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Posts Tagged ‘Designs’

Futurbanist: 10 Award-Worthy 2014 eVolo Skyscraper Designs

28 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

skyscraper award winning designs

From 3D-printed towers of sand to garbage-powered architecture of the seas, these eVolo Skyscraper Competition entries push the envelope in every possible direction, and a few impossible ones too. A common theme this year: harvesting energy and building materials from local environments, and turning pollution into part of a futuristic solution. The award winners are certainly impressive, but a number of other entrants are well worth their honorable mentions as well. Set everywhere from the urban jungles of Los Angeles and suburbs of Detroit to the world’s rain forests, deserts, oceans, here are ten designs, selected from hundreds, all deserving of a closer look (leading up to and including the three award winners).

evolo sandscraper desert tower

evolo sandscraper base footprint

evolo desert 3d printed tower

Sand Babel is one such runner up, an incredible skyscraper crafted from the very sands on which it sits, its 3D-printed construction powered by solar energy (abundantly available). Inspired by desert tornadoes, its above-ground portion is anchored by an underground system of root-like spaces. Temperature differentials help the structure generate water via condensation along its expansive top viewing platform.

evolo pollution harvesting tower

project blue close up

Project Blue, another honorable mention recipient, is fueled by its environment as well, but takes things up a notch by turning particulate pollution in the sky and converting it into “green energy by creating an enormous upside down cooling tower with a multi-tubular cyclic desulfurization system that produces nitrogen and sulfur. When both elements are combined with the atmospheres surplus of carbon monoxide the result is water coal that would later be transformed methane and used as green energy through a low-pressure reaction called low pressure efficient mathanation – a physical-chemical process to generate methane from a mixture of various gases out of biomass fermentation or thermo-chemical gasification.”

evolo vertical transit hub

The Hyper-Speed Vertical Train Hub provides a fantastic vertical spin on a conventionally horizontal phenomena, turning transportation on its side and making it more visible in the city, all while saving precious ground space. “The proposal will ‘flip’ the traditional form and function of the current train station design vertically, and re-form it into a cylindrical mass to increase the towers train capacity. This tall cylindrical form aims to eliminate the current impact that traditional stations have currently on land use, therefore returning the remaining site mass back to the densely packed urban Mega City.”

los angeles freeway skyscraper

The Skyvillage draws its inspiration from the challenging condition created by freeway interstates, which are at the heart of the car-centric city of Los Angeles where the conceptual project is set. The “Los Angeles freeway system segregates the city’s fabric restricting urban activities to single locations. Similarly, skyscrapers exacerbate this condition of segregation instead of encouraging urban integration. The envisioned vertical city would bridge over freeway interruptions and connect the four quadrants around 101 and 110 freeways as a single architectural organism while boosting cultural exchange, urban activities, and social interaction.”

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Futurbanist 10 Award Worthy 2014 Evolo Skyscraper Designs

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Reading Room (Dividers): 13 Creative Bookshelf Designs

20 Mar

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Bookshelf Room Dividers Main

Books make everything better, especially when you’re looking to divide a large loft or studio apartment into smaller, more functional spaces. Bookshelf room dividers go far beyond the standard IKEA Expedit setup, as these 13 examples illustrate, with some offering built-in reading nooks or modular systems that can be expanded as your personal library grows.

Bookshelf Tower and Divider by Marica Vizzuso

Bookshelf Room Divider Vizzuso 2
Bookshelf Room Divider Vizzuso 1

This folding metal screen has slots for books of various sizes, and it can either close up into a columnar tower or be opened for use as a room divider. B-OK by Marica Vizzuso is not only multi-functional, it also turns books into art. Says the designer, “Why do you place books in a conventional way when you can have both an amusing and aesthetically interesting alternative?”

Charmingly Off-Kilter

Bookshelf Room Dividers Off Kilter

Open cubes and rectangles are packed together in a random and off-kilter fashion, resulting in a visually dynamic room divider with a built-in desk.

