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Broken Mirror: Shard Hotel Views Reflect Next-Door Rooms

18 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]

shard hotel london night

Splintered corners, giving The Shard in London its iconic multifaceted look, are now also responsible for letting guests of Europe’s tallest hotel see into the spaces of their nighttime neighbors.

shard broken reflection mistake

As the Financial Times reports,a series of glass panels standing out from the structure have turned into a series of accidental mirrors, giving room-with-a-view a new meaning in the context of this building.

london hotel interior problem

During the day, visitors to the Shangri-La can see out in nearly all directions, but at night with inside lights on they also get an uninvited sneak peak back into adjacent bedrooms. Designed by Renzo Piano, the famous building may not be as problem-plagued as its car-melting sibling but it certainly has some issues yet to be resolved.

shard hotel london day

The solution so far offered by the hotel seems somewhat incomplete – they are notifying guests of the issue and advising them to use curtains. Still, not everyone will remember to take such steps and many will want to leave their curtains open, since they came for the lovely views in the first place. In the end, one is left to wonder how no light modeling of the building revealed this potential problem (image above by Patrick Collins).

[ By WebUrbanist in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]

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Get Your Virtual Wings: Oculus Rift Machine Simulates Flight

17 May

[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

birdflapping

Feel the wind on your face and smell the pine sap of the forest as you gaze down at the scenery far below – without ever leaving the ground. ‘Birdly’ is a new machine developed by the Zurich University of the Arts that simulates flight using an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, a motor-powered machine that mimics flying movements, a fan to fake the feeling of wind and even olfactory feedback tailored to the landscape of your choice.

Oculus Rift Flight Simulator 2

The creators studied the movement of the Red Kite bird and translated it to a sensory-motor coupling that enables you to flap your ‘wings’ as if you’re really flying. The movement of your arms directly correlates to the flying sensation you experience through the Oculus Rift headset.

Oculus Rift Flight Simulator 4

Once strapped in, you’re embedded in a virtual landscape as if you were the Red Kite itself for the closest possible simulation of flight that’s possible without ever actually going into the air. The faster you go, the stronger the air pushed out by the fan positioned right in front of your head.

Oculus Rift Flight Simulator 3

While it’s easy to imagine Birdly becoming a fixture at amusement parks, so far, it’s just an art installation, with no plans for commercialization. The creators say there are a few tweaks still needed to keep users from getting sick during the flight experience. This device is just the latest in an intriguing line of creations using Oculus Rift to bend reality, like a recent Gender Swap experiment that allows the user to switch to the point of view of someone of a different gender.

[ By Steph in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

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Urban X-Stitch: Street Artist Cross-Stitches Yarn on Fences

16 May

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

urban stitch skull tag

Whether you want to call it a new art form or a simply a hipster hobby, an artist France is pushing street-side string art in amusing new directions.

urban cross stitch detail

urban stitch shipping yard

Not quite your grandmother-in-rocking-chair approach, Urban X-Stitch creates colorfully cross-stitched pieces along the lines of yarn bombing and knitted graffiti.

urban x stitch art

urban ducks in row

urban stitch ducks fenc

So far, these subjects are mostly tame – bright logos and cute animals mixed in with only a few things that look more like spray-painted tags, but the potential is there for something more.

urban rainbow process pic

urban cross fish rainbow

urban owl give hoot

urban cat closeup fencing

Another neat possible direction in which to take this: pattern sharing between artists and places, the same way cross-stitching in its traditional setting can follow guides and designs.

