Figuring out the hidden meaning of stock photos

"Lily and Peter were supposed to have a romantic night in, but Peter and a few coworkers went out for happy hour drinks. Peter got drunk, missed dinner, and passed out on the couch.

This actually happens all the time, and Lily is pretty understanding. She’s crying about the ending of Toy Story 3, which they saw four weeks ago."

Some stock photos are just weird. And you can easily spend too much time wondering what the idea behind the photo was. I've definitely wasted part of my life making up stories of the cryptical display in some stock photos. And Kevin Nguyen has done so, too: he imagines the stories behind stockphotos he found of couples fighting.

Without the hot air

There's no denying it: sustainability is a hot topic. And, as most sane people would agree, rightfully so. But there is little agreement on what the right measures would be to deal with our current climate crisis (which would be more aply be labelled as a "energy crisis", in my opinion, but that's a whole different subject).

The current trend in sustainability seems to be based on the adagium "every little bit helps", combined with "fake it until you make it". Every little bit is made to sound large, by using numbers that to many a laymen sound vast, blurring the discussion with fake facts and unclear figures.

That's where David MacKay, professor at Cambridge University's department of physics steps in. His main argument is that there should be a clear measure for energy consumption. His basic concept is very clear, as could be seen in this quote "We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use; we need to decide how much energy we would like to use in the future; and we need to choose where we will get that energy from."
Ok, it sounds simple, but how? For him, the starting point is starting to measure everything in a single unit. In the case of energy, of course, Kilowatt-hour: a measure that most people know from daily use.

To give some examples: One kilowatt-hour (1 kWh) is the electrical energy used by leaving a 40 watt bulb on for 24 hours. Or driving an average European car 50km uses 40kWh of fuel. In total, the british lifestyle allegedly uses approximately 125 kWh a day.

Good. Once the basic units and a reference point are established, it's time to see how actual measures add up.
The first example is simple: switching off phone chargers when not in use. It's included in lists of "things to do to go green" all around the world, and sounds like a sensible idea. The truth is that leaving a phone charger switched on uses about 0.01kWh per day – 100th of the power consumed by a lightbulb. Or better yet: switching off a phone charger for an entire day is the equivalent of driving a car for about 1 second!
This being said, it's not that switching off phone chargers is a bad idea. Just note that it's only a tiny bit of improvement. So in this case a tiny bit only helps a tiny bit...

Another example: think about vehicles. Most people consider hydrogen cars one of the sane solutions - they certainly have a "green" feel to them. The odd thing is, that if you really measure it, most prototype hydrogen-powered vehicles use more energy than the fossil-fuel vehicles they replace. The average fossil car in Britain uses 80 kWh per 100 km, the BMW Hydrogen 7 uses 254 kWh per 100 km.
Electric cars, is a different story alltogether: Even if the electricity for electric vehicles comes from traditional fossil-fuel power stations, electric cars are still more efficient than petrol cars; and if in the future we switch over the nation's electricity production from fossil fuels to greener sources, then electric vehicles will win by a mile.

And now the big question: how can we use more (preferably only) renewable energy sources? "As a thought experiment, let's imagine that technology switches and lifestyle changes manage to halve British energy consumption to 60kWh per day per person. How big would the wind, nuclear, and solar facilities need to be to supply this halved consumption? Here is the scale that is required if (for simplicity) we wanted to get one-third from each of these sources: we would have to build wind farms with an area equal to the area of Wales; we would have to build 50 Sizewells of nuclear power; and we would need solar power stations in deserts covering an area twice the size of Greater London."

The interesting thing about the argument David MacKay brings across isn't about solutions, it's about measuring. About carefully looking at actual effects, and cutting away all the hot air surrounding sustainable arguments.
This is uncomfortable for anybody who's making money spreading half-truths about green issues (or green-washing unecological ideas).

He put forth his ideas in a book, aptly called "without the hot air". The cool thing is that the entire book is available as a PDF from (t)his website. It's worth your time, because he delivers a refreshing take on sustainability and energy consumption, and gives an insight that is mostly left out of the equation. There's no politics in this book, only arthmatics. And that's definitely wise for such a widely used and misused theme.

all you need is... sticky tape!

