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Posts Tagged ‘Design’

Arc Kit: Design and Build Your Own Miniature Architecture

19 Nov

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

arc kit 1

A kit that combines the precision and detail of computer modeling with the physicality of Legos makes it possible to design and build any architectural structures you can dream up. With minimalist greyscale components that are significantly more refined than those found within actual Lego modern architecture sets, Arckit by Damien Murtagh can be used as a professional tool for architects or a fun toy for architecture hobbyists and enthusiasts.

arc kit 2 arc kit 3

Traditional model-making typically requires a lot of measuring, cutting and glueing, and once you set a piece in place, you’re stuck with it. Arckit’s snap-together system made of ABS plastic allows continuous modifications so you can really experiment. It’s a lot cheaper than purchasing 3D modeling software, without the steep learning curve. While it was initially designed for adult use only, it turns out that kids love it, too.

arc kit 4

arc kit 5 arc kit 6 arc kit 7

The modular system is at 1:48 scale and comes in three packages for structures measuring 60, 120 or 240 square meters. The 120-square-meter set has proved the most popular, offering over 385 pieces, a component tray, and a booklet explaining how to put it all together. Add-on components are also available, with extras including trusses, floating staircases and printable adhesive sheets so you can customize colors, textures and other imagery however you like.

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ARCKIT: Reusable Model-Making Blocks Built By & For Architects

Positioned between robust LEGO-style systems made for easy reuse and refined architectural models that are fragile but permanent, this modeling kit is both a …
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ZIG: Modular Furniture Lets You Build to Suit Your Space

Assemble rectangular furniture components like building blocks to create the exact arrangement of seating, tables and storage to suit your space and lifestyle.
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WikiHouse: Open-Source DIY Architecture You Can Build

Design, ‘print’ and assemble your own WikiHouse using free open-source software and a local CNC mill to cut the parts, even iwith no prior building experience.
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[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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BOOMR camera strap features unique bungee design

05 Nov

StatGear, a Brooklyn-based manufacturer of first aid and EMS products, is venturing into photography accessories with BOOMR, a unique camera strap featuring internal bungee cords for shock absorption and increased comfort. The design is inspired by bungee cord rifle slings, and the company is seeking funding for the product on Kickstarter. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Divisible Design: Modular House Anticipates Partial Demolition

14 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

modular house potential street

While nothing is set in stone as yet, the city of Tokyo has plans to build a road through this residential plot, forcing architects working on the site to craft an ingenious future-proof solution for potential partial destruction.

modular 3 piece house

modular demolition house japan

Faced with a long history of earthquakes, Japanese architecture has a long history of ephemerality, but this challenge is of a more controlled nature: an expanded street is slated to eventually slice at an angle through the property, hence a home designed to break into pieces.

modular home site plan

modular home road area

Japanese architects Starpilots call their creation Housecut, a direct reference to this core dilemma. The house-and-office they crafted for the site is composed of three structurally independent volumes, anticipating the possibility that one or two may be demolished.

modular home interior slice

modular home bathroom box

The family runs a funeral home, lives in the structure and wants to maintain a business and domestic presence in the remaining space should part of their live/work building be removed. While the warehouse, break room and other elements may go, their goal is to at least maintain a reception area for clients if the city does eventually proceed with its plans.

modular home deck area

modular home corner view

For now, two residential areas border a central entry and are lofted above the business below. Everything is designed with dual endgames in mind, at once spacious and open but able to be reconfigured to make maximum use in a scenario where much of the building vanishes.

