STUDIO 630

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud Onstage at TED2013,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:26 -0500

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other — using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), and learn more at tedprize.org.

Swiss Pavilion / Le Corbusier In 1930, Le Corbusier was tasked...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:30:17 -0500

Swiss Pavilion / Le Corbusier

In 1930, Le Corbusier was tasked with designing a dormitory that would house Swiss students at the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris. At first the architect and Pierre Jeanneret, his partner at the time, refused to take on the project due to tensions with the Swiss after their handling of the architects’ proposal for the League of Nations competition. Eventually, however, they agreed to see it through and worked on a very limited budget, which led the building to become a summation of Le Corbusier’s modern principles, forcing him to focus on dwelling before all else.

The New York Times: “Suburban Disequilibrium By BECKY M....

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:00:15 -0500

The New York Times:

“Suburban Disequilibrium

By BECKY M. NICOLAIDES and ANDREW WIESE. April 6, 2013

A little pocket of Los Angeles County tucked into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains reflects a crucial facet of suburban life. There’s tiny, wealthy Bradbury, a town that prides itself on having one of the richest ZIP codes in Los Angeles, where a house is on the market for $68.8 million. A couple of miles to the east is Azusa. This modest suburb is more than two-thirds Latino, a town of working families whose incomes and home values are a sliver of the wealth nearby.

These towns represent extremes of social inequality, but in Los Angeles and other areas, they reflect a defining pattern of contemporary suburban life. Nationwide, rich and poor neighborhoods like these house a growing proportion of Americans, up to 31 percent compared with 15 percent in 1970, according to a recent study by Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff. Meanwhile, iconic middle-income suburbs are shrinking in numbers and prospects.

Today’s suburbs provide a map not just to the different worlds of the rich and the poor, which have always been with us, but to the increase in inequality between economic and social classes.”

Photo: Ron Chapple/Corbis

via massurban:

Harnessing Heat from City Roads | ThisBigCity The black asphalt...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:30:31 -0500

Harnessing Heat from City Roads | ThisBigCity

The black asphalt roads of urban centres are notorious for soaking up the sun, often helping make cities uncomfortably hot during the summer. Special piping technology from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, however, is offering a way to trap this heat and use it elsewhere, potentially transforming urban streets into giant solar collectors.

The idea is simple: the sun-warmed asphalt can be used to heat up water, which is pumped through tubes embedded a few centimetres below the road surface. This has the dual effect of cooling the asphalt, prolonging the lifespan of the road, and heating water which can be used either as is, or to produce electricity.

via smartercities:

“15 Ideas for Making Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Better. Eric...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:26 -0500

“15 Ideas for Making Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Better.

Eric Jaffe. April 4, 2013

Early last year, the Federal Railroad Administration launched NEC FUTURES — an effort to plan out the passenger rail investments needed in the Northeast Corridor through 2040. This week it released a short list of ideas [PDF] for improving the region. FRA is calling these 15 ideas “Preliminary Alternatives,” whittled down from a larger basket of about a hundred. The next step is an even smaller set of “Reasonable Alternatives,” and by early 2015 the administration is expect to arrive at what it may well call a “Single Alternative,” but what the rest of us will probably just call a decision.

NEC FUTURES is the latest attempt to prepare for growth in the country’s most important rail corridor, following the $151 billion “vision” [PDF] for the Northeast that Amtrak released last summer. The FRA has (rather wisely) chosen not to subject itself to the political ridicule that surrounded Amtrak’s price tag, but as a result it’s a bit tough to evaluate the options set forth by the administration. Generally speaking, they range from limited capacity upgrades to an enhanced high-speed service — as well as a “no build” option that more or less maintains the status quo.

The impetus for all these plans, of course, is that rail travel in the Northeast Corridor is both thriving and seemingly set to thrive even more. Amtrak ridership in the region is steadily growing, with trains now carrying a greater share of passengers than planes in the corridor, and yet there’s plenty of room for improvement. NEC FUTURES makes the case that the Northeast is also deserving of great investment given its economic importance to the country — generating a fifth of the nation’s G.D.P., according to an FRA chart.”

