Archinect - News

AERIAL FUTURES release a new video exploring integration of airports and cities

2018-06-27T14:28:00-04:00

AERIAL FUTURES, a non-profit think tank exploring innovation in the architecture of flight, have created a new film titled Urban Constellations looking at the relationship between a city and its airports. Using NYC as a case study, this video asks how fragmented pieces of infrastructure can be reimagined more holistically, in order to simultaneously improve air travel and urban life.

The film features experts who discuss the challenges and opportunities for the future of NYC’s aerial infrastructure, drawing on the New York think tank’s focus on urban design and digital interfaces.

The next public AERIAL FUTURES event will take place on Thursday, July 19 at the Denver Art Museum. This edition, entitled Constructed Landscapes, will ask how airports influence the future of mobility and transportation.

Flyover Moscow with aerial photography of the city's architectural icons

2017-08-23T09:00:00-04:00

In a scene from Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams' character, the English teacher John Keating, famously climbs on top his desk to remind himself, and his students, that "we must look at things in a different way. The world looks very different from up here." Thanks to satellite and drone technology, we can now take Williams' advice quite literally by looking at the world from up above.

Sadovye Kvartaly Residential Complex

Using a remote-controlled drone, the photographer Denis Esakov has done just that by capturing the amazing "fifth facades" of Moscow's architecture. Photographing over seventy buildings throughout Europe's largest metropolis, Esakov flies over the city to reveal previously unseen geometries of the city's greatest architectural icons. The new vantage point exposes intriguing compositions that spark a re-evaluation of the works themselves and a query into the hidden symbolism behind the plans that up until now, have remained the secret of the architects and their c...

Watch a meditative and breathtaking aerial survey of the L.A. River

2017-01-05T14:26:00-05:00

Only one thing is certain now that Frank Gehry has undertaken the plan to revitalize the LA River: in the future, it will be different.

Check out Archinect's extensive coverage of the LA River Redevelopment, including interviews with major players like Mia Lehrer via the Next Up series...

This elegant aerial video by Chang Kim captures the current state of the concrete-channeled river, offering not only a meditative journey over freeway overpasses, opportunistic scrub brush and litter-choked rivulets, but a lush historic record of what this city's main water artery was, whatever it may eventually become. With a spare piano soundtrack composed by Nils Frahm, the video comes in at just under five minutes:

Pop quiz, hot shot: identify these world cities from above

2015-10-05T17:58:00-04:00

We’ve stripped out the street names and lost the labels – but can you still recognise the cities from their aerial views?

This exercise in aerial recognition comes in quiz form, where the viewer must guess the city pictured in a monochrome-treated satellite image of an urban grid. Identifying some cities is far easier than others – the quiz will tell you how your response stacks up against others'.

Get a drone's eye view of Foster + Partners' Masdar City in Abu Dhabi

2015-02-27T22:00:00-05:00

UK/Dubai-based media company Electric Lime Productions recently released a film for the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi called "The Arcology", defined as "a vision of architectural design principles for very densely populated habitats (hyperstructures)"

The short video below is a highlight from a student recruitment film, showing off beautiful aerial shots of Foster + Partners' solar-powered Masdar City and its desert landscape -- all captured by drone.

Bright nights at TED2014 Vancouver with Chrome-powered aerial sculpture

2014-03-19T17:47:00-04:00

Donning a spectrum of colors and moving beams of light, the "Unnumbered Sparks" installation comes to life every night as it hovers near the site of the 30th anniversary TED2014 world conference in downtown Vancouver, Canada.

Artist Janet Echelman and director of the Google Data Art Group Aaron Koblin -- who both spoke at TED2011 -- collaborated in designing the aerial sculpture just in time for TED2014. Echelman officially introduced the work earlier this week at the conference.

The 745-foot net, which is powered by Google Chrome and other modern web technologies, can be choreographed by visitors using their smartphones or tablets to "paint" the sculpture in real time.

Visitors in the area will be able to interact with Unnumbered Sparks every night until Saturday, March 22.

Check out the video below to see the creative process behind the piece.