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

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Real-Life Panopticons: Deserted Dystopian Prisons in Cuba

16 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

panopticon central guard tower

Imagine life inside a ring of cells around a central watchtower, where you can never be sure whether you are being observed. This surreal setup became an extreme reality under dictator Gerardo Machado on the Cuban Isla de la Juventud.

panopticon prison complex exterior

One of the creepiest concepts in the history of architecture, the Panopticon model of incarceration design proposes keeping prisoners forever on edge, fearing their watchers.

panopticon real life cuba

Both Fidel and Raul Castro spent time within the walls of this Presidio Modelo (Model Prison) complex, which, at its peak, held over 8,000 political prisoners. Apparently they found the approach sufficiently effective, since the Castro regime kept them open as well.

panopticon island cuba set

panopticon gathering space center

Originally the vision of Jeremy Bentham (and later nightmare of philosopher Michel Foucault), this 18th-Century idea was never realized in its creator’s lifetime but found expression in many structures after his death.

panopticon model prison diagrams

panopticon interior cell details

While there are other Panopticon-inspired prisons around the world, this complex in Cuba may be the most literal and direction realization of the original diagrams. It features circular structures and guardhouses in the center of a vast open spaces, all to keep residents in a perpetual state of uncertainty (images via Jason Florio and Wikipedia).

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Aviator’s Villa: Ultramodern House Made of Airplane Parts

15 May

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Aviator House 1

A long, narrow ultramodern residence envisioned as a composition of disassembled aviation components offers an evocative home for a retired pilot. ‘Aviator’s Villa’ by Urban Office Architecture is elevated on a hill between a lake and a swimming pool, and exposed on three sides so it feels like it’s floating on air.

Aviator House 2

The cantilevered master bedroom juts out from the main volume of the home like the nose of an airplane, hovering over other ‘floating’ volumes conceived as abstracted clouds. You might expect a smoother silhouette from a plane-inspired structure, but the architects deliberately gave it a “twist and torque” to simulate the way a plane steers through air currents.

Aviator House 3

Aviation House

The house consists of three primary spaces including a thirty-foot-tall living area and kitchen, the 40-foot bedroom, and the library. Between the two separate structures are a series of hidden spaces revealed during the ascent up a circular staircase.

Aviator House 4

Throughout the villa, little details echo those found within a plane, like the riveted metal frames around the windows, and perforated metal screens that filter harsh direct sunlight the way clouds do in the sky. The sharp, geometric panes of glass that make up the windows are meant to recall the angles found within a cockpit.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Fairytale Hotels: 15 of the World’s Most Magical Lodgings

15 May

[ By Steph in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]

Magical Hotels Main
Waterfalls stream down the sides of mountain-shaped, moss-covered structures, while white horses gallivant in front of castles that look like they were ripped right out of a book of fairytales. These 15 hotels are among the most magical places to stay anywhere in the world, from ancient palaces in India to gleaming ice hotels in Quebec. While some are a peek at how the 1% live, others are surprisingly affordable.

Magic Mountain Hotel, Chile

Magical Hotels Magic Mountain 2

If elves took up residence in Hobbiton, this is what their homes would look like. The mountain-shaped structure is dotted with arched windows and obscured with lush greenery. Waterfalls stream down the sides to drench the moss, ferns and flowers. Located within the remote Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve, the hotel requires an adventurous spirit to even access, but it’s well worth the effort. Nearly everything is constructed from locally, sustainably sourced wood.

Neemrana Fort Palace, India

Magical Hotels Neemrana

A 15th-century palace built into the hillside in India is now a five-star, 55-bedroom hotel with kingly views over the nearby village. Neemrana Fort Palace is full of authentic decor from periods throughout India’s history and contains displays that educate guests about the palace’s fascinating past. Though rooms here start at just £50 per night, guests are given the royal treatment, with options including poolside spa treatments and hot balloon rides over the valley.

Fairytale Hotel in Belgium

Magical Hotels Balade Gnomes 1
Magical Hotels Balade Gnomes 2

Sleep in a surreal medieval-style chamber within a massive wooden Trojan Horse at Belgium’s La Balade des Gnomes Hotel. This bizarre retreat boasts ten unique rooms sculpted with the natural earthen building material known as cob to create all sorts of curved custom surfaces. The horse is just one of the hotel’s suites – others include a troll’s lair and a Macquarie Island room with a boat-shaped bed.

