Shamengo pioneer Pierre Calleja has invented something truly remarkable--a light powered by algae that absorbs CO2 in the air--at the rate of 1 ton PER YEAR,...

Xianxingzhe (lit. "Pioneer" or "Forerunner"), was completed in 2000 after more than a decade of research. It is considered China's first humanoid robot.
More info: http://www.plasticpals.com/?p=32032

Pretty much a documentary on how Fort Standard makes their balancing blocks.

The image above is one-hundred percent fake. It has no connection whatsoever to the world of things. I created the bolts, lights, textures, and everything else in a free, open-source, relatively easy-...

Our earliest descendants were hunter/gatherers who foraged for their food, were in tune with their surroundings, and ate with the seasons. After foraging was essentially replaced by agriculture, people became increasingly detached from where their food came from. Foraging offers people a way to reconnect with nature and shows that food is all around us.

@OzarkHerbs offers foraging workshops.

Rento van Drunen’s Gridcollages on pytr75′s blog put my mind back to Albert Pope’s book, Ladders which was published in 1996.

This book was very influential on my work and my thinking about urban structures and the systems that are used to put and keep them in place. In Ladders, Pope suggested that the pre war urban grid, when it was first conceived, was an open system.

via:

http://urbanculturalstudies.wordpress.com/

According to Spillman Farmer Architects‘ blog “Speaking of Architecture“, Lynette Jackson aka Flickr user Page67_Lynette Jackson uses her iphone to document, design and publish images of the built environment around her through Instagram. Taking a series of images that zoom deeper and deeper into the nuances of architectural form and space, Jackson’s use of pop-art imagery and graphic tools bring out details that otherwise go unnoticed and creates a narrative about each individual work of architecture that she documents.

On the shore of an idyllic white sandy beach on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula rests an elegant hut. The site lies within the coastal erosion zone, where all building must be removable. This is taken literally and the hut is designed on two thick wooden sleds for movement back up the site or across the beach and onto a barge.

The hut is a series of simple design moves. The aesthetic is natural and reminiscent of a beach artifact/perhaps a surf-life-saving or observation tower.

The two storey shutter on the front facade winches open to form an awning, shading the interior from summer sun while allowing winter sun to enter.

The hut is totally sustainable from its modest size to the use of timber in its cladding, structure, lining and joinery and from its worm tank waste system to the separate potable grey water tanks.

Ever lamented having to answer a work call on a night out, or regretted checking your email just after leaving work to find that your co-worker needs you to come back?

How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The above illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.

@manufernandez

It is likely you have heard about this project of building a new city from scratch to test new urban technologies, but no people will be living there. In fact, we first heard about it some months ago (I wrote some paragraphs linking this with my memories from Dead cities and other tales, by Mike Davis, in which he depicts the construction of a german town in Utah to test the destruction potential of city centres aerial bombing).

Denser cities are more productive, more innovative, and more energy efficient.

Density is all the rage these days. Urban economists, some of whom could be heard extolling the praises of "sun, skills, and sprawl" just a few years ago, now see increasing density as the key to improving productivity and driving economic growth. In his story for The Atlantic, "How Skyscrapers Can Save the City," Harvard University’s Edward Glaeser put it this way: "As America struggles to regain its economic footing, we would do well to remember that dense cities are also far more productive than suburbs, and offer better-paying jobs ... tall buildings enable the human interactions that are at the heart of economic innovation, and of progress itself." Well-intentioned planners and preservationists drive up prices when they stand in the way of taller and taller buildings, he argues. Overly restrictive height limitations not only impede economic progress, but make cities less, not more, liveable.

There can be no doubt that density has its advantages. In general, denser cities are more productive, more innovative, and more energy efficient. But only up to a point.

What is the impact of digital technology on the city and its architecture?

MovingCities interviews John van de Water (partner of Next Architects) about his new book 'You Can’t Change China, China Changes You.'

l punto de partida del proyecto han sido las formas, ritmos y estructuras de los sonidos y su interpretación en forma física con el uso de varios materiales.

Love beautiful guitars? How about a 3D printed guitar? Yes, it does exist.

The Franklin plant of mining equipment manufacturer Joy Mining increased productivity and reduced costs in their bit block assembly by converting to automated welding systems from Lincoln Electric. 

The idea for these minimalist Tea Houses was triggered by the need of a nature retreat, located not far from a family home in Silicon Valley, California. The creative team at Swatt Miers Architects was in charge with transforming a vision into reality, designing the three tea houses as perfect observation spots.

According to the official description provided by the project developers, each new tea house was created as a “transparent steel and glass pavilion, hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape. Cast-in-place concrete core elements anchor the pavilions, supporting steel channel rim joists, which cantilever beyond the cores to support the floor and roof planes. With its minimal footprint, the design treads lightly on the land, minimizing grading and preserving the delicate root systems of the native oaks“.

Guedes + DeCampos have designed the Quinta Do Vallado Winery Hotel in Vilarinho dos Freires, Peso da Régua, Portugal. The project for the new Rural Hotel at Quinta do Vallado fits in a strategy that balances the need for expansion of the existing facilities of with the correct integration into the landscape so that the solution, as a whole, has a minimal impact. The two strands linked to wine – production and leisure – are addressed in a single project with a distinctive and contemporary language.

Given the strong impact of the surrounding landscape, characterized by a natural architecture that gives the area a singular character – World Heritage – the resort hotel project focuses on solving the insertion of a new volume conditioned by a long and impressive wall in shale, which draws a sharp curve on the ground...

A scientific ghost town in the heart of southeastern New Mexico oil and gas country will hum with the latest next-generation technology -- but no people.