Category: Creativity

World’s Largest Indoor Farm is 100 Times More Productive

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.

Customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up to two and half times faster, one of the many innovations employed in this enterprise by Shigeharu Shimamura, the man who helped turn a former semiconductor factory into the planet’s biggest interior factory farm.

Shimamura has shortened the cycle of days and nights in this artificial environment, growing food faster, while optimizing temperature, lighting and humidity and maximizing vertical square footage in this vast interior space (about half the size of a football field).

With a long-standing passion for produce production, he “got the idea for his indoor farm as a teenager, when he visited a ‘vegetable factory’ at the Expo ’85 world’s fair in Tsukuba, Japan. He went on to study plant physiology at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, and in 2004 started an indoor farming company called Mirai, which in Japanese means ‘future.’”

The beauty of this development lies partly in its versatility – since it deals in climate-controlled spaces and replicable conditions, a solution of this sort can be deployed anywhere in the world to address food shortages of the present and future. Saving space, indoor vertical farms are also good candidates for local food production in crowded and high-cost urban areas around the globe. Aforementioned strides in waste and power reduction also make these techniques and approaches far more sustainable and cost-efficient.

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Tons of Art: Christo Unveils World’s Largest Indoor Sculpture

Well known for grand gestures and huge installations, Christo has outdone himself once again in this latest work made of air, light and wonder.
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Swinging Times: 13 Stylish & Fun Indoor Swings

Why should kids have all the fun? These 13 indoor swing designs range from traditional to modern, to bring swings from the backyard into any interior.
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Urban Farm Kit: Modular Chicken Coops, Planters & Benches

A solution for all seasons and regions, the premise is simple: every would-be urban farmer has space, weather and other growing constraints, and yet draws from …
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January 12, 2015
That’s No Moon: Artists Launch Huge Human Head Balloon

[ By Steve in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

A bizarre art installation based on a dream saw a 50-ft tall balloon become a bizarre “Man In The Moon” as it rose above the streets of Utsunomiya, Japan.

Residents of Utsunomiya, a smallish city roughly 60 miles (100 km) north of Tokyo, Japan, experienced the shock of their lives on the evening of December 13th, 2014 when they espied the full moon rising over the horizon.

No doubt dozens of necks suddenly snapped in a group double-take as residents suddenly realized that’s no moon… it’s the enormous inflated head of one of their neighbors!

Give credit to Japanese art trio Me (in collaboration with the Utsunomiya Museum of Art) for the uniquely unusual “Ojisora” project, an artistic effort spanning over two years from conception to realization. Its origin rests with one of the three artists, Haruka Kojin (above, right), who as a junior high school student dreamed of an old man’s grossly enlarged and disembodied head floating over town and country .

Upon awakening from her dream, Kojin quickly sketched her recollection and then just as quickly forgot about it. Many years later, she came across her sketch and wondered… was there some way to recreate her dream in real life? After consulting with her two co-artists and with the support of the Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Kojin took the first step towards realizing – and sharing on a mass scale – her odd dream from so many years before.

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Thats No Moon Artists Launch Huge Human Head Balloon

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If You Believe, They Put Google Maps on the Moon. Mars?

Google has conquered Earth and apparently looking for new frontiers – too bad they haven’t develop Google Moon very much since releasing it.
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Jason Hackenwerth: Weird & Whimsical Balloon Sculptures

We all remember funny balloon animals made by clowns at the circus. But Jason Heckenworth takes the same balloons and makes them into amazing, unique art.
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Head Light: Popup Wall Lamp Has Horns that Glow in Shadows

A classy alternative to hanging animal parts, this deer head wall lamp started as a design concept, went viral as a prototype and has just been funded for full …
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[ By Steve in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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January 11, 2015
Beware of Colour: Activists Highlight Decay with Pink Paint

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

Splashed with bright buckets of paint from roofs and windows, the colorfully defaced buildings of downtown Johannesburg have evoked different reactions from supports and detractors who variously see this work as an act of protest or crime of vandalism. Before we delve too deep into the sides represented, keep in mind that Beware of Colour employed water-soluble paint in these interventions.