Crazy House Hotel, Dalat, Vietnam

Weirdest Hotels Crazy House 1
Weirdest Hotels Crazy House 2

The aptly named Crazy House Hotel in Vietnam began as the private residence of architect Hang Viet Nga, who clearly let her imagination run wild in creating an organically shaped structure reminiscent of the Barcelona ouvre of Antoni Gaudi. Made from the base of a dead tree, the house is full of ladders leading into hidden nooks and through tight tunnels. Rooms cost as little as $ 22 USD per night.

Thorngrove Manor Hotel, Adelaide, Australia

Magical Hotels Thorngrove

The Thorngrove Manor Hotel could easily double as a princess castle at Disneyland, it’s so picturesque. Located in Adelaide, Australia, the castle-like structure looks centuries-old but was actually built in 1994 as part of a vineyard. Though all the rooms are together in one building, there are no common spaces, and couples staying there never need to see other guests.

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Fairytale Inn 15 Of The Worlds Most Magical Hotels

[ By Steph in Boutique & Art Hotels & Travel. ]

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Groundless City: A Guidebook to Underground Hong Hong

14 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

hong kong elevated walkway

Between raised walkways, subways, ferries, cable cars, a multi-block outdoor escalator and extensive double-decker bus system, it is possible to traverse a huge swath of Hong Kong without even touching the ground (photo above by HappyKiddo).

hong kong map detail

At the same time, it is hard to find maps and illustrations of this vast urban phenomena – at least outside of Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, which maps 32 networks of pedestrian paths above and below the surface.

hong kong book cover

Architects and authors Jonathan D Solomon, Clara Wong, and Adam Frampton (through ORO Editions) documented these interconnected systems in amazing detail. As Kevin Kelly writes, the book captures the essence of a sort of shadow city: “Beneath and between the gleaming skyscrapers built over the cramped confines of Hong Kong proper are miles of subterranean malls, passageways, stairs, subway stations, parking garages, escalators, skybridges, and food courts.”

hong kong underground network

Like aged cities themselves (or water-carved catacombs or piecemeal-generated anthills), these networks were not designed as a whole. Rather, they developed organically over time via both private and public initiatives, slowly forming a convoluted but beautiful and evolving patchwork of voids with various degrees of privacy and accessibility.

hong kong detailed guidebook

hong kong public diagrams

If you do visit Hong Kong, try this for a start: take the escalator all the way up and back down the steeply-sloped hillside. Or: break off just before the bottom and stay on second-story walkways as far as they will take you. If you get stuck, instead of descending just to street level, go underground and see how far you can make it via subterranean passageways. If all else fails, hop on a bus, ferry or subway. You may be amazed at how far this combination can take you.

hong kong urban diagram

hong kong above

More about the book from the official description: “Hong Kong is a city without ground. This is true both physically (built on steep slopes, the city has no ground plane) and culturally (there is no concept of ground). Density obliterates figure-ground in the city, and in turn re-defines public-private spatial relationships. Perception of distance and time is distorted through compact networks of pedestrian infrastructure, public transport and natural topography in the urban landscape.Without a ground, there can be no figure either. In fact, Hong Kong lacks any of the traditional figure-ground relationships that shape urban space: axis, edge, center, even fabric.” (Photo by Nicolas Vollmer)

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

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Empty Spaces: Photo Book Documents Eerie Urban Ruins

13 May

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 1

Crumbling cathedrals, decaying theaters and half-destroyed camping cabins: urban explorer Johnny Joo has seen it all, and he doesn’t just document these abandoned places, he does so with an eye for spine-tingling drama. The 23-year-old photographer is releasing his collection of stunning images in book form with ‘Empty Spaces,’ available for pre-order for just a couple more days.

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 2

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 5

The 116-page, hard-cover photo book ‘Empty Spaces’ includes the photographer’s favorites from years of urban exploration. Pre-orders come hand-signed with a free gift; the book is also available in E-book form. Order it at Architectural Afterlife.

