“Part of the research I did for that game is I went around to Alcatraz in San Francisco because I wanted to have a level where you break into a prison,” Chris Delay, one of Introversion’s co-founders said in an interview.
“I started working on how to simulate a prison and how it was going to work. It was then that it occurred to me that building a prison was quite good fun, and that it shouldn’t be, but it is.”
— business.financialpost.com
This film was shot in October last year when the Internet Archive celebrated a landmark --10 petabytes of stored media. Tour the space, which still looks more like a church than a library and see where millions of books are digitized and stored in a facility in Richmond, CA. — theatlantic.com
*This screed is awesomely entertaining and full of cool links, even though it’s almost entirely implausible..There’s also the occasional built-from-scratch Brasilia. So, some people might build a city like this in some central-planned, high-tech rush, before realizing that urban drones, bacteria, and 3DPrinters are fated to become as old-fashioned and pokey as swoopy, Space Age Brasilia is right now. - Bruce Sterling — Co.Exist. - Fast Company
As part of the Futurist Forum series, Chris Arkenberg composed some vignettes, suggestive of how urban architecture(s) could transform from than the rigid construction methodologies of today, the result being that "Architecture will lose its formal rigidity, softening and flexing and getting... View full entry
"OpenStreetMap is not about crowdsourcing, OpenStreetMap is about community collaboration. This is not you being a mindless crowd adding data to some big company’s map. This is about you putting in data in your own neighborhood, working with your neighbors, working with a larger community to refine and make a really cohesive map. That's the kind of experience that was so successful with Wikipedia." — Atlantic Cities
Get to know your world and not just the restaurants. Somewhat related: Constellations of Los Angeles View full entry
It's been a while since we rounded up our selections from Archinect's curated Kickstarter page... so here we go... STEAM Carnival by Two Bit CircusThe carnival reimagined with robots, fire, and lasers to inspire young inventors in science, technology, engineering, art, and math Siteseekr!... View full entry
Staples, the world’s largest office products company and second largest e-commerce company, today became the first major U.S. retailer to announce the availability of 3D printers. The Cube® 3D Printer from 3D Systems, a leading global provider of 3D content-to-print solutions, is immediately available on Staples.com for $1299.99 and will be available in a limited number of Staples stores by the end of June. — businesswire.com
The good folks at the Morpholio Project, who brought you the Trace iPad app, have launched their latest application which combines 7 new tools for presentation, collaboration, and critique. "The app re-imagines the portfolio as a design utility, moving it into the fast, flexible... View full entry
Some of the most densely populated cities across the globe are tackling population growth and food shortages by establishing more rooftop farms. Vertical farms are popping up on unused rooftops in cities across the globe and the outcome is extremely positive. — DesignBuild Source
It's easier to conceive of creating such schemes for an un-built structure on a computer screen. But as we try to re-purpose an aging building stock in our cities – not just treasured cathedrals, but also old offices and unremarkable apartments – we're going to need new ways of documenting and thinking about the buildings we already have. Historically, this has been a tedious process, but technology (albeit currently costly) means that we might be able to appraise an old building in hours. — theatlanticcities.com
In order to trim 300,000 square feet of construction costs from its budget, Apple has pushed the entire Tantau Development to Phase 2, which means it will be completed after the main campus is built.
Apple's revised campus plan includes the addition of an expanded section detailing bicycle access improvements, which comes with an included visualization of what bike pathways and sidewalks might look like on the campus.
— macrumors.com
Download all the revised plans from Cupertino.org View full entry
A new apartment complex in Hamburg, Germany, intends to generate heat, as well as revenue, from growing the micro-organism. The five-story Bio Intelligent Quotient (B.I.Q.) building, which was expected to become fully operational on Wednesday, has a high-tech facade that looks like a cross between a Mondrian painting and a terrarium but is actually a vertical algae farm. — nytimes.com
The LA Times reported that Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs for a $300-million film museum. Eric Chavkin concluded "A toy chest of architectures related only by location. From the Bruce Goff Japanese Pavilion to the black box Mies bookstore to Hugh Hardy's disco streamlined moderne to Luckmans sorry start. Renzo Piano's 'back-to-the-future cinema spheres just continues the trajectory"
In an essay titled UNEXPECTED COSTS ~ Big ticket design software versus alternate methodologies, Ann Lui a designer and freelance writer reflected on the fact that "Not twenty years ago, if you wanted to start your own firm, you could do so on a Mayline drafting board in your basement...Today, my... View full entry
Departing with the familiar tradition of producing a hefty physical volume, GSAPP offered its most recent Abstract in the form of an iPad app. In addition to (or on cover-like behalf of) this app, students received an object: It looks like a book, but turns out to be a book-shaped plastic box, and its contents consist of a URL, where the app can be downloaded. This object, as you can see, has not been universally embraced. — observatory.designobserver.com
AEC-APPS is the first Web-based library of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) applications built by and for digital tool users and toolmakers, who share a common interest in the evolution of innovative technologies. Conceived, designed, and maintained by Skidmore, Owings &... View full entry
Sources close to the project said Foster + Partners... is helping Apple on the retail store design brief. — marketingmagazine.co.uk
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson has reached out to us about an error in the cited article at Marketing Magazine... The Regent Street and Fifth Avenue Apple Store were not designed by Eight Inc., but by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. We also continue to have a very collaborative relationship with Apple... View full entry