Let’s End The Day With Drumzzz

This is one of my favorite vids – people of all ages drum. Fifteeeen!

Goodnight :*

Water and Air on Earth

I thought this shouldn’t just go in the container so here’s a post that contains nothing but this picture and some facts. Left – all the water on Earth, right – all the air on Earth. And some quick facts to go with (wiki):

Water: it covers 71% of the Earth’s surface; 97,2% is in the oceans, 1,8% in the glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, 0,9% groundwater, 0,02% of fresh water in inland sees, lakes and rivers, 0,001% is atmospheric water vapor at any given time.

Air: the average mass of the atmosphere is 5 quadrillion metric tons or 1/1.200.000 of the mass of Earth which makes the pictured sphere of water 16% of the Earth’s size.

I was wondering what that giant ball rolling over my back yard was the other day. See how it’s standing on Slovenia? But I understand, I do. You had to pick a beautiful piece of Earth to put the ball on and you went with Slo, that’s cool.

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(via: Phiffer)

Metal Shutter Houses | Shigeru Ban

This oh-so urban industrial chic project by Shigeru Ban in New York City will be completed in fall this year. The Metal Shutter Houses are a part of a series of shutter homes (see also Shutter House of a Photographer and The Glass Shutter House in Tokyo). The building of 11 stories has 9 duplex apartments with floor areas ranging from 180m2 to 295m2 (the penthouse) and all have walls that can be moved out of the way completely. The facade metal shutters are motorated and serve as privacy screens by covering the double-hight living rooms that are otherwise exposed to the streets. In the penthouse the large windows can be opened completely, leaving no boundaries between the interior and the terrace. The idea for this came from delis and industrial rolling gates to close the storefronts, allowing the house to blend perfectly with the densly built city environment.

slideshow: click

download floorplan: PDF

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(via: freshhome & inhabitat)

Beijing Airport | Foster & Partners

Hello people. I’m sorry for the lack of posts but I was sick in the past week so I was forced to stay in bed. I finally dug myself out of the huge pile of tissues that were starting to take over my room and today I have enough power to type something other that delusional thoughts. So what’s new but really kinda old….

Foster and Partners built the new Beijing airport. Beijing is going completely wacko because of the coming Summer Olympics and it seems to have turned into a Mecca of new buildings from the big boys. I do like the new airport, the form’s flow got me and it looks like it’s crawling on the floor, I love it. The whole complex covers a floor area of 1.3million square meters, mostly under one roof. Although the structure is enormous, the simple form makes it easy for the passengers to navigate. The perimeter was maximized with the intention of ‘increasing the capacity of aircraft stands while maintaining a highly compact and sustainable footprint.’ It has an integrated environment-control system and rood windows to receive as much heat from the sun as possible. The building is also rich in symbolism; the form mimics a dragon to ‘celebrate the thrill and poetry of flight’ and when inside, you are surrounded by traditional yellow, orange and red colours. The opening is tomorrow, Feb29th, so we can all go sip some beverages with ol’ Fossie. Except we’re not invited and would probably get evicted. I wonder if throwing Tito in the conversation would score us some points.

Slideshow: click

Talented Architect Vs. Poseour

Such a good topic, and one that continues to emerge through time as history repeats itself. There’s an article, that is basically putting words in my mouth, at SFGate about determiming good architecture from well… ‘bad’ architecture. I usually don’t like to point out a piece of work and label it as anything at all, let alone label it as ‘bad’. But let’s not keep our mouth shut. I generally agree with the author of that post. In my humble opinion, less is always more and I don’t digest the new ‘baroque’ that well. But that’s just me, you can beg to differ.
/read the article at SFGate

Meet The World | Icaro Doria

The Brazilian Icaro Doria has been working for the Grande Reportagem magazine in Lisbon for 3 years now and came up with these very original graphics. Icaro says: ”The magazine Revista Grande Reportagem is a Hard Journalism magazine, on the same line as the Times. The idea was to bring across the concept that the magazine offers profound journalism about topics of real importance to the world today. This is how we thought of the concept Meet the World. /…/ We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.”

/see the rest of the flags here.

Okhta Tower, St. Petersburg | RMJM

The Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom Neft chose this high rise building, designed by the UK based RMJM Architects, that is to be built in St. Petersburg and will serve as the new Gazprom headquarters. At 396m tall, it will be the tallest building in Europe and the greenest skyscraper in the world. RMJM are working together with consulting engineers Battle McCarthy to make the building as energy efficient as it can possibly get in an environment where the temperatures fluctuate throughout the year and fall as deep as 30°C below zero. The building is wrapped into two layers of glazed glass and consists of an inner core and an outer atrium that will serve as a buffer zone, providing the building with enough natural ventilation, thermal insulation and light. The project will also have specialized water, heating and ventilation solutions and an intelligent facade. As you can probably imagine, this proposal was and remains very controversial. Tall buildings and slums seem to be inevitable in modern urbanism. But as the undertaking of this project will surely start soon, I can only say it’s better than building the monster pillow theater building ‘designed’ by Eric Owen Moss – are you joking, this isn’t Disney World. Those who have been at the ORIS conference in Zagreb should know what I’m talking about. Never in my life have I felt so utterly bored in a lecture. I thought the chair was going to get the munchies, close in on itself and start digesting me. And I wouldn’t even resist.

slideshow: click

(via: Inhabitat)

Let’s End The Day With a Korean Boy

Better, better, better, betTTER, BETTER, BETTER! AAAAAAA!!! :D

Goodnight :*

Word up, World! Short Films

These sweet videos by Hornet Inc. all have a clear message behind them. Although they are intentionally made simple, colorful and short, their aim is to bring forth all the different problems of the world. Their message is: ”With many who are skeptical and issues seemingly too daunting – it’s about tapping into our childhood optimism that can help overcome what may seem impossible. Underneath it all, it’s really that simple.”

/click on the images above to view the videos (Quicktime required)

(via: Motiongrapher)

100 Design Solutions For Ordos, Inner Mongolia

Ordos 100 is a huge architectural project that is to take place in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. The client is Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd and the challange for the 100 architects from around the globe, selected by Jacques Herzog, will be for each to build a villa on a 1000m2 parcel. The whole masterplan will be led by a Chinese architectural designer Ai Weiwei of Fake Design. The architects that were chosen come from the States (22), Switzerland (14), Mexico (9), France (7) and many others. I always wondered how a city (or a district) would look like if it was designed by high profile architects and now we’ll see. Fingers crossed it won’t be completely twilight zone weird. By the way Jacques – you told me if I ate that formaldehyded ‘animal’ you’d let me be a part of this project but you totally bailed me out. That’s cool… no no, it’s ok really. No don’t call me it’s… Stop it Jacques! Stop begging, this is pathetic and I won’t do it. (Drop me a line sir, I’m totaly in.)

slideshow: click

(via: Inhabitat)