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Posts Tagged ‘Invisible’

Invisible Bicycles: Tokyo’s High-Tech Underground Bike Parking

26 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

undergound bike copy

Sufficiently advanced science has been said to look like magic, like this subterranean cycle storage system – except in this case images and videos give you a peak at the secret workings below the surface.

amazing bike parking

On the space-starved streets of Tokyo, every bit of spare square footage counts, making the city’s investment in this complex-seeming solution a sensible way to tackle bike storage and theft.

underground bike storage system

underground bike parking system

Users simply walk their bike up, input a card or code, and let the machinery do the rest. The bikes are then taken underground, sorted and stored in a cylindrical shaft until needed, then available at a moment’s notice – bikers can be back on their rides faster than a valet at a fancy hotel could bring a car around.

underground car park variant

The Eco Cycle Anti-Seismic Underground Bicycle Park was designed and built by the engineers of Giken Seisakusho and can store up to 800 bicycles at a time. Its creators have also developed similar system designs that would work the same way but with cars.

underground japanese bicycle park

underground cycle storage solution

The real wonder is not that it already exists in Japan, however, but that it has not been imported to other countries. There could be issues with water tables in certain cities, but the solution could also potentially be adapted to spaces like abandoned subway stations that already exist in others.

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Invisible Barn: Mirrored Surfaces Create Camouflaged Folly

23 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

 

invisible structure windows reflections

Like a mirage on the horizon, the structure seems to shimmer into and out of existence, playing tricks on the eye with a combination of see-through portals and reflective surfaces.

invisible barn at night

Designed for the 2014 Folly Competition held by The Architecture League, the idea was to slip something into an existing park context that would draw attention and generate interaction.

invisible architecture mylar plywood

Deceptively, the building itself is nearly two-dimensional, adding another element of camouflage depending on the angle of view or direction of approach. Unlike its more solid cousin the invisible cabin, the result in this case could really catch you by surprise, but is still probably less dangerous to walk into by accident than a mirrored fence.

invisible mirrored architectural concept

One of the self-imposed problems its designers sought to solve revolved around the question of year-round engagement – how to make something that changed and was worth revisiting from one season to the next.

invisible building site plan

From the design brief: This mirror-finished folly is placed in the middle of the grove and reflects its surrounding environment: different species of trees and plants, sky, ground and the seasonal changes of the site. The reflection of the folly within its enclosed grove allows the structure to smoothly assimilate into the nature.”

invisible design concept drawing

“The incisions that penetrate through the folly allow visitors to maneuver in, out, and around the structure. Invisible Barn is a folly that loses its man-made architectural presence in nature but adds novel experience and interaction to the users.””

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Invisible Borders: Mirrored Picket Fence Blurs the Lines

06 Mar

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Mirrored Fence Illusion 1

Mirrors typically represent a way of facing reality, but depending on where they’re placed, they can bend it to the point of surreality instead. Take, for example, this invisible fence, a striking illusion installed at the Storm King Arts Center by artist Alyson Shotz. Driving past it, you likely wouldn’t even notice it was there, though your eye might be caught by unusual glimmers – tricks of the light.

Mirrored Fence Illusion 2

Mirrored Fence Illusion 3

‘Mirror Fence’ is exactly as the title suggests; a reflective barrier in the shape of a picket fence that’s almost perfectly camouflaged in its environment. The illusion is so effective that you could probably walk right up to it, only realizing that the barrier exists when the reflection of your own legs comes into view.

Mirrored Picket Fence Illusion 4

Mirrored Picket Fence Illusion 5

Though her portfolio reflects a diverse range of shapes and media, Shotz unifies her work with a common aim to “give form to the invisible forces of nature.” Many focus on light itself, such as a sculptural examination of the dual nature of light (as it bears characteristics of both a particle and a wave) entitled Geometry of Light, and a digital animation called ‘Fluid State’ that captures an ocean of reflective spheres over a dawn-to-dusk cycle.

Mirror House Illusion

The installation calls to mind another recent project, ‘Lucid Stead’ by Phillip K Smith III, wherein an abandoned home in the desert was fitted with mirrors that make up doors, windows and long horizontal siding to create the illusion of ghostly floating wood.

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Invisible Cities: Tweets and Photos as Terrain on a Map

20 Feb

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

Invisible Cities Data Visualization 1

What would it look like if you could actually see all of the tweets and Instagram photos from a Beyonce concert in New York City hovering above the skyline in physical form? A project called ‘Invisible Cities’ answers that question with an interactive map that displays geocoded activity from various online services in real time with individual nodes appearing anytime a message or image is posted.