Hidden Chair and Footstool

Bookshelf Room Divider Viable Hidden Chair

The ‘Shelflife’ series by Charles Trevelyan for Viable London is a space-saving bookcase and room divider with a chair and footstool hidden within the structure of the shelves.

Modern Leaning Bookcase and Room Divider

Bookshelf Room Dividers Modern Leaning

Forget about bookends – you don’t need them with this modular bookcase and room divider system by Nitzan Cohen. The leaning shelves ensure that books stay put, and modules can be added as your collection grows.

Alphabet Room Divider Bookshelf

Bookshelf Room Divider Alphabet

So maybe it’s a little difficult to fit books into rounded letters like C and O, but but this room divider and storage system by modern Finnish designer Lincoln Kayiwa is still a fun way to organize small objects. It’s made of medium-density fiberboard and available in a range of colors.

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Reading Room Dividers 13 Creative Bookshelf Designs

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Modern Tree Houses: 14 Awesome Arboreal Dwelling Designs

18 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Modern Tree Houses Main

Some tree houses are crafted in organic shapes and materials to blend into their environments or designed as veritable castles in the sky, but these 14 are as modern as arboreal dwellings get. Ranging from a tree hotel in Sweden with a variety of eye-popping options to a simple freestanding backyard structure you can build yourself, these contemporary tree houses might get you daydreaming about your own private tree retreat.

Treehouse Conference Center

Modern Treehouses Conference Center

Your brainpower might just be multiplied if you attended a work conference in a treehouse like this one. The stimulating environment of a Belgian forest provides the setting for an elevated structure consisting of two large wooden cabins connected by a walkway, with a ramp leading to the grass below. Built by German architectural studio Baumraum, which is responsible for many other gorgeous modern tree houses, this complex is set on 19 stilts.

Beach Rock Treehouse in Japan

Modern Treehouses Beach Rock

Japanese builder Kobayashi Takashi created this domed ‘Beach Rock Treehouse‘ for the sole purpose of communicating with outer space. Seriously. It’s featured in the book ‘New Treehouses of the World,’ in which the author writes “A sparkling beacon among treetops, it is easy to imagine the dome succeeding at its mission to make contact with alien life.”

Tree Snake Houses

Modern Treehouses Snake

Inspired by serpents, these twin treehouses in Pedras Salgadas Park, Portugal take advantage of a sloping hillside. The structures extend out from ground level to hover within the woods, requiring no stairs or ladders to feel as if you’ve ascended into the treetops. Each unit is equipped with a mater bedroom studio space with a small kitchen and wash area.

Prefab Eco Perch

Modern Treehouses Eco Perch

Set it on the ground or put it in the trees – ‘Eco Perch’ by Blue Forest is adaptable to virtually any environment you’d like to place it in. The prefab luxury tree house unit is made of natural materials and can be installed within 5 days, taking up just 6 by 8 meters. The living area, kitchen and bedroom inside can accommodate up to four people.

Modern Treehouse for Kids

Modern Treehouses Kids Nashville

Those of us who were lucky enough to have a treehouse as kids often happily made do with little more than a rickety plywood platform and ladder treads nailed into the bark. How fun would it have been to call a two-story treehouse like this one your very own? This freestanding treehouse was built around a pine in the owner’s Nashville backyard.

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Modern Tree Houses 14 Awesome Arboreal Dwellings

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Spiral Architecture: 12 Swirling Building & Bridge Designs

06 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Spiral Architecture Main

Ubiquitous in nature and mathematics, spirals are beautiful to look at and provide a structure that’s strong and stable, so it’s no surprise that they turn up so often in architecture, too. Spiraling forms offer uninterrupted panoramas on observation towers, remove the obstacles of walls and floors in a creative interior, and enable unusual stacked configurations of living spaces in skyscrapers.

Evolver by Alice Studio

Spiral Architecture Evolver

The spiraling viewing platform in Zermatt, Switzerland by Alice Studio fuses beautiful design with a function that enables uninterrupted panoramas of the surrounding landscape. It was constructed by a group of students from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and is made up of 24 wooden frames, with a tubular path offering a continuous 720-degree route to the top.