Photo: Reuters

via The Atlantic Cities & massurban:

We found this on the BBC News site, thats something that would...

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:30:16 -0500

We found this on the BBC News site, thats something that would definitely revolutionize the flat packed furniture industry ..IKEA yeah be warned ….

via imagineblog:

This Video Will Change How You Think About Wealth Distribution...

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:13 -0500

This Video Will Change How You Think About Wealth Distribution in the U.S.

Like Occupy Wall Street in infographic form, this simple video makes extreme inequality impossible to ignore.

Infographic: The Intricate Anatomy Of UX Design THIS MEGA...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:35 -0500

Infographic: The Intricate Anatomy Of UX Design

THIS MEGA GRAPHIC ATTEMPTS TO TACKLE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UX AND ALL OTHER ASPECTS OF DESIGN.

Via FastCoDesign

"It doesn’t require a singular generational talent like Ada Louise Huxtable to teach people how..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:35 -0500

““It doesn’t require a singular generational talent like Ada Louise Huxtable to teach people how architects make the communities we live and work in better places. This is a job for architects as well. No one knows the total story better–neither the client nor the public. You know your project’s intentions. If the building is a school, you know how it might enrich a student’s learning experience; if it’s a hospital, how it might help a patient heal.””

- Robert Ivy

Via Archdaily

Grasshopper Plug-In - Ladybug Ladybug is a free and open source...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:18 -0500

Grasshopper Plug-In - Ladybug

Ladybug is a free and open source environmental plugin for Grasshopper to help designers create an environmentally-conscious architectural design. Ladybug allows you to: import and analyze standard weather data in Grasshopper; draw diagrams like Sun-path, wind-rose, radiation-rose, etc; customize the diagrams in several ways; run radiation analysis, shadow studies, and view analysis for your design inside Grasshopper.

Experimental Japanese Winter Cabin Blends Traditional Methods...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:11 -0500

Experimental Japanese Winter Cabin Blends Traditional Methods with Modern Materials

The conventional modern way of building for northern climates often involves synthetic insulation and some kind of mechanical heating — an energy-intensive and inefficient way to live out the winter. For the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, the traditional way of winter-proofed building is called “chise,” referring to a home that is built with earth, clad with bamboo and sedge grasses, with radiantly heated floors and interiors kept warm by a central hearth that is never allowed to go out.

In an experimental project for the Meme Meadows environmental research facility on Japan’s Hokkaido island, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has constructed a dwelling that uses these indigenous principles and combined them with modern materials to create a translucent house that operates in rhythm with natural patterns of light and heating.

Via Treehugger

Between the Folds Origami may seem an unlikely medium for...

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:29 -0500

Between the Folds

Origami may seem an unlikely medium for understanding and explaining the world. But around the globe, several fine artists and theoretical scientists are abandoning more conventional career paths to forge lives as modern-day paper folders. Through origami, these offbeat and provocative minds are reshaping ideas of creativity and revealing the relationship between art and science.

Via PBS

ZERO/FOLD SCREEN Although digital fabrication has allowed...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:17 -0500

ZERO/FOLD SCREEN

Although digital fabrication has allowed architects and designers to explore more complex geometries, one of the byproducts has been a lack of attention to material waste. Often digitally fabricated projects are generated from a top-down logic with the parameters of typical material sheet sizes being subordinated to the end of the design process. This project attempts to reverse that logic by starting from the basic material dimensions and then generating a series of components that will minimize material waste during CNC cutting while still producing an undulating, light-filtering screen in the gallery.

Via MATSYSTEM

Stove Tiles Designed To Heat The Room Around Them Old-world...

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:30:10 -0500

Stove Tiles Designed To Heat The Room Around Them

Old-world construction is like stew—the thicker, the better. Raw wood planks and rough stone bricks convey comfort in their permanence. So rather than feeling like you’re surrounded by something old and decrepit, you feel like you’re surrounded by something that’s only grown more grizzled over time.

German stove tiles are the epitome of this idea. Built thick to absorb and release a stove’s heat, they’re painted and glazed with a fatty, rustic sheen. But Daniel Becker wondered, could you modernize the design while making it more efficient? His solution was a new style of German stove tile—the “Berlin”—textured to increase surface area (and thereby increase ambient heat transfer) while speaking in an entirely new visual language.

