Voromuro form Ofice DA

more from de GSD

“Voromuro, 2007.
created by Professor of Architecture Monica Ponce de Leon and Adjunct Professor Nader Tehrani and exhibited on Georges Island, is an intricate structure made with translucent acrylic installed in the elegant interior of the fort’s powder magazine"

I remember a work of Tehrani in 2001 at NY MOMA called "Fabricating Coincidences".
very inspiring.

Picon on Tech Thought

Alireza Razavi just sent me a couple of articles of Antoine Picon.

Since I am now doing a bit of historical research reframing industrial vs. digital thought, I found this one particularly helpful.

"Towards a History of Technological Thought"
(Article published in Robert Fox (éd.), Technological change. Methods and themes in the history of technology, London, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996, pp. 37-49)

Raphael Navot 2

Nuno,
Looking for a previous work of Navot I discovered this
which imidiatly brought to my mind something you were working on.
funny.

3d voronoi - patio

Here is what we ar doing now, for the Osuna project.
we are dividing the courtyard into smaller spatial cells and assigning a certain density of points to each one of them depending of certain parameters that have to do with the program requirement, light and privacy issues between the different uses that share the space.
then we run the scrip to generate a 3d voronoi, and finally we extract surfaces or volumes from that road map to generate each element needed in the space.
I will post the result of the patio in a week since we have to submit it.
and then you will see, but for now, here is the generic and previous exercise

c.

Voronoi on sdk

This is our first attempt to program the deformation of a voronoi subdivision on a sdk surface.
so far is only a double projection of a flat voronoi, but we are working on a script to be applied directly to any surface
Yimei, I though you would like this

Voronoi-skylight

First application of voronoi in the Osuna Project. we are creating a skylight. these are just some of the process work. I will post some more images soon, specially of the prototype we plan to built in a couple of weeks to control the lighting impact on the interior surface.
(w/ DeLab)
c.

Time, presence, absence: house-projects

The house-projects are time-based events that occur in public spaces, in which a group of builders slowly assemble and disassemble an amount of bricks (and the necessary scaffolds) in a period of ten days. They follow a plan of a whole building that is fully accomplished throughout the given period, yet only a part of it is actually built at a given moment. Interactions may occur with passers-by.
Time-lapsed photographs and videos document the process.

By Wolfgang Weileder.

Interactive open-air market

During an interval at the s.o.f. conference, someone showed this video of a good example of interactive architecture in Thailand.

networked dripping

Newsdrip will be an installation translating keywords and occurrences from online news into water droplets over a semi-drowned mapa-mundi. A beautiful example of how the conceptual and the aesthetic may be inseparable.

By Anneke Pettican and Spencer Roberts.
Other collaborative work involving Anneke can be found at www.brassart.org.uk

Future conflicts

FLC is a loose, collective practice based in Belgium that attempts to not only rethink the way a design/ architectural practice might act, but also its very ambit of intervention. They consider the arena of future conflicts (in an extended sense) as the realm of (spatial) negotiation. Great stuff, particulary the "bittersweet projectile" which Marc Godts presented at the s.o.f conference. They have their blog.

Bonus points if you can guess what FLC stands for.

Flowing from the north

Just got back from the "space of flows" conference at the Culture Lab/ Newcastle University.
It was a great event.
I was able to meet an impressive number of both clever, talented and kind people (a rare combination), and to learn a lot from them.
The Culture Lab in itself is already quite a one-of-a-kind institution, to keep an eye on in the future.
In the next posts, I'll try to describe and link to some of the work that I was able to see there.

electroactive polymers

This is fascinating: making an airship's surface contract and expand so as to enable it to "swim" through the atmosphere. These artificial muscles are made of polymers which deform when subjected to an electrical field.

Wikipedia entry for electroactive polymers

Dynamic terrain

A kind of low-brow, but interesting, version of the Hyposurface, this time to roll over:
DYTE, by Janis Pönisch

911 attack simulation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cddIgb1nGJ8

Wind Sculpture

Beautiful!

Watch this video!