Arganzuela Footbridge

Spiral Architecture Arganzuela

A spiraling footbridge in Madrid’s Parque de la Arganzuela by Dominique Perrault Architecture links neighborhoods on the right and left banks of the Manzanares River, opening up in the center to allow access to a new urban green space. Built for both pedestrians and cyclists, the bridge is made up of two interlocking metal spirals ‘wrapped by a metallic ribbon.’

Mobius Buddhist Temple

Spiral Architecture Buddhist 2

Spiral Architecture buddhist 1

Based on a mobius strip, this Buddhist temple in Taichang, China integrates visual symbolism representing reincarnation with the basic design of the architecture interpreted as a path. Digital design and fabrication techniques enabled a building in which the entire shape is made up of two intertwined spirals, an ‘unstable’ configuration that places the beginning and ending of the worshipper’s path at the same point.

Mangal City Spiraling Skyscraper Pod

Spiral Architecture  Mangal City

Envisioned as an ‘urban ecological system,’ Mangal City is a concept that explores spiraling towers made up of individual pods. taking its design cues from systems in nature, such as mangrove roots. Of the project, Chimera says “The mangrove plant and its collective the mangal, provide examples of social associative principles as well as structural capacities and hybrid responses to environmental and contextual conditions.”

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Top Choppers: 15 High-Flying Helicopter Designs & Drones

02 Dec

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

Helicopter Drone Designs Main

Everybody’s buzzing about Amazon Prime Air, which will bring the products you order from the mega-retailer to your doorstep in just 30 minutes via helicopter drone. So how else is helicopter tech – both manned and unmanned – moving forward into the future? These 15 designs include pedal-powered flying machines, electric helicopters, self-assembling drones and the world’s most expensive helicopter at $ 21 million.

Amazon’s Flying Robot Delivery Drones

Helicopter Designs Amazon Prime Drone

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed the possible delivery method of the future for its Prime consumers: helicopter drones, from the warehouse to your doorstep in 30 minutes. Showing off the prototype on 60 Minutes, Amazon announced that its Prime Air program is slated for rollout in 2015, pending FAA approval. So just a half hour after you hit the ‘buy’ button on a product page, the item you want is dropped off by a propeller-powered robot.

eVolo 18-Rotor Electric Helicopter

Helicopter Concepts eVolo Electric

An 18-rotor electric helicopter made its maiden flight in late November, reaching heights of nearly 22 meters (72 feet.) The eVolo VC200 is capable of carrying two passengers for distances of up to 100km and flight altitudes of up to 6500 feet. It can be disassembled, with all parts connected to an ‘intelligent mesh network’ so that if one or several components fail, the aircraft can still land safely. It’s the first electric helicopter to lift off successfully.

eVolo Personal Helicopter

Helicopters eVolo Personal

Another eVolo design, the Personal Multicopter, can elevate a single passenger into the air with a joystick steering system and sixteen propellers. A team of German professionals completed the first prototype and test flight, and envision its use in the entertainment arena as well as for aerial photography, inspection and short-distance travel. A one-hour flight is estimated to cost just about 6 euro’s worth of electricity, and it can land safetly even if up to four of its motors fail.

Hermes Luxury Helicopter

Helicopters Hermes Luxury

Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that fashion designers are getting in on the game of designing luxury helicopters, since people with tons of money are always eager for prestigious labels. French fashion company Hermes teamed up with Eurcopter to create L’helicopre par Hermes “for the discerning luxury traveler.” It features a spacious cabin for four, a minimalist color palette, Hermes signature upholstery and calf’s leather banquettes.

Solar Copter

Helicopters Solar Copter

The world’s first solar-powered helicopter isn’t going to lift much of anything up in the air – but it does work. It’s basically a remote-controlled solar panel liftable via four propellers. This project by masters students at Queen Mary University of London may be small, but it could become the basis for larger and more complex designs.

