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The City Is Your Living Room: 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

01 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Smart, well-designed urban seating encourages more interaction with the cities we live in and with each other, infusing them with vibrancy and a sense of connection. It’s even cooler when it’s built right into a park or sidewalk as a multifunctional element to add some sculptural visual interest, delineate different zones or offer opportunities for fitness and play.

Just a Black Box: Furniture Transforms Into Kiosk

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A cube of semi-private seating by day, ‘Just a Black Box’ by Max Boano and Jonas Prismontas transforms into a kiosk for commercial or public use at night (or whenever else it’s desired.) The box elevates itself on its own hidden hydraulic columns to become a customizable space that can be used for retail, cafes, bike repair, selling tickets or even as a mini theater.

3 Urban Hammock Installations

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Comfy hammocks come to public spaces in various forms to create some of the most nap-worthy urban furniture you’ll ever see, including a series of nets strung over the grass by The Chartered Institute of Housing, bright blue hammocks inserted into a void in a promenade along Paprocany Lake in Poland, and re-purposed fire hoses hung from a steel grid in Copenhagen.

Vanke Cloud City by Lab D+H

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Vanke Cloud City is a mixed-use development project in Guangzhou, China boasting a series of creative public seating strategies by Lab D+H. The Cloud Line is a continuous tubular steel structure offering benches, monkey bars, parallel bars and other uses, while Cloud Seat is a modular set of interacted spaces made of perforated steel plate, with vertically stacked seating.

Meeting Bowls for NYC

meeting bowls

Small groups can get together and chat face-to-face in a comfortable, breezy space with ‘Meeting Bowls’ by the Madrid-based design firm mmmm… in partnership with the Times Square Alliance. The urban furniture installation was situated in the center of Manhattan’s busiest plaza in summer 2011to facilitate interactions and dialogue between friends and strangers alike. The base of each bowl gently rocks to imitate the sensation of floating.

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The City Is Your Living Room 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Book City: Retail Space for Reading Mimics the Look of Urban Spaces

01 Sep

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

book city 1

The appearance of the city outside – complete with crosswalks and grids resembling aerial views of urban blocks – acts as a transition space between the entrance of a bookstore and the quiet, private spaces beyond. This space by XL-muse, located on the fourth floor of the Réel Mall in Shanghai, references the orderly aspects of urban aesthetics, carrying them from the sunny, exposed main room into the darkened alleys full of floor-to-ceiling shelves.

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Street lights gently illuminate the rows of books in these tranquil hallways, organized like pedestrian promenades complete with central park benches and displays. Mirrors are employed to visually double the height of the shelves, making them feel as if they continue up into the sky and stretch far deeper into the building than they really do. Paths direct you from one ‘house’ of books to the next as you explore the shop.

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In these atmospherically-lit areas bursting with dark-stained wood, shoppers feel like they’re navigating the city late at night, when the traffic has died down and the streets are eerily silent. The crosswalks continue into the small cafe, stepping right up onto the ceiling and then back out into the showroom, where white pegs inserted into the concrete walls can be pulled or pushed to create display niches.

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

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Circular Reasoning: How Rounded Homes Resist Storms & Save Lives

31 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

modern round house

Combining the physical benefits of circular plans with the practicality of straight lines and corners, octagonal houses are uniquely positioned to resist hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes that threaten coastlines. Rounded habitats have a long history, from tipis and yurts through the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller. Indeed, round homes make sense for a lot of reasons. They have less surface area, which means they require less construction material and have greater energy efficiency, for instance.

round house avoids destruction

Critically, rounded homes are also ideal for resisting extreme weather (above: a regular home destroyed in a storm and a surviving semi-round house).

round house diagram

round house functionality

Flat sides pose a significant structural risk during hurricanes and tsunamis. It is much easier for wind and water to flow around a round house than a square or rectangular one.

round structural design

In modern rounded house designs, radial floor and roof trusses meet in a center ring like spokes on a wheel and thus lock the building in a constant state of compression, which further reinforces its structural integrity. This approach also helps them resist earthquakes.

round interior

Of course, fitting furniture along the edges of a truly round house can be frustrating. The space and materials saved are nice, but the usability of the resulting spaces is diminished.

round house

Today, many round-house makers opt for a middle ground and go with octagonal floor plans (or other variants with more than four sides). Doubling the number of walls, this represents the best of both worlds in many ways. These are easier to construct with contemporary materials and techniques, but still take advantage of wind- and water-resistance found in edge-less dwellings.

