own home base or by those already engaged with it in their local languages and practices.

Text and Images via The Show Room