Packaging tape is generally only used to keep pieces together, not to make self-supporting structures. Exceptions to this rule could probably only be found in episodes of McGuyver. Until now, that is. The design collective For Use/Numen used nothing but packaging tape to create huge cocoons which you can actually enter and explore.


I stumbled upon this project onfastcompany.com

The blue city

"Jodhpur is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It was formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name, it was the capital of the kingdom known as Marwar. Jodhpur is a popular tourist destination, featuring many palaces, forts and temples, set in the stark landscape of the Thar desert."
At least, that's what wikipedia says.

But there's one thing that's remarkable enough in itself to draw huge crowds into town: large parts of the buildings around Mehrangarh Fort in the city are coloured in a bright blue. The city makes for quite an intriguing view, with the indigo colouration of the buildings in the desertous landscape.

At this point, you might be pondering "why on earth did they colour the place blue"? And surely, you are not alone in this. There's no conchise reason that is clearly stated, but there are plenty of theories, some of which are more believeable than others.
1) It is claimed to have started with blue as a symbol of a Brahmin living in that particular house. (makes me wonder: how many Brahmins could one city possible entail?)
2) It is claimed that blue works charms against mosquitos and other buggering bugs.
3) It is claimed that blue absorbs rather little of the heat of the sun.

I don't know which of this is true, and to be honest, I don't really mind too much. The thing is, it just looks spectacular, a blue city within the earth-coloured surroundings...



In case you want to see more images, the Boston Globe has a nice feature on Jodhpur.

Fly-overs done differently

When I look at many of the larger east-Asian cities, I am perplexed by infrastructure. Fly-overs are obiquous, swirling and curling through the city, and twisting and turning above it, just occupying whatever space it's able to take within the city - whether it's on the ground, or in the sky above.


In many ways, the new walkways in Telok Blangah Hill Park reminds me a lot of those infrastructural fly-overs. The walkways are respectfully woven throughout the park above the level of the trees, reaching a height up to 40 metres above the forrest floor, creating a spectacular way for the visitors to observe the stunning natural beauty of the area.



However, what I cannot quite put my finger on is the formal language of the bridges. Some are excessively curvy and flowy, others have a demure high-tech appearance, it's really a mix of things. But on the other hand, it also really offers a broad range of experiences. For instance, the narrow bridge is actually so narrow that one has to walk single file, with views not blurred by crowds standing on the edge of the bridge, while other areas offer luscious viewing platforms.
All in all, the new system of bridges and walkways offers a completely new perspective on the park.

Inside / Outside

What if an outside wall of a house would be more than a stringent division between inside and outside? What if a house would be able to intermingle the inside and the outside?

Well, that's exactly what Sou Fujimoto achieved in their House N in Oita (Japan). In this project, parts of the outside are integrated in the building, creating a weird mix-up that's neither inside or outside. Or both, at the same time.

The basic idea behind this is the concept of stepped privacy, by nesting three cubic volumes in eachother. This makes the space of the building a continuous whole with different parts.

It might even be a bit like a traditional Japanese house. These normally consist of a ornamental garden, a transitional area and the living area. The last one is always the really private space with a exeptional position in the whole.
However, the way the walls are punctured has nothing to do with traditional Japanese houses - where the walls are mainly layers of translucent sliding doors on top of eachother. The wall openings of the House N are more like traditional western windows - whether or not the frames are filled with glass. The only way these resemble the traditional Japanese wall is by means of the roller blind, that can close the window opening to vary the privacy of the spaces of the house.

Beer goggles?

It's nothing new to build pavilions out of beer crates. For instance, Atelier Kempe Thill designed and built a mobile pavillion out of translucent beer crates, called the Light Building.
However, the (unknown/unnamed) designers/builders of the Pavilion Du Bonheur Provisiore in Brussels (Belgium) must have thought that here's always something more extravagant that can be done. And they designed this cathedral out of Jupiler crates. This pavilion is an extension of the exhibition about the 1958 expo, and is situated near the Atomium, and it took 19 builders a total of 3900 hours to build this.

