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Tech NewsDesign
Inside the Disaster Housing NYC Is Testing For City Emergencies
More than eight million people live in NYC. And when a natural or human-made disaster strikes, there’s a good chance it’ll leave some New Yorkers without homes. That’s why this summer, NYC’s Office of Emergency Management is testing out a fast, cheap, and comfortable solution: Meet the Prototype. Technically, it’s called the Urban Post-Disaster Housing … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Tracking Brooklyn’s Rapid-Fire Gentrification With Google Street View
Open any issue of The New York Times, and you’re all but guaranteed to hit a passing reference to the mecca of all things gentrified and hip: Brooklyn, New York. But the real testament to the borough’s changing face lies not in trend pieces, but in the nearly unrecognizable streets and buildings themselves. As Manhattanites … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Watch This Guided Tour of Stockholm’s Beautiful Subway
Alexander Dragunov is an architectural photographer, but his real passion is capturing images of subways. In this video, he gives a guided tour of his favorite metro system in Stockholm—and reveals that it is indeed stunningly beautiful. The St Petersburg-born photographer shot this video with the BBC to explain why he thinks Stockholm’s is ‘the … Continued
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Tech News
These Tiny Robots Are Designed To 3D Print Whole Buildings
By now, large-scale 3D printing has been around for a few years. (Crazy, right?) But there’s always been one big problem with existing technology: The printers need to be larger than the structures themselves. That’s a problem that a team of researchers say they can solve with swarms of tiny robots. The innovative thinkers at … Continued
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Tech NewsApple
This Flyover Shows What Apple’s New HQ Will Look Like From the Air
We have a pretty good idea of what Apple’s forthcoming headquarters might look like, thanks to all the glimmering renderings. But the 3D visualization company Technology Integration Services Inc. just published a video of what the office will look like as you’re flying over it—and it’s even cooler in motion. What can we learn from … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
You’d Never Guess This House Was Made Entirely From Trash
This house looks normal. Lovely, even. But get up close and you’ll realize that it’s far from conventional—because it’s made from trash. Real, actual trash. We’re not talking nicely recycled plastics or reclaimed woods, here. No: the foundations are constructed from blast-furnace slag; disused carpet tiles clad its walls; and the whole thing is insulated … Continued
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Tech News
Did Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, Inspire Better Urban Design?
Walt Disney didn’t set out to revolutionize urban design when he created Disneyland—that’s what his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT, was for. But whereas EPCOT never became anything more than a sort of permanent world’s fair, it was Disneyland and especially its Main Street, USA, that ultimately changed the way we think about … Continued
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Tech News
The Wobbling Stairs at This World Cup Stadium Look Ready to Collapse
Given that Brazil has spent around $14 billion getting ready to host the 2014 World Cup, you’d think they’d have sufficient funds to install staircases that weren’t made of scaffolding. I mean, just look at those steps shake under the load of hundreds of futbol fans. In this raw video from what looks like outside … Continued
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Tech NewsSploid
World’s northernmost big city is a brutal mosaic of color and pollution
Welcome to Norilsk, Russia. With 175,365 citizens, it’s the northernmost big city in the world. The architecture is brutal, it’s highly polluted, and it’s freezing cold all year round. Yet its geometric and colorful shapes make it an oddly pleasing sight—at least as captured from the air by photographer Slava Stepanov. Norilsk has polar days … Continued
By James Baker -
Tech NewsDesign
Watch This Diamond-Dusted Robot Saw Through Marble Like It’s Hot Butter
There are lots of fun ways to watch machines show-off: see them play massive Jenga games; ooh and aah as they draw peens and portraits; or, in the case of Carrara Robotics, check out a wire-saw saturated with diamond dust slice through a chunk of marble like it it’s absolutely nothing. One of the coolest … Continued
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Tech News
The Insane Plan to Build the World’s Tallest Towers in a Lake in China
These days, ambitious new skyscrapers are blanketed in a cloud of “green” buzzwords. Wind turbines! Hydrogen fuel cells! Insect farms! (Yes, insect farms.) Then there’s Phoenix Towers, which has all of the above and more and looks like this. Let’s call it what it is: a greenwashed dick-measuring contest. The monstrosity, recently unveiled by the … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
The Faded Glory of Dilapidated Modernist Homes
Modern architecture is usually grandly depicted in pristine photographs against seductive backdrops. But buildings, like all things, are subject to the decay of time. The photographs of Chris Mottalini depict modernist homes, built by Paul Rudolph in the mid-twentieth century, in a deteriorated state, shortly before their planned demolition. They sit unoccupied, bereft of the … Continued
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Tech NewsFacebook
Building the Part of Facebook No One Ever Sees
Ever since we humans gave up the nomadic life and started building homes, architecture had one goal: To make life better for humans. But now, a new architecture is taking shape in remote, frozen corners of the world. And it’s not designed for humans. It’s for machines. In this case, for the remote machines that … Continued
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Tech News
China’s New Tallest Building Adds a Floor Every 96 Hours
At 2,165 feet, Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Center is about to become the tallest building in China and the second-tallest in the world. And it’s getting there very quickly: According to a new report from DesignBoom, workers are finishing a new floor of the 115-story building every four days. That’s a remarkable pace for a … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Imagining Famous Music as New Architectural Designs
Inspiration can come from the strangest places—so what if buildings were designed around the sounds produced by famous musicians? That’s exactly what Italian architect and illustrator Federico Babina has imagined in his new series called Archmusic. It takes 27 popular songs—from the likes of David Bowie t0 Mozart—and turns them into cartoon buildings. The results … Continued
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io9
Would This Building Make You Want to Eat Bugs?
As you already know, we’re going to have to start eating bugs if we want to avoid mass starvation in the near future. But how do people from non-bug-eating cultures get over the ick factor? Swedish architecture firm Belatchew Arkitekter has come up with a plan so bizarre it just might work. https://gizmodo.com/should-you-really-start-eating-insects-509900937 Their idea … Continued
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Tech News
These Nanoparticle Panels Can Perfectly Mimic the Italian Sky
A new lighting technology that uses a special blend of LEDs and nanoparticle coatings to recreate the concept of Rayleigh scattering—the process that makes the sky appear blue—is currently being used at the Biennale in Venice to bring the Italian sky indoors. Z! Zingonia, Mon Amour is an exhibition at this year’s architecture-focused La Biennale … Continued
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Tech News
This Origami-Inspired Emergency Shelter Pops Open in Seconds
In disaster-relief situations, every minute matters—as does every pound and inch. Because when thousands of people have been suddenly left homeless, you can’t just build new houses overnight. You can, however, set up one of these origami-like shelters in less than two minutes. The descriptively named Compact Shelter is due to hit the market this … Continued
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Tech NewsSploid
I want to spend the summer in this tree house
I love the design of this tree house created by architectural firm Farrow for an eco resort in the middle of a protected Canadian forest. A floating ship—it is suspended from the tree, not nailed to it—that can fly to space at any given time. Inside it is beautiful too. I’d love my entire house … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech News
Three World Cup Stadiums That Are Actually Good For Brazil
The 12 stadiums currently seeing World Cup action are not created equal. The dozen venues for the games are a mix of something old, something new, something temporary that will be taken down after the last goal is kicked. And not all of them have turned out to deliver the hopes and dreams promised (a … Continued