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Geometry + Humanity: Beirut Shutterbug Abstracts Everyday Life

12 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

abstract building facade

Photographing real people in actual places, Serge Najjar manages to make the mundane seem strange and fantastical, highlighting the intersection of humans and the architectural spaces they inhabit.

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His planned-looking portraits of people in urban environments are surprisingly spontaneous, appearing staged but usually featuring strangers he has never met and captured as he wanders cities.

abstract circles building

Technically, Najjar, a lawyer by trade in Beirut, Lebanon, is not even a professional photographer, though the beauty and popularity of his work would suggest otherwise.

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His work, which spans from his home city to Rome and Berlin, features both generic architecture and famous places, all with his eye for making the familiar stream foreign and fresh.

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abstract shadow building

While there are common threads, themes and angles to much of his photography, it is impossible to describe the commonality strictly in terms of perspective, as various works break the very conventions he generally follows.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Form Follows Treehouse: Tiny Green Canopy Home Tops Wood Trunk

12 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

living tree building

Wrapped in living greenery, the upper story of this solar-powered, tree-shaped dwelling branches outward, set upon a wooden framework supporting it from below.

tree trunk shape house

Designed by Elevate Structure Inc. in Hawaii (photos by Corey Lum for Civil Beat), the 40-square-foot-base expands upward to a 400-square-foot second floor above, overhanging to provide shade for outdoor uses (patios or parking) underneath.

tree house interiors

Eco-friendly features include living and breathing exterior walls that can also be used to grow edible produce, self-sufficient solar power generation via side and top panels and rainwater storage and collection (up to 1,500 gallons).

tree house shape

The modular structure was originally designed as an easy-to-ship, simple-to-build and off-the-grid solution for remote parts of Oahu, but the target has since been expanded due to broader public interest.

tree house living walls

While they work wonderfully as elevated homes, the units can also be used for other purposes, including small stores, cafes, offices, gyms and/or storage spaces.

From its creators: “Inspired by Hawaii’s natural beauty, Elevate founders Tiffany and Nathan set out to create these innovative structures to help care for the environment and help people. The pressure of existing global issues – insufficient water availability in areas, poor air and water quality in others, and high energy consumption are exacerbated by the increasing population density and demands of urban environments – combined with their streak of entrepreneurship brought the Elevate unit to life.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Sculptural Skyscraper: Ornate NYC Design Redefines Tower Decor

11 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

ornate manhattan skyscraper concept

Architect Mark Foster Gage has unveiled stunning plans for this 100-story, skyline-defining structure for Midtown Manhattan with views of Central Park. Commissioned by a developer to explore a statement-making skyscraper, the work includes carved figures and ornate balconies.

ornate midtown tower design

No expense was spared, at least in this conceptual stage: limestone-tinted concrete cladding and hydroformed sheet-bronze details are accompanied by brass-tinted alloy wrapping structural extrusions and enclosures. The program features ballrooms and restaurants at various heights as well as a mid-structure retail ‘sky lobby’.

ornate facade balcony level

Early skyscrapers puzzled architects initially, and many were envisaged as lower-height buildings (featuring a plinth at the base and crowned with decorative roofs) with the central portion stretched vertically. Then Modernists came along, smoothing out lines and discarding sculptural effects for glass and steel. This design goes a step behind recalling early towers, including iterative and undulating embellishments from top to bottom.

ornate street view building

Of course, there was a logic to architectural predecessors with elongated central zones – they were street-friendly at the bottom, and sky-friendly at the top, saving cost and complexity in the middle.

Whether such an extravegant reinterpretation of skyscrapers as this represents is indeed desirable or even feasible remains an open question. Still, there is something to be said for attempting to bring non-minimalist beauty back to tall buildings.

ornate towering structure nyc

In many ways, this approach represents a hybrid of old skyscrapers and new city-in-the-sky attitudes championed by contemporary architects, mixing programs at various levels to create a sort of self-contained structure for living, working and recreating.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Brandalism: 600 Fake Ads Call Out Climate Conference Sponsors

11 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

paris climate reality

In a massive coordinating guerrilla marketing campaign, 82 artists from 19 countries produced and installed 600 convincing false advertisements around Paris, all targeting major polluters and corporate backers of the COP21 Climate Conference.

paris fake adverts

paris climate bus stop

Orchestrated by Brandalism, these installations were professionally executed, placing real-looking adverts behind panes of glass at bus stops and street corners around the city. The aim: to raise awareness of corporate interests in the talks, particularly those with high fossil fuel consumption, and attempts by such companies to greenwash their behavior and appear to be on the side of sustainability.

paris climate change posters

paris we are sorry

The works came in all forms, from political cartoons to stark photographs showing the realities of climate change and impacts around the world. Some highlighted the roles of specific brands while others spoke more generally to the consequences of global pollution left unchecked.

greenwashing conference talks

From the organizers: “Amidst the French state of emergency banning all public gatherings following the terrorist attacks on 13 November in Paris, the ‘Brandalism’ project has worked with Parisians to insert unauthorised artworks across the city that aim to highlight the links between advertising, consumerism, fossil fuel dependency and climate change.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

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Painstaking Paper Plane: Model Made from 100 Manila Folders

10 Dec

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

paper plane 1

It only took 100 manila folders, 50 X-Acto blades, a bottle of glue and 1,000 hours of time to create one 1:60 scale model of a Singapore Airlines A380 airplane featuring fully operational sliding doors and properly folding landing gear. This isn’t Luca Iaconi-Stewart’s first model airplane – the 23-year-old, New York-based designer is known for a series of paper planes with amazingly complex parts.

