Creativity « 360Photography

RSS

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Absolut Brilliance: Vodka Shipping Containers to Workspaces

08 Aug

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

absolut containers 1

Four bright blue shipping containers formerly used to transport Absolut vodka have become ‘Creative Space,’ a versatile series of workspaces at the company’s headquarters in Åhus, Sweden. Recent architectural grads Astrid Skog and Charlotte Stuveback stacked the crates and transformed them into working environments supporting a wide range of creative processes. The structure was used for Absolut’s ‘Hackathon,’ a three-day event exploring ways to creatively repurpose materials like glass vodka bottles and otherwise reduce the company’s environmental footprint.

absolut containers 2

absolut containers 3

absolut containers 5

The shipping container workspaces consist of four distinct areas: the bar, the distillery, the workshop and the bottlery. The bar offers a place to relax, drink coffee, read magazines and talk to fellow designers. The distillery is a brainstorming space, and the bottlery encourages experimentation with ideas in early phases. Finally, the workshop is where these ideas are made into real products and concepts. One of the coolest projects that came out of Hackathon is a DIY sound system set into Absolut bottles and hung from the ceiling.

absolut containers 6

absolut containers 7

The spaces are full of their own impressive hacks, including a bunch of suspended vodka bottle lights and reuse of cardboard bottle sleeves as horizontal organizers within wall shelves. There are slide-out work surfaces with sawhorse-style legs and rolling crates full of tools tucked under tables. Now that the event is over, Absolut plans to ship the Creative Space crates to a new location so they can be used for innovation again.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Back From the Future: Working Hoverboard Surfs Water & Rails

07 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

hoverboard over water

Pro skaters pull tricks on (and beyond) the pavement on this real-life hoverboard – at a distance, one might mistake their rides for normal skateboards, except for the steam from liquid nitrogen cooling superconductors to negative 320 degrees. Completing the futuristic scene, hovering drone cameras can be seen floating into and out of view, capturing wide-angle views and close-up shots of the gravity-defying skateboarders in action.

hoverboard park

Developed by Lexus, getting the hang of this electromagnetic contraption is still not trivial, even for professionals, as many falls and bails illustrate in the video above. Considering the challenge of relearning a fundamentally difference set of balancing variables, though, these skaters do quite well for themselves, even managing a few rail slides and to coast across a body of water.

hoverboard lexus

hoverboard bowl

The device does, however, come with a significant catch: like other similar inventions, it relies on a metallic subsurface to function – the depiction of this scene as taking place a typical skateboard is alas somewhat misleading.

hoverboard pavement

hoverboard jump

Out in the real world, there are limited environments where one might actually make this work. That being said, infrastructure changes, and should this take off as a recreational sport, new parks could be designed around these devices as well. At the very least, this one is a few steps past the Hendo in terms of technological compactness, robustness, stability and, of course, an outdoor demo to get people excited.

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Snow Cover: Subterranean Museum Pierces Alpine Mountain Peak

06 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

mountain museum overhang

Buried within a mountaintop nearly 7,500 feet above sea level, this remarkable semi-subterranean mountaineering museum, designed for a unique client – the first man to scale Everest without oxygen.

mountain peak museum

musem picture windows

Designed by Zaha Hadid (images by Werner Huthmacher), the Messner Mountain Museum Corones refers to Reinhold Messner. Located atop Mount Kronplatz in Italy, it is the first in a series of planned mountaintop museums, each designed to create a sense of journey and adventure for its visitors.

mountain view out

In this case, one arrives from the side then continues below the surface before emerging to discover a dazzling view of the surrounding landscapes and peaks, framed by huge windows or enjoyed from a balcony jutting over the edge.

museum curved forms

museum interior design

As one travels through the building, the focus shifts from artifacts and exhibits within the museum back to the outdoor world that inspired this famous climber to become the first to ascend all fourteen of the world’s tallest peaks. The signature curves of Hadid’s work guide one through narrowing and widening spaces, slopes and steps, each shaping the experience.

mountaintop museum plan

From the architects: “A composition of fluid, interconnected volumes, the 1000 sq. m. MMM Corones design is carved within the mountain and informed by the geology and topography of its context. A sharp glass canopy, like a fragment of glacial ice, rises from the rock to mark and protect the museum’s entrance”

mountaintop museum

Without further landscaping, it is hard to say whether the building in reality reflects the mountain-piercing concept, but a freshly-constructed work of architecture is rarely finished until more greenery (and maybe in this case some additional dirt) comes back into play.

