Basque Health HQ by Coll-Barreu Architects

edgargonzalez.com has a photo filled post about the new headquarters of the Basque Health Department in Bilbao, Spain that was designed by Coll-Barreu Architects.

Bonneville Salt Flats Rest Stop Shelter

The first in an occasional series of unexpected monuments - Bonneville salt flats is famous for its salty flatness - hence the name - and its predictable weather....making it a prime choice for land speed record attempts and possibly chip consumption.... A striking mid-century modern form at the rest area next to the (also striking) salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. This is one of those historically significant public designs, like those of the WPA, that remains uncredited, and often unappreciated, by today’s administrators.

source

2012 the year the internet ends...

Source: Power.ning.com

Editors Note: I was tipped to this article and have talked with several others in trying to confirm its legitimacy. It has over 11,000 diggs and it seems legit.

Update:Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.

Dylan Pattyn *, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and is interviewing a marketing representative from TELUS who confirms the story and states that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren't in the subscription package for mobile Internet access. They could not confirm whether it would happen in 2012 because both stated it may actually happen sooner (as early as 2010). Interviews with these sources, more confirmation from other sources and more in-depth information on the issue is set to be published in Time Magazine soon.

What can we do?

The reason why we're releasing this information is because we believe we can stop it. More awareness means more mainstream media shedding light on it, more political interest and more pressure on the ISP's to keep the Internet an open free space. We started this social network as a platform for Internet activism where we can join forces, share ideas and organize any form of protest that may have an impact. If we want to make a difference in this, we have to join together and stand united as one powerful voice against it.

Join the movement.

Don't let the Internet evolve to this!

Now I don't know if I'm scared or merely covetous...

Apparently, in another robotic development, Berkeley Bionics in the United States is already working on its second generation exoskeleton suit for hikers, emergency/rescue personnel and military. The company originally showed off their exoskeleton back in 2005 and has steadily improved the design. Like the HAL, the contraption consists of leg braces, a 1.2 lbs battery and a microcomputer. There’s also a back frame for military style rucksacks. More on both here

Domo arigato Mr Roboto

I want one of these...

palintology

'nuff said...

Liz on TED

worth keeping an eye on ted.com...

new kwinter book for any architectural technophiles out there...

Far from Equilibrium

Essays on Technology and Design Culture

Sanford Kwinter

Sanford Kwinter ponders the complex encounters between technology, culture, and architecture. Critical essays offer an extended meditation on infrastructure, war, computation, mechanical and material intelligence, and other multivariate facets of modernity. Far-reaching in scope, Far from Equilibrium amounts to a performance in writing of what Kwinter describes as radical anamnesis: “the imagination's escape from the sterile logic of what is.” Compiling over a decade of architectural and critical writings, many published here for the first time, Far From Equilibrium is essential reading for anyone interested in the state of architecture and criticism today. A primer for (re)thinking design in the 21st century.

Is Architecture one of the Creative Industries?

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3106849&origin=BDweeklydigest

An interesting debate, worth posting a comment on the site above, I did, would you agree/disagree?

"Its people like Mr. Kenealy that make this profession so dull and restrained, subsiding it to merely tactics and trouble shooting! If it wasn’t for the creative individuals in this field that strive to "reinvent the wheel" we would still be living in 'thatched cottages’... Architecture is an art, beauty and intellectual thinking. It is very much related to the creative industries where it is cross informed by all the other subjects like fashion, ceramics, fine art, interiors, digital design, product design, modelmaking.....It is a social profession that is at the heart of society that listens and responds and not one that governs and dictates!"

Ted

Explosive Car Ballet...

This is quite amazing, changing something quite horrific into something almost beautiful?!...

"Artist Cai Guo-Qiang has achieved the impossible. His installation Inopportune, featured at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts presents a virtual ballet of individual cars as they twist, revolve and flip in sequence making their way through the motions of a car crash. Long transparent rods radiate from the car, pulsing with dazzling multi coloured light as the vehicles appear in stop motion. Suspended from the ceiling with transparent cables the vehicles takes us through the contorted journey of an experience we would otherwise not want. Described as as "an explosive moment“ expanded in time and space as if in a dream Cai Guo-Qiang's work is dramatic, severe and frighteningly beautiful."


It's a 2006 project if you wanted to have a look but there's also some other interesting stuff on the website...

LINK:
http://www.caiguoqiang.com/shell.php?sid=2

To Travel Somewhere

To Travel Somewhere was made as a result of an artists placement at Adobe/Macromedia in San Francisco.

The aim of the placement was to explore ways in which mobile technology intersects with social experience.

I began this project by asking people I met on the streets to direct me to their favourite place. I followed their directions documenting the route in image and video on my mobile phone. This material was later loaded onto the project web site and positioned on a map using GPS co-ordinates.

The project took place in three cities - San Francisco, USA, Cambridge, UK and Helsinki, FI. All cities synonymous with the development of mobile technology

I was directed to swimming pools, cafés, parks, rooftops, harbours, rivers, museums, markets, bars. I met other people on the way, took detours, got lost, but usually found the right place in the end.

