Mongolia is to launch one of the world's biggest ice-making experiments later this month in an attempt to combat the adverse affects of global warming and the urban heat island effect.
The geoengineering trial, that is being funded by the Ulan Bator government, aims to "store" freezing winter temperatures in a giant block of ice that will help to cool and water the city as it slowly melts during the summer.
— guardian.co.uk
One winning project and two runners-up have recently been announced at the 2011 edition of the James Dyson Awards, an international student design award running in 18 countries. The first prize went to the entry 'AirDrop Irrigation' from Australia. Two top awards went to the design concepts 'Blindspot' from Singapore and 'KwickScreen' from the UK. — bustler.net
As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores. — newyorker.com
“There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and... View full entry
It’s like a body brace with a backpack and gizmos that resemble shotguns near the knees. A physical therapist operates a remote control that makes the patient step when their body is properly aligned. — nydailynews.com
... the next wave of mobile applications do more than that—they collect massive amounts of data about how people live, where they travel and what they want to see in their neighborhoods. And they connect all of that with the officials in position to make decisions.
Apps, in other words, offer potential solutions for two of the trickiest parts of the urban planner's job: sharing data and engaging citizens.
— theatlanticcities.com
Wojcicki said the new campus — three adjacent buildings including Frank Gehry-designed Binoculars Building — would also help Google attract candidates from area colleges and universities... The company's focus on Web search is evoked by the iconic binocular sculpture at the site, created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. — latimes.com
It turns out that Job’s masterful use of modern design could have been incubated by growing up in a home which was built by the father of the California modernist movement, Joseph Eichler. The idea is not too far fetched - in Walter Issicason's biography on the design pioneer, Jobs admits "that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market". —
From Inhabitat View full entry
Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm. — charlotteobserver.com
“The best clients, to my mind, don’t say that whatever you do is fine,” Mr. Bohlin said last week, a few days after Mr. Jobs’s death. “They’re intertwined in the process. When I look back, it’s hard to remember who had what thought when. That’s the best, most satisfying work, whether a large building or a house.” — nytimes.com
Oh, look, Bohlin Cywinski is hiring. View full entry
Countless academic studies have argued that studying design at school can be hugely beneficial, even for students who have no intention of becoming professional designers, because it builds their confidence by teaching them communication, planning and visualization skills, which will be useful in any field. Yet relatively few students in America’s cash-strapped public school system are given the chance to study design, or art, especially in deprived areas like Bertie County — New York Times
Cities are very complex, and what the best designers illustrate is how to give form to sometimes very simple ideas. Good design involves bringing not just a fresh eye to problems but, most of all, listening to the people who live in those communities. We’re talking about a billion people living in informal settlements today — New York Times
The venerable rapper, who helped usher hip-hop into the pop mainstream in the early '90s, has rolled out a search engine he hopes will outperform Google, Bing and other established tools. — edition.cnn.com
Gehry Technologies (GT), a global leader in applying technology to building industry challenges, today announced that Co-founder and Chairman, Frank Gehry, has brought together the world's most distinguished architects and designers to form a strategic alliance furthering his vision to transform the building industry and the practice of design. As part of today's announcement, this core group of renowned architects will also serve on Gehry Technologies' board of advisors. — gehrytechnologies.com
Besides Frank Gehry himself, initial alliance and board members include: Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid Architects ), Greg Lynn, Moshe Safdie, Ben van Berkel (UNStudio), Wolf D. Prix (COOP HIMMELB(L)AU), David Rockwell (Rockwell Group), David Childs (SOM), Matthias Schuler... View full entry
Anthony J. Lumsden, a prolific Southern California architect who helped develop new ways of wrapping buildings in smooth glass skins, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles. eric chavkin shared a personal memory “I remember Tony Lumsden. He taught 5th year studio at SCI-Arc , the time between Cesar Pelli and Alberto Bertolli...Lumsden's after work crits started from later afternoon and lasted to evening , always over-sketching on flimsy. A roll a night. One student after another.”
Sherin Wing, takes A Macro Look at Unemployment and the Economy. In the piece she examines what the architecture profession can do in the face of high unemploymentand the current macro economic conditions. Most importantly, she believes “First, they must stop simply... View full entry
Some robots are being trained to do digital design work now. The design-savvy robots in question are part of Southern California Institute of Architecture's (SCI-Arc) Robot House and they're around for the repetitive and extremely detailed movements that human artists find tedious or impossible. So your life of quiet painterly desperation and locavore vegan cocktails is safe for the time being. — blogs.laweekly.com
Here's some info about the Robot House, from SCI-Arc's website. View full entry