Colombian-American Yazmany Arboleda and the other artists behind the work note that all of the buildings targeted have been abandoned for decades despite a housing crisis – a fifth of the region’s population needs a place to live, currently dwelling in shanties or on the streets. Historic preservationists, meanwhile, decry the defacement and suggest that other methods could be used to raise public awareness of civic problems.

The case is more complicated, though, than either single viewpoint might suggest and the case for preservation is nuanced. As CityLab’s Ryan Lenora Brown points out, “appealing to history in contemporary South Africa is hardly a straightforward matter. Buildings like Shakespeare House were originally built for the exclusive use of whites, back when Johannesburg’s inner city was the center of one of the modern world’s most infamous projects of racial segregation …. The slumped and broken building has become a symbol for a different Johannesburg, one blighted by decades of white flight and municipal neglect.”

Arborleda was eventually caught with a crew of people and arrested for “malicious destruction of property” after being spotted entering one of the buildings on their list. This has, for now, put an end to this particular vintage of urban activism in South Africa.

Most of the structures the 30-some artists threw paint upon are either owned by the city or by Urban Ocean, a development group with a significant number of centrally-located and historical holdings. It remains to be seen whether this project will make a difference in the course of the city’s development, or become just another piece in the area’s persistently puzzling blight.

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Dark Tower: Decay Inside Africa’s Tallest Apartment Complex

Before a long descent into darkness, the cylindrical Ponte City Apartments began life as a luxurious tribute to growth and wealth in Johannesburg , filled with …
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Urban Camo: Body Paint Blends Humans into City Backdrops

Human figures blend into iconic New York City scenes, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Guggenheim Museum, in artist Trina Merry‘s tromp l’eoil urban …
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Blanking Banksy: Artists & City Paint Over Pricey NYC Graffiti

Banksy is an artist with the rare power to make walls more valuable after he has vandalized them, which some then seek to alter or destroy and others fight …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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January 11, 2015
Hut Above the Rest: Elevated Cabin for the Athens Skyline

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Far from its typical location in the woods and other remote places, an archetypal cabin looms over the bustling city of Athens from its rooftop perch two meters above the top of most high-rises. Proposed by Panos Dragonas and Varvara Christopoulo, the elevated urban hut brings a structure with a rural connotation representing quiet and solitude into an environment that’s nearly the exact opposite.

Instead of hills and trees, the hut looks out onto a landscape of man-made design. But the designers posit that these urban spaces, busy as they may be, can still provide a space for meditation and peace – as long as you go to extremes.

Urbanization has made isolated spaces hard to come by, so the dream of escaping to a cabin in the woods is not as achievable or even idyllic as it once was. This project emphasizes how much the world has changed as our cities have grown, replacing nature with streets, skyscrapers and antennas.

The hut is a mere nine square meters (96 square feet) and lacks any modern amenities, offering only a few platforms for sleeping and sitting, much like a camping shelter in the wilderness.

“The urban hut creates a voluntary isolation cell over the ruins of the new Great Depression. The hut returns to the city both as a primary form and as a standard of minimum living, and establishes a heterotopia in the stepped skyline of Athens.,” say the architects.

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Bunyan’s Pride: 19 Log Cabins That Stack Above The Rest

The typical rectangular cabin plopped in the middle of the woods is no longer the standard. Homeowners are becoming increasingly creative with rustic design.
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Norway Mountain Cabin Roof Doubles as a Ski Slope

The architecture firm Fantastic Norway designs a very remote mountain getaway cabin that’s sloped to allow winter sports on top, like skiing and sledding.
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Manifest Destiny! Parasite Cabin Clings to San Francisco Wall

A rustic 19th-century cabin by artist Mark Reigelman is an unlikely sight clinging to the Hotel des Arts in the middle of urban San Francisco.
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[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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January 10, 2015
Exo-Prosthetics: Light, Cheap & Custom 3D-Printed Body Parts

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

Lightweight, individualized and inexpensive, this design and manufacturing strategy bends artificial limbs in new directions and promises a more personalized product for those in need of a replacement (or upgrade).

Developed by Adam Root, the process involves inverted laser scanning, 3D modeling and printing to generate form-fitting body parts that are comfortable, affordable and suited to a particular individual. The result is a “highly precise virtual model of the patient’s residual limb and matches its anatomy to within a fraction of a millimeter” which together with the “MIT biomechatronics lab-developed fitsocket captures leg tissue properties to enable a better fit.” Off-the-shelf parts round out these customized creations.