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paper plane 2

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The artist first started building his own miniatures after finding a highly detailed diagram of an Air India 777-300ER online. He replicated the forms in Adobe Illustrator, printed them onto manila and sliced them out with his X-Acto knife. It took Iaconi-Stewart five years to complete a scale model of a Boeing 777, with an entire summer dedicated to perfecting the seats. While economy seats can be finished in a mere 20 minutes, first class seats take eight hours each.

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The new Singapore Airlines model consists of 3,000 pieces of folded and cut paper, the smallest being a 2.5 x 1mm pin used to hold each business class seat together. The artist notes that manila folders are surprisingly strong when engineered correctly.

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Considering that Iaconi-Stewart spent a month designing the engines and fourth months assembling them, perhaps it’s no surprise that his classes at Vassar soon started getting in the way, and he ultimately dropped out to focus on full time model-making. He’s now known as the world’s best paper airplane maker. You can follow his creations on Flickr.

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Sci-Fi Skyscrapers: 14 Futuristic Visions for Vertical Cities

10 Dec

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Screen Shot 2015-12-09 at 9.03.30 AM

As the global population grows and the world’s largest metropolises evolve into mega-cities, skyscrapers stretching higher than ever before could hold our transit hubs, parking garages, parks, museums and even food production systems. Some of these concept designs seem feasible for the near future while others could serve as the settings for science fiction.

Light Park Floating Skyscraper

This concept for a floating skyscraper takes a similar tack, reacting to the infrastructure problems caused by rapid, unchecked urbanization by literally having no earthly footprint at all. The Light Park features a helium-filled cap and solar-powered propellers keeping it looming over Beijing like a ghost ship, and it contains parks, sports fields, green houses, restaurants and other public facilities.

Alternative Car Park Tower

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With all of its spiraling open levels, this parking garage tower envisioned for Hong Kong seems chaotic and unstructured, but it’s actually a well-thought-out automatic system that automatically sweeps cars from the ground floor to parking spots surrounding a central atrium.

Flex Towers for NYC

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An overflowing, overpopulated New York City could be in dire need of new technology to meet energy needs by the year 2040, as designer Paolo Venturella imagines with his ‘Flex Tower.’ This moving skyscraper tilts and rotates itself to follow the sun to perfectly position its envelope of solar panels at all times of the day.

The Tall Tower by Project Hieroglyph

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson, known for cyberpunk classics like ‘Snow Crash’ and ‘Quicksilver,’ has teamed up with the Center for Science and Imagination to design an incredible 12.4-mile-tall tower capable of launching rockets into space. 24 times the height of the Burj Khalifa, which is currently the world’s tallest building, Tall Tower would scrape the bottom of the stratosphere.

Twin Taiwan Towers

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Tangled with lush greenery, these tall, narrow twin towers stretch up to an observatory and sky park looking down over Taiwan. The base is inhabited by a set of museums focusing on the nation’s past, present and future, while the stems contain four different kinds of hanging gardens as well as high-end residences.

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Sci Fi Skyscrapers 15 Futuristic Visions For Vertical Cities

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Bookshop B&B: Novel Vacation Loft Lets You Run Storefront Below

09 Dec

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

scotland bookworms dream

If you have ever wanted to fully experience life as a bookseller in a small town by the sea, this quirky combination home-and-bookstore holiday rental may be just be the page-turner you need.

bookstore b and b

Located in Wigmore, Scotland, The Open Book is an independent retailer that lets interested parties both rent the flat above the store and oversee its operations during their stay. Guests inclined toward working vacations get to double as volunteers, performing all the duties of the shop owners, including opening, closing, shelf restocking and display design.

scotland bnb flat

It may not be a fun novelty for every type of traveler, but presents an opportunity well-suited for those of us who are bookworms, like to stay busy, learn new things and meet locals on getaways.

scotland vacation book store

At less than $ 50 USD per night for up to two guests, the work effectively subsidizes the stay, not to mention giving a more complete experience of the place.

bookstore scotland rental manager

With small bookshops closing up around the country (and the world), the owners wanted to bring more attention to their store and ask their guests to blog about and share their time as a store manager. People are also asked to stay for a minimum of a week, giving them time to learn the ropes and greet a variety of store visitors, from locals to fellow travelers.