Via FastCoDesign

Wanna Reinvent The Inner City? Reinvent Its Housing Stock The...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:28 -0500

Wanna Reinvent The Inner City? Reinvent Its Housing Stock

The Rock Street project came about after a local housing nonprofit tapped the university’s Community Design Center (a consortium of architects and students) to design housing for a plot of land stretched over nine vacant lots in Little Rock’s Pettaway neighborhood. Instead of building nine homes on nine lots, the team grouped the individual homes a la Chapin’s designs, creating shared outdoor spaces and pooling infrastructural resources. Homes are grouped in fours and sixteens, creating unique typologies that ring a common courtyard. “The project does a very interesting and successful job of co-mingling variations of public and private space,” commented the AIA jurors.

Stephen D. Luoni, the director of the Community Designer, acknowledges that Rock Street is a huge leap forward for most American homeowners. “Shared space is a difficult concept in contemporary America,” he tells Co.Design. “Even in urban neighborhoods, the prevalence of single-lot housing has inured residents to the homogenization in their neighborhoods and skewed conceptions of compatibility.” Community feedback from Pettaway residents was uncertain at first, because residents saw the design as a “separatist” development, which hugely surprised the design team. But after explaining the concept behind the proposal—that the entire neighborhood will benefit from the shared outdoor spaces—the community signed on.

Via FastCoDesign

A diet for healthy city: Viktor Zotov at TEDxKyiv City2.0

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:14 -0500

A diet for healthy city: Viktor Zotov at TEDxKyiv City2.0

100 Websites You Should Know and Use from TED Blog

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:00:20 -0500

100 Websites You Should Know and Use from TED Blog

Nudibranch | Add-on for Grasshopper3d The Nudibrach Add-in for...

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:30:17 -0500

Nudibranch | Add-on for Grasshopper3d

The Nudibrach Add-in for Grasshopper3d is a set of components facilitating and automating Grasshopper’s capacity to generate distance-based value fields, in addition to moving particles through attractor defined vector-fields while creating animated simulations of these particles.

In particular, Nudibranch aims to automate the attractor development process (one or multiple), while covering most of the frequently used cases, without however intending to replace or render useless the basic understanding of how attractors operate. Furthermore, three animation components enable the real-time interaction between attractors and the affected data.

New Bricks Can Be Made Out Of Junk We Aren’t...

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:35 -0500

New Bricks Can Be Made Out Of Junk We Aren’t Using

“Spanish researchers are fabricating bricks out of the 30 million tons or so of paper industry waste generated in the U.S. and Europe each year. Although their manufacture is not glamorous—the bricks emerge “like sausages” before being cut to size—they are structurally sound and divert tons of waste water sludge and cellulose residue into useful applications, say researchers publishing in the journal Fuel Processing Technology. The techniques also boosts bricks’ insulating properties, while avoiding the use of new raw materials and energy. For now, they remain experimental. The waste bricks (generally up to 10% paper waste) have slightly less mechanical strength than traditional bricks (although still within legal limits), and pose complications as the percent of waste increases.”

Via FastCoExist

Dordrecht Energy Carousel / Ecosistema Urbano The Centre for...

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:35 -0500

Dordrecht Energy Carousel / Ecosistema Urbano

The Centre for Visual Arts and Amsterdam design bureau Carve recently invited ten European design firms to develop unconventional, inventive, and playful objects for a new public space in the western Netherlands city of Dordrecht. Responding to the challenge, Spanish architecture firm Ecosistema Urbano designed the Dordrecht Energy Carousel - an energy-generating chandelier of hanging ropes meant to engage kids of all ages in the densely populated suburbs surrounding Governeusplein Square…

As kids swing around on the carousel, kinetic energy is released and captured through the structure and stored in a battery underneath the play site. When the sun sets and darkness looms over the park, the carousel is illuminated using the energy that was stored during the day. The varying colors of light are determined by how much energy was stored up that day. Therefore, this park creates two different experiences: one during the day with natural sunlight and one at night with colorful LED lights.

via Archdaily