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Top Choppers 15 High Flying Helicopter Designs Drones

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It’s Electric: 14 Fun and Interactive Conductive Designs

25 Nov

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

Conductive Design Main

Electronic functions aren’t just limited to gadgets anymore – they can be extended to everyday objects, architectural surfaces, paper, clothing and even our own bodies. Conductive paint, thread and wires are used in conjunction with little processors like the Arduino Lilypad to turn bananas into musical instruments or a pair of metallic false eyelashes into a controller for an LED headset.

Gilded Ceramic Radio Controlled by Gesture

Conductive Designs Ceramic Radio

The metallic patterns on what looks like no more than a ceramic vase aren’t merely ornamental. In fact, they’re how you control the volume, frequency and on/off functions of this object, which is actually a radio. Made using fine palladium paint that has conductive properties, geometric patterns each have an individual motif for the function they control. The Hibou, as it’s called, is the result of an unusual collaboration between a gilder and an electronic specialist.

MusicInk: Turning Paper into Instruments

Conductive Designs MusicInk

Flat sheets of ordinary paper become functioning, noise-making instruments thanks to a prototype kit containing conductive carbon paint, stencils and an Arduino Duemilanove board. Individual painted areas on the paper turn into playable trumpets, guitars, drums and more (recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra) by turning them into capacitive sensors that react to gestures. The Arduino board is synched with a smartphone app via Bluetooth.

Touch Board Turns Everyday Objects into Interactive Artifacts

Conductive Designs touchboard

Another touch board uses capacitive sensing  to turn any conductive material into an interface. The touch boards are pre-programmed to turn gestures into sound just by connecting them to a speaker and plugging in a micro USB cable. You effectively paint light switches, volume controls or musical instruments onto a surface with electrically conductive paint, and then use gestures to control them.

SmartWrap Interactive Building Film

Conductive Design SmartWrap

Now imagine taking that kind of interactive functionality and applying it to an entire building. That’s the idea behind SmartWrap interactive architectural film, which can be applied to a wall or the facade of a structure to provide not just shelter and climate control but also lighting, information display and power. It’s embedded with OLED technology, thin film batteries and silicon cells and conductive ink.

Conductive Body Paint Enables Novel Interaction with Environment

Conductive Designs Body Paint

A conductive ink applied directly to human skin can bridge the gap between electronics and the body. Bare Conductive’s body paint is a skin-safe, water-soluble carbon-based ink that can be brushed, stamped or sprayed on to allow users to interact with technology through gestures, creating ‘custom electronics.’ The makers list potential areas of use as dance performances, music, fashion, security, military, audio/visual communication and medical devices.

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Turn Back the Dial: 13 Retro Historical TV Set Designs

13 Nov

[ By Steph in Technology & Vintage & Retro. ]

Retro Television Main

Early television sets ranged from tiny screens housed in laughably oversized cabinets to stylish midcentury modern designs. Some, like a Russian TV from 1932, don’t even look remotely like the televisions we’re familiar with today. Here are 13 historical TV set designs dating from 1928 through 1991.

Massive Luxury Kuba Komet, 1957-1962

Retro TV sets Kuba Komet

Retro TV Sets Kuba Komet 2

How cool is this midcentury modern TV console? Shaped like a sailboat, it features an upper section that rotates like a sail on a mast so you can tilt the 23-inch screen in the desired direction. The lower cabinet holds additional multi-media features with a pull-out, 4-speed phonograph, a TV tuner and a multi-band radio receiver.

First Publicly Available Russian TV, 1932

Retro Television Russian 1

The first television set that was available to the public in Russia looks exactly like you would expect – basically, as if it were a piece of military equipment.

GE Performance Television, 1978

Retro Television GE Performance

Once upon a time, having a gigantic ugly faux-wood-covered box in your living room was considered a sign of prestige. The GE Performance Television is about as ridiculous as it gets, especially since the picture was terrible owing to the fact that it was essentially just a regular TV tube flipped and back-projected onto that giant screen. GE marketed it as “a super-size TV with a picture three times as big as a 25-inch diagonal console and the ‘chairside convenience’ of random access remote control.”