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

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Social Climbers: 7 Vertical Trailer Parks for Mobile Urbanites

09 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Addressing the combined challenges of mobility and density, this series of design solutions (both conceptual and actual) turn trailer living into a vertical endeavor. While the image above was alas only a stage set for a theatrical production, there are real-world examples of this approach dating back decades.

Industrialist, developer and mobile housing pioneer Elmer Frey pitched an incredible project in the early 1960s: a set of spiraling skyscrapers designed to house roadworthy mobile homes. The 20-story structures would house over 500 homes each with parking below and restaurants and community spaces above. While this grand vision never came to pass, Frey did not give up so easily.

Instead, he approach the problem at a smaller scale, hoping to win support for his bigger ambitions. Built near the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, the SkyRise Terrace was controversial from the time it was constructed.

The site provided frameworks for stacking conventional mobile homes, arrayed in an arc around a central shared space. Problems with plumbing and fear of tornados contributed to the deconstruction of this complex a few years after its creation.

In nearby Mankato, the Valley View Apartments complex used similar design principles to create an equally-unappealing set of stacked mobile homes framed by concrete supports. Deemed ugly by critics locally and around the country, this complex also was eventually demolished, but was still not the end of trailer-stacking history.

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Social Climbers 7 Vertical Trailer Parks For Mobile Urbanites

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Cardboard That Shreds: Working Corrugated Fender Stratocaster

08 Dec

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Screen Shot 2015-12-07 at 5.03.33 PM

If you can build a foosball table, a desk or an entire full-scale chapel out of cardboard, perhaps it’s not too surprising that this notoriously flimsy material can form the basis of a working Fender Stratocaster guitar. Signal Snowboards previously teamed up with Ernest Packaging to create a corrugated cardboard surfboard, and now they’ve built a custom Strat that even impressed the expert guitar techs at Fender.

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The way the cardboard is assembled and shaped makes it surprisingly structurally sound, which is a good thing considering the strings put about 250 pounds of torque on the neck of the guitar. Once it was all glued together, Signal took it to Fender and had their techs cut it into shape and add three 50s single coil pickups, a Stat scratch plate and other Fender components. When held up to light, the body and neck of the corrugated Fender is nearly see-through.

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Check out this video to watch the entire building process and listen to the cardboard Fender in action. “The fact that it plays at all is kid of remarkable, honestly,” says Dennis Galuszka, Fender Master Builder. “It’s cardboard.”

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Urban Rainbows: 14 Colorful Art Installations in the City

08 Dec

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

rainbow light rails 1

Nighttime rainbows shimmer across the skies in cities from Istanbul to New York, traversing rivers, illuminating underpasses and highlighting monuments. Bringing splashes of ultra-saturated color to gray concrete scenes in urban areas as well as historic structures and even waterfalls, these rainbow light art installations seem to symbolize the ability to look on the bright side.

35-Mile Laser Rainbow

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rainbow 35 mile 3

‘Global Rainbow, After the Storm’ by Yvette Mattern shone from the rooftop of the Standard High Line Hotel in New York City to 35 miles in the distance, symbolizing hope after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Despite their incredible range of visibility, the lasers used for the installation required the equivalent of two hairdryers’ worth of electricity.

100 Colors by Emmanuelle Moureaux

rainbow 100 colors 2

rainbow 100 colors 3

Lay down on a tatami mat and watch a rainbow of colors shift, swirl and change at the ‘100 Colors No.9’ installation by Emmanuelle Moureaux. Set against Tokyo’s Zojoji Temple, the work has a big impact for its size, with the colorful strands rustling in the wind.

LightRails by Bill FitzGibbons

rainbow light rails 3

A neglected Art Deco railroad underpass gets the attention it deserves with the addition of a network of computerized rainbow LEDs. LightRails by artist Bill FitzGibbons illuminates the passageway for safety, and to encourage its use as a gateway between downtown Birmingham, Alabama and a new urban space called Railroad Park.

Reflective Palace of Rainbows

rainbow palace 2

rainbow palace 3

Built in the late 19th century, Madrid’s stunning Palacio de Cristal feels even more magical and otherworldly with the addition of iridescent panels by Kimsooja. The installation, entitled ‘To Breathe – A Mirror Woman,’ created the feel of stepping inside a rainbow by reflecting the lighting effects on the windows with mirrors installed on the floors.

Night Rainbow

rainbow night trafalgar 2

A ghostly-looking rainbow stretched 100 feet across London’s Trafalgar Square even after dark as part of a promotion for three new LGBT shows on British television in January 2015.

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Geometry + Humanity: Beirut Shutterbug Abstracts Everyday Life

Form Follows Treehouse: Tiny Green Canopy Home Tops Wood Trunk

Sculptural Skyscraper: Ornate NYC Design Redefines Tower Decor

Brandalism: 600 Fake Ads Call Out Climate Conference Sponsors

Painstaking Paper Plane: Model Made from 100 Manila Folders