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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Vertical Micro-Farms: Fresh Produce Grown in Berlin Groceries

01 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

indoor farm grocery store

Taking farm-to-table approaches to new heights, a company in Berlin is putting small vertical farms directly inside of grocery stores to provide fresh produce and eliminate transportation costs. Its makers are boast that these are the first indoor farming installations of their kind, placed as they are directly in markets.

INFARM is currently testing live herb gardens in METRO Cash & Carry stores, integrating them into the layout of the shops and making their display part of the shopping experience.

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Cutting down on transport costs and associated emissions is good both for the bottom line as well as the environment. These aquaponics systems use less water, energy and space than conventional farms and horizontal greenhouses. And, of course, there is nothing customers like more than the freshest possible ingredients, and these come right off the proverbial (or actual) vine.

indoor farm vertical garden

The present year-long pilot program involves herbs and salad greens for now, but the same technology can also be deployed to grow other plants including tomatoes, peppers and other fruits and veggies. Next steps may include additional stores and chains but also inserting similar modules into places like restaurants and hotels looking to offer something unique to their clients and guests.

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This is not the first green grocery innovation to take root in Berlin, Germany, which is also home to the world’s first packaging-free grocery store. Original Unverpackt is the first in a series of stores using a sustainable model similar to co-ops but at a larger scale and aimed at mass market consumers, adapting the package-free bulk approach to sell all of its unpacked goods directly to consumers.

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Sleep with Sharks: 10 of the World’s Most Extreme AirBNBs

31 Mar

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

airbnb shark suite

After a long day of traveling and sightseeing, how does a relaxing evening sleeping in a shark tank, a subterranean vault filled with human skeletons or the trunk of a Tesla sound? Some of the weirdest and most unique listings to ever be offered on AirBNB.com include actual museums, stunning ruins, a three-dimensional recreation of a Van Gogh painting, a hippie paradise and a hotel where giraffes stick their necks through the windows to steal your breakfast.

Glass Shark Suite, Paris
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It’s probably best if you don’t have a shark phobia prior to renting this AirBNB room at the Paris Aquarium, since the marine predators are virtually all you’ll be able to see all night. Just large enough for a circular bed for two guests, this glass room suspended inside the tank provides 360 degree views of 35 live sharks. Guests will get an intimate education on the lives of the animals from fervid and underwater photographer Fred Boyle, and can even enjoy their meals from another vantage point outside the aquarium. It’s open for just three nights in April and will then serve as an observation area for biologists.

Paris Catacombs
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You’d have to be fairly free of superstitions to get a decent night’s sleep right beside a wall of human remains, but for those brave enough, a night in the bowels of Paris is surely an unforgettable experience. On Halloween night, some lucky AirBNB contest winners got to take a tour of the city’s famous catacombs, enjoy a gourmet meal and a private concert “in some of the most incredible acoustics under the earth,” listen to a storyteller’s frightening tales about this subterranean hall of the dead, and then become the only living people to wake up there.

Van Gogh’s Bedroom, Chicago
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Step inside a Van Gogh painting, lay down in his slightly irregular bed and gaze at the walls and floors faithfully recreated in his own iconic brush strokes with this AirBNB offering from the Art Institute of Chicago. Recreating the Dutch artist’s famous ‘Bedroom,’ the exhibit rents for just $ 10 per night and aims to drum up interest in the original painting, which has long been an icon of the museum’s permanent collection. The nightly rate includes tickets to the museum.

Mirrored House, Pittsburgh
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You kind of have to enjoy gazing at your own reflection to enjoy staying in this curious mirrored funhouse of a rental listing in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel. Created by an artist, the house is like a giant habitable disco ball, with mirrors adhered to both the exterior and interior surfaces. The dining room is the crown jewel of the space, with a central aquarium reflected in all of the wall-mounted mirrors and chandeliers. The rental appears to no longer be available.

House of Collections, Brooklyn
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Like one big cabinet of curiosities, Brooklyn’s House of Collections features artfully arranged and carefully chosen objects on every imaginable surface, from patterns of rusted farm tools on the living room wall to cow bones hung beside historic local treasures. There are at least seventy house plants, exotic textiles, books, musical instruments, antique furniture and almost any kind of tchotchke you can imagine. Though it may look like an antique store, it’s a private residence, rented out occasionally to lucky AirBNB guests.

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Sleep With Sharks 10 Of The Worlds Craziest Airbnbs

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Cairo’s Trash Capital Gets Colorful with Massive Anamorphic Mural

31 Mar

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

cairo street art

One of Cairo’s seven settlements of the Zabbaleen, garbage collectors who make their living picking through and efficiently recycling the city’s trash, has gotten a little brighter with the addition of a massive multi-building mural that only comes into focus from a particular perspective. ‘Calligraffiti’ artist eL Seed organized a community-wide effort to paint sections of the mural onto the walls of 50 structures, blending arabic calligraphy with contemporary graffiti style. The work spells out a quote by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, who said “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.”