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Dream-House Designs: 10 Uncanny Ultramodern Homes

Modernism is style – ultramodernism is undefined, but for the purposes of this article is that amazing design approach which brings the future into the present.
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Mobile 3D-Printed House Factory in a Shipping Container

Dutch architects DUS plan to build the first 3D-printed house alongside a canal in Amsterdam using a mobile 3D printer in a shipping container.
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Slices of Home: Modular Mobile House-Shaped Micro-Rooms

Spatial separation can be as much about a feeling of enclosure as a physical divider, like this set of portable lounge structures that provide a semi-secluded …
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Art Glass Pieces for an Appealing Interior Design

06 Sep

A living space must be decorated by at least one item that directs its attention their way. One of the best items to place in your common living spaces is a piece of art glass. Made with great care, through long processing and with a high sense of art, these art glasses are your next […]
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Modular, open-source Focal Camera lets you design your own SLR

18 Aug

Focal Camera is an open source project designed to teach participants about the inner workings of a camera. With access to a laser cutter, a supply of 3mm plywood and the directions provided, you can be well on your way to creating a camera of your own. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Junked Ship: Japan Ditches Hadid’s 2020 Olympic Stadium Design

25 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

japan stadium hadid ditched

Scheduled to land like an otherworldly spacecraft in Tokyo, the curvaceous, controversial but competition-winning National Stadium designed for the 2020 Olympics by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) will be restarted from scratch.

tokyo stadium design

The structure has been criticized for everything from its mounting construction costs to its design that arguably clashes with the surrounding historic portions of the city and violates local height limits. After years of growing issues and complaints, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe finally announced a change of course: “We have decided to go back to the start on the Tokyo Olympics-Paralympics stadium plan, and start over from zero. I have been listening to the voices of the people for about a month now, thinking about the possibility of a review.”

tokyo stadium plans

tokyo stadium interior

Intended to be a sports center to last a century, the price tag has repeatedly climbed beyond original estimates, recently reaching a reported $ 2,000,000,000, in part due to expensive materials but also the complex shape. A number of Japanese architects also weighed in, signing a petition to scrap the project – Hadid, meanwhile, as a London-based Iraqi architect, has contended that their criticism is based on the selection of a designer from outside of the country.

tokyo stadium at night

Whether the 80,000-seat stadium will now be designed by another firm or simply restarted by Zaha Hadid is unclear as yet, but 7 years after she won the competition for this concept one might hope they will give her another chance to cut costs or come up with an alternative. For now, her firm has officially defended the direction they took, claiming the icon is worth the cost and comparable to other world-class sporting arenas in major cities around the globe and that local labor costs are part of the problem: “We have used our experience on major sports and cultural projects, including the hugely successful London 2012 Games and legacy, to design a stadium that can be built cost-effectively and still deliver the flexible and robust National Stadium that the Japan Sports Council requires.” Perhaps the final design solution will more closely mimic the famously futuristic 2020 Neo-Tokyo Olympic Games as predicted and portrayed in the famous 1988 anime Akira.

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Civic Camouflage: Hiding a Huge Urban Stadium in Plain Sight

Sports stadiums can be contentious, particularly when located in the heart of a city, but this design works in various ways to reduce disruptions to urban …
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Gold Metal Architecture: Olympic Stadiums, 1896 – 2012

From 1896 to 2012, here are some attentio-grabbing standout structures of the Olympic Games including stadiums, velodromes, aquatics centers, towers and more.
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Then & Now: 8 Key Historical Olympic Villages & Venues

A look back on critical Olympics venues and villages, historical Olympic architecture from around the world from games gone by in locations of historical …
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Ricoh delays new Star series Pentax 70-200mm F2.8 for design change

17 Jun

Ricoh has announced it is to push back the availability date of its premium Pentax-D 70-200mm lens, as it needs more time to ensure it meets the standards required for a member of the Star-lens series. Initially due this Spring, the HD Pentax-D FA* 70-200mm F2.8ED DC AW is now set to arrive in Autumn. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Photobook Albums: How to Get the Best Design from Your Photos

27 May

Photobooks are gradually replacing traditional albums as the photo-viewer’s medium of choice. These digitally printed albums offer a host of advantages, one of which is a greater flexibility of design and layout. But when you’re faced with lots of blank pages to fill, where do you start? In principal it’s easy to click and drag digital photos onto a virtual Continue Reading

The post Photobook Albums: How to Get the Best Design from Your Photos appeared first on Photodoto.