In case you are wondering about the name of the building: "the pavilion of temporary happiness" (the official name of the pavillion) might be a joyful play on the function of the former contents of the crate - or a contemplation on the short joyous life of the pavilion, which is probably just temporary.

Wearing a new building like a hat

Even though one wouldn't guess so at first glance, the Faculty of Mathematics by Bevk Perović in Ljubljana (Slovenia) is actually an extension of an old edifice. On top of an existing, two story building, the new structure was placed - with a completely different programme. At a second glance, one could still see the old building shining through on the ground floor, retaining it's own identity whilst being absorbed into the new building.

Since the new building does not have a ground floor per se, the architects went for a different approach to create public spaces in the building: these large, transparent rooms are carved out of the building mass. By doing so, the second floor becomes what normally the ground floor would be: the public realm of the building. It consists of the lecture halls and the two larger communal areas of the faculty, with all the other programme of the school on the higher floors.


I found this through archdaily.com

The complex history of sustainability

After all is said and done, a lot has been said about sustainability. Almost every single designer claims to be "sustainable" - even though it doesn't extend beyond the "green" image in many pieces of architecture. Exactly the complex matter of sustainability, the many face it entails, the rich history of ideologies - this all seems to be swept away in a storm of sexy wind turbines, spectacular photovoltaic cells and a strategically placed comment about the cradle to cradle principles inherent in the design process.

But there's so much more than this contemporary - relatively superficial - approach to sustainability. This inspired Amir Djalali, with Piet Vollaard, to compile "The complex history of sustainability". Originally, it was intended for a publication in "Volume #18 - After Zero" only, but the timeline has been transformed into an interactive website, based on a mash-up of the google earth software by CASA.

On this web-interface, on can browse through the history of sustainability. Sure, one might doubt some of the -isms as used. And the selective nature of the people captured in this timeline. And the speculative connections between peoples and issues.
But all in all, it gives a nice insight in the complexities and contradictions within the single term "sustainability". From the 18th century romantics, the eco-anarchists and the global warming denialists to bio-mimicry, cybernetics and nazi eugenetics, all is portrayed in this timeline. Linked to the key figures on every stage. As a nice bonus, books, movies, games and architectural projects are added on the time-line.
It might not all be 100% accurate and complete, but at least it doesn't simplify the true meaning(s) of sustainability.

Vitra House - Herzog & De Meuron

Stacking of shapes and/or volumes is a rather trendy thing in architecture at the moment, I'd reckon. I don't know who started the trend, but a lot of architects are into this concept. Some of the biggest names in architecture are doing it. O.M.A. does it a lot, lately (for instance, in their Bryghusprojektet in Copenhagen, or the Hamburg Science Center). Also JDS (Julien de Smedt) used this concept in his proposal for a Villa in China.
But also in the work of Herzog & De Meuron one can see a proliferation of this concept: for instance in their 56 Leonard Street skyscraper in New York, or the Projet Triangle in Paris. Or even the original proposal for the extension of the Tate Modern in London was based around this concept.

With that being said and done: I recently saw some photos of the construction of the Vitra Haus in Weil am Rhein, like the picture above (from flickr.com user Dom Dada). This project by Herzog & De Meuron looked as a simple schematic "stacking of typical house-shaped volumes" the first time I saw this project (on platforma arquitectura.
But the the construction photos show the actual physical quality that is achieved by such a simple concept. I think it's typical for many of the projects by Herzog & De Meuron: the renderings/drawings make you think "is that really all? It looks a bit dull..."; the construction phase makes you think "well, this appears to be more promising than I thought before, it seems to have some unexpected spatial qualities..."; and the materialized building actually leaves you awestruck. That's exactly what I like about their work in general (and this Vitra Haus specifically): in many architectural projects, the building is not nearly as sophisticated and elegant as the initial renderings; but for Herzog & De Meuron's work it's the exactly the other way around: the building is always better than the drawings.

Maximilian's Schell - Ball-Nogues Studio

Maximilian Schell was an actor, who played the role of Dr. Hans Reinhardt in the sci-fi adventure movie "The Black Hole" (1979). The character of Dr. Reinhardt is on a quest to conquer the unknown forces of black holes, and actually wants to steer a spacecraft through a black hole. The movie is (and probably rightfully so) almost forgotten, but the name of Maximilian Schell lives on, as namegiver of an outdoor installation in Los Angeles, by the architects of Ball-Nogues studio, called "Maximilian's Schell".

