Architecture

Beautiful Japanese Building to be Covered in Puke

Japan is set to launch its first building-mounted free-fall ride in an exterior wall of Osaka’s $157 million 12-story namBa H!PS entertainment complex set to open this December. The ride will provide guests with a beautiful view of the city right before it drops them 200 feet down the side of the building at 50…

Tech News Sean Fallon

Future City: 20 | 21

The Skyscraper Museum, at 39 Battery Place in New York, has an exhibit opening at the end of the month that will certainly interest paleo-futurists. New York Modern, which opens on October 24 and runs through March 2008, looks back at prophecies of the skyscraper city in the early 20th century when the first dreams…

Tech News Matt Novak

Toilet-Shaped House…Now That’s Classy

Just because you have the resources to build the world’s first toilet-shaped house doesn’t mean that you should. Then again, if you happen to be Sim Jae-duck, the chairman of the organizing committee of the Inaugural General Assembly of the World Toilet Association, you may have an interest in such a thing. And a guy…

Tech News Sean Fallon

You Need A Space Image Management Consultant

Now that it’s common for people to look at their environment from space via Google satellite imagery, certain companies are suffering from an image crisis. Their buildings just don’t look good from space. That’s why the Navy, whose unfortunately-shaped building in San Diego caused a lot of angst recently, is hiring a space image consultant.…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Soviet Futurist Architectural Marvel About To Be A Museum

The strangely beautiful Melnikov House was built in Moscow in 1929, and is an early-twentieth-century futurist blend of peasant construction and ultra-modern weirdness. Maverick architect Konstantin Melnikov built his home using rough bricks typically found in Russian peasant villages, but he also gave it a novel shape – two interlocking cylinders riddled with hexagonal windows…

io9 Annalee Newitz

See Black Holes From The Roof Of Your House

New digital light-filtering technologies make it possible for city-dwellers to build astronomical observatories into the rooftops of their homes, complete with high-powered telescopes. Today’s New York Times has the story: At a time when amateur astronomy is becoming increasingly popular — thanks in part to the availability of high-tech equipment like digital cameras that filter…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Architect makes Scale Model of Housing Proposal in Lego

This is a 1:50 scale model of Lego Towers, a proposed housing development for Copenhagen &mdash made of Lego. Designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, this time-lapse video was shot over five weeks. Photos, plus how many bricks were needed to make the model, are after the jump. Two hundred and fifty thousand. [Bjarke Ingels…

Gadgets AddyDugdale

French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

Flying Firemen The National Library of France (BnF) has an amazing collection of prints from 1910 which depict life in the year 2000. They are credited to Villemard. There’s speculation that they were included with “foodstuffs” of the era, much like the German postcards we looked at back in April. Car Shoes The Barber The…

Tech News Matt Novak

35 Years of Tokyo Progress in 10 Seconds

Witness the progress of Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward from 1969-2004 in miniature cereal box form. I feel for the guy who had to hold still with a camera for 35 years. He must have an iron bladder. [freshcreation]

Tech News Mark Wilson

7.5-Tonne Bridge Made of Cardboard Tubes

A temporary bridge made of 281 cardboard tubes has been erected over a river in Southern France. Weighing 7.5 tonnes, it can hold up to 20 people at a time. It is just half a mile from the Pont du Gard, an old Roman stone bridge, and was designed by Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect…

Gadgets AddyDugdale

Wild-Looking Building to be Latin America’s Tallest

Look at this beautifully shaped building, designed by Dutch architects from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). To be built in the heart of Mexico City by 2010, it’s destined to be Latin America’s tallest tower at 984.25 feet. It’s a beefy structure with 160,000 square feet of office space, along with plenty of public…

Tech News Charlie White

Solar Wind Pavilion, Gathering Place of Energy

The Solar Wind Pavilion is a design proposal for California State University to provide an ecofriendly space for students and faculty to gather. The design begins with a 150-foot wind generator that leads down to a roof featuring concentric rings of solar paneling. This rippling form represents the actual energy flowing toward the campus from…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Seaside Dwellings…from Space

“Bathing Beauties” is an initiative to revitalize the 10-mile stretch of Lincolnshire coastline, UK, from Mablethorpe to Anderby Creek. We know that you don’t really care so much about the initiative, but you may be interested in the 240 entries of weird architecture spawned by the initiative—because what better way to revitalize the seashore than…

Gadgets Mark Wilson

Pictures Stately Edifices (1923)

As promised, we have the first in a long list of predictions found in the February 12, 1923 Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut). Today’s excerpt is from architect Thomas Hastings. It’s particularly unsettling to read someone from the 1920s writing about the possibility of another World War. I get such a feeling of detachment, as though…

Tech News Matt Novak

Euroscraper…Scrapes Europe, Not Sky?

The Euroscraper is a donut in the long john-dominated world of skyscrapers. Recently placing third in theeVolo Architecture Skyscraper competition, we love this vision of the future Granted, it’s horrible for preserving ground real estate. But it looks neat. Euroscraper [inhabitat]

Tech News Mark Wilson

Gigantic 3000-foot Pyramid Proposed for Tokyo Bay

Here’s an eight-minute video that shows you a grandiose idea somebody dreamed up: building a 3000-foot-tall pyramid in Tokyo Bay. This megacity would be so tall, and would have such tremendous volume that 24 80-story skyscrapers could be suspended within, and people would travel inside it via the tubes that are also supporting the enormous…

Tech News Charlie White

Bubble House (1968)

This French house, designed by Antti Lovag in 1968 and photographed by Ken Sparkes in 2006, is a shining example of paleo-futuristic design. Many thanks to Richard Green for the link. See also: Desolation Row Desolation Row in Color Taiwan Has Abandonment Issues

Tech News Matt Novak

New York in 1960 (1935)

This cover to the March, 1935 issue of Popular Mechanics purported to illustrate New York City in 1960. The image is featured in the book Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future. See also: Amphibian Monorail (Popular Science, 1934) Commuter Helicopter (1947)

Tech News Matt Novak

Communities May Be Weatherized (Edwardsville Intelligencer, 1952)

The Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) ran an article on December 15, 1952 outlining a vision of weather-controlled communities of the future. “Weather-conditioned” communities in the future are perfectly feasible, according to a professor of architecture. Ambrose M. Richardson of the University of Illinois announced that his graduate architecture students already are working on a model…

Tech News Matt Novak

The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929)

The Hugh Ferriss book The Metropolis of Tomorrow, originally published in 1929, is an amazing work broken up into three parts: Cities of Today, Projected Trends, and An Imaginary Metropolis. Needless to say, the last section is most intriguing for our purposes. The image below is a radial design for a city that pops up…

Tech News Matt Novak

Beautiful Japanese Building to be Covered in Puke

Future City: 20 | 21

Toilet-Shaped House…Now That’s Classy

You Need A Space Image Management Consultant

Soviet Futurist Architectural Marvel About To Be A Museum

See Black Holes From The Roof Of Your House

Architect makes Scale Model of Housing Proposal in Lego

French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

35 Years of Tokyo Progress in 10 Seconds

7.5-Tonne Bridge Made of Cardboard Tubes

Wild-Looking Building to be Latin America’s Tallest

Solar Wind Pavilion, Gathering Place of Energy

Seaside Dwellings…from Space

Pictures Stately Edifices (1923)

Euroscraper…Scrapes Europe, Not Sky?

Gigantic 3000-foot Pyramid Proposed for Tokyo Bay

Bubble House (1968)

New York in 1960 (1935)

Communities May Be Weatherized (Edwardsville Intelligencer, 1952)

The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929)

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