Model homes built in 8 hours

http://www.livinghomes.net/viewStory.html?id=5

On agitation, turbulence, desire, architectural optimism and Constant's New Babylon

image: Constant Nieuwenhuis' New Babylon

The always bedazzling BLDBLG has been running some great interviews lately:
this one with Ole Bouman, and particularly this one with Mark Wigley are outstanding.
Wigley is, as always, a delight to read-hear, and it is worth checking the whole thing through, they even get to talk about Constant's New Babylon in the end.
But the best part of their conversation could be described as this: the major, real task of architects would be to invent new, unsolicited forms of optimism.

Color Shift

They are back, and this time is with "an urban-scaled art project made by inputting a continuous stream of alternating colors into the FreshDirect video billboard, the largest in the country."












by Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch, terraswarm

about control rooms

Super Versailles
from prunned
don't miss - any ideas come to mind for the e-palpit skin?

by the way, happy bithday to all of you.

Camouflaged octopus

An octopus changing the texture, patterns and coulours of its skin.
By the way, this blog is one year old.

Electronic poem

From 1958, Xénakis/ Varèse/ Le Corbusier's work poème electronique.

More scripting (and other stuff) links

Our links column surely needs an update:

Ruy/ Klein

cOdes

McNeel's RhinoScript Wiki

futurefeeder

Somewhere in Alentejo

A protective wrapping for hay or some other agricultural product ended up making this found-sculptural/ architectural-object, in a nice bucolic setting (eat your heart out, minimalists, Christo).

Wondering if they'll let us take a peek

Birds, amongst other animals, already see more than us puny simian mammals.
But, more and more, there are new entities glimpsing through the spectrum:
"Handheld device sees more colours than humans"

hacking google maps

This is a beautiful script that allows (at least allowed, I have not tried yet) to build large maps from google.
also in Noah Vawter (a huge gray area project)
he also has a beautiful master thesis at MIT that has just gotten some publicity on making music out of urban noise, you can check it out here.
I am thrill with the idea of being high on noise.
I wonder if you can also get a pair of glasses
that combination should be called the "i-pot"

New Scripting links

Find some new links on scripting. Smart geometry. A school named Stevens Insitute of Technology and this guy Axel Kilian at MIT.

The expanded classroom

Webcasts have still a long way to go, in terms of quality (sound, etc), access and availability.
But some are really worth it:

from the GSD website (via archinect), take, for instance, Jeff Kipnis, Keller Easterling, and many others;

from the EDA/UCLA archive, there's this Kwinter lecture, and a Marcos Novak one from a series led by Casey Reas, and an impressive list of many others;

and from the Tate archive, don't miss (again, among many others) this great one from Manuel De Landa: Nature Space Society.


Update:
from the MIT Museum, check the "Soap Box" series, from which I strongly recommend this one on energy: "The Role of New Technologies in a Sustainable Energy Economy". The first 20 minutes are a must - clear, informative, mind-boggling.

Gazprom City - St. Petersburg

Six internationally known architects have submitted their designs.



Herzog de Meuron



Rem Koolhaas



Libeskind

Urban Cactus

Urban Cactus is a housing project in the Vuurplaat section of Rotterdam by UCX Architects / Ben Huygen and Jasper Jaegers and done for Vestia Rotterdam Feijenoord/Estrade Projecten.

Geogreetings

Had this been posted before?? Just for fun!

Virtual Earth 3D

In addition to Photosynth that was posted earlier, Microsoft also launched online 3D mapping. Here is the article and the link to download. In commercial applications, there is something called Second Life which is a also total virtual world.

Giant robots

Interesting studio by Greg Lynn on aesthetic culture of robots to produce new forms of architectural spectacle. Watch this video.

Cecil Balmond's Architecture












An Engineering Magician, Then (Presto) He’s an Architect
NY Times interview

Photosynth

You might have heard of this already... Photosynth by Microsoft Live Labs. Watch this video. It would be interesting to see different applications into architecture.

Glass house with nanotechnology

In case you haven't noticed

This blog has been running in hybernation mode.

Let's see when spring arrives.

Telegraphic post of the week

For the love of _______ [insert your own deity here], go and check this great text by Stuart Kauffman and J. Lanier's wisecrack response to it.

