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The Capital: Egypt Plans Largest From-Scratch City in History

20 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

egypt the capital project

Slated to be constructed in just 7 years and cost $ 300 billion (more than the GDP of Egypt), this ambitious design for a brand new capital city of 5 million people is unprecedented – if completed, it will be a record-setting endeavor. And it is not just a conceptual vision, or at least not entirely- the site has been selected and a 100-square-kilometer test section has already been approved by the Egyptian government.

capital in cairo

capital incubator tech hub

The new capital-replacing city is described by its proponents as “the catalyst for an Egyptian renaissance” and “a momentous endeavour to build national spirit, foster consensus and provide for the country’s sustainable long-term growth.” Inspired in part by Silicon Valley, buzzwords about in the promotional materials related to the project, tentatively titled “The Capital.” It is intended to be a “smart city” and “hub of innovation” to carry its country into the future of technology and sustainability.

capital city cairo

capital city of the future

Transportation is to be a big component of the design, both within and beyond the city – it is meant to become both a hub as well as a walkable metropolis. Lessons are being taken from extant clogged and congested urban centers, particularly Cairo. However, it is not clear through the gloss and glamour just how these innovations will manifest themselves – there are some statistics, though, that are at least superficially impressive.

cairo new capital

Environmental friendliness is also high on the list, with plans to sustainable local food, use eco-friendly modes of power generation (wind and solar) and, of course, deal with waste and recycling in a green and efficient manner, avoiding a repeat of Cairo’s infamous “Garbage City.”

capital city images

capital urban design project

Some might question whether the futuristic renderings are really representative of what is planned or if they are simply designed to impress. Critics note that the scheme seems too good to be true, and may be intentionally positioned as a Utopian project in order to draw outside investors. Building a new city from the ground up may result in that space being more efficient, but it leaves one wondering what the country has planned for its former capital. Perhaps there is room for generosity in expectations, however – lessons learned and developers deployed in this massive construction project could be turned around afterward and reassigned to fix existing cities.

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Rapid Resin: Liquid 3D Printing Looks Like Morphing T2 Metal

20 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

carbon 3d rapid printing

Generating objects 25 to 100 times faster than traditional layer-based 3D printers, this new continuous-liquid approach to high-speed fabrication can create complex yet refined finished objects that are at once more pristine and quickly produced, all by harnessing oxygen and light to ‘grow’ results. Its inventors say their solution was inspired in part by a well-known, time-traveling, liquid-metal robot from a science fiction film and indeed both technologies may be poised to change the the future.

A group of scientists from the University of North Carolina have just published a paper in Science on the technology, filed for a patent and formed a company around it called Carbon3D, currently backed by $ 40,000,000 in funding. Essentially, a pool of photosensitive resin floating on a plane of dissolved oxygen provides the raw material bath, while a device suspended above draws resin up and out. The trick to hardening the substance as it is lifted lies in a UV light projector which emits a 2D cross-section of each layer, continuously changing shape as the device above is raised.

continuous liquid interface production

Watching it in action, it is easy to see how the idea came in part from the shape-shifting Terminator ‘upgrade’ first found in the second installation of the ongoing movie franchise. Emerging from a liquid pool, the resulting solid takes shape with remarkable speed.

continuous liquid printing

Effectively, each layer of the object is not only printed at once, but without delays in between – hence “continuous liquid interface production.” In contrast, normal 3d printers are limited in part by the printer heads that deposit materials one point at a time, moving along each plane before moving up to the next level. “Traditional 3D printing requires a number of mechanical steps, repeated over and over again in a layer-by-layer approach. CLIP is a chemical process that carefully balances light and oxygen to eliminate the mechanical steps and the layers.”

continous sped up printing

Moreover, unlike many current models, the continuous production method eliminates rough edges and forms a fully-solid object that, depending on the materials used, could result in a cleaner and stronger finished product. Indeed, the device supports a range of both solid and flexible polymers, giving it potential for all kinds of applications. “Parts printed with CLIP are much more like injection-molded parts. CLIP produces consistent and predictable mechanical properties, creating parts that are smooth on the outside and solid on the inside.”

liquid polymer resin print

Meanwhile, materials like “elastomers cover a range of needs, from the high elasticity needed for athletic shoes to the strength and temperature resistance needed for automotive parts.” Currently, the device on display is just a prototype, but once put into commercial production it could well be a pivotal piece in transitioning the 3D printing industry from a slow-growing niche to a full-fledged revolution for making everything from rapid prototypes to other useful objects at speed.