A custom-patterned mesh model forms the basis for fabricating an exo-skeletal structure, held together with titanium dust particles that are laser-sintered into place for strength and durability. This technique obviates the need for cumbersome central supports by spreading the loads in a sort of three-dimensional ‘space frame’, to borrow an architectural term. The resulting aesthetic is not only personalized but compelling – stylistically, it leaves choices up to the user and gives a unique look to each individual creation.

Gizmag puts these developments in context: “There are over 2 million amputees in the United States with 185,000 amputations every year. More than 90 percent of these involve amputations of the lower limbs. Traditional prostheses can be prohibitively expensive due to their complexity and the specialized labor required to customize them for each patient. They also have a very mechanical and robotic look and feel about them, which can exacerbate the sense of loss and negatively affect the psychological wellbeing of some amputees.”

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3D-Printed Prosthesis: Custom Casts & Artificial Limb Covers

Customization has long been a limiting factor in certain aspects of medical practice, particularly those centering around damaged or lost limbs creating …
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Bio-Mobile: 3D-Printed Car Body Inspired by Turtle Shell

3D printing enables the body of a car to be more complex than ever, yet fairly quick and economical to produce. EDAG, the world’s largest engineering …
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Getting a Leg Up: 6 Amazing Prosthetics Changing the Game

Prosthetic technology has come a very long way. These incredible designs are at the cutting edge of the field and are changing the lives of amputees.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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January 9, 2015
10 Vintage London Paintings Superimposed on Street View Images

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Blending fiction and reality, art and history, this series of superimpositions takes ‘then-and-now’ imagery all the back to the 18th Century on the streets and rivers of England’s capital city. Most of the added classics (spliced with Google Street View shots) are largely unedited, a few are strategically cropped but many show a naturally stark contrast in colors, tones, lighting, and of course: street life.

Collected and collaged by Halley Docherty, these hybrids show historical structures in their built environments like St. Martin in the Fields, shown at the top (painting by William Logsdail in 1888), a church situated on the opposite side of Trafalgar Square to Northumberland House, pictured directly below (painted by Canaletto in 1752 and since demolished).

Various views of the River Thames show how the riverfronts, skylines, ships and boats and shifted in type and number over time, or highlight key points and storytelling scenes of local history set against the everyday backdrop captured by Street View vans.

Many major streets are shown at least partly as they were, albeit with some embellishments or artistic license here and there, as well as the vehicles and people that populated them (just surrounded by contemporary persons and contexts).

Other paintings shown in this collection include: A View of Greenwich from the River by Canaletto (1750–52), Blackman Street London by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1885), View of The Grand Walk by Canaletto (1751), The 9th of November, 1888 by William Logsdail (1890), The Strand Looking East from Exeter Exchange by Anonymous (1822), Covent Garden Market by Balthazar Nebot (1737), The River Thames with St. Paul’s Cathedral on Lord Mayor’s Day by Canaletto (1746) and Westminster Abbey with a Procession of Knights of the Bath by Canaletto (1749).

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Little People of London: Miniature Urban Street Art Images

Wonderfully creative urban street art. These photographs, taken around town in London and even shown in galleries, are just a small portion of the work.
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5 Google Street View Images: Errors, Glitches & Mistakes

With so much focus on Google Street View privacy issues, many people have missed a whole subset of non-controversial but much more strange Street View images.
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Nine Eyes of Google: Street View’s Strangest Images

From the scenes shot by the nine lenses of Google’s Street View cameras, artist Jon Rafman gathers the strange, the beautiful, the haunting and the poignant.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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January 9, 2015
Caricature as Furniture: Pop Culture in Functional 3D Form

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

The Simpsons and other characters and pop culture figures are translated into minimalist chair designs in this eclectic collection from 56th Studio. Can you guess who the rest are supposed to be? The designers took the most recognizable features of each and distilled them to their most basic forms. Naturally, the exaggerated hairstyles of Bart, Marge and Lisa make them easy to spot, while the others are subtler.

