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Video: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
A great video series on YouTube – featuring ‘The Social Life of Small urban Spaces’ videos (a companion to the book, or is that vice-versa) by William ‘Holly’ Whyte . The content is kind of late Mad Men era (OK it’s the 1970s, but one expects Don Draper to mosey through the shot looking dapper,…
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Urban Urinals
Well in defense of the scatological, peeing in urban areas (or other specific displays of a variety of bodily functions) is something of a way of life (often in the doorway of our downtown office). Portland has become another in a line of cities experimenting with public toilets in the inner city for use by…
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3 Dutch Megacities Map
Another fantastic post from Strange Maps, this time featuring the excerpt from Rem Koolhaas’ fabulous door-stop like book ‘S/M/L/XL’. In this case, “…a rumination on “Manhattanism” – i.e. the tendency of city centre densities to be taken to new heights, sometimes literally, in the form of an urban grid filled with skyscrapers. These three maps…
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Animal House
An interesting urban habitat from Inhabitat, “…Gitta Gschwendtner’s Animal Wall is for residents of all species in Cardiff Bay, UK. This 50-meter wall includes 1000 houses for birds and bats, and also acts as a textural and geometric sculptural divider between a residential development and a river front.” :: image via Inhabitat I’m not sure…
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Plants + VOCs
A recent, somewhat hyperbolic title from Treehugger, “Bad Green: Some Indoor Plants Release Volatile Organic Compounds” provides a snippet from some recent research that mention, gasp, that plants, particularly indoor ones, release volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It’s a strange conceptual notion indeed, as there has been much research and information on the ability of indoor…
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Off Grid 2.0: Healing the Damaged Edge
The ideas competition Off Grid 2.0, sponsored by the California Architecture Foundation, recently announced a slate of winning entries under the theme ‘Healing the Damaged Edge’. Definitely take some time to get into the full size PDFs as these thumbnails don’t give one the full picture, and there aren’t any project statements. A range of…
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More Fake Trees
And They’re Pretty Handy if we are Attacked by Giant Interstellar Swarms of Flies: :: image via InhabitatVia Inhabitat: “A report published last Thursday from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) suggested that a forest of 100,000 artificial “trees” could be “planted” near depleted oil and gas reserves to trap carbon in a filter and…
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Digital Exhaustion
It’s seems a little time off makes one introspective, or at the very least a bit nostalgic. Did you ever feel that impossible to scratch, lingering itch in the back of your mind? You know, the one that you can’t subsume, but says we’ve devolved from a culture that celebrates the built beauty and artistry…
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EcoCity Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany’s new planned EcoCity by TecArchitecture and Arup has received a lot of attention as of late… let’s take a look::: image via WAN Wind turbines… check. Green roofs and walls… check. Water and futuristic, semi-biomorphic building forms… check. Reuse of structures… check… Multiple green rating systems… check! Looks like an eco-city… Ok, I’m…
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Reading List: Andrea Cochran: Landscapes
I’ve had the book ‘Andrea Cochran: Landscapes’ for a while now, since Princeton Architecture Press (2009) sent me a copy. I’ve paged through it numerous times, but figured I’d get around to reading it at some point, at least formally, before putting the review together. Well, for a review I have to admit that I…