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Sustainable Food in the City: 10 Smart Urban Farm Designs

19 Mar

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

urban farming korea 3

The world’s largest indoor farm has already proven just how amazingly successful food production can be outside of standard agricultural setups, and these 10 urban farm designs and concepts take the possibilities even further by taking advantage of disused spaces, reaching high into the sky and employing modular, portable, prefabricated configurations.

Jenga-Like Urban Farming Ecosystem by OVA Studio

urban farming jenga 1 urban farming hive inn 2

The Hive-Inn City Farm is a prefabricated, modular farming structure that could brig fresh, locally grown food to busy urban districts. The structure reclaims shipping containers and stacks them in a Jenga-like configuration, with each container dedicated to a specific function from growing a certain type of food to recycling waste. The design echoes that of OVA Studio’s original Hive Inn concept, which uses the containers as individual hotel rooms.

SPARK Senior Living Center and Vertical Farm Concept

urban farming spark 1

urban farming spark 2

This concept by SPARK Architects solves two problems in one by combining housing for Singapore’s rapidly aging population with urban food production. The ‘home farm’ creates a lush, vibrant garden environment that’s pleasant to live in while also catering specifically to the needs of seniors and using a vertical system to grow edibles, offering part-time employment for residents in the gardens

Mini Harvesting Station for Forgotten City Spaces

urban farming harvesting station

urban farming harvesting station 2

On a smaller scale, various spaces around the city that aren’t being put to good use could serve as temporary locations for miniature farms. The Harvesting Station by Conceptual Devices can grow up to 200 plants within 43 square feet, and is topped with a water harvesting tower that irrigates the plants automatically.

Vertical SkyFarm for Korea

urban farming korea 1

urban farming korea 2

Downtown Seoul, South Korea could become a powerhouse food production center if concepts like Aprilli’s vertical farm are actually built, potentially sustaining a significant number of the city’s large population. The tree-shaped structure frees up space on the ground while raising ‘leaf’ platforms far above street level for access to sunlight, and serves as an iconic symbol of sustainability.

Geodesic Rooftop Greenhosue for Urban Farmers

urban farming geodesic 1

Another small-scale rooftop ming solution is the Globe (Hedron) by Conceptual Devices, a geodesic dome for flat urban rooftops that’s framed with bamboo and functions as an aquaponic system to produce both fish and vegetables. Each greenhouse can feed four families of four year-round.

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Sustainable Food In The City 10 Smart Urban Farm Designs

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Silent Slaughterhouse: Pool Produces Infinite Reflections

18 Mar

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

ampudia 3

To gain entrance to this darkened slaughterhouse chamber filled with seemingly infinite reflections, you’ll have to dial a phone number that produces a ripple on the surface of the water covering the building’s floor. Outside the otherworldly scene you’ll find a stack of business cards with instructions in two languages “to activate this artwork.” Your presence, the artist insinuates, is an interruption.

ampudia2

ampudia1

Even the title of the work, ‘Every Word is Like an Unnecessary Stain on Silence and Nothingness,‘ makes a statement on the potential sacredness of forgotten spaces, no matter what their origins may be. In this case, the charred room in which you’ll find yourself is the former cooling chamber of a slaughterhouse in Madrid.

ampudia 4

ampudia 5

Artist Eugenio Ampudia needs very little in the way of augmentation to create the atmosphere within this disused space. The water makes it seem to go on and on, and carries echoes so far that every little squeak of a shoe or muffled cough is amplified.

ampudia 6

Ampudia explains that the work is a critique of modern communication. “It’s true that modern technology has allowed us to connect with thousands of people almost simultaneously. But what is happening with communication? Why is draft legislation eing put forward tov eto the flow of information among citizens? What is more disturbing: people trying to communicate something or people uniting with the same intent? Who is scared of the words ‘network’ and ‘community’?”

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Deceptive Dimensions: Illusion Street Art Creates 3D Portals

18 Mar

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

optical illusion art 2

At first glance it looks as if thin layers of these walls have been slowly torn away in concentric shapes, leading deeper and deeper into the spaces on the other side. No longer clearly cinder block, brick or any other solid building material, the walls seem as if they really could consist of nothing more than stack after stack of thin paper in rainbow hues.

optical illusion art 7

optical illusion art 6

SONY DSC

optical illusion art 4

Germany-based street artist 1010 creates the effect with nothing more than spray paint, adding a third dimension to flat surfaces with clever use of color, shape and shadows. The works range from actual paper cuts that are framed for gallery walls to murals covering multiple stories of a building, like the installation created for contemporary art festival Knotempunkt in Hamburg.

optical illusion art 1

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SONY DSC

Making small creations out of stacked paper likely give 1010 a chance to study the shapes and shadows that make his illusions so effective on a larger scale. “In this case painting a shadow does the trick,” the artist tells Hashimoto Contemporary Gallery. “I call them holes, abyss, passage or portals, names that leave enough space for interpretation and projection for the viewer.”