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It’s not clear how many of the city’s inhabitants can actually access the spot on Mokattam Mountain where the various pieces of the mural actually come together into a cohesive whole, but it has certainly added some vibrancy to their neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr. In photos of the mural, you can clearly see the trash bags piled high on the roof of virtually every building in the frame, and the streets look much the same.

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‘Zabbaleen’ literally translates from Egyptian Arabic as ‘garbage people,’ and their community is known throughout the world as ‘Garbage City.’ Over 90 percent of their 20,000-30,000 population is Coptic Christian. They’ve supported themselves by processing Cairo’s trash for decades, using donkey carts and pickup trucks to transport it. Organic waste is fed to pigs and their recycling rate is an impressive 80 percent (compare that to the Western world’s average of 20 to 25 percent.) Their way of life is currently under threat due to Cairo authorities’ decision to transfer trash contracts to three multinational disposal companies.

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“The Zaraeeb community welcomed my team and I as if we were family,” says eL Seed. “It was one of the most amazing human experiences I have ever had. They are generous, honest and strong people. They have been given the name of Zabbaleen (the garbage people,) but this is not how they call themselves. They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage, and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the ones who clean the city of Cairo.”

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Famous Figures: How 21 Different Architects Draw Scale Humans

30 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

norman foster figure

Many contemporary architects cut and paste scale figures into their renderings to show depth and dimension, but in cases where they draw their own, aspects of their style and personality become apparent in the radical differences between their approaches.

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Frank Gehry’s figure, perhaps predictably, is a mess of forms and shapes. Walter Gropius’ betrays a Bauhaus bent, all angles and boxes. Steven Holl, of course, is a lovely little watercolor, expressive and reflective of his well-known habit for creating daily water-colored sketches.

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New York architectural designer Noor Makkiya has collected twenty-one such examples for a series dubbed simply Figures, isolating them on neutral backgrounds to allow for easy side-by-side comparisons.

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The variations are dramatic, between highly-stylized forms to simplified human figures or completely abstract sets of shapes forming nearly-illegible avatars, all showing something about the architect behind them and how they choose to represent their work.

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From the collector: “Human figures are typically used in an architecture rendering to provide a clear scale for the common eye. Thanks to new technologies like Photoshop we have lost our “ontological dimension”, and the copy paste method we use makes it easier for us to fill architecture renderings with a desultory crowd of figures.”

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oscar neymeier figure

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“True architects since the early centuries used human figures not only to describe the quantity and the quality of the environment but also for deeper purposes of study and expression. Some used it as means of architecture inspiration, demonstrating the divine power of the human order. Other architects use human figures to emphasize on the activity within the space, sometimes it is important to depict the spatial properties of a design. Architects project themselves into the human figure. So if we compare drawings from different architects, we frequently find differences in body shape and body activity, for practicing architects often represent their own ideologies as a reference for understanding the human physical condition.”

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Marine Miracle: Walk on Water at This Sunken Seaside Pavilion

29 Mar

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Walk right out onto the surface of the sea or follow a path that takes you into a tranquil space beneath the waves at the ‘Thematic Pavilion,’ a mostly-submerged nautical exhibition space envisioned for South Korea. Daniel Valle Architects intentionally give the structure an uneasy, delicate sense of equilibrium with the water, drawing parallels to the realities many coastal communities could face in the not-so-distant future as sea levels rise. A visitor’s experience changes depending on the state of the water, with paths appearing and disappearing.

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The pavilion features subtle raised areas offering clear paths that remain above the surface even when water levels are high and, presumably, when rocked by the wake of a nearby ship. In much the same fashion as a submarine, a water tank keeps the ship-like structure submerged for exhibitions featuring water-based technologies, and raises it above the surface afterward so it can be used like an ordinary boat.

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The exhibitions themselves range from the dazzlingly visual, like water shows, to the technical, like hydraulics and cooling systems. “The design aims to raise people’s attention on the ocean and coastal environmental crisis,” say the architects. “The design hopes to provoke the deepest impression to the visitors and prepare them for information and critique on all issues related to the oceans and coastlines. The beauty of scene after visiting the exhibition space and returning to the top plaza will contribute to develop an optimistic conclusion.”

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While it seems like a lack of railings could lead some people to walk right off the edge, people in other areas of the world don’t seem to require the same kind of safety hand-holding as Americans, so maybe they’d be fine. The renderings look especially cool after dark, with illuminated water spouts shooting up into the sky. Though the proposal wasn’t chosen for the Expo 2012 in Yeosu, it’s an interesting idea that could provide inspiration to other structures blurring the lines between architecture and ship building.

