The After Shots

A great collection of images pre- and post-Sandy, via the Atlantic.

Funday Morning next Monday!

How the Ocean Works

Watch this visualization of the actual ocean currents and be amazed!

This may be my last post as I'm changing firms.  I'll try to post in the future!  Thanks.

NATURE! Brought to you by NASA

A timelapse video (sort of - more like an annual photo) of the forest's recovery at Mount St Helens.

Patient Illustrators News!

This post looks at two recent projects by illustrators with herculean efforts and crossed eyes, probably.  First is from Italian Ugo Gattoni.  Inspired by the Olympics, he put 723 hours (!) into the below images.  I wonder how many pens he went through.  See more at core77.com.

Secondly, this animated mural from Japan.

It moves!

Christchurch Installations

A neat artist's installation in some of the damaged buildings in Christchurch, New Zealand, rebuilds some of the shapes and spaces with memories.  An interesting look at how we experience and remember our buildings.  See more on the Atlantic's website.

Summertime Super Gnar

Uh...I guess it's just been a while since we've had a ski video posted here and it's been so dad-gum hot, so maybe this will cool your mental jets.  Here it is.

We Can't Railslide, And That's OK

Thanks to the power of Industrial Design!  Designer PoChih Lai developed a wheel and truck system that allows the longboarder to successfully negotiate stairs.  

This board has all the free-flowing fun of a standard longboard, plus now you don't have to bail at the top of the stairs.  I imagine it's a little nervy headed towards that first flight, but the action looks smooth once you get it down.  Head to PoChih's website for more photos, including the raft of prototypes he worked through.  Watch the video at the bottom of his page to see the trucks in action!

Three Posts - One Jacket

Next up in this shrine-of-the-day is a link to BuzzFeed and their photographic account of Bill Murray's School of Owning the Red Carpet.  Enjoy!

Baseball's Best Boss

Our shrine-of-the-day to Bill Murray continues with this accompaniment to his induction speech.  Learn a little more about his involvement with the minor leagues and see his rain delay tarp slide!

Hall of Famer, Bill Murray

Bill Murray seems to have a fun part-time job.  He's part-owner of the Charleston, SC minor league team.  He's invested in many minor league teams over the years, and those efforts (plus being Bill Murray) have gotten him inducted into their Hall of Fame.  Watch his great acceptance speech and remember the joy of an afternoon at the ballpark.

"This is the architect's problem."

I'm trying to read everything I can that comes from Joseph Lstiburek, PhD, PEng.  If you haven't heard of him, you're probably not putting your buildings together right.  If you have heard of him, you probably still aren't doing it right.  Joseph's making the case far and wide that Building Science is an unknown and undeveloped discipline.  Schools don't teach it, practitioners barely register it.  We're in an age with incredibly high-tech materials and systems and the sophisticated modeling software to understand how our buildings are actually performing, but we might as well be draped in a tarp.  We do not understand how our buildings work.  Listen to Joe.  There's a lot to learn.

Follow the link for an interview with Dr Lstiburek, and then start to track down his own writings.
via ArchNewsNow: http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature396.htm

Thin Air + Long Lines

Outside Magazine's been sending regular updates from this season at Everest.  Poor weather and high popularity have proven to be a fatal mix.  Last weekend, some 300 climbers and guides attempted to take advantage of a break in the weather.  At least 4 people died, with a total count of 10 for this season thus far.  Conditions don't seem to be improving.  Too many green climbers are forcing their summit.  Stay tuned to Outside's coverage for continuing reports -

http://www.outsideonline.com/featured-videos/adventure-videos/climbing/Summit-Day-on-Everest.html

Say it with an icon

The Noun Project is crowd sourcing the heiroglyphics of contemporary times.  Icon graphics are developed by contributors and available to the common man for download as scalable vector graphics (meaning it won't lose resolution when scaled up) free of charge.  If pictures say 1000 words, icons can at least amount to a few.  Start speaking in pictographs here.

Ice Cube on Design, LA and the Eameses (Round 2)

As it turns out, we can still rely on Ice Cube to convey how design is straight up gangster.

Michael Graves is Dignifying Accessibility

Not only has he found a really great house to renovate, Michael Graves is re-defining universal design as a moral imperative.  He just hopes that he'll be around long enough to begin to make an impact.

When Imagination Goes Wild

This elementary school kid named Caine spent his summer building an arcade our of cardboard boxes in his Dad's East-LA Autopart Shop.  His creativity didn't land him many customers until a small-time filmmaker stopped in for a car part and ended up making a short film about Caine's work.  The result of the film is a new foundation created by Caine to promote youth creativity.  Over the course of one week since this video's release, the foundation has raised nearly $200,000.

Think Like a Kid

Ever think about how you think?  Wonder what's really possible when you let yourself stretch?  Consider this video from Sir Ken Robinson, education and creativity expert.  There's an added bonus of nifty graphics.

Taking Notes

A stop motion epic that also illustrates (no pun intended) that there are many methods to learning.

Take the Shot!