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Altopias: Speculative Art Explores Both Dark & Light Futures

17 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

iceberg on a beach

The world of future-focused artwork tends to examine extreme outcomes, but this artist’s visions represent a compelling range of possibilities from catastrophic to optimistic, Dystopian to Utopian with other shades of gray in between.

dust storm in barcelona

no snow in alps

First consider the range of negative outcomes and what they would do to villages, towns and cities around the world (as illustrated in this first round of images above and below) – built environments afflicted by surprising climatic changes like heat waves, ice storms and droughts.

venice run dry

desert meets water

On the one hand, Evgeny Kazantsev considers these disaster scenarios, from dust storms in Barcelona and villages in the Alps without snow to Venice gone dry and oceans overrunning desert cities. But this is only half of the story.

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Altopias Speculative Art Explores Both Dark Light Futures

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Sunny Disposition: Computer-Aided Skyscraper Casts No Shadow

17 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

shadowless skyscraper concept design

With downtown densification usually comes a lack of light in surrounding spaces, leading one architecture firm to develop the world’s first algorithm-driven strategy to allow a tower to fully shed its shadow. Architects of NBBJ developed this set of adjacent skyscrapers that work in tandem to eliminate shade year-round in the spaces between them, proposing the pair for a prominent site in central London. As the simulation of No Shadow Tower illustrates below, considerations are made for all times of day, reflecting the passage of the sun through the sky from dawn until dusk.

computation daylight simulation

The model inputs are complex, using real sun-tracking data tied to a specific location (though easily changed) but also taking into account everything from basic physics and structural engineering to pubic spaces and programmatic functions for building users. At the same time, considerations must be made for diffusing any reflected light to avoid creating obnoxious glare or even lighting adjacent spaces, vehicles or objects on fire. Fortunately, it is easier than ever to implement a complex building shape with custom 3D-printed parts, as architects like Frank Gehry have increasingly demonstrated in recent years.

sunlight filled courtyard reflection

This proposal was inspired by the rapid growth of skyscrapers in areas like London, where 250 are currently planned or in progress, and New York City, where residents are resisting tall buildings that would cast long shadows over Central Park. Large-scale sunlight reflection can be found in built environments already, such as a mountain town in Norway found frequently or for long periods in shade during cold and dark winter months. Conversely, structures in hot climates could also be shaped to deflect sun from occupied spaces during warm summer months – shade and shadows can be shaped, in short, for different environmental conditions.

shadow free skyscraper

In this case, of course, the reflector is itself a building, which of course then casts a shadow of its own – arguably a limitation of the scheme. However, a series of structures could conceivably cancel shadows in sequence, creating multi-block solutions if designed in a coordinated fashion, the shape of each informed by the needs of the previous one in the series. Whether or not this particular pair of structures makes it past the conceptual phase, the idea behind them is powerful and the attitude could be applied more readily by light-sensitive architects down the line.

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16 Fun Kids Room Ideas Will Make You Want to Shrink Yourself

17 Mar

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

treehouse bedroom

Why don’t rooms for adults come with cool tent-shaped beds, oversized Legos, slides, tree houses and secret compartments? These fun and imaginative kids room ideas include furniture with built-in entertainment, fort kits, fully customized themed rooms complete with murals and even a three-story slide built into the design of the house.

Tent, Playhouse and Camper Beds

kids furniture tent beds

kids furniture playhouse beds

kids furniture caravan bed

Design firm Mathy by Bols has created a series of handmade kids beds shaped like tents, caravans and treehouses. The A-frame Cabin Tent Bed features a closable side panel and a bottom section that pulls out to offer storage or a second mattress, the Camper Bed looks like a mini teardrop trailer with a toy box mounted to one side, and the Treehouse Bunk Bed will definitely have kids fighting over who gets to sleep on top.

Fold-Up Staircase to Slide Converter

kids furniture staircase slide 1

kids furniture staircase slide 2

Any staircase turns into a slide in seconds with the ‘SlideRider,’ an extra-long foam mat with safety bumpers on the sides that stretches over stairs and then folds up neatly when it’s time to put it away.

Imaginative Wooden Kids Beds with Slides

kids furniture wooden beds 1

kids furniture wooden beds 2

kids furniture wooden beds 3

Each design in the Rhapsody collection of kids’ beds from CedarWorks is a fantasy world of its own, with a variety of play areas built in ranging from slides to ‘secret’ rooms. They offer so many opportunities for self-entertainment, you might just get a little bit of extra sleep in the morning while the kids keep themselves busy.

