Tag: ARCHITECTURE

For design aficionados, the name "Memphis" is more likely to evoke the influential '80s Italian design movement than it is the home of rock 'n' roll. For those who missed the movement's heyday, Danish kitchenware company Bodum will be releasing a kettle originally designed by Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass. Sottsass designed the kettle in 1986, but, due to manufacturing problems, it never went ...

Construction is nearly complete on the Strata skyscraper in central London. The Strata is the tallest residential tower in the area, and boasts a unique feature, built-in wind turbines, making it the first building of its kind. The five-bladed turbines, each measuring about twelve feet in diameter, are expected to raise 50 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity per year, effectively providing ...

There's been some buzz surrounding Toy Fair 2010 (quite literally with this underwhelming Millenium Falcon 'copter), and the New York City event ends today. With an expected 95-percent of the show composed of Madame Alexander dolls and plush playthings for the preschool set, we embarked on a quest to find a handful of unique toys that both kids and parents will love. From robot bugs, to classic ...

With disease and untreated wounds being the largest threats to victims of the recent Haitian earthquake, doctors are struggling to provide adequate health care in the disaster zone. Clean water is scarce, electricity is unreliable, and the environment isn't sterile. But the aid group Doctors Without Borders has found a temporary solution to these problems. According to Boing Boing, the group ...

We love it when the worlds of nerdiness and design collide. Compulsive case-modder Nick Falzone recently built this wooden mini-ITX mod dubbed Chiaroscuro, based on the Beijing Digital Building from the 2008 Olympic games. He lifted the circuit-like depressions from the facade of the building for the outside of his case, resulting in a modernized Borg cube form that glows from the inside. Two ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/12/08/building-sized-x-rated-led-display-makes-us-blush/'; Abu Dhabi, the nearby Emirate of Dubai and the next decadent Shangri La of the Middle East (largely built, like Dubai, on unscrupulous slave labor), has just vomited forth another architecturally outrageous beacon of bad taste. The recently completed Yas Hotel is covered by a canopy of 5,000-odd ...

Normally when we speak of "the cloud," we're talking about intangible bits and bytes stored on the Web. That digital cloud has inspired the design of the very much tangible The Cloud, one of the finalists in a competition to build a tourist attraction in London's planned 2012 Olympic Village. The Cloud was designed by an international team of architects, scientists, and artists, including ...

While it may not be the most obvious connection, architecture and video games are inseparable. We know 'Goldeneye' levels, 'Halo' maps, and 'Super Mario' worlds as well, if not better, than the streets of our home town. From an architect's perspective, creating buildings and worlds in video games is far easier (not to mention cheaper) than doing it in the real world, yet landscapes from a ...

Wouldn't it be nice to have a portable home without the stigma attached to RVs? That's sort of, well, not really, the idea behind this walking house, designed by Danish art collective N55 and MIT engineers. The domicile sits on six hydraulic legs that can move at walking pace over any terrain. The legs are controlled by a computer inside the house, each moves independently and three are always ...

Dubai has become synonymous with architectural excess, but the latest creation being proposed for the commercial mecca is something that must be seen to be believed. David Fisher, an Italian architect, has designed what can only be described as the world's first spinning skyscraper. The 80-story residential tower -- to be called the Dynamic Tower -- changes shape as each floor rotates ...

There's no shame in admitting that shape-shifting creatures are a touch frightening, but we'll go ahead and warn you -- those spooked by petite bots will be utterly terrified by this. The SkinForm Project has arisen from the University of Technology Sydney, and while there aren't any elaborate details available just yet, it's described as an "intelligent pneumatic structure that transforms ...

This time of year, when the temperatures are soaring, there's nothing like a nice dip in a cool body of water to make the heat tolerable. Who knew the same could be said for buildings? Apparently, a group of Spanish aircraft engineers do. The engineers recently developed a technique to pump water through specialized double-pane windows. The sun heats the water, which is moved elsewhere and ...