Zenith CBS Mechanical Color Wheel, 1948

Retro Television Zenith Color Wheel

Before ‘real’ color TVs were available, CBS labs came up with this contraption – essentially a black-and-white television equipped with a spinning mechanical wheel of red, blue and green filters that added color to the picture seen on the screen. CBS was all ready to start selling these things when RCA protested that an all-electronic color system (which they were researching, but had not yet developed) would make more sense. Ultimately, the Zenith design was briefly used as a teaching tool for surgery, but never sold to the public.

Phillips Discoverer Space Helmet TV, 1991

Retro Television Phillips Discoverer Space Helmet

This novelty television didn’t really do anything special – it just  looks cool, modeled after a space helmet with a closing lid. They can still be found on eBay for under $ 100.

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Turn Back The Dial 13 Retro Historical Tv Set Designs

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The Art of Tranquility: 14 Modern Tea House Designs

05 Nov

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Modern Tea Houses Main

In Asia, tea houses are typically striking examples of traditional architecture, reflecting the culture and history of the nations in which they’re built. But many architects are re-imagining this concept of a private, tranquil space dedicated to sacred or meditative activities through the lens of modern design. These 14 tea house designs include floating glass structures inspired by lanterns, temporary flat-pack huts and digitally designed shelters.

Glass Tea Houses in the Woods

Tea Houses Glass Woods
A trio of minimalist glass cubes serve as tea houses, meditation and brainstorming getaways in the wooded backyard of a home in Silicon Valley. “Each tea house is designed as a transparent steel and glass pavilion, hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape,” says architecture firm Swatt Miers. “Cast-in-place concrete core elements anchor the pavilions, supporting steel channel rim joists which cantilever beyond the cores to support the floor and roof panes. With its minimal footprint, the design treads lightly on the land, minimizing grading and preserving the delicate root systems of the native oaks.”

Fujimori Tea House on Stilts

Tea Houses Stilts

Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori has a little fun with traditional tea house designs by placing them high on stilts, stringing them between posts or otherwise removing them from any sense of being grounded. This one is precariously perched on just two narrow trunks in Nagano Prefecture, and is accessible by a rather intimidating freestanding ladder. Fujimori intentionally pushes the limits of tea house architecture, making it a bit of a challenge to access them, but rewarding once inside.

Paper Tea House by Shigeru Ban

Tea Houses Paper Shigeru Ban

Architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for making unexpected things out of paper and cardboard – like bridges and even churches. The Paper Tea House was created as part of a sale of Japanese art and design, constructed of square paper tubes with an indoor space measuring just over 5 meters long.

Floating Glass Tea House

Tea Houses Floating

This tea house floats over the landscape, a glass and bronze rectangle suspended from a frame in the image of a Japanese lantern. The backyard structure, by David Jameson, is also used as a meditation space and a stage for the family’s musical recitals.

Modern Tea House and Meditation Hut

Tea Houses modern Meditation

This private tea house is elevated on the edge of a peaceful lake in Illinois on the property of architect Jeffery Poss. The vaulted roof reflects the dappled light from the surface of the pond onto the interior ceiling, and also pours rainwater into the pond. A low horizontal window frames a view of the water.

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Retro Rail: 14 Real & Visionary Historic Monorail Designs

30 Sep

[ By Steph in Technology & Vintage & Retro. ]

Retro Monorail Designs Main copy

There’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car monorail. Or a one-car monorail with a propeller, or a high-speed rail plane, or even an amphibious monorail that can go from the elevated track right into the water. Some of these concepts were doomed from the start, some never got enough support to get off the ground and others still stand today.

Mountain Monorail with Propeller, 1936

Monorails mountain propeller

This fanciful concept illustrated by Kikuzo Ito in 1936, was invented by an American. The airplane propeller and tailfin keep the small car upright as it rides along the track in the mountains. An extra set of wheels extend from the sides to provide stability when it comes to a stop.

Wuppertal Schwebebahn, 1901-Present

Monorail Wuppertal

While most early monorail systems either never made it past testing stages or were dismantled soon after construction, the Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Wuppertal, Germany remains in operation after over a century. It was initially designed to be sold to the city of Berlin; the first track opened in 1901. The cars have been replaced over the decades, but since then, the monorail line has been closed just once. It moves 25 million passengers each year.