round edge house

Deltac, one manufacturer of such semi-round structures, boasts that none of their 5,000 homes built to date has been knocked down by nature. These kinds of homes also have an added benefit for those living along coasts, where storms are a great thread: their shapes provide seaside dwellers with amazing panoramic views (images via Deltac and Cayman).

round houses surviv

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Prefab Office Pods: 14 Studios & Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

30 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

backyard studio sett 1

A backyard refuge to work, practice, paint or meditate separates you from the activities inside your home and gives you prime views of your backyard, garden or urban rooftop space. Adding a freestanding room can be as simple as having a fully-assembled prefab volume plunked right onto your property, and you can often customize them your ideal interior configurations, windows, built-in furniture and surfaces. Order one of these ready-to-go options, or use them as inspiration to build your own.

Prefabs by InOutside

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A wood-clad cube with one corner entirely consisting of glass, the ‘Cooba’ by InOutside is a prefab modern room that’s ready to be dropped into your backyard as a studio, office or guest space. It starts at just over $ 15K (AUS) and when there’s easy access to the site, it can be delivered pre-assembled, requiring no concrete foundation or special equipment.

House Arc by Bellomo Architects

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A modular system of bent steel tubes serves as the basis of ‘House Arc’, an unusually shaped rehab designed with environmental sensitivity in mind. It’s got a lattice screen roof providing a bit of shade and interest, rounded ends , translucent panels to let in light, and sliding glass doors. It’s made to be fully off-the-grid, can be flat-packed and shipped in a box that’s barely larger than that of a typical IKEA bed frame, and weighs 3000 pounds when complete.

Modular Library Studio by 3rd Space

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Is this the coolest backyard room of all time? 3rd Space didn’t just add an office to the garden of a literature professor in Oxfordshire – they gave her an entire private library, with floor-to-ceiling windows and walls lined with books. The prefab system can really be used for anything, but the custom shelving really makes this unit special.

Green Roof Garden Studio by Eco Space

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Vertical slats and optional green roofs add a whole lot of charm to Ecospace studios and their smaller models, including the medium-sized MidiPod. Based in the UK, Ecospace offers a sustainable and affordable alternative to a fixed addition. These studios are flexible and modular so they can be tailored, reconfigured or extended. The WorkPod is the smallest of all, built for a single user with a typical installation time of just 5 days.

The LoftCube

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No backyard to work with? How about a roof? The Loft Cube functions like a ready-to-go rooftop extension and ranges in size from a modest 365 square foot volume, which requires no building permits in its home nation of Belgium, to a volume that’s plenty large enough to live in at over 900 square feet. You can even stack the cubes on top of each other to create a larger dwelling.

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Prefab Office Pods 14 Studios Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Twisted History: Archival Photos Augmented with Surreal Animations

30 Aug

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

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Black-and-white images and footage from the past, plucked from public domain collections, become absurd animations as moving elements are transposed on top of them in this series of images by artist Bill Domonkos. UFOs spin around a a curly-haired woman captured on film in the early 20th century, a running skeleton struggles to keep up with the camera on a blurry set of train tracks and television sets hover in Victorian living rooms. A fancy hairstyle becomes a journey into a forest, human eyes project beams of light and armless statues get prosthetics.

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The fact that the moving additions are so suitably tailored to the original images is what makes the results so magical, not to mention their 3D appearance. Simultaneously funny and dark, the animations – which he presents in both GIF and video form – are each strange and unlikely in their own particular way, yet somehow still believable. Maybe that’s not too surprising, coming from a man who shot his own version of Valley of the Dolls as a child with a Super 8 camera.

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“I view my work as a collision and recombination of ideas,” says Domonkos. “My process unfolds gradually and spontaneously – using found materials such as archive film footage, photographs, and the internet. I experiment by combining, altering, editing and reassembling using digital technology, special effects and animation to create a new kind of experience. I am interested in the poetics of time and space – to renew and transform materials, experiences and ideas. The extraordinary thing about cinema is its ability to suggest the ineffable – it is this elusive, dreamlike quality that informs my work.”

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The filmmaker and computer animator is also the creator of an app called Stereopsis, collection of 40 3D stereo images and GIF animations that combine altered archive stereographs and 3D computer graphics. You can get a contraption called ‘Google Cardboard’ to enhance the effect. See more on his website and tumblr.