LEGO-Inspired Kids Furniture Collection

kids furniture lego inspired

Kids Furniture LEGO 2

The LEGO Furniture Collection for Kids by Lola Glamour uses the look of these iconic plastic brick toys to make a big visual impact in children’s rooms. The ones mounted to the bed hide drawers and cabinets, while the rest are purely decorative.

Custom Treehouse Bedroom

kids furniture treehouse bedroom

kids furniture treehouse bedroom 2

A swing, a fake tree, climbing ropes and a storage platform that doubles as a stage aren’t even the coolest things about this imaginative kids’ bedroom idea – that honor goes to the awesome miniature treehouse tucked up into the corner of the room next to windows overlooking the yard.

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16 Kids Room Designs Thatll Make You Want To Shrink Yourself

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Cantilevered Conversion: Sleek Modern Cargo Container Office

16 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

cargo container office design

While many intermodal freight crate transformations turn steel boxes into comfortable spaces, this project goes a step further both by taking maximum advantage of its material origins while still making the aesthetic result more than the sum of its parts.

cantilevered office design conversion

Repurposed as an office by and for architect Patrick Bradley, this 45-foot cargo container (re)creation makes use of existing openings on either end and requires as few cuts in the surface of the sides as possible (an energy- and cost-efficient approach). Each of these openings is in turn taken advantage of, in one case to create an entry sequence and, at the other end, to facilitate a lovely little balcony extension.

cantilevered shipping container office

Further, the design leverages the strength of the container to cantilever it out over a steep-sloping cliff already on the site, saving money, time and energy landscaping the lot. Simple modular cladding manages to transform the exterior appearance with ease as well.

cargo container office design

In the end, there is little about the project that screams ‘shipping container’ at first glance, yet the overall shape and structural advantages of that core element are maintained and utilized throughout – a brilliant blend of old and new.

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Stopping Shopping: Eleven Eerie Abandoned Supermarkets

16 Mar

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned supermarkets Foodland 1a
Aisle be back… NOT! These closed and abandoned supermarkets give us a preview of the coming apocalypse – zombie or otherwise – when shopping simply stops.

abandoned supermarkets Foodland 1b

Once bustling, busy and brightly lit, abandoned supermarkets evoke a certain type of grim dreariness tinged with decay so palpable one can smell it… or is that just the foetid aroma of a packaged meat section needing a cleaning it’ll never get?

abandoned supermarkets Foodland 1c

abandoned supermarkets Foodland 1d

Credit Flickr user Wampa-One for choosing an ominously overcast day in November of 2011 to capture this abandoned and label-scarred Foodland store in St Louis, MO, and for returning almost a year later as it was being demolished.

Blue On Blue

abandoned supermarkets 9a

abandoned supermarkets 9b

Still abandoned but what a remarkable contrast from that doomed Foodland! Formerly a Vietnamese supermarket in San Jose, CA’s Japantown, this seafoam green & white supermarket once offered shoppers an eclectic range of SEAFOOD, GROCERY, GROCERY and ORIENTAL FOOD. Flickr users Travis Wise (Photographing Travis) and Paul George (snowcrash98), respectively, bring us the above images snapped on different blue-skied days in 2014.

Unfree Market

abandoned supermarkets GDR 3a

abandoned supermarkets GDR 3b

Mr. Gorbachev tore down that wall but unaccountably left this Stalinist supermarket standing – go figure. Snazzy blue stripes notwithstanding, the former supermarket from the former East Germany no doubt offered shoppers a typical variety of Warsaw Pact specialties such as cinderblock-sized bars of soap, left boots, and rendered horse-hoof jello.

abandoned supermarkets GDR 3c

abandoned supermarkets GDR 3d

Shopper also enjoyed free parking for their two-stroke Trabants, a bonus in a land where “free” was a four-letter word. Credit Flickr user Patrick Scholl (.patrick.) for visiting this abandoned DDR supermarket in January of 2013, camera in hand.

Terminal ACME

abandoned supermarkets Egg Harbor City 4c

abandoned supermarkets Egg Harbor City 4b

abandoned supermarkets Egg Harbor City 4a

New Jersey doesn’t get much bleaker than this seriously abandoned ACME supermarket in Egg Harbor City – and that’s saying something. Flickr user Kevin Jarrett (kjarrett) visited the decrepit and decaying market situated off US Route 30 on December 14th of 2014, and came back with the above images of retail despair.

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Stopping Shopping Eleven Eerie Abandoned Supermarkets

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