[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
Aiming to revolutionize the most basic material units of construction, these building blocks snap together like LEGO bricks while leaving space for insulation and infrastructure inside and between them.
Designed by Kite Bricks, a startup company with lofty aspirations, these Smart Bricks offer “high thermal control, full passage of pipes, wires, cables and the like, finishes for both indoors and outdoors, extraordinary tensile strength, ease of construction, safety of materials, and total application throughout a structure—floors, ceilings, and walls.”
Among other ecological and cost advantages, a core idea is to reduce the difficulty of construction and the equipment and debris associated with the building process. The bricks can be stacked by hand and are self-supporting from the start – no scaffolding needed.
As for applications: “The brick is amenable for building houses, buildings, bridges and more.. The block is constructed of high-strength concrete with unique properties that allow for … large savings in electricity expenses associated with seasonal heating and cooling. The block allows for faster, cheaper, more precise, and stronger building than is available through traditional building methods.”
Whether this approach will replace bricks as we know them remains to be seen, but the next step will certainly involve full-scale prototypes, albeit hopefully ones more creative and attractive than the rough-and-ready examples shown in the video above.
Fans wanting to fully experience the land of LEGO will be able to visit this huge hometown headquarters being build up like a giant stack of LEGO bricks.
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Familiar scenes from Brooklyn, from the local flower shop to the train station, are lovingly rendered in pixelated plastic by local resident and artist …
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It may seem an incongruous combination but legions of LEGO-maniacs have employed the versatile bricks to create stunning scenes of plasticized steampunk glory.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
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Establishing your own photography business is a full time job, if not more. It’s a great gig, don’t get me wrong, but running this or any other business will instantly make you the wearer of many hats. The best way to make it work and avoid headaches along the way is to have a plan, even if it is a Continue Reading
The post Tips to Establish a Smart Photography Business appeared first on Photodoto.
[ By Steph in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
Two hundred square feet may sound absurdly small, even by New York standards, but what if you could make it feel three times larger with hidden furniture and other amenities that roll out and unfold at a wave of your hand? A team at MIT’s architectural program has come up with a smart solution for micro apartments that makes it quick and easy to reconfigure the entire space with virtually zero effort.
CityHome consists of a transformable wall system that condenses all the main functions of a bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom into a tiny space without sacrificing most of what you’d have in a larger apartment. You can still cook for and seat a group of six for dinner, sleep in a comfortable full-sized bed and enjoy a movie in a spacious living room.
You tell the room what you need through a combination of hand gestures, voice control and touch elements, with internal motors silently launching the furniture you require at your command. One gesture draws the bed out of the wall, while another calls forth a work desk that doubles as a dining table.
Wave your hand to adjust the ambiance of the room via lighting and window blinds, and move the entire unit against a wall or into the middle of the room at the touch of a button depending on whether you want to divide up the space or gain use of the entire room.
For now, CityHome is just a concept, but MIT envisions turning it into an actual product, possibly through crowdfunding.
This remarkable remodel is full of fun and functional surprises ranging from ceiling-suspended swing sets, hammocks, bookshelves, tables and benches to …
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When you’re trying to pack an entire apartment worth of furniture into just 130 square feet, where do you find the room for a full-sized bed? The answer, …
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Dedicated dining rooms have only been part of a common floor plan feature since the mid-19th century. Dining rooms have too long been ignored when it comes to …
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[ By Steph in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
Currently in crowdfunding, these hexagonal pavers can provide energy, melt accumulated snow and ice, light up with LEDs, all while being tough enough to support trucks weighing 250,000 pounds.
Designed by American electrical engineer Scott Brusaw to work everywhere from roads, parking lots and driveways to sidewalks, bike paths and playgrounds, you can walk, drive or park on these hexagrams with ease. They have been extensively tested for load-bearing capacity as well as traction and impact resistance.
More about the project from IndieGoGo (graphics by Sam Cornett): “Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can … pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which [in turn] can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots.”
Current working prototypes are already powerful, as demonstrated above. Beyond existing capabilities there are many possibilities for further development, including mutual induction technologies that would allow charging while driving and more complex LED systems to create changing road displays on demand.
This sphere is so powerful in its ability to turn light into heat that it can not only harvest the rays of the sun, but even draw on energy reflected from the …
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Functional street lights tend to fade into the background for most of us, but these designers have creatively re-imagined the humble piece of urban furniture.