The latest winners of the Military Photographer of the Year competition, via foreignpolicy.com:

"As fewer Americans serve in the armed forces, the difficulty of translating the experience of military service to a wider public becomes increasingly challenging. But sometimes a picture tells a thousand words, as in this selection of winners from the 2011 Military Photographer of the Year competition, which was recently judged at the Defense Information School at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland. Combat photography began in earnest during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln commissioned Mathew Brady to document the war, eventually leading to an invaluable trove of photographs used by generations of historians. Today, hundreds of U.S. military photographers, videographers, and artists continue to document armed services activities around the world. These photos were chosen from thousands of entries and adhere to the same standards as photojournalism (meaning no posed or electronically manipulated images)."

See the images here.

The Rabbit Ears Project

For your pleasure - Sonja Hinrichsen has taken advantage of the recent snowfall to writ large a drawing at Rabbit Ears Pass.  Via the Dirt

That's Fly

To celebrate RNL's Greenweek and this year's theme; FutureForward, funday blog presents to you this: flying autonomous builder robots. These little guys are even aspiring musicians, playing this version of the James Bond theme song at last week's TED conference. Funday would like a fleet of these to build our projects piece by piece, 24 - 7, no tower cranes, anywhere we want without disturbing the neighbors.

Best Jobs for 2012

According to U.S. News and World Report, being an architect is one of the 50 best jobs for 2012 (#2 in the Creative Services field).

'The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects architect employment growth of 23.1 percent between 2010 and 2020.' 

Many of the comments on the U.S. News website dismiss the estimates as wishful thinking or fantasy. Could the economic outlook from the Bureau of Labor Statistics accurate? Could many architects be stuck looking at the recent economic recession and missing the forest for the trees?

Or are we relegated to be a punchline about high unemployment (Want a Job? Go to College, and Don't Major in Architecture - NY Times)

Let's hope 2012 is a year to celebrarte in the architectural industry.

Free Trees!

The nice folks at The Park People - an oranization focused on supporting Denver parks and open space - are giving out free trees this spring, but you have to apply by Feb. 15.  There are two options for how to get trees, so visit the site to see if either one works for you.  In some cases, they'll come out to your house and plant them for you.

The Feltron Annual Report

Nicholas Felton is a numbers guy.  Since 2005 or so he has archived data or his daily life annually and translated that information into beautiful graphic form - the Feltron Annual Report.  Each static dataset, a seemingly unrelatable web of information, adds up to a vivd snapshot of Felton's life on a yearly basis.  Of particular note is his 2010 Annual Report, which is dedicated to statistically describing the life of his father who passed away during that year.  Despite being a rigid collection of numbers, statistics like "number of photos featured wearing a tie"; "most frequently visited lunch locations"; "number of exclamation points used" really begin to paint a vivid picture and allow us to piece together a character in our heads.  For a bit lighter content representation of Feltron, the travel journal "Hello China, Goodbye Tibet" is worth skimming.

We hadn't heard of Geospatial Predictive Analytics before, either

But look at all the cool stuff it can do!  Researchers are now using this aspect of GIS (geographical information systems) to predict the locations of meth labs, fer cryin' out loud.  Sure, it's a bit Big Brother-y, but maybe they can predict the best spot for a mini golf course in our neighborhood as well.  Click here for the link to the Fast Company article.

 

Pretty Wave Machine

This video was shared by SH.  Makes you wonder.  Wonder where they filmed from, anyway.  And how much do waves weigh?  How do they make themselves into such impossible shapes?  Is there an equal, inversely-shaped wave at the other side of that ocean, at that same moment?  Probably not.  But it'd be pretty cool if there was.

The Machine Has a Beautiful Soul

From Slate.com: AT&T has released a classic Jim Henson short film titled, "Robot".  Initially intended for business seminars, this film is very Henson and quite terrific.  Enjoy!

There's a Hole in This Mountain

From Rock and Ice Magazine comes this video of the fun that can be had when your mountain is spatial.

Fight Fire with Physics!

Ever notice that fighting a fire with water or fire extinguishers does at least as much damage as the fire itself?  So did DARPA!  They've been looking for ways for the Army to combat fires not by suppression, but by challenging the very physics of the flame.  The result of this research is the "Instant Fire Suppression" wand. 

While still a bit underwhelming, the science behind is pretty wicked.  Read all about it here at Geekosystem.

Just Add Water

From unofficial contributor Carl, check this video of a 30-story tower being erected in 15 days!

Site Specificity

We talk a lot about site specificity, but this installation epitomizes the ideal.

http://www.zanderolsen.com/Tree_Line.html

copywrite Zander Olsen

art/furniture/building/room

I'd like a house that is just a whole series of these; bedrooms, kitchen, and living areas all nested together like a big hamster house for people. That would be sweet.

Adaptive Reuse

Concerned that the financial quagmire means your building won't ever be completed?  Even oil-rich Venezuela's feeling that pain.  This photo report from foreignpolicy.com shows how the homeless of Caracas have intervened on behalf of the corporations, occupying an unfinished tower so that it's not a complete (or legal) waste.