Herzog & De Meuron Unveils Switzerland’s First Motorway Chapel
Herzog & de Meuron has completed the design for Switzerland’s first motorway chapel. A concept well known in neighboring Germany, the motorway chapel is a modern-day interpretation of the medieval wayside chapel. The contemplative space offers travellers a place of rest, respite, silence and prayer.
How Public Housing Fails, And Why
There was a time when public housing served a different purpose — that it served fairly well the people who lived in it, that it was safe and decent housing, and that it did help people as a sort of stepping stone. It was a different demographic that it was serving in that way.
The New York City Subway Map As You’ve Never Seen It Before
In 1979, responding to complaints from riders that the subway map was difficult to use, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hired the Manhattan design firm Michael Hertz and Associates to create a new map. The M.T.A. subway map is a record of how graphic design, politics and geography have shaped the city over the last 40 years.
Hayri Atak Architectural Design Studio Proposes Cantilevering Glass Pool Over Norwegian Fjord
Istanbul practice Hayri Atak Architectural Design Studio proposed building the hotel on a site 600-metres-high on Preikestolen – a steep cliff and popular tourist spot in the west of Norway that overhangs the Lysefjorden fjord. It is intended to recreate the thrill of embarking on hiking trails around the cliff.
How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games
Fairness is the unspoken promise of most video games. Controlled by an omniscient and omnipotent designer, a video game has the capacity to be ultimately just, and players expect that it will be so. And yet, when video games truly play by the rules, the player can feel cheated.
Volkswagen Gives Classic 1972 Type 2 Microbus An Electric Upgrade
Volkswagen has replaced the original internal-combustion engine of this 1972 Type 2 Microbus with an electric powertrain. The German automaker commissioned EV West — a company that specializes in electric conversions on the west coast.
Prefab Needs To Be Fixed Before It Can Save Housing
Today, prefabrication in the United States is stunted. The small manufacturers that exist cannot invest in research and therefore cannot produce the more sophisticated projects that are needed today. Plus, in many cases, it can be less costly to ship a project over from a more experienced or innovative fabricator.
How ‘Landscape Urbanism’ Is Making Gentrification Look Like Fun
The High Line and its imitators are examples of “landscape urbanism,” a growing design movement that places green space in collision with old infrastructure. Rehabilitation projects follow a familiar playbook, aestheticizing the labor of the past even as they support a gentrified future.
Small Cities, Big Challenges
From building in a crowded capital threatened by rising sea levels to creating modern housing alongside historic landmarks, this is how small cities around the world are overcoming some remarkable challenges.
How To Create A Playable City
Technology may be reshaping how we engage with urban spaces, but does it risk sucking the life out of them in the process? We explore some of the creative projects that are making our cities more playful.
Tiny Houses Look Marvellous But Have A Dark Side
Tiny houses are often put forward as a more sustainable housing option. They are certainly a potential check on the continued pursuit of bigger houses and greater consumption of energy, building materials and so forth. Yet reducing your environmental impact by going tiny is not as simple as some have claimed.
Los Angeles Roads May Soon Be Paved With Recycled Plastic
The City of Los Angeles has partnered with landscape product company Technisoil on a plan to pave roads with a new material called “plastic asphalt.” It’s a surfacing material that uses oil made from shredded plastic waste as its binder.
Suburban Megastores Remade Into Libraries, Schools & Shelters
Across America, many malls have emptied out and thousands of abandoned big box stores sit empty, including hundreds of former Walmarts. Some, though, are getting creative new leases on life, becoming community markets, indoor tracks, gaming spaces, museums and more.
Waste Heat From Underground Begins Warming London’s Homes
The Bunhill 2 Energy Centre has started capturing excess heat from the London Underground to help warm over 1,000 buildings in the UK capital. A perforated red-metal pavilion distinguishes the Bunhill 2 Energy Centre, which occupies the site of the disused City Road tube station.
Futuristic Photos From High-Rise Towers In Paris Suburbs
As a child, Laurent Kronental walked past Les Tours Aillaud, a group of eighteen residential towers in the Paris suburbs, in wonderment. As an adult, the looming high-rises, home to some 1600 apartments, continued to haunt his subconscious.
On Walkman’s 40th Anniversary, Sony Opens Retro Exhibition In Tokyo
Sony Corp. opened an exhibition Monday in Tokyo’s bustling Ginza district to mark the 40th anniversary of its signature Walkman. The handheld audio player debuted on July 1, 1979, offering portable music to ears across the world. In the years that followed, over 400 million units would be sold.
Shanghai’s Underwater Quarry Hotel
Extending 90 meters down into an abandoned quarry the 18 storey, InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland is a structure like no other. Located in the Sheshan Mountain Range, the hotel was conceived by Atkins for the Shimao Group as a unique destination to rival the extravagant resorts of Singapore and Dubai.
Crumpled, Highly Realistic Drawings By Bella McGoldrick
Bella McGoldrick has a series of hyper-realistic drawings, using crumpled bags, boxes, and concert tickets as subject matter. The wrinkled, smashed, and folded material presents a complex web of shadows and reflections, making the drawings all the more difficult to compose.
Human Terrain, Visualizing The World’s Population In 3D
Kinshasa is now bigger than Paris. Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen are forming an epic, 40 million-person super city. Over the past 30 years, the scale of population change is hard to grasp. How do you even visualize 10 million people?
How Scientists Imagined And Built An Undersea Utopia For Humans
During the late 1960s many believed revolutionary social and political change was imminent, and Jacques Cousteau was no exception. Soon there would be “undersea parliaments and new nations,” he wrote; “poets, architects, and painters would be needed to give expression” to this “new world.”
The Economy Skynest: Airplane Sleeping Pods For Economy Passengers
New York to Auckland is one of the longest flights in the world. Because the flight is roughly 17 hours and 40 minutes, Air New Zealand has been working on how to make Economy passengers more comfortable for the duration. The Skynest is a well-designed tower containing six bunks.