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Future NYC: 12 Design Proposals to Reshape the Big Apple

28 Mar

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

future nyc hive

A half century or into the future, will New York City even still exist as it stands today, or will these fanciful and sometimes bizarre proposals get a chance to become reality? These visions for future Manhattan aim to maximize available space by building new infrastructure right on top of transportation hubs as well as the Hudson River, and adapt to changing needs by creating new drone superhighways and building porous street systems that can absorb floodwaters.

Excavated & Walled Central Park
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Considering that the entire city is liable to be flooded at the first sign of a serious storm, let alone rising sea levels, sinking any part of Manhattan doesn’t seem like the greatest idea. Yet, the visuals associated with this crazy concept are too stunning to dismiss. The winner of eVolo’s 2016 Skyscraper Competition, ‘New York Horizon’ excavates the entire park to reveal a mountainous landscape, and wraps it in a 1,000-foot-tall mirrored megastructure. Tenants living inside the megastructure would have unparalleled access to the park, but views of it from any other buildings that aren’t skyscrapers would appear to be limited.

Bizarro Futuristic Coney Island
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The New York CityVision Competition by London-based firm Squint/Opera imagines a dazzling new future for Coney Island Park that could save it from the current threats of being turned into a condominium park. Transporting the defunct ‘Southern Star Big Wheel’ ferris wheel all the way from Melbourne, Australia is crazy enough, but those giant clown heads in the sky are asking a little too much.

The Hive: Drone Hub in Midtown Manhattan
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The modules on the outside of ‘The Hive’ skyscraper are designed to fit nine different types of drones, acting as one big dock and charging station for both personal and commercial usage. Incorporating a ‘vertical highway model’ around the tower, the design regulates drone traffic to prevent the sky from becoming one big buzzing traffic jam of flying robots. “To provide a safe landing environment, the tower projected a new method for drones to dock horizontally onto their corresponding platforms with the fitting shape and scale; the platform with docked drones can be flipped vertically to be in parallel with the tower facade. The facade is constantly animated as the platforms flip outwards and backwards to nest back into it.”

Floating Neighborhood
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An entire neighborhood for 65,000 people will hover right over the congested island of Manhattan in a proposal that seems too crazy to be true, yet is under construction right now. Hudson Yards will rest on 300 concrete-sleeved caissons right on top of the 26-acre West Side Yard, which is a critical part of New York City’s transit system. The plan includes six skyscrapers, 100 shops, 20 restaurants, a school and 14 acres of parks, and will be completed by 2024.

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Future Nyc 12 Proposals To Reshape The Big Apple

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Sunken Central Park: ‘Sidescraper’ Wraps Excavated Landscape

28 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

excavated central park skyscraper

Conceived of as a hybrid, multi-functional work of landscape architecture, this award-winning design proposes digging down to the bedrock beneath Central Park and erecting a reflective “horizontal skyscraper” around its perimeter, providing 7 square miles of peripheral housing with views out over the park.

excavated park design

Designed by Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu, the concept received first place in eVolo’s annual skyscraper competition. The proposal includes a continguous 1,000-foot-tall (and 100-foot-deep) structure, creating a looping horizontal-and-vertical skyscraper (or perhaps: sidescraper).

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By carving into the ground, new inhabitable areas are created, while mega-structure winds along the freshly-exposed cliff faces. The designers see this move as an inversion of the typical relationship between landscapes and buildings, with architecture forming a framework around outdoor space (versus a plaza surrounding a traditional skyscraper).

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They also maintain that the project would democratize access to the park by providing more people with greater proximity. On the one hand, it would indeed create more housing units with direct access to and views of the park, decreasing distance for many residents. On the other hand, the resulting residential units would no doubt still remain expensive real estate, and, in most regards, the park is already quite open and accessible.

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The displaced dirt and rocks from the excavation would be used to create additional three-dimensional topographies around the city, added to parks and open spaces and creating greater variety within the urban park system of Manhattan.

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Impactful: 12 Examples Of Crash Test Dummy Art

27 Mar

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

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That’s gotta Hertz! These dozen examples of crash test dummy art & graffiti display a curious reverence for our impactful anthropomorphic analogs.

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Crash Test, an art installation by Jamie Willis, is located in Hindmarsh Square, a pleasant urban green space in Adelaide, Australia. The piece consists of five bronze statues displaying black & white vector icons and mounted on posts. The statues’ heads are all tilted to one side as if, say, they were dangling from an invisible hangman’s noose… and that’s no coincidence.