More Kauffman here (this time on economics).
Update: forgot to add this other great text of his: "The Sciences of Complexity and 'Origins of Order'".

On one hand, on the other hand

"The Dichotomy of Design and Evolution" on The J Curve.

via the indefatigable Resarch. The dichotomy thing reminded me of this B. Steele article, that played around with the dichotomy/simmetry themes as well. And speaking of simmetry...

biovertigo

Where would you begin, if you wanted to set up a panorama of "bio everything" today?
Just merely attempting it is enough to make one dizzy...

Biomimetics (or bionics or even biomimicry or...) is fast becoming, or so it seems, an established field in its own right. It can also be understood as phenotropics. And what about synthetic biology? Check one of their wikis, for instance.

Is this going to affect material production, as we know and practice it, right away? Perhaps.

On nature and technique, part IX

It's the second time I refer to John Walker's site in this series, but "Seventh Industrial Revolution: Replicating Machines", part of a larger text and written back in 1990, is well worth checking out.

frontdesign - from sketches to life

interesting furniture designer's demonstration of sketching. watch this video.

KrazyDad

This guy is a programmer-artist and he has some fun projects to look at. The most impressive in his series is the Whitney music box and the color picker. The color picker also extends into a flickr series of mosaic images collection like this one and this one for halloween. More coverpops can be found here. His new book flikr hacks is on sale at amazon.

One more for the agenda

This year's edition of Art Futura doesn't have Theo Jansen or Usman Haque as it did last year.
But it is always an event worth experimenting, if you happen to be in Barcelona from the 26th to the 29th October.
This year, they bring us the infosthetics guy for a talk, they will show "A scanner darkly", and much, much more...

photovoltaic interlude, part IV

Little by little, more promising news regarding photovoltaics are appearing, such as breakthroughs in efficiency, and, hopefully more than just a P.R. move, Google going solar. (googleblog post here. these guys were involved)

The architecture of cloud computing

A single word invoking more than a thousand images: cloudware.
(this is only a nice article on the upcoming changes in computing/networks and the like. But the key word is just beautiful. it's also interesting to check how many times the word architecture is used)

Faraday's wave garden

Faraday's wave experiment,
from Pruned, by Alexander Trevi
must see the video.

Is better than the milk drop experiments

On nature and technique, part VIII

Everything Computes: an eminently readable essay by Peter Bentley. (there are many other good texts and relevant information in his site. He also authored and edited several books, such as this one)

Scalae Podcast Barcelona

An interview by Felix Arranz at the Scalae BCN podcast on Barcelona architecture.

Just some shockwave fun

In telegraphic mode, just a few promising toys (the respective sites are also worth checking): soundmap and doodle.

Container Home Kit

Interesting prefab by LOT-EK. Take a look at the video.

"Many, because orchids"

Half a century later, it is impressive how Reyner Banham's text "A Throw-away Aesthetic" is still one of the most important insights on design in our time.

there's something too perfect in the kingdom of denmark

Following on Yimei's post on Bruce Mau, it is adequate to check again the "Too perfect" project/exhibition he curated in 2004. This is described as a set of "pragmatic utopias" shaping possible futures for Denmark. With contributions by Mau's studio, and danish firms Arkitema, Kontrapunkt, NORD, SRL Arkitekter and (the irresistible) PLOT.

A bit of Pynchon

Regarding the previous post, some characters with a "Dr." prefix may come to mind (Frankestein, Octopus, the like), as well as distopian and technophobic themes and stories.
But things are never as simple as we would like them to be. Maybe this text (from 1984) by Thomas Pynchon is adequate for our meditations on these issues:
Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?

(file under obscure)

On nature and technique, part VII

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that the amount of news regarding experiments and research that blur the distinctions or frontiers between the organic and the technical is growing a lot lately.

Roland Piquepaille writes about the first "bionic woman"; researchers at Princeton and the University of Cambridge are developing a stretchable electronic skin; and researchers at Harvard are working on hybrid structures of neurons and nanowires.


(Quote from this article: "The neurons grew on the chip and made connections with the nanowires". And these are only a few examples.)

