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Architectural Fairy Tales: Unreal Structures Tell Strange Sci-Fi Tales

11 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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These fictional structures seem to be ripped right out of the concept art for a sci-fi film, envisioning a world of architecture that’s totally out of scale with humans but fittingly grand for the environments in which they’re placed. ’Last Day’ by Ukrainian architect Mykhallo Ponomarkenko is the first prize-winning entry at this year’s Fairy Tales concept architecture competition, using classical painting techniques to tell stories of a huge artificial platform that uses anti-gravity engines to escape the laws of physics.

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“Landscapes have always inspired me to put something weird, unreal and out of human scale into them,” says Ponomarkenko. “Something not feasible and not practical that contrasts with the natural surroundings, but also exists at the same scale. These satirical interventions lead to new ideas and feelings about nature – they make the viewer more aware about the environment and our harmful impact on it.”

“We are flat surface creatures. Sometimes I feel that we crave it so much that the planet is going to be turned into pavement so cars can go anywhere, and our industries could continue expanding. The ‘Saturn Rings’ in my proposal represent these flat surface desires but in a more poetic, optimistic, and friendly manner.”

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Organized by Blank Space, an online architecture platform, the fourth annual Fairy Tales competition announced three winners selected from over 60 project submissions. Winners are awarded prizes of $ 2,500, $ 1,500 and $ 1,000, respectively, and select projects will be featured in the fourth print edition of Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story. Read the story that goes along with ‘Last Day’ and see the rest of the entries over at Blank Space.

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“The proposals put forth in the Fairy Tales competition create entire worlds of the imagination – they build their immersive stories as much by what they don’t say, as by what they do,” says Blank Space. “The winning entries in this year’s competition include oblique references to current events, mundane daily activities and human emotions that we all easily relate to – they make visible how we shape space, and in turn, how space shapes us.”

“The images and narratives are so wildly outlandish, and yet, so grounded that it seems like we could mistakenly stumble into any of them. They are personal and powerful – a testament to the power of architecture as a world-builder.”

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Handle with Care: 10 Years of Fragile Glass Boxes Broken by FedEx

10 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Packing and shipping artwork is a delicate and costly process, unless your intention is to create new pieces by allowing them to break along the way. Starting in 2005, artist Walead Beshty began a decade-long project, sending works of art to galleries around the world with an important twist: the key element of their creation happened in transit.

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Beshty would construct glass boxes to fit inside the cardboard shipping containers, matching their interior dimensions (no padding or other protection). Curators then unpacked the finished works, usually cracked but not totally destroyed (being constructed from shatter-proof glass).

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Each piece was given a descriptive name including the date of shipment, tracking number and box dimensions, then put on display (resulting in titles like: FedEx® Large Box ©2005 FEDEX 139751 REV 10/05 SSCC, Priority Overnight, Los Angeles-New York trk#795506878000, November 27-28, 2007). In some cases, the glass contents are reshipped, changing form again and again as they move between exhibitions.

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The net result is a work that tells the story of its own travels, particularly a period between leaving the hands of the artist and being received by a museum or collector. The displays vary, but in some cases the battered boxes become pedestals for the finished sculptural displays.

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But beyond this fixation with the story behind the art, there is another element that drove Beshty: the “perversity of a corporation owning a shape” – as it turns out, FedEx has managed to copyright the dimensions of their box designs.

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“They are basically a unit of space owned by a corporation in which to ship objects,” explains the artist. This idea of a company being able to “own” an empty volume of air designed to transport goods seemed surreal, and was another factor motivating this unusual mobile art project.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Inner Space: 14 Modular All-in-One Living Cubes to Organize Interiors

09 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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No shelter is too small or too basic to accommodate a comfortable lifestyle when everything you need, from your bed and kitchen to walk-in closets and mini theaters, is contained in one compact, mobile, modular ‘living unit.’ Often fitted out for plumbing and boasting their own internet and sound systems, these rooms-within-rooms can instantly make warehouses and other typically uninhabitable spaces into cozy apartments or save an astounding amount of space when square footage is severely limited.