On the web site a kind of psycho-geography or alternative portrait of the city is created as we discover places through the memories of others.

Julie Myers

the 17

link

art&architecture

'Art & Architecture is an independent association providing a public forum for cross-discipline debate.

Celebrating twenty-five years, Art & Architecture (A&A) has been influencing the role of art, design and building, ever since its inception at a landmark ICA conference in 1982. To date A&A has presented over 200 lectures and numerous events, a considerable achievement for a voluntary group.

Applying the principal of art practice at the forefront of innovation, A&A promotes the collective approach as the vehicle to a better public domain. Rallying and empowering practitioners it advocates joined-up thinking between architects, engineers, planners, artists and academics to meet new challenges, such as a low carbon society and "restorative" ecological design.

In order to achieve the desired levels of quality and influence the future of the built environment the aim is to stimulate a lively and open debate through its open talks programme'

has a useful links section to various journals and foundations > see blogroll >>>

Metro Zones

metrozones is a really interesting Berlin imprint. the website has some selected essays translated into English.

link

Visual Complexity

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

do your own thing?????

here's an archive of GLASPAPER, a publication produced by a deign co-operative I was part of. (established by a group of us who studied together in Diploma School). If it proved anything it was just how easy it is to get something done yourself!


GLASPAPER link

what if?

WHAT IF: projects Ltd builds upon what‘s happening on the ground. We consider the qualities of existing conditions that may begin to unlock resources that reduce dependency, enabling people to find new ways of doing, thinking and relating in response to everyday issues.
We make small adjustments to our environment which have the potential to influence locally, city wide and beyond.

link

MAde - Digital Ekistics MA now recruiting

On Monday, the MA digital ekistics: new online virtual settlements was validated for the maximum 5 year term. The course, the first of its kind, will provide a route by which students can conduct advanced design-based research into how architecture and urbanism can respond to these novel and increasingly pervasive electronic spaces. Should be fun....kind of drl in space, really...
link

RepRap

JJ showed me this the other day - I want one - we should get one- in fact everybody needs one, imho....RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the left - a self-replicating machine. RepRap will make plastic, ceramic, or metal parts, and is itself made from plastic parts, so it will be able to make copies of itself. It is a three-axis robot that moves several material extruders. These extruders produce fine filaments of their working material with a paste-like consistency. Conductors can be intermixed with the plastic to form electronic circuits - in 3D even!

linkerator

light relief?

Iso Truss

The three-dimensional, yet relatively simple geometry of IsoTruss® grid structure provides substantial resistance to local and global column buckling, while lending itself to cost effective fabrication using batch or automated continuous manufacturing techniques. IsoTruss extrapolates the traditional 2-D triangle based truss to a 3-D truss made up of pyramids formed by isosceles triangles.

The IsoTruss® can support axial tension or compression, torsion, or flexure (bending) loads, or any combination thereof. Each individual member carries primarily axial loads, taking full advantage of the inherent strength and stiffness of continuous fiber-reinforced composites. IsoTruss structures are particularly effective when replacing structures that were stability-critical designs.

link

The Acorn Pig

Art and Agriculture
landscape vision and natural animal keeping

The engagement of art with ecological questions is more old than 40 years. Since 1990 Insa Winkler did approach segments of this voluminous theme, special the keeping, the destroying and the repairing of the landscape - Moor, Chernobyl Zone, Military Zone, Wadden Sea and then the mass production of agriculture in the focus of the Acorn Pig and their species appropriate in the landscape.

`The domestic animal of human being incur into the machinery of the European agar industry. As an object of this intensive factory farming it becomes the danger of the landscape.´

loink

another huge dutch housing block

From BD - The Parkrand building, designed by MVRDV and interior designer Richard Hutten, is one of the key projects in what is being branded a “metamorphosis”. Situated between a park and a residential neighbourhood set for demolition, the 135m-long, 12-storey building dominates its surroundings through its sheer size. With 223 dwellings, 193 of which are at the higher end of the rental market, the Parkrand building introduces a type of tenant to the north-western periphery of Amsterdam West who had been virtually absent in the social housing units it replaces.

linkoid

Skydiving in the lift shaft?

Japan opens 'tallest lift tower'

The tower will be used to test new lift technologies

Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has opened what it says is the world's tallest elevator testing tower.

The 173m-high (567ft) structure is called Solae and dominates the skyline of Inazawa City.

The company says it will use the tower to conduct research into high-speed elevators to serve the next generation of super-tall buildings.

linka

MURVEGETAL

I know some of you are aware of this guy- but maybe not everyone is - so here you go!
Using a system that allows plants to grow without any soil, The Vertical Garden by Patrick Blanc allows for natural living beauty in the otherwise most uninhabitable of places: the very walls of buildings, indoors or out. Watering and fertilization are automatic, so it's almost completely hassle free. Patrick Blanc has created customized living walls all over the world.
linkeroo

Bdonline's alternative architecture awards for 2007

In case you missed them - check out this lot of shrinking violets - I'm sure you are aching to join them - I particularly admire the island in the shape of Russia - mad as a brush and rightly receiving the 'god complex' award

linkoid