“At the beginning, this project is an exploration of minimal illustration that has eventually expanded into pieces of furniture,” say the esigners. “We believe that objects possess power of communication, therefore, we decide to take a tongue-in-cheek look at investigating Pop and Hollywood Culture in tangible forms, in hoping that it would make the line that separates Graphic from Furniture become thinner.”

Inspired in part by the ‘cubical appearance’ of iconic singer Grace Jones, the project definitely blurs the lines between art objects and functional furniture. Jones is represented by one big pair of lips, and you might be able to spot Harry Potter and his owl, too.

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The Eyes Have It: Funky & Functional Occular Furniture Art

French artist Nicola L. has been producing mind-bending works for four decades. Her functional furniture art is among the most amazing and memorable.
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Origin III: Minimalist Furniture Inspired by Boat-Building

Designers BCXSY developed a line of minimalist furniture and home decor based on boat-building methods observed during an artist residency in Ireland.
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Absolutely Absurd: 18 Playful Furniture Pieces for All Ages

The humor starts with the name, but definitely does not end there. Straight Line Designs produces just about anything except works that are straightforward.
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[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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WebUrbanist

January 8, 2015
Art in Abandoned Places: 15 Unexpected Urban Installations

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Translucent jellyfish put on a serene display in the window of a derelict shop, ghostly images of long-dead patients seem to haunt a disused hospital and surreal oversized spider webs appear in the basement of an old factory in these 15 eerie installations bringing art and design to abandoned places.

Glowing Jellyfish Aquarium in an Abandoned Building

A glowing blue tank full of eerily floating jellyfish is probably one of the last things you’d ever expect to see in an abandoned shop window. Artists Walter Hugo and Zoniel built this striking aquarium as part of the Liverpool Biennial, inserting it behind the shutter of the derelict building. The installation, entitled “The Physical Possibility of Inspiring Imagination in the Mind of Someone Living” was not promoted in any way so people could come across it on their own and experience the wonder of such a discovery.

Ghostly Portraits in Ellis Island’s Abandoned Immigrant Hospital

The ghostly images of the very same nurses, doctors and patients who once roamed the halls of Ellis Island’s immigrant hospital remain in the building like a psychic imprint thanks to an installation by French street artist JR, who installed paste-ups of archival photographs. The hospital treated 1.2 million immigrant patients between 1901 and 1954, when it was abandoned, and has since been re-opened to the public. The exhibit is entitled ‘Unframed – Ellis Island’ and will remain in the building as it continues to decay (photographs by Allison Meier of Hyperallergic.)

Eerie Installations in Abandoned Churches by Herbert Baglione

Painted shadows floating around in an abandoned mental hospital in Italy aren’t the only evocative and subtle works that Herbert Baglione has completed in derelict places. The Brazilian artist also brought his signature figures to a 16th century church in Celles-sur-Belle, France. Says Baglione, “The ‘reading’ of these places allows me to take the shadow to a unique path, which usually feeds and broadens the discussion because it brings light to the abandoned environment, and so I put the name of this series as ‘The path that the soul takes.’ The idea for the name came from a conversation I had with my brother ‘William Baglione’ about the places to do these installations. It is as if the soul is leaving an invisible trail on these places.”

Trampolines Suspended in an Abandoned Mine

An abandoned Welsh slate quarry twice the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral is now home to a rainbow-hued installation of nets as part of Bounce Below, the world’s largest underground trampoline. The new tourist attraction features three gigantic trampolines ascending to 180 feet above the floor of the cavern, with ten-foot net walls keeping anyone from bouncing right out.

Stop-Motion Time Lapse in an Abandoned House

Abandoned houses served as some of the unsettling locations that make up the backdrop for ‘Circle of an Abstract Ritual,‘ a stop-motion time-lapse by artist Jeff Frost. The film was created using time-lapse photography – no special effects or graphics were added.