Kammerspiel Unit by Nils Holger Moormann

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Designed for people living in micro apartments, Nils Holger Moormann’s ‘Kammerpsiel’ contains just about everything you need in an apartment, in one compact and highly efficient package. The bed is lofted above the walk-in closet, while important functions are located along the perimeter, like the couch, storage, desk, dining are and even a place to display and store your bike.

Cubitat by Urban Capital and Luca Nichetto

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Measuring 10 by 10 by 10, the Cubitat by Luca Nichetto and urban Capital is designed to be a ‘plug and play’ living space containing a built-in kitchen, living room, bed, bathroom and closets. The idea is that you could move into virtually any kind of building and instantly make it inhabitable without the need for further renovations.

Living Cube by Ken Isaacs

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The first designer to come up with this concept seems to have been Ken Isaacs, whose 1974 book ‘How to Build Your Own Living Structures’ still serves as a roadmap to modular room systems today. Isaacs reportedly came up with the idea when he was a poor Chicago student needing a place to live and work. The whole book is downloadable here.

The Hub by Kraaijvanger Architects

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Another all-in-one apartment system, the Hub by Rotterdam-based architects Kraaijvanger, contains everything you need to make a warehouse a comfortable place to live – even plumbing. It measures just a little more than 160 square feet, hooks up to existing water mains through an access point in the floor, and has its own internet, heating and sound system.

Wooden Mountain Hotel Suite, Volkshotel

photo: Arend Loerts

Not all modular living systems are cubes, though. The Wooden Mountain in the Volkshotel’s Edmund Suite packs just as much function into an amorphous wooden structure, including a wardrobe, double bed, shower, toilet, full-sized soaking tub and even a cactus garden. Photos by Arend Loerts.

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Inner Space 14 Modular All In One Living Cubes Organize Interiors

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Winter Carousels: Circular Spinning Ice Islands Carved with Chainsaws

08 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

ice carousels

Ice fishing huts and art shanties allow people to enjoy peaceful winters and creative expression on frozen lakes, but for those with something more dynamic in mind: rotating DIY islands of ice are also an option.

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Ice circles have been known to form naturally, particularly in streams where a current can round the edges of a free-floating chunk and keep it spinning. The ice circle below captured by Kaylyn Messer is one such example, found this winter in the Snoqualmie River near Seattle, Washington.

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These kinds of formations happen on their own at times in Scandinavian and American rivers, water currents slowly shaping the ice. Lakes with fully-frozen surfaces are another matter — creating ice islands on their surface requires a bit more ingenuity (or at least: labor and machinery).

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Once created, these may or may not move on their own, depending on currents below the surface — in some cases they have to be helped along by an outboard motor. Seating and shelters can be brought out to make them more homey (small fires can even be lit if the intended use is temporary).

Fair warning, though: if you plan to light your ice circle on fire at the end of a festival or gathering, be sure to stay far back from the flames and warming ice.

The best part is that there is no waste in the making of these things nor assembly required. And if your first attempt fails (assuming you don’t go down with the island), you can always carve out more.

[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

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Urine for a Beautiful Day: Street Gardens Double as Public Pissoirs

07 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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‘Piss in peace’ is the tagline for the Urintrottoir, a recent addition to the streets of Paris that’s part urinal, part composter, part mini garden. City officials are hoping that offering these urinals right out in the open will be a viable way to get men to stop peeing all over everything in sight, especially at night when they’ve had a few drinks. It would be cool if our cities could smell a little nicer, guys.

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The problem is, most of us don’t want to stare at urinals as we’re walking down the sidewalk. The Urintrottoir design attempts to find a way around that and make use of waste products at the same time, by making each unit into a planter full of herbs and flowers. The top bins contain straw and sawdust, which help break down the urine into relatively neutral-smelling soil for the plants.

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Larger versions of the device could potentially absorb the urine of 600 people before needing to be emptied. Two smaller versions are currently located near the Gare de Lyon station in Paris, and if the test is successful (and men really do choose to pee in them instead of in alleys or in the doorways of shops,) additional units will be rolled out to other stations in France.

