What if you only had to buy one piece of furniture to make your tiny apartment abundantly livable?
CityHome, a new project from MIT Media Lab’s Changing Places group, promises to make that fantasy a reality. The highly transformable device, loaded with built-in sensors, motors, and LED lights, promises to make a 200 sq.ft. apartment feel three times larger.
— citylab.com
What do cooking and mixology have to do with architecture? Can food and drink, as prototyped and iterative objects, help us better understand architectural design? The AA Visiting School is traveling to San Juan, Puerto Rico this summer for “Play With Your Food”, to tackle these questions and... View full entry
It was an artistic collaboration delayed by some 25 years: The London architect Zaha Hadid responded as much to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as she did to “Così Fan Tutte” when she designed her undulating all-white set for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Mozart’s opera this week (it closes on Saturday). “We were responding to the context, to Frank’s design,” Ms. Hadid said in a telephone interview from London. — nytimes.com
I saw him a week ago [Tuesday], and he was sitting at his desk going through some of the thousands of letters and notes that people have sent to him wishing him well. He just had this incredible spirit about him, this attitude that everything was going to be all right. He was amazing.” — Artinfo
Massimo Vignelli, the award-winning designer whose influential signature minimalist style balanced architecture and graphic design in the later half of the 20th century, has died at the age of 83 after a long-term illness. Born in Milan on Jan. 10, 1931 and inspired by Mies van der Rohe and Le... View full entry
Architects, designers and scientists have joined forces to explore the technologies needed to build a spacecraft that could be launched within the next 100 years and sustain human life for generations.
Early designs for the ship envisage a giant 15km-wide ball filled with soil that will support complex ecosystems of microbes, plants and animal life. Rather than building homes on top of the soil, humans will live within, carving out rooms in a network of connected burrows.
— theguardian.com
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
"An eyewitness said the fire appeared to have started in the basement of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in Renfrew Street just before 12:30.
Smoke is billowing from the main windows, which are cracking, and through the attic studios.
Smoke is also drifting across the M8. Police have cordoned off Renfrew Street.
Four fire appliances are at the scene.
Firefighters were seen pouring water on the building from a high ladder as flames blew windows out."
— BBC UK
breaking story - hoping it's not as bad as it looks... View full entry
A major insurance company is suing Chicago-area municipal governments saying they knew of the risks posed by climate change and should have been better prepared. The class-action lawsuits raise the question of who is liable for the costs of global warming. [...]
“What the insurers are saying is: ‘We’re in the business of covering unforeseen risks... But we’re now at a point with the science where climate change is now a foreseeable risk.’”
— washingtonpost.com
The Korea pavilion has been a part of the Venice Architecture Biennale since 1993, when the optimism of the post-Berlin Wall era made reunification between North and South Korea seem plausible. But getting equal representation from both Northern and Southern architects in 2014 has proved nearly... View full entry
It's all in the details with BIG + KILO's newly launched "BIG Cities" tableware collection. The longtime Danish collaborators worked with major porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal to craft the table set for the company's TAC collection. The collection was first developed in the 1960s and includes... View full entry
As fossil fuels become more expensive and the number of urban dwellers continues to rise, urban farming will help feed the population without increasing the cost and pollution of food transport. [...]
The rise in rooftop farming isn't limited to commercial operations. "Rooftop farming and gardening has become extremely diverse, and in that sense a more 'normal' presence in cities"
— news.nationalgeographic.com
Ikea, the home furnishings store of choice for college dorms and bachelor pads around the world, is creating a new museum that is expected to open in the fall of 2015. The company will turn its first store in Älmhult, Sweden into a museum that will provide visitors with a survey of its history. — latimes.com
Last week, the Van Alen Institute hosted an interdisciplinary event relating brain activity, new technology and our response to the built environment. The event included a tech demo of brain computer interfaces and a conversation involving architects, neuroscientists, psychologists and... View full entry
Imagine what [living in a tiny house] might mean when it's time to bring a date back to your place for the first time. Or even worse, moving in together. Will you remain devoted to your extra-small space when you decide to get a dog? Have kids? And so on. [...]
Turns out, dating and cohabitating and raising a family in 120 to 400 square-foot spaces can be done. It just comes with a unique set of challenges and best-practices at each milestone.
— citylab.com