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

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Solar-Powered Pipe to Desalinate 1.5 Billion Gallons for California

29 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

coastal water purifying pipe

Designed to address the pervasive drought and long-term water problems of the West Coast, The Pipe is an offshore water purification plant that combines sustainable energy, public works and experiential architecture.

solar pipe

A finalist of the 2016 Land Art Generator Initiative design competition, focused on projects around the Santa Monica Pier, the solar-powered Pipe filters brine and channels drinking water to the adjacent city. Saltwater is returned to the Pacific Ocean. Khalini Engineers, a Canadian company, employed an electromagnetic desalination system for their entry, driven by energy from the sun (10,00 MWh/year). With that power and overall system capacity, the Pipe could produce 1.5 billion gallons of fresh potable water annually.

pipe interior

“The sustainable infrastructure that is required to meet California’s development goals and growing population will have a profound influence on the landscape, ” say Rob Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian, co-founders of the Land Art Generator Initiative. “The Paris Climate Accord from COP 21 has united the world around a goal … which will require a massive investment in clean energy infrastructure.”

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“Above, solar panels provide power to pump seawater through an electromagnetic filtration process below the pool deck,” writes the design team, “quietly providing the salt bath with its healing water and the city with clean drinking water. The Pipe represents a change in the future of water.”

pipe view

“What results are two products: pure drinkable water that is directed into the city’s primary water piping grid, and clear water with twelve percent salinity. The drinking water is piped to shore, while the salt water supplies the thermal baths before it is redirected back to the ocean through a smart release system, mitigating most of the usual problems associated with returning brine water to the sea.” In addition to its primary functions, The Pipe also represents an aesthetically pleasing offshore object that would change viewer’s conceptions of near-coastal rigs, conventionally associated with oil production.

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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My Space: 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots

29 Aug

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

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So custom-painted assigned high school senior parking spots are a thing now, and it appears students are expressing a LOT (ahem) of creativity.

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The concept looks to be a win-win for both schools and students: the former collect fees for each space and nip parking spot rage in the bud; the latter get to be creative and take pride in their work. Take Martha Caldera’s take on Drake’s “If Youre Reading This Its Too Late” mixtape, which garnered her (and others as well) a measure of Twitter fame and thousands of shares.

States Caldera, “The only thing that’s going to motivate me to wake up for school tomorrow is pulling up in my parking spot.” One wonders if Drake – who played high school student Jimmy Brooks in Degrassi: The Next Generation – would approve.

PokeSpot

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Topics and themes for the parking spaces are pretty much left up to the individual students. Many choose to express their currents interests as illustrated by Reddit-user mrpopper96 above. Trends are fleeting, of course, but no worries since next year’s senior class simply paints over the work of their predecessors.

School Of Fish

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This parking space may be slippery even when it’s NOT wet. We’re not sure what kind of car this student drives but please, please, please let it be the one in the second image.

Tread On Me

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Jeep Patriot parking only? We’ve come a long way since Peter Fonda’s character was hassled for his Stars & Stripes motorcycle gas tank. We’d hassle the dude above over his spelling but hey, that’s the school’s job.

Reece Witherspot

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When the Good Lord gives you lemons, make lemonade. When your parents name you “Reece“, well, see above. By the way, is that a space painted like a Rebel Flag just intruding into the top of the second photo? Who knows, Reece might go to Robert E. Lee High School.

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My Space 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots

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

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Open-Air Hotel: Infinite-Star Accommodations on the Swiss Alps

28 Aug

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

open air hotel

Above and beyond your typical five-star hotel, this open-air room sits at nearly 6,500 feet in the mountains of Switzerland with panoramic views of the Alps.

wall free bedroom

A bed, side tables and lamps are not quite all visitors need to enjoy their stay at Null Stern (translated: Zero Star), but bathrooms are just a few minutes down the slope and meals are delivered by a butler. The name is a little misleading, since in most hotels one would have greatly reduced access to the infinite stars in the night sky.

boutique mountain hotel

At around $ 250 per night, the space and its amenities are a steal and reservations are refunded in case of inclement weather. The wall-and-ceiling-free room is available in spring and fall but closed during the winter.

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The Null Stern is part art experiment and part boutique hotel, using the sky as a ceiling and mountains as walls.

alps panoramic view

“Even though this version is radically different from the first one in the nuclear bunker,” a previous project by the same creators, “the essence and the spirit of the concept remains the same,” said one of the artists behind Null Stern “To put the guest at the centre of the experience and to focus on the intangible by reducing everything else to the minimum.”

