Category — design

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There is an interesting post over at ReadWriteWeb about how how people are creating new user interfaces to deal with information overload. Check it out.

Flickr Slideshow:

“Symbiotic and multi-scalar, SF HYDRO-NET is an occupiable infrastructure that organizes critical flows of the city. HYDRO-NET provides an underground arterial traffic network for hydrogen-fueled hover-cars, while simultaneously collecting, storing and distributing water and power tapped from existing aquifer and geothermal sources beneath San Francisco. A new aquaculture zone with ponds of algae and forests of sinuous housing towers reoccupy Baylands inundated by rising sea levels. Hydrogen fuel is produced by the algae, and is stored and distributed within the nanotube wall structure of HYDRO-NET’s robotically-drilled tunnels. At key waterfront and neighborhood locales, HYDRO-NET emerges to form linkages between the terrestrial and subterranean worlds. Here new architectures bloom as opportunistic urban caves and outcroppings, fostering new social spaces and densified urban forms, fed by the resources and connectivity provided by HYDRO-NET. These locally responsive and distributed nodes and tendrils facilitate both the preservation and organic evolution of San Francisco.”

Richard Meier writes:
“The number of urban dwellers is expected to rise sharply in the future. Addressing this fact, this vision for the future of San Francisco proposes a new network of infrastructure below the surface of the city that will help the region maximize and distribute its resources. Called ‘Hydronet,’ the system will not only provide tunnels for a new generation of hover-cars, but also collection and distribution systems for water and power. The proposal identifies places where drinkable water might be harvested from both the sky and the earth, where heat might be extracted or dissipated deep in the strata below the city, and where new hydrogen based energy might be generated from algae fields. The city’s signature waterfront is repopulated with a series of eco-towers that animate the skyline and are linked to the network of infrastructure.”

[History Channel City of the Future | IwamotoScott Architecture]

“LINC is leased to the user as a service, not a product.”

It’s like netflix but for cell phones. You hold onto it for a year then it gets shipped back to the factory to be disassembled. They send you a newer phone with the latest hardware.

[Read More | via Kitsune Noir]

“Current State is a real-time energy use monitoring system and timer for powered devices combined into one. The Current State system is made up of two parts, a mobile application for you cell phone, which allows you to control and monitor electricity use from anywhere, and a series of Plug-Ends that give you control over the products around your house.”

[The Greener Grass | via Kitsune Noir]

photo by jurveston

1. Earthquake Towers
2. Tectonic Warfare
3. Igneous Printheads
4. Colored Magma
5. Slow Sculpture

What the heck is this?

[Read the full article @ io9]

[via smashing magazine]

Illustration by Bryan Christie Design

The following article was written by David Gelles
(original story on The New York Times)

“Traditional wind turbines can be unreliable sources of energy because, well, the wind blows where it will. Not the case 1,000 feet up. “At a thousand feet, there is steady wind anywhere in the world,” says Mac Brown, chief operating officer of Ottawa-based Magenn Power.

To take advantage of this constant breeze, Brown has developed a lighter-than-air wind turbine capable of powering a rural village. “Picture a spinning Goodyear blimp,” Brown says. Filled with helium, outfitted with electrical generators and tethered to the ground by a conductive copper cable, the 100-foot-wide Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS) will produce 10 kilowatts of energy anywhere on earth. As the turbine spins around a horizontal axis, the generators convert the mechanical energy of the wind into electrical energy, then send it down for immediate use or battery storage.

Planning for the MARS has been under way for a few years, but this fall Magenn got the $5 million it needed to build prototypes from a California investor. In October, the MARS received its U.S. patent. Already, larger models — ones that might light a skyscraper — are in the works. Brown says he hopes his floating wind turbines will power off-the-grid villages in the developing world. He says the governments of India and Pakistan have expressed interest.

At least one argument against wind turbines — that they slice up birds and bats — isn’t valid, according to Brown. “This thing is bigger than a house,” he says. “A bird can see it and a bat can sense it.”

[via New York Times]

[via core77 by Abhinav Dapke]

“obviously, construction technologies are advancing extremely quickly. couple that with multi-billionnaires / deep-pocketed companies trying to outdo each other in the quest for the next standout design and you have a near-future filled with mile-high skyscrapers and buildings that no longer look like buildings.”

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