museum from above

mountain museum balcony

More from Messner on the museum itself: “On Kronplatz I present the development of modern mountaineering and 250 years of progress with regard to the equipment. I speak of triumphs and tragedies on the world’s most famous peaks – the Matterhorn, Cerro Torre, K2 – and shed light on alpinism with the help of relics, thoughts, works of art, and by reflecting the outside mountain backcloth in the interior of MMM Corones.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Amazing Modern Maze: Dystopian Steel Labyrinth Installation

06 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

modern mine 1

This steel labyrinth looks like something left behind after the production of a dystopian film, its irregular grid of steel rising and falling onto the concrete surface outside Belgium’s C-mine art center. Designed by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, the maze is an immersive experience in what the artist sees as architecture in its essential form: “a composition of walls that define spaces.” Made of 186 tons of metal, the installation features vertical surfaces towering over 49 feet in the air to properly disorient visitors.

modern mine 3

modern maze 7

modern maze 8

modern mine 2

Entering the maze, you pass through a series of geometric doorways cut into the steel, including a sphere, a cylinder and a cone. Depending on where you are in the maze, these cut-outs might offer a tiny glimpse of what’s on the other side of a wall, or open to reveal a succession of similar cut-outs passing all the way through the installation.

modern maze 5

modern maze 6

The steel, and how it is cut and arranged, offers a unique architectural visual that changes according to your perspective, shifting from abstract lines into distinct geometries and sometimes creating optical illusions that make you uncertain whether you’re looking at a two-dimensional or three-dimensional surface.

modern maze 9

modern maze 10

modern mine 4

A nearby installation of antique mine shafts offers a different way to experience the maze: from above. You can pass through it as an active participant, and then view it as a whole, taking in its complexities from a more detached bird’s eye view.

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Flip, Stack, Connect: 13 Highly Customizable Furniture Designs

05 Aug

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

customizable facile sofa

Somewhere between half-hearted DIY jobs and expensive custom-created solutions, there’s customizable furniture kits, which make it easy to create the ideal setup for your home and life without requiring special skills or tools.

Hacka IKEA kitchen

customizable ikea hacka

customizable ikea hacka 2

People hack IKEA products all the time, creating new items from cheap components available at the Swedish big-box store. The ‘Hacka’ concept is a kit that makes it even easier to do using a series of orange joints and wooden beams. You essentially create your own framework around IKEA products like countertops, sinks and storage cabinets for a completely customizable setup that’s easy to change around at your whim.

The Homework Desk

customizable homework desk 2

Start with two simple trestle legs and add whatever surfaces work best for you, whether that’s a flat desktop, a self-healing cutting mat, storage for writing implements or some combination of the three. With The Homework Desk, you can incline your surfaces like a drafting table, hang felt slings for additional storage or connect various compartments including pen holders, vertical filing systems and even a hidden phone charger. The whole front ledge of the desk functions as a ruler, too.

Push-Pull Foam Chair

customizable push pull foam

customizable push pull foam 2

Do you like chairs that are deep and low to the ground, or prefer a higher perch? Do you like armrests, or would you rather have that space free for a better range of movement? The Sink In chair consists of foam bars enclosed within a wooden frame so it’s incredibly easy to create a seat that’s tailored to your exact desires.

Dots Storage System

customizable dots 2

customizable dots
Protruding cylinders attached to wall panels in a grid pattern support a series of boxes for storing and displaying various objects in the ‘DOTS’ system by PolarisLife. Move them around, add more shelves, arrange them however you like them. When the cylinders aren’t supporting a shelf, they can be used to hang things like coats, bags and plants.