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

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Spatial Bodies: Warped Architecture Bends & Twists Osaka Skyline

27 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

twisted skyline

Imagine a world in which an abandoned city goes to seed, but rather than plants reclaiming buildings, the buildings grow and morph like unkempt weeds, twisting the skyline into impossible new patterns.

In their project Spatial Bodies, AUJIK envisions architecture as something organic, skyscrapers like trees and vines that curve, wrap and interlock to create fresh and unpredictable formations.

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impossible architecture

The team compiled aerial drone footage, manipulating it in Autodesk 3D studio and combining it with Google Maps images. The resulting urban landscapes are both real and surreal, vaguely recognizable and semi-coherent but contorted and distorted. Buildings grow from familiar foundations, but wiggle and wind in unnatural and unexpected ways.

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wrapped city plants

From the artists: “Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self replicating organism. Domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. A vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos.”

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buildings in motion

curved cityscape

Many of the shots in the film are largely static, but in a way that helps make them comprehensible to viewers: it is almost impossible to take in the scenes as they pass by even in still format. Limiting the realtime motion of structures in the video also reflects their plant-like nature, implying that these transformations will take time, just like growing organic material in the wild.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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LEGO Shadow Show: Masses of Toy Bricks Reveal Surprising Silhouettes

27 Aug

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

LEGO GIF

What looks like no more than an unweildy mass of Lego bricks stuck together into an abstract shape reveals itself to be not just one but two separate intricate shadow-casting designs. Artist John V. Muntean mounts his unusual sculptures on a special table to rotate them into just the right position in front of a spotlight so we can see what’s hidden within the positive and negative spaces created by the bricks.

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The artist calls it a ‘magic angle sculpture,’ and it’s just the latest of an impressive collection he’s created over the past couple decades. This appears to be the first time he’s worked with Lego bricks, though – the rest are sculpted wood.

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lego sculpture 2

lego sculpture

“As a scientist and artist, I am interested in how perception influences our theory of the universe,” says Muntean in his artist statement. “A Magic Angle Sculpture appears to be nothing more than an abstract wooden carving, skewered with a rod and mounted on a base. however, when lit from above and rotated at the magic angle (54.74 degrees) it will cast three alternating shadows. Every 120 degrees of rotation, the amorphous shadows evolve into independent forms. Our scientific interpretation of nature often depends upon our point of view. Perspective matters.”

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

The City Is Your Living Room: 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

Just a Black Box: Furniture Transforms Into Kiosk

3 Urban Hammock Installations

Vanke Cloud City by Lab D+H

Meeting Bowls for NYC

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
The City Is Your Living Room 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

Book City: Retail Space for Reading Mimics the Look of Urban Spaces

Circular Reasoning: How Rounded Homes Resist Storms & Save Lives

Prefab Office Pods: 14 Studios & Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

Prefabs by InOutside

House Arc by Bellomo Architects

Modular Library Studio by 3rd Space

Green Roof Garden Studio by Eco Space

The LoftCube

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Prefab Office Pods 14 Studios Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

Twisted History: Archival Photos Augmented with Surreal Animations

Solar-Powered Pipe to Desalinate 1.5 Billion Gallons for California

My Space: 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots

PokeSpot

School Of Fish

Tread On Me

Reece Witherspot

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
My Space 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots

Open-Air Hotel: Infinite-Star Accommodations on the Swiss Alps

Spatial Bodies: Warped Architecture Bends & Twists Osaka Skyline

LEGO Shadow Show: Masses of Toy Bricks Reveal Surprising Silhouettes

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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Just a Black Box: Furniture Transforms Into Kiosk

3 Urban Hammock Installations

Vanke Cloud City by Lab D+H

Meeting Bowls for NYC

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: The City Is Your Living Room 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

Prefabs by InOutside

House Arc by Bellomo Architects

Modular Library Studio by 3rd Space

Green Roof Garden Studio by Eco Space

The LoftCube

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Prefab Office Pods 14 Studios Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

PokeSpot

School Of Fish

Tread On Me

Reece Witherspot

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: My Space 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
The City Is Your Living Room 15 Modern Street Furniture Designs

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Prefab Office Pods 14 Studios Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
My Space 15 Creatively Painted High School Parking Spots