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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Settlers of Chernobyl: Self-Contained, Fallout-Absorbing City

07 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

pripyat self contained city

Despite warnings about dangerous radiation and an ongoing project to cap and contain further fallout, many families have already taken up residence around Ukraine’s famous failed nuclear reactor – this skyscraper would enable them to do so safely. The skin of the building provides more than just shelter, glowing like a grounded aurora as it captures and processes radiation.

pripyat design soluiton

pripyat aurora skyscraper design

Designed by Zhang Zehua, Song Qiang and Liu Yameng, Unexpected Aurora filters air and water, harvests solar energy, and creates a kind of self-contained oasis that would allow people to resettle the wastelands around Pripyat. Their design won them an honorable mention in the 2015 eVolo Skyscraper Competition.

pripyat nuclear city design

Protocol for many irradiated sites is simply a bit of soil coverage (as little as a few feet) and conversion to a park (as opposed to homes), the idea being: a bit of exposure here and there is not too harmful, though living right on top of contaminated areas could be. Many parks in San Francisco, for instance, were built on sites once used as test beds for hosing down irradiated ships, which were intentionally placed closed to nuclear tests in the ocean. As the government learned, you can’t wash away the radiation, but trying to do so does cause some to leak into the surrounding ground. Of course, the situation in and around Pripyat is significantly more severe.

pripyat city in a box

The creators set the scene: “With a big bang, the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, the amount of radiation is about 400 times of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. About seven million people were forced to leave their homeland in two days, they had no time to say goodbye to their present life.”

pripyat active system designs

They also acknowledge the aftermath: “But not everyone accepts the arrangement of fate. The negative effects of radiation have been dafeated by a large group of settlers, more and more people are returning to their homeland which located in the restricted area, what can be sure is that they use a different way to look at the risk which they bear.”

pripyat concept science diagrams

There is no perfect solution for a complex problem like this, and the concept is unlikely ever to be realized, but at least this approach recognizes the reality on the ground and attempts to bridge the gap between an imperfect present and hopeful future.

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Beautiful Bacteria: Infectiously Intricate Paper Cut Art

07 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

bacteria paper cut 1

Few people outside of research scientists are quite so well-acquainted with the bacteria that grows inside the human body as artist Rogan Brown, who spends up to four months studying, cutting and assembling his paper reproductions of microbes and pathogens.

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The series ‘Outbreak,’ completed in 2014, was inspired by a meeting with a group of microbiologists planning a new exhibition center focusing on the human microbiome, and its exhibition just happened to coincide with the deadly ebola outbreak last summer, when everybody had infectious diseases on the brain.

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“Fascinated by this hidden world I spent months researching the strange shapes and forms of microbes and pathogens,” says Brown. “I wanted to create a piece that examined our fears of the microbiological world, so out of one of the petri domes a group of bugs burst forth, full of ferocious uncontrollable energy.”

Bacteria Paper Cuts 8

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Stacks upon stacks of finely-sliced white paper make up each organism, nestled into white foamboard dishes. A more recent piece, ‘Cut Microbe,’ measures over 44 inches in length, about a half a million times the bacterium’s actual size.

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The details are scientifically accurate, including the tentacle-like flagella that allow the bacteria to swim through our intestinal tracts, yet rendered in white paper, they become something aesthetically pleasing to gaze at, removed from the grotesque nature most often associated with them.

microbe detail

“People often marvel at the time I spend on a sculpture but Time is the fourth dimension that gives my work part of its value. Few other art forms foreground the amount of time spent making them as a paper sculpture does: every cut is a moment. The end result is the sense of something incredibly hard won and precious which is precisely the message I wish to convey: we need enormous concentration and effort to really SEE and appreciate what we see.”

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Portrait of a City: 31 Photographic Street Art Murals

06 Apr

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

wrinkles of the city main

Residents of cities like Tokyo, Havana and Los Angeles see their own faces blown up to monumental proportions and pasted onto all sorts of urban surfaces when photography, street art and architecture come together. These 31 images from artists working all over the world cover the humorous and the poignant, bringing photography to the most unexpected places.

2 Girls Building in Melbourne by Samantha Everton
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A fine art image by Australian photographer Samantha Everton spans the entire facade of the ‘2 Girls Building’ in Melbourne by KUD Architects. The concrete of the building is printed with a wallpaper texture and where it cuts away, the photo (printed on glass) is revealed. The image becomes three dimensional in the form of the three-story lamp mounted to the outside of the structure, mimicking the one in the original photo.

Inside Out Project by JR in Tokyo

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photographic murals JR Tokyo 1

The most well-known street artist working with photographic imagery is JR, who creates collages of portraits of residents in each of the cities in which he works. Based in Paris, the artist pastes up gigantic images of faces on buildings, bridges, rooftops and trains all over the world and gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm lens to capture unguarded expressions. The work pictured here is part of the Inside Out Project, which welcomes people to submit their own black and white photographic portraits to be exhibited in their own communities.