Invisible Cities Data Visualization 2

Using a Leap Motion controller and various hand gestures, the user navigates a three-dimensional data landscape, with all of that information literally at their fingertips. As data is aggregated, the landscape of the city changes, with new hills and valleys representing areas where social networking is the most and least active.

Invisible Cities Data Visualization 3

Invisible Cities Data Visualization 4

The individual nodes seen on the maps are connected by narrative threads based on themes emerging from the information as it comes streaming in. So, those tweets from the Beyonce concert look a bit like a stream of smoke rising out of Barclays Center in Brooklyn as users exclaim, “Jay Z and Beyonce on stage together right now OMG!”

Invisible Cities Data Visualization 5

Take a look through Central Park and you’ll see Instagram posts of people running, walking their dogs or having a picnic. Version 1.0 is now available for the Leap Motion Controller and can be downloaded for free on Airspace. The creators, Christian Marc Schmidt and Liangjie Xia, say “Through an immersive, three-dimensional information landscape, the piece creates a parallel experience to the physical environment, one of intersections, discovery, and memory.”

 

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Windowless House of Glass: Solid Walls Hide Invisible Floors

05 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

glass house modernist china

In a surreal reversal of modern architectural convention, this Vertical Glass House trades a tradition of solid horizontals and clear verticals for an opaque shell and see-through walking surfaces.

glass house exterior view

glass house vertical view

The design by Atelier FCJZ draws on Modernism’s celebration of materials like concrete, glass and steel, but subverts them at the same time via a 90-degree twist. The result is a surprising inverse of celebrated Modernist residences, textbook-making works like Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House or Phillip Johnson’s Glass House.

glass house stairs door

glass house seated meditation

Despite its strategic departures, the unique home is still intended in a Modernist spirit – its simplicity is just turned inward, meant to engender and focus internal reflection. Set as it is in Shanghai, and designed by a Chinese firm, one could also argue it is an Eastern interpretation of a primarily Western movement.

glass house on river

glass house bedroom bath

The building was originally designed for a competition just over two decades ago, but recently realized as an actual structure thanks to the West Bund Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art, which has made it a permanent pavilion and opened it to guest artists and architects in residence.

glass concrete home original drawings

glass house bathroom living

From the designers: “Vertical Glass House is a urban housing prototype and discusses the notion of transparency in verticality while serving as a critic of Modernist transparency in horizontality or a glass house that always opens to landscape and provides no privacy.”

glass house plan section

glass house living kitchen

“With enclosed walls and transparent floors as well as roof, the house opens to the sky and the earth, positions the inhabitant right in the middle, and creates a place for meditation. Vertical transparency [also] visually connects all the utilities, ductworks, furniture pieces on different levels, as well as the staircase, into a [comprehensible] system of domesticity.”

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Invisible Tree: Trunk Wrapped & Camouflaged to Float on Air

10 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

invisible tree painting process

A simple illusion with so much potential – wrap an object, paint the wrapping plastic and presto, a central section appears to disappear before your eyes.

invisble tree floating effect

In the the case of this collaboration between street artists Daniel Siering and Mario Shu, it would seem the trick only works from one perspective. Still, in a consistent landscape, the effect could work in potentially all directions.

invisible tree wrap illusion

The only problem one might worry about in the case of this roadside attraction is the impact on surprised drivers doing a double-take as they pass by.

invisible tree art installation

invisible tree material wrapping

Working in a similar vein, another artistic duo (Joakim Kaminsky and Maria Poll) installed Clear Cut in the Medelpad, Sweden.

invisble tree forest series

They circled trees with mirrored material to create a less-consistent but still-impressive and (in this instance) fully-circular effect.

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Half Invisible: Deserted Desert Cabin Remixed with Mirrors

05 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

see through cabin

Unlike a mirage on the horizon, this quaint little abode is entirely real, even if it seems to half-disappear through alternating wood and (seemingly) see-through slats.

see through

A project by Phillip K Smith III (images by Stephen King Photography and Lance Gerber), Lucid Stead modifies an existing abandoned home shape that is straightforward and familiar.

see through night light

Through its materials, however, the artist makes the building interact with the landscape in mind-bending ways, reflecting its surroundings via long horizontal siding and framed rectangular (faux) windows that slowly light up at night. The effect is a strange partial vanishing of the structure.

see through house art

Of the work, the artist writes: “Lucid Stead is about tapping into the quiet and the pace of change of the desert. When you slow down and align yourself with the desert, the project begins to unfold before you. It reveals that it is about light and shadow, reflected light, projected light, and change.”

see through day stars

From the portfolio page: “Composed of mirror, LED lighting, custom built electronic equipment and Arduino programming amalgamated with a preexisting structure, this architectural intervention, at first, seems alien in context to the bleak landscape.  In daylight the 70 year old homesteader shack, that serves as the armature of the piece, reflects and refracts the surrounding terrain like a mirage or an hallucination. As the sun tucks behind the mountains, slowly shifting, geometric color fields emerge until they hover in the desolate darkness.” 