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Some European cities already offer public ‘pissoirs’ that are considerably less decorative, but there’s not always a recycling component involved. This option makes lemonade out of lemons, so to speak (sorry, that metaphor is almost too perfect.) Now, if only there were similar options designed for people with different equipment.

A previous effort to prettify public urinals came in the form of a rose-tinted marble fountain by Portuguese architecture firm Bureau A, attempting to make public pissing into an artistic act.

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Pop-Up Car Tents: These 15 Rooftop Campers Are Like Portable Tree Houses

07 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

ikamper rooftop tent

Popping up from the rooftops of everything from rugged Jeeps to adorable BMW MINIs or extending from the sides of motorcycles and bicycles, these vehicle-based tents make shelter on the go as easy as it can be. Some cantilever dramatically over the ground so you feel like you’re hovering in midair, and others stretch surprisingly high into the sky, like your own personal portable ‘treehouse’ built right onto your car.

Overland Tacoma Habitat Levitating Tent

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This pop-up tent by Nemo Equipment is custom-designed to fit the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, using a hardtop as a base for a lightweight aluminum structural shell that opens and closes with the help of gas springs. When standing in the truck bed, users have an impressive 7 feet of headroom.

iKamper Skycamp & Hardtop One Rooftop Tents

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The SkyCamp by iKamper is envisioned as a mobile treehouse experience that’s secured to the roof of a vehicle rather than a tree, complete with ladder access to the sleeping quarters. Nearly flat when not in use, the SkyCamp expands to impressive proportions, and add-ons can make the setup extend all the way to the ground for a lofted suite. The Hardtop One is a similar design, but expands vertically rather than diagonally.

Motorcycle Bivouac Exposed Camping

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The ‘Bivouac’ by Exposed is designed to extend from a motorcycle to fit a single sleeper and their luggage, and pack up so tiny it can be mounted to the handlebars for transport. It may not be luxurious inside, but it’ll keep you and your motorcycle seat dry in the rain, and it’s perfect for the one-person explorer.

Prius Plus Hard Top Camper

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There’s something hilarious about the proportions of this hard-shell ‘Prius Plus’ camper, which is made to clamp right onto a Toyota Prius hybrid as a camper converter. It’s been described as a ‘saggy diaper,’ ‘tumorous growth’ and a ‘giant marshmallow from outer space,’ and it’s not hard to see why. But Japan-based manufacturer Camp Inn did pull off quite a feat in creating a full-height entry to the back of a compact vehicle, leading to enough space for for or five people to sleep. It’s not clear how it latches on, it probably causes a significant plunge in your fuel economy and it costs twice as much as the Prius itself.

Bike Tire Tent

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Cyclists can get in on the portable tent action, too, with ‘The Travel Tent’ by Chung-Jung Wu, Pei-Chun Chen & Li-Fu Chen. The design clips onto a bike wheel for easy portability while freeing up cargo space for other items, and extends into a pretty decently-sized one-person shelter.

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Pop Up Car Tents These 15 Rooftop Campers Are Like Portable Tree Houses

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Let’s Make A Dill: 11 Closed & Abandoned Pickle Factories

05 Feb

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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The Age of Pickles ended when home refrigeration arrived, souring prospects for pickling businesses and leaving abandoned pickle factories hither and yon.

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Folks living in tropic and desert climes depended on preserved foods of all kinds so it’s no surprise A Pickle House (formerly the Arnold Pickle and Olive Company) managed to pump out the pickles from 1905 through 1994.

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The brick factory building/warehouse at 1401 E. Van Buren Street in Phoenix, Arizona was built in 1934 and has lately been repurposed as the CPLC Pickle House Makerspace Business Incubator. Nice that they kept the signage. Kudos to Flickr users Ira Serkes (berkeleyhomes-dot-com) and Amy Brown (amybrownphoto) for snapping the brine-infused building in its abandoned pre-CPLC state.