Humorous Photographic Images by Mentalgassi

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Trash cans mounted to poles become backpacks, ‘metal heads’ appear on domed recycling bins and faces appear to be squashed in windows as artist trio Mentalgassi bring their photographic imagery to the streets. The anonymous young Berlin artists met at school and became interested in how new media techniques could be applied to three-dimensional objects.

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Portrait Of A City 31 Photographic Street Art Murals

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Boxed Water is Better: Paper Packaging Beats Plastic Bottles

06 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

boxed water image

The brand tells you what it is in bold minimalist script: better, but more specifically, its packaging is better than the dominant plastic bottle alternative – a square peg for what product designers have long assumed was a round hole.

boxed water versus bottles

Aside from the (cardboard carton) material itself being more sustainable, the trick is in the shipping: a single truck packed with pallets of flat-pack water boxes means 25 fewer trucks than shipping plastic bottles to a bottling plant.

boxed water is better

Plastic bottles not only take up more space when filled (thanks to their rounded shape), but far more space when empty in the first place. They are also being banned in some cities, which means more market opportunity for companies like Boxed Water Is Better.

boxed water on shelves

The recyclable packages also stand out on the shelves – white cartons and black type stacked alongside complex logos and variegated shapes of their plastic relatives.

boxed water better

Some will still question the need for conveniently-packaged water altogether, and in a perfect world (perhaps someday) we would all use reusable containers, but for now this seems like a solid (or liquid) step in the right direction. Meanwhile, the company helps customers go green indirectly as well, planting two trees for each picture of their product posted – not bad marketing, either.

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Played Out: 10 Cheerless Abandoned Toy Factories

06 Apr

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned toy factory 9a
There are few things sadder than an abandoned toy, and abandoned toy factories take that sense of lost innocence to dramatically deeper depths of despair.

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As if an abandoned doll factory isn’t creepy enough, Flickr user Bousure ramps it up to eleven via some nightmarishly awesome photo-processing techniques. Taken in early September of 2011 at an undisclosed location, Bousure’s haunting imagery will surely disturb all those who enjoyed playing with dolls when they were kids… and, well, everyone else too.

Unmade In China

abandoned toy factory 3a

abandoned toy factory 3b

The pace of change in China is truly startling at times – perfectly good buildings just a few years old are casually knocked down so something bigger and better can be built on the site. Take this sharp-looking toy factory (check out that gnarly gate!) in Zhangmutou, southern China, that had the excavators sicced on it in July of 2013. Flickr user Chris (dcmaster) checked out the factory as the heavy machinery moved in for the kill.

Game, Set & Matchbox

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Lesney Products & Co. Ltd was one of Britain’s few postwar economic success stories. Founded in 1947, the company made “Matchbox” brand die-cast miniature vehicles by the millions until labor issues and the side-effects of Thatcherism drove the firm into bankruptcy.

abandoned toy factory 2c

The company’s last and largest factory, set astride the Lee Navigation canal in London’s Hackney Marshes, closed in 1982 and Flickr user Sludge G (sludgegulper) snapped it in April of 2009. The abandoned complex, stripped of its machinery and sullied by vandals, was finally demolished in 2010 with the Matchmakers Wharf retail, commercial and residential complex now occupying the site.

LaLa Land of Toys

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Once “The West’s Largest Exclusive Toy Wholesalers”, Pensick & Gordon lorded over the California toy universe from this ominously imposing building in what is now LA’s trendy Arts District. Built in 1907 as a wholesale grocers warehouse, the factory was abandoned by the early Eighties and just recently underwent conversion into condominium lofts. Kudos to Flickr user Kent MacElwee who snapped the building and its faded signage in September of 2013.

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Played Out 10 Cheerless Abandoned Toy Factories

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Unboxing: Angled Metal-Clad Canopy Hints at Surprises in Store

05 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

unboxing storefront design

There is nothing like a good mystery to draw people in, but adapting that maxim in an architectural context flies in the face of convention, making this barely-open-box building all the more effective in how it employs the element of surprise.

unboxing exterior facade night

unboxing front facade

While closing people off to what is for sale may seem antithetical to showcasing wares. At the same time, that is precisely the paradox Herzog & De Meuron’s latest storefront for a fashionable chain of Japanese boutiques uses to its advantage.

unboxing facade interior

This new shop for Miu Miu, intended to be its flagship operation, works on both fronts, playing on our desire to unbox from outside while creating an intimate interior space within.

unboxing main entry

While the outside is polished and minimalist, like the case of some fresh new smartphone, the inside is set up as much like a living room as a store, encouraging people to browse, linger, sit and lounge among the various items for sale. Mannequins are set up as participants and exemplars, themselves sitting on the seats or floors, or leaning against racks in the store.

unboxing sitting spaces

“The typological model that best suited these considerations and specifications was a box placed directly at the level of the street, its cover slightly open to mark the entrance and allow pedestrians to look inside,” explain the architects. “Only then do they realize that the building is a shop. Here, under the oversized canopy, the two-storey interior is visible at a single glance, as if the volume had been sliced open with a big knife, turning the inside out.”

unboxing store interior chairs

unboxing living room

“The rounded, soft edges of the copper surfaces inside meet with the razor-sharp steel corners on the outside of the metal box, while the cave-like niches clad in brocade face the central space of the shop like loges in a theater. The shop on two tall storeys not only presents enticing goods on tables and in display cases; it is also like a spacious and comfortable home with inviting sofas and armchairs.”

