Thin Concrete Roof

I stumbled across this method when looking at concrete roof structures.  It involves pouring concrete over cloth and chicken wire.

 

http://www.edirisa.org/studioarchive/?p=1571

Cool Video of the Edge of Space

Check it…

 

A video from a weather balloon…

 

Maps – human factors – check it out

http://www.krisharzinski.org/

book about what we have talked about in human factors

There is this book that I have heard about but never read called “The Psychology of Everyday Things”  attached is the Google Books page.

http://books.google.com/books?id=TI5wnq1PimMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=psychology+of+everyday+things&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=ng85TaquF4W0lQfkpdX_Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Television series that is pretty cool and pretty dated

So I have mentioned this series to some, but I thought I would post it for all of you.  The series is called Connections: an Alternative View of Change.  The series was done in the 70s by a guy named James Burke and discusses how the technologies that we take for granted come about.  He refers to technology as an interdependent network of inventions that build on each other.  When one piece of the network is removed the network falls apart.  Attached is the first 10min segment of the first episode.  There are ten episodes in the series and I think most are on youtube.  Enjoy

 

:(

I dont really have anything to say, or even a nifty link to share, at the moment. But I just wanted to encourage anyone who does find something, even if its not really architecture-y, to share it. Because right now our blog is pretty much dead, and thats sad.

It doesnt have to be fancy or super in-depth. I just don’t want this blog to become completely dead and irrelevant, when it could at least be an interesting collection of things any of us have found amusing, interesting, inspiring, funny, or just wanted to share with everyone easily.

 

So people. POST your/some STUFF! please?

The Amazing Life of the Pebble Toad!!

This frog is outrageous!!

Eye Writer

http://www.eyewriter.org

i thought this was pretty incredible, graffiti with your eyes…

Members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group communities have teamed-up with a legendary LA graffiti writer, publisher and activist, named Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE. Tony was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, a disease which has left him almost completely physically paralyzed… except for his eyes. This international team is working together to create a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system that will allow ALS patients to draw using just their eyes. The long-term goal is to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.

– joe colarusso

COMPUTER TREES!?!?

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/three-trees.html

This was a pretty sweet video on BLDGBLOG about a design student’s thesis project.  The narrator looks a bit like Oppenheim…

Can you imagine rendering with a grove of oaks?

–Zach

Gallery crawlin’

So Friday night I ventured downtown to make my way through the cultural district for Pittsburgh’s quarterly Gallery Crawl, basically a big open house of all the galleries in the Golden Triangle. A few pieces caught my eye.

First was Anjali Srinivasan‘s “do/undo” at the 707 Penn gallery. I’m sure people from Lubetz studio will appreciate the title, but it definitely succeeded in engaging the visitors and all their senses. The piece began as a series of white tape strips behind which was a layer of tumeric or cocoa. The users then activated the piece by pulling the tape, releasing a shower of spice. It was interesting to see how different people reacted to the cocoa and tumeric scents, and also how, as the piece decayed into a pile of tape and seasoning on the gallery floor, a crawler might indentify the work as “a pile of trash.” (actual quote) Follow the link to the artist’s website for more pictures / video.

The second piece was Martín Bonadeo’s moebius display at the Wood Street Galleries. The piece was a möbius strip array of LED screens suspended from the ceiling of a dark room. On each opposing side (although a möbius strip has no sides) were two opposing ideas (light/dark, night/day), which due to the strip’s edgeless condition, circulated across the surface, always switching positions and appearing and disappearing, visible only through the reflections on the gallery walls. It’s quite hard to describe, but follow the links to the artist’s website for photos, or watch below.

Was anyone downtown Friday night who saw anything worthy of mention or these two pieces? Hope your weekends are all going well!

Do we see color the same?

The discussion yesterday reminded me of a story I heard.  I heard that in the 60s scientists were persuing studies to determine if everyone sees color the same.  I decided to try to find an article about the topic.  I found that the idea was first proposed by John Locke.  Below is a link to the article.  You may also want to look at “Qualia”.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026213?cookieSet=1

3d Model Downloads

I stumbled on this site that has a lot of free 3d models.

http://www-roc.inria.fr/gamma/download/download.php

Kenneth Snelson “Needle Tower”

I saw this in DC and thought some of you might find this interesting.  None of the steel rods in this art piece touch.  The rods are held in tension by the cables.

gehry and gaga

In a recent performance at the MoCA in LA, Lady Gaga linked together several different forms of art to create her own little gesamtkunstwerk (hi Ting!)  Her hat was designed by Frank Gehry, mask by filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, and costumes by Vezzoli and Prada.  She also played a piano painted by Damien Hirst while accompanied by dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet.

More info:

http://gagadaily.com/2009/11/lady-gaga-performs-at-the-moca-gala/

-Maddie

New Foundations

Architecture TED Talks

-Kendra