Decimated by manufacturing losses, some smaller cities are turning for help to an unlikely group of people: typeface designers. Can new fonts really breathe life into the postindustrial city? [...]
Type has a lot of effect on the atmosphere of a place, he says, calling it “the voice of the city”: “I think cities that don’t have this very dynamic energy, they don’t feel the need to change their identity.”
— theguardian.com
That’s a lot of accolades for one building, but the SHoP Architects-designed tower at 111 West 57th Street is looking to sweep the supertall competition. Originally planned to rise 1,397 feet, the tower will now soar to 1,421 feet, surpassing 432 Park Avenue (the current tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere) by 24 feet, according to city records uncovered by Crain’s. It will also retain its title as the world’s slenderest tower. — http://www.6sqft.com/
We went to Oamaru, New Zealand to see the blue penguins (and they were super cute), but it was the town's dedication to Steampunk that really got us fired up. — boingboing.net
Forget steampunk condos, New Zealand has it's own steampunk town. View full entry
"Textscape" by interdisciplinary artist and University of Hawaii at Manoa educator Hongtao Zhou is a visually engaging work of 3D text documents that nods to one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: printing. The letter-sized documents examine how the role of printing has shifted from... View full entry
Remember the memorable double sunset on the desert planet Tatooine in the original Star Wars? As it turns out, such a vista isn't unimaginable – if you can get to Kepler-16b, an exoplanet about 196 light years away. Of course, if you did get there, you might be disappointed to find that the... View full entry
China Merchants Group (CMG) has appointed Ole Bouman as Director of the Shekou Design Museum in Shenzhen, a project being developed in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) to become a major design hub for China. Bouman will take up his new role from the beginning of January... View full entry
Resembling the surrounding tree trunks in London's Hooke Park forest, the Callipod installation was created by a group of 18 students who participated in the AA School of Architecture's Summer DLAB::WHITE at AA London and AA Hooke Parke for nearly three weeks last summer. Students in the yearly... View full entry
Religious architecture is a typology where the traditional and the contemporary can easily clash, but it is possible to create harmony between the two, as seen in the Faith & Form/IFRAA Awards. The annual awards program not only showcases a glimpse of the wide range of religious architecture... View full entry
Technofuturism:Aftershock #4: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neuroscientific Architecture Research: Bringing the brain into evidence-based design, one EEG-measured dérive at a time. Reporting from the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture's conference in San Diego, California.Working... View full entry
Let's admit it, we architects much too often get lost in narcissistic own-horn-tooting, passionate ego-inflating, disillusioned navel-gazing, vile shit-flinging or simply in the mundane day-to-day operations for the paying clientele. But all is not completely lost thanks to the tireless work and... View full entry
Back in September, Archinect published INABA's winning entry for the first-ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition. Titled "New York Light," the public artwork was recently installed for the holidays and is now open to the public on...well, Flatiron Plaza.Project description from INABA:The... View full entry
A typical library can take years to build. But a new library kit, designed to travel to remote refugee camps or disaster zones, can come together in less than 20 minutes. The Ideas Box...fits the equivalent of a small-town library on two standard shipping pallets. It comes with books and e-readers, tablets, laptops, cameras and other creative tools... Since camps might not have internet access or power, it comes with its own. The boxes that hold all of the devices convert into tables and chairs. — FastCoExist
"The latest proposal for the aging Astrodome calls for converting the structure into an indoor park and civic space, including an indoor grassy lawn and an outdoor promenade lined with oak trees. An Urban Land Institute panel, comprised of urban planners, economists and designers from around the country, released its preliminary recommendations Friday at the NRG Center." — Houston Chronicle
The mortar resists microcracking through in situ crystallization of platy strätlingite, a durable calcium-alumino-silicate mineral that reinforces interfacial zones and the cementitious matrix. The dense intergrowths of the platy crystals obstruct crack propagation and preserve cohesion at the micron scale, which in turn enables the concrete to maintain its chemical resilience and structural integrity in a seismically active environment at the millennial scale. — Berkeley Lab
Choi + Shine Architects, who envisioned the beautiful Land of Giants in 2010, developed a new lighting system called the BIT Light™. BIT's name is primarily derived from the Korean word for light (빛) which is somewhat pronounced like "bit" in English. It also stands for Bulb with Integrated... View full entry