Bruce Mau

One hour interview about Massive Change on The Connection.

photovoltaic interlude, part III

"Solar Cells for Cheap" is a quite interesting interview with Michael Grätzel (from EPFL) on what might happen soon (next couple of years) in the realm of photovoltaic systems.

Algorithms at work

Some hands on algorithms for construction elements.
architectural finishes (column covers, walls and ceiling systemns) using AlgoRhythm technologies to efficiently bend sheets of metals into complex forms, by Haresh Lalvani (Pratt institute).

On dynamic arch

As always, just dropping the thing
here is an inspiring animation of the inner life of a cell

"Nuclei, proteins and lipids move with bug-like authority, slithering, gliding and twisting through 3D space"

On nature and technique, part VI

The theme of swarms deserves its own series around here (one of these days). But this project is too interesting to be left out of our current focus: Swarm-bots (pdf).
More info here.

(on a related note, I also like the shrimp)

NodeBox

No time really to post, sorry
I just found this site by chance and had no time to go thru
but it looks promising
http://research.nodebox.net/Index

Under 6,000,000 m3 of concrete

Pictured: Andrea Bassi, Fabian and some guy called Carlos.

All under this unique place.

Bliki

blog + wiki = bliki
I was thinking of the possible potential for a hybrid between these two apparently opposite approaches to web publishing when... I found it is well developed already.
Then I thought of PROTO.lab and the possibility of organising the class in a bliki format.

Belated thoughts on blogs and wikis by J. Tauber, the founder of Leonardo, a Python based bliki server

mapping some more

a new mapping tool, this time by recopilating global data to map through a wiki called MG dedicated to mapping globalization by Princeton University and University of Washington.

via WorldChanging, by Sarah Rich

On nature and technique, part V

Eugene Thacker is one of the few guides we may have when confronting the complex issues regarding what is usually called biotechnology, or, as he suggests, Biomedia.

His articles for C-Theory, such as "Biophilosophy for the 21st Century" are worth checking out, as well as the collective project "biotech hobbyist".

four letter words to shout in the tube

Nuno, don't get me started, I have so much to do!

following your link about the factbook, ... I think its worth of its own link
viz4all of University of Maryland
specially the works of Karsten Schmidt on 4 letter words in english and Tom Carden on london's tube traveling time.

kk's street use

Kevin Kelly has expanded his site with a new section: street use, in which are shown all kinds of unexpected of unintended modifications of machines, artifacts and technologies that occur a bit everywhere.

Pictured examples: an old school bus used for storing vegetables, and this airconditioner fan hack (we should have built a similar one in July).

talking about mapping

I hate to refer to the CIA in these pages but I found this document on world mapping to be quite surprising, if anything for being public (since 1975!!).
I have to see if they say where the nuclear weapons are hidden in irak.
It seems very useful information, I just can't bring myself to look at it as a inoffensive little book
CIA World Factbook

a large cabinet of curiosities

Many blogs are, to some extent, wunderkammers. But the closest I know to such a description is the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. The kind of site worth checking by the end of the day. For example, take this series on Pentecost Island land divers.

On nature and technique, part IV

An interesting interview with Daniel Dennett, by Hari Kunzru .

(warning: it will get more and more indigestible from this point onward. i'm so sorry)

On nature and technique, part III

"Recycling Recycling" by Mark Wigley.

(oldie but tremendously goodie. pdf version here)

On nature and technique, part II

"Revisiting The Natural Contract", by Michel Serres.

On nature and technique, part I

It's about time we start a series on this subject. Avoiding the typical cliches, prejudices and parochialisms that hinder a serious approach to the theme is difficult, but let's try...
(... this is going to be a long one...it would be great if it initiated a good discussion...)

"Computation, Memory, Nature, and Life" is a mind-boggling text by Autodesk founder John Walker, really, really worth reading.

worth (more than) a detour

Pictured: these stone quarries, definitely worth visiting (maybe this is too obvious for my catalan co-bloggers, but you never know)

SANAA Glass Pavilion, Ohio

What do you think about this plan? Does it look familiar?

integrated actions

interesting program at the university of berlin
hands on
a reference for protolab