The installation looked like a rendition of a vortex. It creates an outdoor space to inhabit, by means of a swirling canopy made out of tinted Mylar panels. As the designers themselves write on their website "During the day as the sun passed overhead, the canopy cast colored fractal light patterns onto the ground. When standing in the center or "singularity" of the piece and gazing upward, the visitor could see only infinite sky. In the evening when viewed from the exterior, the vortex glowed warmly while both obscuring and allowing glimpses of the building behind it."

And while this background story of black holes, vortexes and whatnot is somewhat entertaining, and while the spatial effect was indeed stunning (as far as one can judge by looking at the images), the most fascinating part about this structure is the amalgamation of "skin" and "structure". The installation is a contemporary version of the work of Frei Otto in the fifties and sixties, in the sense that it is a behaved as a so-called "minimal surface": a prestressed form which is always in tension but still is definable mathematically.
Membrane engineer Dieter Strobel did an awesome job transforming hand-sketches and computer models by the architects into a digital model that actually worked the way it should, fysically. The interaction between architect and engineer created the form as such. This gave the canopy the smooth look, whilst giving space for creating it out of the Mylar panels, which give the space the lovely spatial and lighting patterns it has on the interior.

Transforming your shoes

As a kid, I was totally into transformers. I didn't have too many of them to play with (just a couple), but I watched many episodes of the cartoon, wished to get something Transformer-related for christmas and all that.
And even though I don't care about the toys anymore (or even the 2007 Transformer-movie, for that matter), but I still really enjoy the idea of something being one, and being two different things at the same time. A transformer might be a car - looking a bit odd for a car, though - and when transformed into a robot, it still has a slight car-like appearance. The two identities are merged into one, with the one slightly influencing the other.

That being said: some transformers move beyond that, and contain a little surprise. Like these sneakers. They are sold by Nike, are packed in a typical shoe-box, and look exactly like a pair of sneakers. But it is impossible to wear the shoes, since they are actually toys: a transformer is hidden inside the shoe. The toy is hidden in the shoe, making it quite a surprise discovery when the robot pops out. If I were a collector of either shoes or transformers, I'd love to get one of those. But since I'm neither of the above, I'll just stick by saying that these transformer-shoes are absolutly lovely.


I found these shoes/transformers via designboom.com, by the way.

Image Construction

Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin made a really intriguing series of photocollages under the title "image/construction". The starting point appears to be an existing building, which is cut up, sampled, mirrored, warped, distorted, cloned and appropriated to make a new structure, possible and impossible at the same time. It plays on the dichitomy of the image and reality. It questions the value of representation in many aspects. And it implicitly asks the question what a building is.

Other than this quasi-intellectual interpretations, these images just look great. So here's another one:

Giving directions

When working for Emery Studio in Australia, Axel Peemüller Design came up with a more graphic way of depicting the signs of the Eureka Carpark Tower. The letters of the directions one should go in the parking garage are distorted. They are smeared over the walls, floors and ceilings. Only from certain vantage points along the route, they are perfectly readable.

Border control

Sometimes, an image doesn't need that many words. I could write loads of different articles about this picture, but I think the sheer image of the American-Mexican border in the Tijuana-San Diego Metropolitan Area suffices to explain a thing or two about the local conditions...

P.S.: If it isn't clear: left is the USA, right is Mexico...
P.P.S.: I found this image via deputy dog, and the source is wikipedia.

Swoosh pavillion

Some time ago, I wrote a post about the [C]-space pavillion that some students of the Architectural Association in London designed and constructed on Bedford Square in London.

It seems as though a herd of pavillions is slowly taking over the square. A group of second and third year students - lead by Charles Walker and Martin Self - recently designed and constructed a pavillion, aptly dubbed the "Swoosh Pavillion". Even though this name seems to be a reference to the well-known logo by Nike (which is also called the swoosh), I am pretty much positive that the pavillion isn't sponsored by the sporting goods mogul. I believe that the name seems to relate to the dynamic nature of that logo.
Because, simply said: the Swoosh Pavillion is a sleek, dynamic form. It swirls itself around a lamppost on Bedford Square. In the centre, the pavillion is closed off by a dense structure of pieces of timber. In the outskirts, the spiral becomes looser, transforming the overhanging enclosure into benches.

