Berlin yet again; Chicago yet again. Earlier, we made a passing comparison between NURBN's Tempelhof See with The Hole. Now, to bring balance to the universe, we're twinning together Jakob Tigges' Tempelhof Mountain and a ski jumping ramp temporarily inserted into Chicago's Soldier Field in 1954, after all, is the ramp not an intimation of a mountain in the way that the other is a facsimile of a real one?
The latter is a mathematically perfect combination of topographical conditions. Contour lines, slopes and snow type, and maybe even favorable sun angles and prevailing wind direction for the athletes, and for the better enjoyment of the audience, an optimal viewing perspective, have all been co-opted to actualize a very specific event space.
The former is similarly a complicated exercise in mountain design. Tapping into a pathological desire for unspoiled Nature, a patch of Alpine wilderness is recreated hundreds of miles away in the center of Berlin. If actually built, it would mostly likely be ridiculously programmed in the same way so many parts of the Alps have been absurdly landscaped for winter enthusiasts.
Before its renovation in 2003, the result of which garnered a rave review from The New York Times, even placed fourth in their list of the year's best new buildings, but got pummeled by local culture observers, Soldier Field was already being augmented, spectacularly at that if we are being honest.
Perhaps Zaha Hadid could be persuaded to design another ski jumping ramp, though this prosthesis would be hinged and can be flipped up whenever there's a Bears game. Those traveling along Lake Shore Drive or boating on Lake Michigan would see the wavy profile of a half Eiffel Tower. It's the technolicious abstraction of geology.
In any case, this sort of thing isn't as rare as we first thought. This ramp was erected in Empire Stadium, Vancouver, in 1958.
Even the stadiums of winterless Los Angeles were similarly augmented.
If you can't go to the mountains, bring the mountains to you.
An intriguing mix of the bleeding-edge of recent times (seen at my hotel in Paris yesterday):
- this rfid key that you swipe on your door to enter your room
- the stability of the past: this old and commong keyring which is so heavy that you would not keep the rfid key in your pocket during a whole day: you must put it back at the hotel desk when you get out (delegation in design).
The flat, sober and white plastic key and the old copper keyring.
Commissioned by Covent Garden, UVA lit up the market halls of Covent Garden with a contemporary responsive light installation. Launched as the flagship piece of the winter season program at Covent Garden the installation features 600 custom designed LED mirrored tubes hung above the entire Covent Garden market space. The volumetric arrangement of the tubes created a canvas in which three dimensional light formations were made possible. Constellation was also individually controllable using a custom designed control panel, enabling the installation to have an intimacy with the public.
TARMLED GmbH & Co. KG of Bochum, Germany supplied a total of 578, 2m long, double-sided, LED-strips, and 37 DPDUs (Data Power Distribution Units), to power the installation in the English capital that has become the talk of the town after just a few days of operation. In just 10 weeks TARMLED’s engineers developed double-sided, video-compatible LED-strips based on it’s TARMLED STRIP 25-modules that were premiered at the “PLASA 2008″ show. The LED strips were incorporated into polycarbonate tubes coated with a semitransparent reflective film, in accordance with UVA’s design. Together with 37 customised TARMLED DPDU’s, the tubes are allowed to hang elegantly in the space, as the DPDU’s allow for cable runs of maximum 20m from the fixture using a single CAT5e cable carrying data and power to each fixture. The 25mm pixel spacing of the TARMLED STRIP and UVA’s regular grid layout of the tubes allow for spectacular 3D-displays of voluminous, complex, geometric patterns and effects. The system is entirely driven by UVA’s d3 production system.
The "jury", who were Nicholas O'Leary and infosthetics, have chosen the winner of the paper-based visualization competition. First of all, a great thank you for all those who have submitted their entries! It is amazing to see the amount of creativity, time and effort has been put into each single submission.
Petals [charlenelam.com] by Charlene Lam merged the qualities of beauty, originality, and usability the best. As an independent object, it looks clean and sophisticated. The curves give it a real organic feel whilst the relation between daylight hours is clear. It is also definitely something that can be picked up and examined for a closer look. The price, the book Tactile: High Touch Visuals will be on its way soon.
Check out all the other entries below. Let us know what you think about the entries, and having competitions on infosthetics in general.
Google already had more satellite and aerial imagery available for free than anyone. Now, they've added a new feature to new Google Earth 5 that let's you turn back the clock and see other imagery they have for locations around the world. Click on the little "Clock" icon in the upper middle (or the "View->Historical Imagery" menu item). A time slider appears (see below) showing available imagery. If other imagery is available in your current view, you see little tic marks on the slider. Drag the slider (or click the left/right buttons) to see earlier or (or even newer) imagery.
For example, here's a shot of the famous "Bird's Nest" stadium from the 2008 Beijing Olympics as it appeared under construction on February 17, 2007:
And, here is a video showing this all in action:
This feature is amazing! The amount of data Google is storing must be immense! Several instances of imagery for millions of square kilometers! You may be able to see how your house changed over the years, or see aerial pictures of cities from decades ago. Expect to see lots of posts on this new feature.
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
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