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Consistency in Design

14 May

I’m a big fan of the new Flickr. Despite a few bumps along the way, like last weekend’s uploading fiasco, it feels like a new fresher Flickr and I think the fact that people can download their photos now in bulk will be a wonderful way to attract new talent to the site.

There are two little things that bug me about Flickr right now though. They are unimportant in the big picture of things, but the compulsive side of me tends to focus on the little things sometimes.

Artifacts

The first is the artifacting that takes place around icon that tells you if a photo is favorited or not or commented on not when you hover. Something just doesn’t seem right to me about this. It’s not a big deal for sure, but I wonder if Steve Jobs would let something like this fly? There appears to be two little dots around the star and the comment bubble seems cut off for me. I wonder if there is a way that this can be fixed?

Flickr Favorite
On most of Flickr a full white star means a photo has been favorited.

Flickr Non Favorite
On most of Flickr an empty white star means a photo has *not* been favorited.

Flickr Favorite 2
On the “photos from your contacts” page a colored pink star means a photo has been favorited.

Flickr Non Favorite 2
On the “photos from your contacts” page a full white star means your photo has *not* been favorited.

The second problem is a more serious one and something I’m sure will be addressed when Flickr rolls out their new page build to the “photos from your contacts” page — here the problem has to do with consistency in design.

On most places when you favorite a photo on Flickr it turns an empty star into a full white filled star — but on the photos from your contacts page, it’s confusing. On the photos from your contacts page a full white star actually means the opposite, that a photo is *not* favorited, here the signal for a favorited photo is a colored pink star.

As your eyes learn Flickr you become accustomed to seeing an empty or full white star to signal to you if it’s favorited or not, but when you go to this one page on Flickr and see a full white star it means the opposite.

As Flickr rolls out their new page design to other areas of this site I’m sure that this inconsistency will be fixed.

I’ve got a more serious problem with the “photos from your contacts page” that only affects some accounts at Flickr, and that is that the page is jumpy and unstable when I browse it. This is not a universal problem though and one that is only affecting some accounts (unfortunately mine is one) at the present time.

These are first world problems for sure. With each new build Flickr gets better and better, and the team should be commended for doing such a great job these days.


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Jungle in the City: Wild Urban Biome Skyscraper Design

11 Apr

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

jungle skyscraper 1

Suspended aquariums, snowy landscapes, jungles and caves can all be found in the heart of the city, steps away from dense urban housing, in the middle of this wild skyscraper concept. Winner of eVolo magazine’s 2015 skyscraper competition, ‘Essence’ by BOMP re-introduces nature to heavily developed areas with eleven diverse landscapes built right into its core.

jungle skyscraper 3

The futuristic urban tower design aims to be a secret garden in the middle of the city, combining architecture and nature within an environment where wildlife and greenery are rarely found outside of parks. “The main goal of this project is to position non-architectural phenomena in an urban fabric,” say the designers.

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 11.00.49 AM

The eleven natural landscapes overlap each other within the vertical structure, including a jungle, a cave, a waterfall and even an ‘ocean.’ The landscapes were chosen for their complex range of “visual, acoustic, thermal, olfactory and kinesthetic experiences.”

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 11.00.41 AM

Open to the public, this series of natural spaces includes fish tanks lifted 30 meters above the floor and other natural features, with different paths offering different adventures. Each is positioned beside large glazed walls overlooking the city, offering a strange juxtaposition of environments. See the rest of the contest entries at eVolo.

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Wild Creatures in Urban Mexico: New Street Art by ROA

10-foot-tall wild animals spring to life in the streets of Mexico from the spray paint can of Belgian artist ROA, champion of the underdogs of nature.
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