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According to Willis, the statues were inspired by a faded photo of a female Holocaust victim who had been hung from a lamppost. “Crash test dummies stand in for people in horrific situations,” explains Willis. “These figures seem to act out the crashes in human history, the colossal mistakes and the times we smashed into each other. The blandness of these unobtrusive, hovering dummies acts as a foil for the quiet, deafening violence their hanging implies.” Enjoy your picnic lunches, Adelaideans.

Driving School of Hard Knocks

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Flickr user duluoz cats captured this slightly (ya think?) sketchy vehicle inspection center in Woodstock, NY on February 25th of 2007. “I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road…” blame it on some billion-year-old carbon clogging up the carburetor.

Samcheongdong Style

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A modern mashup of Michelangelo’s Pietà featuring crash test dummies? Yes please! You’ll find this unlikely artwork on a rooftop in Seoul, Korea’s Samcheongdong neighborhood. As archetypical Pietà sculptures depict a sorrowful Virgin Mary cradling the body of her deceased Son, employing crash test dummies in place of the Madonna and Child isn’t really such a stretch.

Belgian Combo

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What is “NAWAS”, and why does that name appear on dozens of trains, walls and other outdoor infrastructure throughout the Low Countries? Call it the calling card of one of Belgium’s most noteworthy (or notorious, depending on one’s POV) graffiti crews. The otherwise anonymous artists don’t often depict crash test dummies in their graphics but when they do, it’s on the side of an SNCB train. Kudos to Flickr user New Fast Atomic Daffodil for the above image taken in June of 2014.

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Impactful 12 Examples Of Crash Test Dummy Art

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Nothing to Hide: Open Glass Islamic Culture Center for NYC

26 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

islamic center facade

Designed to dispel fears surrounding Muslim culture, practices and traditions, a new wide-open skyscraper design for New York City invites people of all faiths to enter, through both programmatic functions and a clear facade.

islamic center facade glass

The schematic proposal by local firm Buro Koray Duman was commissioned by the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), aiming to promote progressive change and social justice. The Society hopes to show another side of Islam to the city and the world.

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The idea is, in part, to highlight cultural aspects of Islam as apart from the strictly religious (and particularly: radicalized) associations, distinguishing between peoples and religions.

islamic center design diagrams

The building is structured to be as welcoming and open as possible, consisting of horizontal floors stacked to fit a vertical urban landscape.

islamic center walkways interior

From Dezeen: “His studio’s schematic design for the centre features a 100,000-square-foot (9,290 square metres) building that takes its cue from historic Islamic cultural complexes, called kulliyes.”

islamic center vertical stacks

“In these complexes, which are laid out horizontally, low-slung buildings with varying functions are organised around a centrally placed mosque.”

islamic center central volume

A central volume contains an auditorium, library, prayer room, restaurant and offices, connected by walkways that span public and private spaces around the perimeter.

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This design may or may not be realized; the idea of building Islam-centered architecture near the site of the 9/11 attacks has been contentious for well over a decade.

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Supporters hope, however, that structure (conceptual or actual) can show another dimension to even the wariest members of the public, at least opening the door to interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

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Presidential Graveyard: 43 Colossal Statues Crumble in a Field

26 Mar

[ By Steph in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

Drone footage of abandoned president statues

Nearly every single President of the United States, from George Washington through George W. Bush, sits in a dead field in Virginia, some with the tops of their heads blown off or streaks of dirt streaming down their cheeks, looking rather war-torn. Stark white and silent, they wait for what will likely be their ultimate fate: total destruction. The 43 crumbling statues were saved from demolition after the closure of Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Virginia in 2010, and now drone footage has captured them in their current state of purgatory.

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A man named Howard Hankins was reportedly tasked with destroying the statues when the park shut down after six years in operation, and couldn’t bear to go through with it. He had them moved – at a cost of $ 50,000 – to his farm in the small town of Croaker, about ten miles away. Most of the damage to the twenty-foot-tall statues was sustained during the move. The field is private property and not open to visitors, but Hankins did allow one drone operator access to take this stunning video.

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Weighing up to 20,000 pounds each, the statues were a challenge to relocate. The tops of the their heads had to be cracked so a crane could hook onto the metal frame inside each one to move them, and some sustained neck damage as they were lifted. Once in place, they continued to peel and crack. Ronald Reagan bears the scars of being hit by lightning.

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Their presence in the field is a bit eerie, especially when the landscape is icy, as captured by photographer David Ogden of Abandoned Earth. It’s hard not to see them in a post-apocalyptic light, imagining them crumbling to dust as a symbol of a culture destined to fall – our version of the ruins of Rome. But at this rate, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be around much longer. An attempt to raise funds to preserve them hasn’t mustered any more enthusiasm than the Presidents Park did when it was a tourist attraction tucked behind a motel, too far from Williamsburg’s more popular sights.

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