The pavillion started out as a scripted 3D model, I assume. Therefore, it is quite an impressive feat that the pavillion was constructed by manual labor. It's always really good to see how an experiment in a computer program is transformed into something that can actually be built. The fact that it is done by a bunch of students makes it even more impressive...


The images come from dezeen.com.

Weingut Gantenbein - Bearth & Deplazes

Brick is mostly considered to be a traditional building material. Granted, the material's been around for ages, and in certain cases it certainly plays on a nostalgic feeling of recognition, but there are other ways of dealing with this material. As the Swiss architects Bearth & Deplazes have shown in their Weingut (winery) Gantenbein.

For an expansion of the existing winery near the village of Fläsch, they chose to go for a concrete skeleton with a brick infill pretty early on in the design process. But instead of limiting themselves to the traditional brick-laying methods, they decided to opt for something rather more contemporary. They really treated the brickwork as a skin of the building, and decided to have it "tattooed" by an image made out of bricks, by using patterns of bricks and seams.

And traditional methods didn't suffice. Laying bricks by hand wouldn't be precise enough, let alone massively expensive. So they teamed up with the people from the chair for Digital Fabrication from the ETH Zürich, who were already working on a bricklaying robot. In the end it all worked out rather splendidly: a robot was created, which was programmed to position every single brick in exactly a certain position - in order to create a really sexy, modern skin out of a classic material.

The piezo bridge

This is the Sakura bridge, in Tokyo. It's part of the Shuto expressway, which is running straight through the city. As everybody who lives near a busy road knows: loads of traffic creates a lot of noise, a lot of dirt and... a lot of vibrations. All of these things can be considered a nuisance. But in Tokyo the decided to turn things around, and use one of these nuisances for to create a beneficial situation. They made use of Piezo electricity. The principle is that certain materials (i.e. specific ceramics and chrystals) produce an electrical current when mechanical pressure is applied. And the vibrations of the traffic do just that: they produce a continuously changing mechanical pressure. This leads to electricity that is being produced. This way, the bridge supplies the energy that is needed for the illumination of the bridge.

I'm well aware that this is just taking the ineffectiveness of the combustion engine and create something worthwile with excess energy, but still it is a fascinating idea to begin with.

Schalalala

I've seen it pretty often during the last weeks. Cars with national flags attached to it, to show support to a specific national football team. And I must say that I really enjoy seeing cars with two different flags. Especially in the area where my girlfriend lives, I've seen a lot of cars with both the German and the Turkish flag attached to them. What happens on wednesday (when the two nations collide in the semi-finals of Euro 2008) is a different story.
But normally supporter-kits for football-fans are pretty absolute. They leave no room for double choices, or multiple options. Since not everybody it as rigid as this supposes people to be, Schalalala was invented. As they say themselves on their website: Schalalala is a fan-scarf remix project, which offers you a more self-determined formulation. Use the Remix-Interface to turn existing fan-scarfs into your own message. Download your knitting pattern from the Remix-Gallery and go ahead and knit it.

[C]space

For the 10th anniversary of the AA's Design Research Laboratory, a competition was held for a small pavillion to be erected on Bedford Square in London. The competition was open to all students and graduates of the DRL - and more or less the only given was that the competitors should make innovative use of Fibre C (glass fibre reinforced concrete).

And the design that won the competition (designed by the architects Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang) does just what one would expect from a competition entry by someone from the AA: it's all computer graphics, double curved, and smooth rendered elegant shape. Sure, there's a bit more to it, but I could never really been bothered with this kind of spectacular architecture for the sake of it. It means nothing, it just looks good...

I couldn't be bothered until I saw that the project is actually under construction. The two designers set up a blog about the project, on which they document the entire production. And I must say: in reality it looks amazing. It's still just showing off, but it's really beautifully done - one can just see that the architects pushed themselves as far as they could to realize the qualities of the virtual image. Just lovely.