TRS Studio Envisions Shipping Containers As Affordable Housing In Peru
Two shipping containers are joined together and topped by an angular polycarbonate extension in this conceptual design for low-cost housing by Peruvian firm TRS Studio. TRS Studio designed the speculative dwellings for communities that struggle with housing issues and lack resources to devote to buying construction materials.
Studio Precht Designs A Fingerprint-Shaped Park For Physical Distancing
Austria-based studio Precht — previously known as Penda — has unveiled the design for a lush green park envisioned for physical distancing and short-term solitude. Dubbed Parc de la Distance, the open air space has been shaped in the form of a fingerprint, evoking human touch.
How A Small Texas City Rewrote The Rules Of Development
Last month, Bastrop, Texas, adopted a new building code, known as Bastrop Building Block, which radically alters how the city will approach development. The new flexible system was designed to address three interrelated issues hitting municipalities across the county: population growth, aging infrastructure, and outdated development patterns.
Skinny Home In Toronto As Prototype For Parking-Space Homes?
When Cyril Borovsky bought a 16-foot-wide strip of land in Toronto sandwiched between two bungalows, he knew the only way to fit more than one bedroom on the tiny footprint was to think cubically. Using a steel frame and performing much of the work himself- with just a boom lift and makeshift pulley-, he went up four floors.
This Could Be America’s Most Expensive Home Ever—If It Can Find A Buyer
Seven years after he started working on “The One,” a 100,000-square-foot mansion in Bel-Air, movie producer turned developer Nile Niami says he’s just about ready to test the market with his ballyhooed $500 million asking price.
Why Amazon Is Betting You’ll Buy A Million Dollar Prefab Home
Prefab has long been the unattainable unicorn of architecture, the ideal marriage of high design, efficient building, environmental consciousness, and affordability. Designers have long tried and failed to take modular mainstream. Can this Amazon-backed entrepreneur make prefab more than just a fad?
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.
Korvaa Is The World’s First Headphones “Grown” From Bio-based Materials
Helsinki-based multidisciplinary design studio Aivan recently unveiled Korvaa, the world’s first headphones made exclusively from microbially grown materials. Created using synbio, Korvaa is the first physical implementation of the technology and marks a potential shift away from a fossil fuel-based economy.
Europe’s Largest Green Façade Has Been Completed In Germany
Over 30,000 plants and 5 miles of hornbeam hedges cover the newly completed Kö-Bogen II commercial and office building by German architecture firm Ingenhoven Architects. Located in Düsseldorf, the verdant structure features Europe’s largest green façade.
University Professor Has Redesigned The Zweibrück Observatory In Germany Into R2-D2
Star Wars fans know him, the little droid R2-D2. Through him, friends of space can now look into the stars, more precisely into the Zweibrück starry sky. Because Hubert Zitt, professor at the Zweibrücken University of Applied Sciences, has redesigned the Zweibrück Observatory of the Natural Science Association.
Osaka’s Gate Tower: Highway Through A Building
The property was owned by a business since the early Meiji era but when business declined, so did the buildings in the 1970s. The property holder refused to give up the land, even though new building permits had been refused to him. The highway corporation and the property owner negotiated for 5 years and what you see today is their compromise.
A Stunning 4K Timelapse Of The Gunhilde Maersk
A stunning 4K timelapse of container ship Gunhilde Maersk at sea from Ho-Chi Minh City, Vietnam to Ningbo, China and the incredible loading sequences at each port. A montage of over 78,000 5D Mk3 RAW files. Edited by Toby Smith to create a stunning day to night sequence in 4K.
Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Will Tell Your Surreal Future
The deck was originally created for the 1970s James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour, but it never appeared in the picture. Now, Dalí cards are available to all in Taschen Books‘s reproduced edition of the deck.
Real Estate For The Apocalypse: My Journey Into A Survival Bunker
Doomsday luxury accommodation is a booming business, offering customers a chance to sit out global pandemics and nuclear wars in comfort – as long as they have the money to pay for it.
Nike Reveals Space Hippie — Sustainable Sneakers Made From Waste
Nike has launched a new, exploratory collection, aptly named Space Hippie. By taking the company’s own “space junk” from the floors of its manufacturing warehouses, Nike is turning waste into feedstock, creating a sustainable sneaker that combines high performance with low impact.
The Death And Afterlife Of The Mall
Once a cornerstone of American consumerism, shopping malls are now mostly ghost towns. In a new episode of The Atlantic’s Idea File, staff writers Jim and Deb Fallows explore the phenomenon of the dead mall, and its emerging afterlife.
Corrugated Steel Shelves Line A Church-Turned-Poetry-Shop In Shanghai
Peer inside Shanghai’s St. Nicholas, an Orthodox church from 1932, and you won’t see pews or traditional iconography. Thanks to architectural firm Wutopia Lab, the renovated building now serves as a shrine to verse.
How And Why The Great Wall Of China Was Really Built
The Great Wall of China was built 2,200 years ago out of military necessity: to combat the Mongolian ancestors of Genghis Khan. Its construction was a marvel of military engineering.
Meet China’s Take On The Classic British Chippie
Architect studio Unknown Works 3D-scanned fish and chip shops across the UK to create the ultimate chippie in China’s Chengdu. The end result isn’t exactly as you might expect, but there are some definite recognizable details – such as the square white tiles, and the engraved salt and pepper pots and fish menu.
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.
How The Dumb Design Of A WWII Plane Led To The Macintosh
For all the triumph of America’s new planes and tanks during World War II, a silent reaper stalked the battlefield: accidental deaths and mysterious crashes that no amount of training ever seemed to fix. At first, pilots took the blame for crashes. The true cause, however, lay with the design. That lesson led us into our user-friendly age—but there’s peril to come.