Bennie Railplane, 1930

Monorails Bennie

The propeller-driven Bennie Railplane, designed in 1930 by George Bennie, was a prototype that aimed to solve the problem of more economical and rapid transport via a high-speed monorail link from London to Paris. A short test track was built in Glasgow, Scotland, but the economic troubles of the ’30s doomed the project. The test track hung around, rusting and abandoned, through the 1950s.

Boyes Monorail, 1911

Monorail Boyes

The test track for the William H. Boyes Monorail was built and demonstrated in 1911 in Seattle, Washington, with wood rails and an estimated cost of about $ 3,000 per mile. When it opened, the Seattle Times proclaimed, “The time may come when these wooden monorail lines, like high fences, will go straggling across country, carrying their burden of cars that will develop a speed of about 20 miles per hour.”

Amphibious Monorail, 1934

Monorails Amphibious 1

Twin amphibian cars zoom from the desert into the open sea in this concept, dreamed up by the Soviet Government and featured in Popular Science in 1934. The idea was that the cars, which could reach up to 180 miles per hour, could travel three monorail lines totaling 332 miles in length in order to tap mineral wealth in Turkestan. They were reportedly tested in Moscow.

“The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load,” explained Popular Science. “Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.”

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Rad Restroom Designs: 15 Actually-Awesome Public Potties

21 Aug

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Amazing Public Toilets Main

Little architectural effort is typically spent on public restrooms – they’re perfunctory, with looks reflecting embarrassment about the functions carried out within. But they’re a necessary part of every city, and, as some architects have proven, they can stand as impressive landmarks, conversation pieces and works of public art.

Kumutoto Toilets by Studio Pacific

Amazing Public Toilets Kumutoto

These two headless dinosaur things in Wellington are actually – believe it or not – public restrooms. Studio Pacific architects took their inspiration from “the crusty saltiness of the sea” in the nearby harbor, comparing the structures to crustaceans or sea creatures, though they call to mind armored slugs. Each one has a concrete base containing one accessible public toilet, while the cantilevered appendages provide natural ventilation.

Don’t Miss a Sec Restroom by Monica Bonvicini

Amazing Public Toilets Mirrored Cube

We’ve all had this nightmare: needing to use the restroom, and having no place to go but in front of a room full of people. Artist Monica Bonvicini has recreated that feeling, but without actually requiring indecent exposure, with a glass cube restroom outside London’s Tate Britain gallery. The work, called Don’t Miss a Sec, is based on prison bathrooms. It’s mirrored on the outside, but from inside, it feels like you’re on display.

Public Toilet Proposal by FAT

Amazing Public Toilets FAT

In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, British public toilets were the best in the world, and a matter of civic pride. The Royal Institute of British Architects sought to revive that tradition with a challenge for architects to design outlandish restrooms that could stand as “a center piece for urban regeneration and to ultimately improve people’s lives.” Does FAT’s decapitated Hercules head do that? The answer is subjective, but it’s certainly an eye-catcher. The architects are presumably being a little cheeky when they say, “It is hoped that Hercules will inspire those who enter to conjure up whatever strength they require to complete their transactions within. Inside will be a view of the sky through an oculus in Hercules’ truncated neck.”

Gravesend Public Toilets by Plastik Architects

Amazing Public Toilets Gravesend

The Gravesend Public Toilets features a pointy prow rising up into the sky as a ‘minor landmark’ for public convenience, as requested by the local council. The toilet likes along a new public footpath linking the heart of the town to public park land, and is shaped according to the topography and geometry of the site.

Hiroshima Park Restrooms by Future Studio

Amazing Public Toilets Hiroshima Park

A colorful series of structures located throughout the city of Hiroshima are public restrooms inspired by origami cranes. The concrete facilities are dotted with round ventilation holes and acrylic windows to let in air and sunshine. There are seventeen in all, each one pointing in the same direction, with the entrance moved to various sides as needed at specific sites.

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