In just a few minutes I was hooked. . . The photos and video were stunning. By assuming unusual vantage points, the drone allowed me to “see” so much more of my surroundings than usual.
[The view] would have otherwise been impossible without the use of a private plane, helicopter, or balloon. With any of those vehicles, I would have needed a telephoto lens, and all of them would have made an unacceptable commotion on the beach. What’s more, I would not have been in the photos!
— Martha Stewart
Purveyor of all things "Good", Martha Stewart has added her two color-coded cents to the debate on drones in a nearly gleeful op-ed for TIME magazine. Titled "Why I Love My Drone", Stewart gushes about her new "useful tool" and marvels at how large-scale planning projects like Chateau de... View full entry
English photographer Rebecca Litchfield braved radiation and KGB-style interrogation techniques to capture the beauty of this bygone era in a series called Soviet Ghosts.
Her work took her to schools, hospitals, factories, and accidentally, a top secret radar installation. “Many of the abandoned buildings are pretty unknown to the public, they are hidden behind tall fences and gates, I think it is easy to just pass without knowing what is inside,” says Litchfield.
— wired.com
In the heart of downtown Aspen, Colorado, the new Aspen Art Museum already has a busy itinerary of festivities — from an award ceremony to the official ribbon-cutting this past weekend -- even before its public opening this Saturday, August 9. Surrounded by Aspen's mountainous landscape, the new 33,000 sq.ft building designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban includes a rooftop sculpture garden and 17,500 square feet of new exhibition space. — bustler.net
Check out some recent photos of the new building:Plenty more details on Bustler. View full entry
In the past decade we have seen an explosion of honors and awards for the most innovative and forward thinking solutions. Yet no one recognizes the projects that have caused harm to the environment - designs that are helping shorten our existence on this planet. This is why we created the DEAD prize. Let's recognize the bad, honor the failures and hopefully do something to rectify these designs against humanity. — The Dead Prize
The Dead Prize may be the first ever anti-prize in architecture. Launched by Cameron Sinclair, the Executive Director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation and co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, Dead Prize opened its nominations today for architecture that has caused remarkable environmental harm... View full entry
...University of Washington engineers have designed a new communication system that uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices. Called Wi-Fi backscatter, this technology is the first that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure. — ScienceDaily
In the past decade, some data scientists have looked to science to understand history, borrowing tools from disciplines such as ecology and statistics to answer questions like when (and how) Rome ceded its throne as Europe's cultural capital to Paris. The new study is part of this trend: It offers an extremely detailed look at the cultural movements of the past 2,000 years, pointing to a new data-driven way to conduct historical research and map the migration of people over time. — National Geographic
The study utilized historical figures, chiefly because records of the poor simply weren't taken in the past. It includes several interesting finds. In particular, the more intelligent individuals in rural areas have consistently migrated to cities and stayed there. In other words, it is no... View full entry
The recent "TALL DC: New Monumentalism" exhibition took a critical approach to how outdated urban building standards -- specifically in D.C. -- can affect the built environment and the field of architecture, even as social demands and technology progress. Graduate students of Emerging Technologies and Media at The Catholic University of America proposed three skyscrapers among D.C.'s historical monuments to further encourage the questioning of this notion and the definition of "a monument". — bustler.net
More photos and other details on Bustler. View full entry
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration and Technologies Corp. plans to build the world’s first commercial launchpad near Brownsville in South Texas [...]
The state is providing $2.3 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund to bring an estimated 300 jobs to the launch site, which will bring about $85 million of capital investment into the economy [...]
In the region near the proposed launch site, at Boca Chica Beach in the state’s southernmost tip, two of five residents live in poverty.
— businessweek.com
While the civil war in Syria has killed tens of thousands of people, it has also destroyed countless of the country's ancient treasures. Now a number of Syrians are trying to save what artifacts they can -- and are risking their lives to do so. — spiegel.de
Previously View full entry
Friday, August 1 Gas Pipelines Explode in Taiwan City Killing 24: The cause of the propene pipeline explosion is still unknown, but officials noticed irregularities in the pipe's flow hours beforehand, without investigating further.Jacko's Neverland Ranch is up for sale at $50-75M: Michael... View full entry
But, with all this push to quantize and characterize, there are dangers. Cities clearly are more than a new kind of physics problem. They are also creations of the human imagination and, as such, they live or die by the quality of the imagination we bring to them.
Thats why no discussion of the health of cities can be complete without thinking about the role of art — public art.
— npr.org
Frank Gehry once said that if we didn’t have starchitects, architects (and architecture) wouldn’t be in the media at all. But this kind of coverage, even when positive, we don’t need. It perpetuates a Howard Roarkian image that makes most of us architects cringe — not the least because of the uber-capitalist, Ayn Rand alignment — and also deflates a more productive optimism within the profession that sees these arrogant acts as old school. — mobile.nytimes.com
The 2,700 acre property in Santa Barbara, California, was bought by Jackson in 1988 at the height of his fame, a place where the pop legend was reputed to have found sanctuary and happiness away from the illness and controversy that plagued his adult life. [...]
In 2008, heavily in debt, Jackson was forced to hand over ownership rights to Tom Barrack's Colony Capital and since then, as well as paying off $23million of unpaid debt, the company has coughed up $5million per year just in upkeep
— dazeddigital.com
Outline plans for the project were approved by the North Devon Council this week. The village will officially be known by the surprisingly prosaic name Southern Extension, and will include shops, a primary school, a sports pitch and woodlands. [...]
The project will include 75 affordable homes, and will be built over the next 10 to 15 years. Renderings show an extremely typical suburban town filled with identical houses and strolling pedestrians.
— nextcity.org
Hirst is collaborating with the Architects Rundell Associates, who have yet to complete such a large scale project. Related news from the world's richest living artist:Artist Damien Hirst's eco-homes vision to regenerate town is unveiledDamien Hirst's London art space due to open next spring View full entry
With so many crossovers in private operations, public data, and private uses, our future transit agency would blur the line between public and private sectors in a way we haven’t yet pioneered. The challenge is one of governance, bureaucratic turf, organizational development, planning, and public policy, not simply one of technology. Technology is just a tool, and our human institutions can either make use of it or try to ignore it. — urbanomnibus.net