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Flip Stack Connect 13 Highly Customizable Furniture Designs

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Chicken Church: Fowl-Shaped Abandonment Found Deep in Forest

05 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

chicken church

Reportedly inspired by a divine message, the architect of this poultry-shaped church initially set out to create a place of worship in the form of a giant dove, but the locals quickly dubbed his creation the Chicken Church (Gereja Ayam in the regional language).

chicken church exterior ground

chicken church side view

chicken church tail feathers

Indeed, despite the best intentions to craft it otherwise, it is impossible not to see a domestic egg-laying bird when looking at this open-beaked architectural creature.

chicken church interior view

chicken church structural decay

In a remote Indonesian forest, this creation of Daniel Alamsjah was once a place of prayer as well as a rehabilitation center for children and drug addicts, but finishing the building proved too costly and the place closed down over a decade ago.

chicken church head neck

Covered in graffiti and crumbling at a structural level, the Chicken Church is likely not long for this world. For now, though, travelers (sometimes with romantic partners) can be found inside at times, cooped up away from prying eyes, but eventually the building will doubtless be either demolished or perhaps simply collapse on its own (story via Colossal and images via uzone.id, Punthuk Setumbu and Alek Kurniawan).

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Tree of 40 Fruit: Fresh Interview with Nature’s Master Grafter

05 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

tree fruit varieties

Seven years into his experiments, the living artworks of Sam Van Aken are bearing far more than just fruit, each new variant of the Tree of 40 Fruit building on experiences learned from the last. And while simply grafting forty fruits of different kinds to a single tree is impressive, his work continues to branch out. The trees have to grow for three years before he can start to reshape them, and even then only so many grafts can be added each year.

tree diagram

Van Aken’s Frankensteinian creations are an endeavor forever in progress. With increasingly refined sets of controls and directions, he has been able to go beyond simply grafting dozens of types on a single tree. Carefully diagrammed, his planned plants can be designed to bloom and bear fruit year-round and in choreographed sequences, almost like a slow-motion fireworks display or performance piece.

tree 40 fruit bloom

His individual trees are displayed around the country, reflecting the climate as well as local varieties of the different regions in which they can be found. Each provides seasonal moments of surprise to passers by, producing almonds during one month then perhaps peaches or plums (or both) in the next.

tree fruit diagram book

From National Geographic: “Sam Van Aken, an artist and professor at Syracuse University, uses ‘chip grafting’ to create trees that each bear 40 different varieties of stone fruits, or fruits with pits. The grafting process involves slicing a bit of a branch with a bud from a tree of one of the varieties and inserting it into a slit in a branch on the ‘working tree,’ then wrapping the wound with tape until it heals and the bud starts to grow into a new branch. Over several years he adds slices of branches from other varieties to the working tree.”

tree grafting process

“In the spring the ‘Tree of 40 Fruit’ has blossoms in many hues of pink and purple, and in the summer it begins to bear the fruits in sequence—Van Aken says it’s both a work of art and a time line of the varieties’ blossoming and fruiting. He’s created more than a dozen of the trees that have been planted at sites such as museums around the U.S., which he sees as a way to spread diversity on a small scale.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Amazing Aerial Photos of LA and NYC Reveal Urban Geometry

04 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.55.33 PM

No matter how far and often you might wander around your city, there’s one way you most likely never get to experience it: from above. Approached from directly overhead, the bird’s-eye-view renders virtually any urban scene unrecognizable, reducing landscaped streets and towering skyscrapers to mere shapes within an abstract composition, as if it’s a work of art. And perhaps, for some urban planners, it is. Thanks to photographer Jeffrey Milstein, we can all appreciate New York City and Los Angeles from a new perspective.

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.56.48 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.56.41 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.56.28 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.56.03 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.54.55 PM

Captured from a helicopter both at night and during daylight, Milstein’s aerial imagery of these two iconic American cities presents entire neighborhoods as tapestries of geometric shapes. New York’s Stuyvesant Town looks like a bunch of crosses embedded in greenery, and the Statue of Liberty is strikingly jewel-like on its island.

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.53.40 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.53.00 PM

Some of LA’s most posh neighborhoods are unsurprisingly picturesque from above, laid out in their carefully-arranged grids and often centered upon parks. In comparison, the shots of downtown look downright bleak, sort of like you’re looking at a circuit board rather than a full-scale city. The photographs are on display now at New York’s Benrubi Gallery and LA’s Kopeikin Gallery.

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.53.58 PM Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 4.54.06 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 5.52.30 PM

If looking at the pictures gives you vertigo, good, says Milstein. That’s the effect he’s going for. “That’s exactly what I want. To get a visceral reaction from it,” he told City Lab.