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Stunning images of things invisible to the naked eye

01 Nov

Entry_25002_Egmond_Chaetoceros_debilis.jpg

A close up of a corkscrew-shaped plankton, a look into a weaver spider’s abdomen, and a microscopic view of a mouse’s spine are among the winners of this year’s Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Dutch photographer Wim van Egmond took top prize for his Chaetoceros debilis (marine diatom) image. See gallery

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Invisible Skyway: Urban Optical Illusions Conceal & Distort

30 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

illusion artist bridge

New Zealand artist, illusionist and urbanist Mark Hewson has a good many tricks up his sleeve involving spatial deception, convincing citizens there is less (or more) to their city than can ordinarily be seen.

illusion fake sky bridge

His first trick in this series: disguising an ordinary street-crossing skyway from a series of key vantage points. But even from alternate angles where the lines do not sync up, the effect is dizzying. Our pattern-seeking brains keep looking for transparency or reflection where there is just a solid painting.

optical urban illusion art

Other illusions in his repertoire involve mirroring or warping unseen elements behind solid surfaces or sheets of material. Again, this toying with voids and our structural expectations induces odd forms of visual vertigo.

optical trick magic photois

In previous projects, like the Lost Space Installation, he has worked with gaps and openings, filling them in with imaginary scenes that range from plausible to impossible. While these may be more obviously fake on the surface, they create a nonetheless potent sense of spatial distortion and disorientation.

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99% Invisible: 7 Episodes of the Best Radio Show on Design

24 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

roman mars 99 invisible

There is no witty wordplay nor shocking truth in our title today, but that is quite by design – we simply did not want risk underselling Roman Mars, the maker of a radio show that covers architecture, design and cities at a level more than sufficiently clever to speak for itself. Below, we will share with you a hand-selected set of some of the most fascinating episodes 99% Invisible has aired to date. If you like what you hear, be sure to support the program on Kickstarter.

roman mars radio show

Roman Mars, host of 99% Invisible and Progam Director of Public Radio Remix from PRX, crafts artful stories that reveal hidden realities in the built environments around us and celebrate secret histories of seemingly ordinary spaces. Roman has 450,000 listeners on SoundCloud and has won praise from the likes of This American Life and RadioLab – two programs that this author has regularly compared to 99% Invisible (“It’s like RadioLab for design geeks”).

suburban cul de sac

Today, from the lawless metropolis of Kowloon Walled City to the tame suburbs of the American cul-de-sac and beyond, we invite you to explore a series of compelling stories from this stellar radio show, with more links and information at the end of this article.

 Kowloon Walled City – Den of Iniquity [Episode 66]

Kowloon Walled City, covered previously on WebUrbanist, was a lawless metropolis – a strange no-mans-land between (then) British Hong Kong and mainland China. “By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.” Even with pictures, it is almost impossible to visualize – but listen to the above tale and it starts to come alive the same way a fictional city rises from the pages of a book.

Cul-De-Sac – Symbol of Suburbia [Episode 29]

The cul-de-sac once represented the American Dream, but has in the minds of many turned from a utopian ideal to a dystopian symbol of dead-end suburban life.  “When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time, they’re actually critiquing the suburbs more generally. The cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs– like if suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of a cul-de-sac on it. Cul-de-sacs by definition aren’t well connected to other streets and they are far away town centers. For little kids, cul-de-sacs can be great, but they do have some real, quantifiable design flaws.” In the episode above, Roman and a guest explore the back and forth, exploring the evolution and alternating emphasis on urbanization and suburbanization, and changes in regulation that first allowed and are are now destroying these strange street layouts.

In and Out of LOVE – Skating in the Park [Episode 71]

Skateboarding enjoys a dubious reputation in most cities – some places are set aside for skateboarders in some cases, but many of the best impromptu skate parks (at least: from the perspective of skaters) are those that are forbidden. “Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable. But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding. As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world–even though skateboarding was officially banned there.” Even if you hate having a skateboarder whip by you on the sidewalk, you may find yourself softening to their perspective as you listen to this episode.

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99 Invisible 7 Episodes Of The Best Radio Show On Design

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