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Art In Abandoned Places 15 Unexpected Urban Installations

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See What? 14 Amazing & Unexpected Urban Art Installations

Colorful and strange, these temporary urban sculptures bring art out of museums and into the streets where it interacts with daily life in the city.
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Painted Shadows: Dark Art Haunts Deserted Psychiatric Hospital

Eerie shadows float out of empty wheelchairs, trailing up cracked and peeling walls and slinking under doorways in a series of paintings in an abandoned mental …
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Abandoned Intervention: Sliding Facade Reveals Decay

A brand new brick facade slides off the front of a building in Kent, UK to reveal the derelict mess just beyond. Abandoned for 11 years, the four-story …
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[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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WebUrbanist

January 8, 2015
Flowerworks: Pictures Capture Plants Exploding Like Fireworks

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

A novel take on a New Year’s staple, crafty photography and flower power, these bright botanical arrangements (set against dark night-like) backgrounds seem to burst in midair.

This Flowerwork photo series from Berlin-based artist Sarah Illenberger stemmed from her combined interest in art, photography and graphic design as well as a fascination with other dimensions of everyday options.

Working together with photographer Sabrina Rynas, buds and blossoms were set against a faux night sky, appearing to be much larger fireworks shot from off-screen at first glance. In some cases the stems trail like streamers or one plant seems nested in another like some kind of grand finale.

More about the artist: “Sarah Illenberger is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Berlin working at the intersection of art, graphic design, and photography. With a focus on analog craftwork using everyday items, Sarah is renowned for creating vivid, witty images that open up new perspectives on seemingly familiar subjects.”

“Her ability to transform ordinary materials into complex and unexpected visual experiences has been utilized to develop concepts for clients from the fields of culture and business in several countries. In her aim to explore the fertile overlap between art and design, she’s collaborated with numerous photographers and artists, and filled exhibition spaces with self-initiated projects in Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin.”

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Cyclonic Pictures: Long Exposures Spin Art from Light & Air

The shots seem impossibly composed, consisting of light that arcs and twists like a tornado in the night skies, but the process of creating them is much …
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3D-Sculpted Pictures: Innovative Photography Sculptures

Sculptures and photography often go hand-in-hand, but they’ve never been combined like this before. Korean artist Osang Gwon has created a whole new art form.
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Flowering Potholes: Lovely Tile Plants Fill Ugly Street Voids

An uniquely elegant solution to a dirty everyday problem, these gorgeous handcrafted tile mosaics are turning unfilled potholes back into functional pieces …
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January 7, 2015
Waste-Free Future: 5 Package Redesigns for Everyday Products

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Starting with name-brand versions of popular products found in virtually any home, this designer has come up with a series of clever solutions to eliminating the waste from each package system on a case-by-case basis.

Aaron Mickelson took on this challenge as a master’s thesis project at the Pratt Institute, asking (and answering) the question: can any product be truly garbage-free, leaving little or nothing unused in its wake? The strategies employed here are also potentially versatile – each could be applied to a type or category of packaging (and would-be trash).

The bag of garbage bags design for GLAD products is fairly straightforward, to the point where one has to wonder why they are not using this strategy already: the last bag contains the rest of the bags, both to make it functional as a bag itself but also to leave it as a reminder to buy more bags (which you can see coming thanks to it being partially transparent as well).

The laundry (or dish) pods for Tide are designed to dissolve in water, leaving nothing behind that you need to take out of the wash, obviating the need for a container entirely.

The OXO pop containers feature soap-soluble ink that breaks down when you wash it, taking the branding materials with it and leaving you with an all-purpose container. As a bonus: these could also come pre-loaded with food rather than simply sold as containers, too, allowing you to buy products then keep the plastic boxes for other uses.

The Nivea bar of soap comes in a septic-safe dissolving paper wrapper that you can bring into the shower or bath with you and not have to worry about throwing out, eliminating a step as well as reducing landfill.

Finally, this Twining tea bag variant eliminates the wax lining that typically prevents composting and instead integrates each tea packet directly into the compost-friendly packaging design that unfolds like an accordion for use.

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Unverpackt: Zero-Waste Grocery Store Packages No Products

The first of its kind in the country, this German supermarket strips away wasteful packaging and sells its goods in bulk to customers who bring or borrow …
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Package Equals Product in 5 Innovative Industrial Designs

What if you could simply reuse packaging as part of a product rather than sending away for disposal or recycling?
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Crazy Cargo: 30 Steel Shipping Container Home Designs

Shipping container homes are the perfect blend of modern architecture and sensible green building. Buy your own used cargo container on sale and start building …
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January 7, 2015