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Dr. Seuss Tower House: Storybook Structure Grew with the Trees

03 Apr

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.56.04 AM

One odd slightly off-kilter story after another was added to this once-modest house in Alaska as the trees decimated by a wildfire grew taller and taller, the owner insistent upon maintaining his view of Mount McKinley. Located in the woods of Willow overlooking the Denali National Park, the tower house began as a one-story that wouldn’t look out of place in any Alaskan neighborhood.

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The forest recovered and the trees got taller and taller, obscuring the mountain. So, the story goes, the owner tacked on a second story. And then a third. After a while, it apparently just became a fun challenge to see how many tiny rooms could be stacked on top of each other until locals began calling the structure the Dr. Seuss House.

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Alaska Aerial Footage swung by the house to capture a dizzying video that really gives you an idea of just how tall and whimsical the house really is. From the footage, it looks as though the upper levels are unfinished, their windows covered in ripped plastic sheeting. The snow-topped roofs and balconies on each level just add to the slightly surreal effect.

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PlantLab: Urban Farms 40 Times More Productive than Open Fields

03 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

indoor farm vertical design

A Dutch firm on the cutting edge of indoor agriculture estimates that producing food for the entire world could take place in a space far smaller than the area occupied by Holland, using just 10% of the water needed by traditional farms. The proposal is not without precedent – Japan already has one prototype urban farm that is 100 times more productive than farmers’ fields.

indoor farm red light

indoor farm closeup

Noting that the vast majority of people will live in cities in the coming decades, PlantLab suggests a solution that involves using existing basements and purpose-built structures for our future food production. This means less energy, space, time and water than conventional methods.

indoor farm hallways

indoor farm plant lab

Urban farming in controlled environments lets growers take full advantage of variables like custom lighting, using far-red LED lamps that reduce moisture requirements for plants. Naturally, interior spaces are also free from the uncontrolled variables of weather and pests as well, increasingly reliability.

indoor urban agriculture industry

indoor farm vertical buildings

Automatic systems can optimize yields based on crop types, making indoor farms more effective than greenhouses and far more productive than fields. The ever-increasing efficiency and lowering costs of LEDs mean this method will only become more viable over time.

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Sim TV: Interactive 3D Models of Television Show Floor Plans

02 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

dexter condo

Be the show drama or comedy, the scenes set by designers for television programs tend to become as familiar as the characters being acted and the stories they tell – with these interactive models from HomeByMe, you can take a step back and see some famous and classic sets from a new perspective. As a bonus: you can also click to download any view as a static image, too, or check out some of other TV home plans hand-drawn in 2D – meanwhile, start by clicking on the images below to spin them around.

dexter interior design

First on the list: Dexter‘s sleek Miami loft full of whites, blacks and grays but largely devoid of color – a perfect home for a calculated killer trying to fit in yet finding it hard to show (or even have) emotion. You can even see his closet where he keeps, well, never you mind.

friends 3d model view

On a lighter note, this apartment was home to half the cast of Friends, Rachel and Monica mostly but with some rotation as well (no pun intended). Spin the model to see their bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen and deck from different angles.

how i met your mother

On the set of How I Met Your Mother has some added elements of seasonal decor, including a Christmas tree as well as some figures of the cast sprinkled in for scale and perspective.

3d home model big bang theory

The Big Bang Theory features a surprisingly odd-shaped dwelling when seen from a distance – perhaps not as obvious in the show itself, the floor plan is full of strange intersections, extraneous spaces and odd angles, not too unlike the minds of its inhabitants.

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Point & Shoot: 8-Bit Gameboy Gun Takes and Prints Pictures

02 Apr

[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

photo gun 1

This fun bit of retrofuturistic tech genius looks like an ‘80s designer’s idea of a high-tech camera smashed up with a toy gun, and it actually works, taking and printing photos. Russian artist Dmitry Morozov combined a GameBoy screen with an Arduino processor, a camera, optical relays and an original GameBoy thermal printer.

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The ‘gbg-8’ is attached to a plastic toy gun so you can literally ‘point and shoot.’ To take a photo, you pull the trigger (which might make selfies a bit… uncomfortable.)

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As soon as the image is captured, the gadget prints out a streaky, blurry, pixelated image, just like we remember from the heyday of Nintendo. It may not be the greatest quality, but that’s hardly the point.

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