Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category
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25
Feb
2010
New discoveries
This was posted on reddit today. I agree entirely with the poster’s sentiment: interesting links on reddit are, more often than not, not links to the gateway of a whole website of interesting stuff. When they are links to a website’s front page, it’s generally a very narrow, single-purpose website that is quickly forgotten about. Hopefully, the poster’s subreddit — apparently yet to be made — will be a success.
In any event, having gone through the blog-post he had linked I decided to share some of my new discoveries here myself:
- Building Maker: A Google app I was unaware of, which lets you add the 3D element to Google Maps. For all bored architects out there (since this is just what they want to be doing in their time off.)
- Ikea Hacker: Neat stuff done with bog-standard Ikea furniture.
- Strange Maps: A blog of, well, old and interesting maps. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say strange…
- Newseum: The front pages of newspapers from 78 countries around the world.
- Cooking For Engineers: This one reminded me of my father, a pragmatist who insists on weighing pasta before cooking it, in order to make sure he’ll be doling out the correct amount. Nothing wrong with approaching cooking as a science, as opposed to an art!
- GetHuman.com: An excellent idea for a website. This one tells you which keys you need to press in order to get an actual human operator on the line when calling a large company, saving you the time of listening to and trying to interact with a computerised system.
- PDFGeni.com: Another great idea — a repository of PDF documents such as old technical manuals, academic texts, and so on.
I feel I must write a disclaimer, saying I haven’t used or read these sites extensively, having just discovered them a few hours ago, but from first impressions they do look like they deserve a bookmark.
23
Feb
2010
Detroit and other examples of urban decline
The photo above is from a short photoseries in Time magazine, the title of which is “Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline.” Below are a few photos from another, much longer series by 7 different photographers who state:
Detroit is one of the most visually interesting cities in the world however it is also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented cities. This group of photographs illustrates what contemporary Detroit artists have been doing in regards to developing an understanding and appreciation for this complex and diverse city from street portraits of the “survivors” to the landscapes of wild new growth to the industrial leftovers.
You can view the full series here.
I also came across a German blogpost entitled, “The beauty of a city’s downfall,” which features photos from all over the world of derelict buildings and cities decaying.
22
Feb
2010
Clearing the backlog
Some of these links have been sitting in my Gmail Notes a year now, and I’ve become sick of looking at them. A few of them I’d planned on leaving for when I had time to adequately address their theme and topic in a proper blog-post, but I’ve realised that’s not going to happen any time soon. So: Read the rest of this entry »
13
Nov
2009
More tricks with projectors
One of my earliest blog posts was a video of a building in San Francisco being “painted” by projectors. It seems the technology of 3D modelling is advancing by leaps and bounds — here is a video of a paper church being modelled with just a webcam and some advanced software — and I just came across another video of more buildings being played with by projectors.
Some really impressive 3D effects in this one: spheres of light passing in and out of the buildings; flags being unfurled and waving in the wind, casting their shadows on the building; water gushing down from above.
A must-see.
Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.
11
Oct
2009
Fleet Foxes: Un concert a emporter
The Fleet Foxes play Sun Giant and Blue Ridge Mountains in an abandoned wing of the Grand Palais, Paris. Recorded in May 2008.
Slightly dodgy camera-work (did the cameraman really need to stand so close to them?) made up for by the music itself.
1
Jun
2009
Abandoned cities
Thanks to padraiq for sending me this: there are some lovely photos on archibase.net of Gukanjima, an island off the west coast of Japan which was home to a thriving coal mine. In the 70s, the mine was closed down and the island deserted, leaving this chaos behind:
This also happens to tie in with Wikipedia’s featured picture of the day: Mane St [sic] of Pioneertown, “an unincorporated and inhabited town built in 1946 as a TV and film set by, among others, Roy Rogers. The town was designed to provide a place for the actors to live while simultaneously having their homes used as part of the set.”
This is a dangerous page to visit, as it’ll inevitably lead to a list of ghost towns, such as Bodie, California:
And Kayaköy, Turkey:
And by the time you’ve read about them all, the day is spent. Good work!
If not, then here are some extra, related wiki rabbit-holes for you to bound down:
Urban Exploration [and some extra photo galleries at undercity]
21
May
2009
Jan Vormann’s Legowelt
Jan Vormann goes around Berlin, patching up war-time holes with Lego.
Head over to the Jarmuschek exhibition space for more info, and this Jorymon blogpost for more pictures.
28
Apr
2009
Tricks with projectors
An old mint in downtown San Francisco “painted” by seven perfectly mapped high-definition projectors. The result is pretty neat.
Now, back to the thesis..
30
Mar
2009
berlin.unlike any other
As probably anyone who knows me can attest to, I’m something of a Berlin-fanatic. It’s most likely insufferable in real life, hearing someone go on and on about the virtues of this great city, but at least I can harp on about it here in little conversations with myself to my heart’s content, in the knowledge that it shall at worst cause nobody annoyance and at best perhaps prove useful to one or two of the internet’s many lost souls.
First up in what is likely to be a long string of love-letters to Germany’s capital city is a descovery I made the other day: the website berlin.unlike. With a tag-line stating its aim to be the “definitive city guide for the mobile generation” (whatever the fuck that means), it provides articles on all the usual stuff: where to eat, where to club and where to stay, but also some interesting guides on “wellness” and “thrills.”
What first brought me to the site was an article about Haus Biesenthal, a stunning manor-house on the outskirts of Berlin. Seemingly bought and renovated by a group of artists and architects, it is “supposed to be the center point of an ecological special zone”, the artists having preserved the facade of the house while completely revamping everything else:
Inside, there’s impressive minimalist architecture complemented with rather busy interior design: it seems the only decorations adorning the walls are the artists’ own works:
Incredible stuff. Apparently the house serves as a kind of art gallery, and the third exhibition, featuring the art of 20 different artists, will begin on the 5th July. My exams finish at the end of July – I find myself hoping the exhibition will go on for a few months…
Another feature of the website which I particularly liked were the guides to Berlin written by local celebrities such as Lars Eidinger and DJ Shir Khan, who list bars, restaurants and attractions of Berlin which are notable and which the average person may not know about. They also explain what they find special about these places in a paragraph or two (most interestingly in Eidinger’s guide, as a slightly unusual case in that he was born and grew up in Berlin).
This blog post is simply an unfairly shallow scratch at the surface of this wonderful website which demands far more than simply a cursory glance. Indeed, it turns out it’s more of a network than a single website: there are .unlike websites for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, Miami, Paris, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Vienna.
Konrad Fischer Galerie