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Fossil fuels won’t be around forever. Is the world prepared for alternative energy? Judging from these 10 amazing concepts, we’ll be just fine.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
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I never bother to keyword or tag my images. I often neglect putting my photos into organized collections. It takes too much time away from my workflow to bother with any of that – so how the heck do I find any of my images?
It’s easy to keep track of your images without painstakingly organizing them shot-by-shot. Lightroom Smart Collections allow you to filter and organize your images based on metadata contained within the images. Often times this metadata can be unique enough to sort your images based on subject, location, and genre.
Smart Collections allow you to define very specific criteria, and you can require many different criteria to be met before an image will be included in the collection. Common settings like ISO, shutter speed and aperture are available, but the options are endless. You can filter based on whether a flash was used, based on GPS data, file type, lens, focal length, capture date, the list goes on.
Below are a few examples where Smart Collections can define a specific type of image with only metadata:
Some images can easily get lost amongst others, and pan-blur shots are one of them. I usually photograph these on a whim while shooting other subjects, but they all have something in common. I use a zoom lens with a very small aperture, in addition to a few other factors:
Slower shutter speeds are usually used, and typically only with one of my cameras. I built the above list of criteria or requirements which gives me a pretty good list of all the pan-blur abstract images I’ve ever taken:
There is always a chance that an unrelated shot might meet the same criteria and appear in the collection, so try to be as specific as possible and use as many defining conditions as you can.
If you have a GPS unit for your camera (or have a GPS built-in), the extra metadata provided by your location can be invaluable to sorting your images. For example, I can easily specify that I want to create a collection of all images I’ve photographed in the Yukon Territory of Canada:
You could also further to showcase only the wildlife shots. Because I know that I would only have been using focal lengths longer than 200mm for wildlife, I can add that requirement to find only my wildlife images. A few other shots may sneak in, but it’s a great way to narrow things down:
Entire vacations or trips can be defined this way, and even specific client location shoots can be identified by this location metadata.
I shoot a TON of snowflake images each winter, and by looking at the common metadata for each image you can create a “fingerprint” that a Smart Collection can identify. The following Smart Collection will only show snowflake photographs:
I can also create a collection of just my final print-ready files. As these images need to be edited in Photoshop as part of the required workflow, the final images would then all be TIF files. That requirement can be added to show only my completed images:
Not every subject will have a “fingerprint” that can be defined by Lightroom Smart Collections, but with a bit of clever thinking you should be able to define a good number of your own. As new images are added to your Lightroom catalog that meet the criteria for inclusion in your new Smart Collections, they will automatically appear. The lazy efficient photographer’s dream come true!
The post Why Lazy Photographers Should Use Lightroom Smart Collections by Don Komarechka appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Your photography portfolio should be a collection of your work that will encompass your entire career, or it can focus on a single theme or medium. Most photographers who have been at it a while tend to have multiple portfolios that cover a myriad of compositions, mediums and client need aspects. Many of the best will have tens of portfolios, Continue Reading
The post The Smart Guide to Creating Your Portfolio the Right Way appeared first on Photodoto.
One of the stands we didn’t get a chance to visit at CES 2014 was that of Sakar International. Its Vivicam IU680 (as seen by digitalcamera.jp) at first looks like a competitor to Sony’s QX models and JK Imaging’s Kodak Smart Lenses. However, a closer look reveals that the lens module is interchangeable. We say lens module, rather than lens because it appears to be the same 10-30mm lens/sensor combination shown by Sakar at last year’s CES under the Polaroid brand.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Among the cameras launched at this year’s CES were a handful from JK Imaging, a worldwide licensee for Kodak ‘PIXPRO’ digital cameras and lenses. JK doesn’t have a booth at the show, but we visited them in a hotel suite for a briefing and some hands-on time with the new S1 Micro Four Thirds camera, and the company’s two new ‘Smart Lens’ camera modules. Click through to read more, and see some pictures of the new cameras.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
CES2014: JK Imaging has announced an array of Kodak-branded cameras, including a superzoom compact with a 65x optical zoom and a couple of ‘Smart Lenses’ designed to clip onto smartphones (very much like Sony’s QX cameras). It’s also given more details about its long-in-development PIXPRO S1 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera. Click through to learn more.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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