Detroit’s Booming

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Is Detroit booming again? Well, yes and no… while the much-maligned Motor City continues its inexorable decline, there are a few bright spots amid the gloom. One involves an old pickle factory.

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In May of 2015, Detroit Boom City temporarily transformed an abandoned pickle factory on Detroit’s rough east side into “a site-responsive, fully immersive (art) exhibition” featuring a host of Detroit-based creative artists, painters and sculptors. Good to know not all Detroit booms are gunshots.

All Puckered Out

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The old abandoned Seacoast Packing Company building located at 100 Dill Drive in Beaufort, SC is better known as the “Old Pickle Factory”, though pickle-packing was merely one of its many incarnations. We wonder what came first: the pickle factory or the street being named “Dill Drive”.

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Built in 1921, the factory was originally intended to be a meat-packing plant but sour economic conditions in the region put the kibosh on that plan. The completed building sat vacant for seven years before re-opening, respectively, as a grocery storage facility, a tomato-canning plant, a pickle factory, and a lumber storage warehouse.

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The Old Pickle Factory’s current distressed state looks to be the result of arson and that’s sort of true: the Beaufort Fire Department used to practice there. Hopefully their real world responses turned out better.

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These days, the much-deteriorated Old Pickle Factory is considered to be unrepairable but nobody’s in any hurry to tear it down. Besides, many of the locals find its presence oddly comforting. “It speaks to our hearts rather than our eyes,” states Beaufort native Ryan Copeland. These haunting images were taken by Eye and Eye Photography in June of 2010.

Higher & Dreher

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There’s not much left of the former Dreher Pickle Company plant in Fort Collins, CO, and there’ll be even less after the Fort Collins Community Solar Array is expanded. If you have a “pickle where the sun don’t shine” joke, here’s your cue to relate it.

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At one time, the Dreher Pickle factory processed cucumbers grown for miles around in hundreds of wooden pickling vats. The clever factory owner adapted the vats from disused wooden steam-train watering tanks made redundant after the railroads moved from steam to diesel/electric power. Much of the old plant burnt down in a 1990 fire and five years later the City bulldozed everything remaining except for one small office.

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Lets Make A Dill 11 Closed Abandoned Pickle Factories

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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CloudFisher: Low-Tech Net Turns Fog into Drinking Water for Morocco

04 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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In a semi-arid region of Morocco, where tap water is a luxury but fog is plentiful, a fog-harvesting net based on the structure of a spider’s web naturally collects moisture from the air. Engineer Peter Trautwein of the German Water Foundation volunteered his time to develop CloudFisher, a structure that looks like no more than a fence from afar. Get closer, and you’ll see a metal framework supporting the stretched nets, with gutters and tubing directing the collected droplets to tanks.

The nets are placed along the area around Mount Boutmezguida, which is known for being one of the driest parts of Morocco, but also the foggiest. When the wind blows, it pushes moisture into the complex woven netting, effectively trapping it. Rubber expanders holding the nets to the frames reduce the impact of wind pressure on the net to keep them from breaking.

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CloudFisher is the result of many years of study, as Trautwein experimented with various structures of net to see which ones yielded the most water. Ultimately, monofilaments were the most effective. The netting’s tiny triangular openings fill with water, which then trickles down to the collector at the base.

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The CloudFisher system was installed with the help of NGO Dar si Hmed and won the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Momentum for Change Award. It’s capable of harvesting between four and fourteen liters of water per square meter of net, ultimately producing up to 36,000 liters (9,510 gallons) of water a day for the area’s 800 residents.

[ By SA Rogers in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Invisible Graffiti: Uncanny 3D Overpass Art Simulates Transparency

03 Feb

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

3D graffiti artist Milane Ramsi has combined two challenging types of urban art into a single installation, making a concrete pillar appear to vanish while producing three-dimensional lettering.

The installation wraps a concrete support post for a highway overpass in Karlovy Vary, a city in the Czech Republic. The work spells the artist’s name in reverse, appearing to pierce the pillar thanks to a combination of colors overlaid on a simulated background. The purple gives a general shape to the work while the yellow adds apparent depth and dimension.