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

Tools That Rule: 13 Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder

04 Aug

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

tools vector scissors 1

Most of the tools we use have looked the same for decades, if not centuries, but that doesn’t mean they’re optimized to be as useful, convenient and durable as they can be. These clever tweaks on conventional tool designs can be incredibly simple, like adding a ledge to scissor handles for cutting straight lines, or unexpectedly innovative, like an illuminated glove that makes it easy to light whatever you’re working on while freeing up your hand.

Locking Aperture Wrench

tools aperture wrech

The aperture wrench eliminates the storage issues and guesswork associated with having an entire set of wrenches, with an aperture based on that of a camera lens. The metal blades of the aperture close around any given nut and automatically lock into place for perfect custom sizing and a secure fit.

Hoyo Drill

“You could almost keep your drill on the dinner table,” says the designer about the looks of the Hoyo, a sleek black-and-white power drill. In addition to ‘looking like a race car,’ the Hoyo has an optional stabilizer to ensure that you always enter a surface perfectly straight, dial presets to adjust the power depending on the material you’re drilling, and a built-in level.

Ruler Compass

Conventional compasses typically have to be used in conjunction with rulers when you want to draw a circle of a very specific size. This one features a radius display that tells you the size of your circle as you move the leg of the compass

Portable Lighting Tool

Ultra-portable and easy to recharge either with an outlet or an included mini solar panel, the H9 Portable Lighting Tool is a silicone sheath that wraps around your hand to provide up-close illumination for whatever job you’re trying to complete. You can direct the light exactly where it needs to be, but don’t have to sacrifice the utility of your hand.

Tool Pen by mininch

tool pen

Carrying a set of screwdrivers becomes as simple as carrying a pen with the Tool Pen, a lightweight, compact and ultra-sleek multitool solution with 18 bits. Six can fit inside the tool without making it heavy, and it comes in a variety of metallic finishes.

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Tools That Rule 13 Ways To Work Smarter Not Harder

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

WebUrbanist

Comments Off

Posted in Creativity

BIG Plans to Turn 4 London Power Plant Chimneys into Tesla Coils

03 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

battersea square

Danish firm BIG Architects has a feasible strategy for converting four iconic smokestacks in the center of London into a series of gigantic pedestrian-powered Tesla coils. These would be the tallest of their kind and their visual effect would be nothing short of stunning, generating arcs of energy to bridge between the 300-foot-high towers at predetermined times.

big tesla coil project

Bjarke Ingels Group was commissioned to create a sizable public plaza space adjacent to the disused building as part of a larger redevelopment plan, but announced during a lecture that they had much larger design ambitions in mind. Going public with this plan may have come as something of a shock to their client, who had not yet be apprised of the scheme. In defense of the architects: they wished to make sure what they were proposing was actually possible before any announcement. “We’re working with experts in Tesla coils, looking into how to incorporate it into the chimneys so essentially we might celebrate the transformation from carbon footprint to human footprint.”

giant tesla coils

Currently, the world’s largest Tesla coils are in the 100-foot-high range, so depending on how much of each tower was turned toward this function, these could conceivably become the tallest coils ever constructed (in addition to being the highest-reaching).

battersea power project

Piezoelectric pavement would slowly generate energy from those passing through the square (estimated at 50,000 people per day), which would be collected and deployed in periodic bursts. “We imagine it like Big Ben, when the clock strikes the hour, we can have this celebration of human energy and human life.”

battersea power station

The two pairs of towers are extremely tall relative to their surroundings and arguably an iconic part of the neighboring urban landscape, jutting up out of a power plant complex that is nearly a century old. The Battersea Power Station will be rebuilding the chimneys regardless, so it is just a matter of whether they will adopt this enhancement in the process. Already populated with colorful enhancements and unusual architecture, bolts of electricity arcing across the sky would still certainly stand out in London’s bright nighttime cityscape (tesla coil image by Clarence Risher).

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Absolut Brilliance: Vodka Shipping Containers to Workspaces

Back From the Future: Working Hoverboard Surfs Water & Rails

Snow Cover: Subterranean Museum Pierces Alpine Mountain Peak

Amazing Modern Maze: Dystopian Steel Labyrinth Installation