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 3

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 4

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 6

The photographs take us on a visual tour of the abandoned Rust Belt. Some structures are so covered in moss and ivy, their former use is a mystery. Others, like bowling alleys and theaters, seem frozen in time, as if they’re just waiting for patrons to start filing back in.

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 7

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 8

Johnny Joo Abandoned Places Photography 9

“Why were these places vacated? And why are they left to sit, uncared for? The remains of a person’s bedroom, bed still intact, covered in a layer of mold and dust. Walls surrounding with cracked complexions and vivid, yet transparent voices telling a story of time. Living through the history of abandonments as you explore what once was an entirely different scene; now transformed into a desolate, yet incredible, stimulating image of complex patterns and great detail. Through this book, we will take a journey through the rust belt to see the unseen and find the forgotten.”

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Floating Architecture: 16 Dramatic Cantilevered Structures

13 May

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Cantilevered Structures Main
Jutting out over cliffs or hovering over impossibly small foundations, these 16 dramatically cantilevered structures seem like they’re about to take off into the sky. With designs that appear to defy the laws of physics, these balancing homes, museums and mountain overlooks extend beyond the usual boundaries to take in majestic views.

Balancing Barn by MVRDV

Cantilevered Balancing Barn 2
Cantilevered Balancing Barn 1

Dutch architecture firm MVRDV has made a name for itself with wholly unexpected, often gravity-defying structures, and Balancing Barn is a prime example. The glittering metal-clad building looks like someone started to push it off a cliff and gave up, seeming to balance precariously on the edge of the hillside. The structure is 98 feet long (30 meters) and is actually no barn at all, but a home designed to take in the views of the surrounding forest.

Hemeroscopium House by Ensamble Studio & Anton Garcia-Abril

Cantilevered Hemeroscopium House 2

A swimming pool juts out over the grass at the highly unusual Hemeroscopium House by Ensamble Studios. Made of prefabricated concrete built from three massive I-beams, two segments of an irrigation canal and two steel girders, the house took just a week to assemble.

Top of Tyrol Viewing Platform, Austria

Cantilevered Top of Tyrol Overlook

The sculptural Top of Tyrol overlook by Aste Architecture is a platform that juts 27 feet over a ridge at the pinnacle of Austria’s Mount Isidor. The oxidized metal structure was designed to blend into the environment as much as possible, seeming to disappear into the rocks during warm weather and meld with the snow in winter.

View Hill House by Denton Corker Marshall

Cantilevered View HIll House

Rather than placing the second story parallel to the first, as is most common, Australian architects Denton Corker Marshall chose a perpendicular approach for the aptly named View Hill House. The architects envision the isolated building as ‘land art,’ a shape that can be reduced to two sticks placed on top of each other and ‘dropped’ onto the landscape.

Five Fingers Viewing Platform, Austria

Cantilevered Five Fingers Viewing Platform

Five individual platforms stick out of this overlook in the Salzkammergut area of the Austrian Alps, each with a different way to experience the view. One has a picture frame at the end, another has a glass floor, the third has a trampoline, the fourth features a round hole in the floor and the fifth offers a telescope.

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Floating Architecture 16 Dramatic Cantilevered Structures

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Pop-Up Portfolio: Mobile Furniture Folds Flat Between Pages

12 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

flat pack furniture set

It is not unusual to see art and design students walking around with portfolios under their arms, but few open up to reveal such creative results as these.

flat pack chair closed

flat pack green chair

Inspired by campus folder cases, origami and pop-up books, Japanese designer Mariko Tsujimoto created this series of unfolding furnishings that deploy into surprisingly solid (if small) functional objects.

flat pack table open

flat pack table closed

Set in vivid colors to distinguish their functionality, the set includes a chair, table, desk and bookshelf, each of which refolds automatically when the end pages are closed.

flat pack shelf closed

flat pack book shelf

flat pack in motion

These quite literal portfolio pieces are just plastic prototypes for now, but rendered in a more solid material they could provide the conceptual groundwork for a full-fledged furnishing set.

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

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