His other works range from tags to 3D-looking works that appear to pop off the wall, but this particular piece combines elements that span graffiti types and styles.

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In invisibility aspect is reminiscent of another clever work of roadside art, a wrapped tree designed to look like it has been cut across the middle, leaving the top half portion of the trunk and branches to seemingly float on air. And below: Tree Line by photographer Zander Olsen.

tree-line

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

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Plant Patterns: Living Roots Manipulated Into Nature-Based Art

02 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

plant-root-art

The intricacies of a plant’s secret life beneath the soil, where its roots grow and change almost constantly, become a true work of art when manipulated into specific patterns. Artist Diana Scherer collaborated with biologists and ecologists at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands to develop a system that can create the same kinds of spirals and other motifs found in traditional woven textiles.

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Subterranean templates act like molds as the root systems expand, channeling them in certain ways to form thick mats, almost like living fabric. As the roots grow, they curl and braid around themselves, becoming stronger and reinforcing the patterns.

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“In my work I explore the relationship man has with his natural environment and his desire to control nature,” says Scherer. “For the past few years my fascination has mainly been focused on the dynamics of below ground plant parts. I’ve been captivated by the root system, with its hidden, underground processes; it is considered to be the brain of the plant by plant neurobiologists.”

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“Charles Darwin was the first to watch the behavior of the plant roots. In his book The Power of Movements of Plants, he describes how roots do not passively grow down, but move and observe. A root navigates, knows what’s up and down, observes gravity and localizes moisture and chemicals. Darwin discovered that plants are a lot more intelligent than everybody thought. For contemporary botanists, this buried matter is still a wondrous land. There is a global investigation to discover this hidden world. I also want to explore it and apply the ‘intelligence’ of plants in my work.”

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Architectural Fairy Tales: Unreal Structures Tell Strange Sci-Fi Tales

Handle with Care: 10 Years of Fragile Glass Boxes Broken by FedEx

Inner Space: 14 Modular All-in-One Living Cubes to Organize Interiors

Kammerspiel Unit by Nils Holger Moormann

Cubitat by Urban Capital and Luca Nichetto

Living Cube by Ken Isaacs

The Hub by Kraaijvanger Architects

Wooden Mountain Hotel Suite, Volkshotel

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Inner Space 14 Modular All In One Living Cubes Organize Interiors

Winter Carousels: Circular Spinning Ice Islands Carved with Chainsaws

Urine for a Beautiful Day: Street Gardens Double as Public Pissoirs

Let’s Make A Dill: 11 Closed & Abandoned Pickle Factories

Detroit’s Booming

All Puckered Out

Higher & Dreher

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Lets Make A Dill 11 Closed Abandoned Pickle Factories

CloudFisher: Low-Tech Net Turns Fog into Drinking Water for Morocco

Invisible Graffiti: Uncanny 3D Overpass Art Simulates Transparency

Plant Patterns: Living Roots Manipulated Into Nature-Based Art

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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Kammerspiel Unit by Nils Holger Moormann

Cubitat by Urban Capital and Luca Nichetto

Living Cube by Ken Isaacs

The Hub by Kraaijvanger Architects

Wooden Mountain Hotel Suite, Volkshotel

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Inner Space 14 Modular All In One Living Cubes Organize Interiors

Overland Tacoma Habitat Levitating Tent

iKamper Skycamp & Hardtop One Rooftop Tents

Motorcycle Bivouac Exposed Camping

Prius Plus Hard Top Camper

Bike Tire Tent

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Pop Up Car Tents These 15 Rooftop Campers Are Like Portable Tree Houses

Detroit’s Booming

All Puckered Out

Higher & Dreher

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Lets Make A Dill 11 Closed Abandoned Pickle Factories

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Inner Space 14 Modular All In One Living Cubes Organize Interiors

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Pop Up Car Tents These 15 Rooftop Campers Are Like Portable Tree Houses

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Lets Make A Dill 11 Closed Abandoned Pickle Factories