7 Wonders

18 Unbelievably Realistic Works of 3D Digital Art

2011-12-09T19:25:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism

What can’t artists do with 3D computer graphics these days? Fantasy can be brought to life in ways never before imagined, and realistic scenes as clear as a digital photograph are illustrated with stunning vitality. These 18 CG images from 15 talented artists will blow you away with their depth and attention to detail, from the tiniest little pores on the skin of an elf to the fibers on a fuzzy sweater.

Piotr Fox Wysocki

(image via: cgsociety.org)

The texture of the fabric. The gleam of the metal helmet. The pores, tiny hairs and imperfections of the skin. Piotr Fox Wysocki proves his mastery of 3D art with “The Last Elf”, a truly mind-blowing testament to how powerful 3D modeling programs have become. The project was certainly a labor of love, as Fox Wysocki notes that “As far as I
remember there were 1,300,000 small hair in the fabric.”

Juan Siquier

(image via: siquier.cgsociety.org)

3D artist Juan Siquier has managed to stir together a complex pot of magical ingredients to make this image so believable and moody: perspective, lighting, texture, and all of the little details that make up a personal space. See it full-sized on CGSociety.org to really appreciate the artistry of this image.

Arthur Wiechec

(image via: djdrako.deviantart.com)

Polish artist Arthur Wiechec may design everyday items like wine glasses and chess boards, but he infuses an incredible amount of life into them. Only the physical impossibility of floating wine and precariously balanced quarters of a glass betray the source of the image.

Kuanfu Sun

(image via: apollo13c.cgsociety.org)

Macro photo of a bee, or work of computer art? Kuanfu Sun makes it hard to tell in this image, which is richly detailed down to floating bits of dandelion in the background.

Rodrigue Pralier

(image via: 3dtotal.com)

Principal Artist at Bioware Montreal , Rodrigue Pralier has worked on 3D characters and backgrounds for games like Mass Effect 2 . This particular piece was done using Zbrush, 3Ds Max and Photoshop.
“I wanted to do a piece with an old Samurai. He just had a fight and won over another samurai. He is completely detached, he has done it so many times before. Now he just awaits for the one who will beat him, and end his nonsense life.”

Hong Phi

(image via: hongphi.deviantart.com)

If you saw one of Vietnamese conceptual 3D artist Hong Phi’s interiors in a magazine, you’d never guess that it wasn’t a photograph of a richly appointed home. But all of these images – including the incredible food spread above – were made using CG.

Rick Baker

(image via: monstermaker.cgsociety.org)

Renowned makeup artist Rick Baker turned to CGI to create a stunning likeness of Frankenstein’s monster. “This piece entitled “The Monster” is based on one of my favorite stills, of my all time favorite monster Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s Monster,” he writes on CG Society.
“I used Modo ZBrush and Photoshop to create this piece. Jack Pierce had crude materials in 1931 to create this makeup but managed to create an image that the whole world knows. Besides trying to do a likeness of Karloff I hoped to show some of the emotion that he put into this character.”

Mauro Corveloni

(image via: maurocor.cgsociety.org)

Mauro Corveloni’s “Muriel” may not quite look like a real woman – there’s something sort of waxy about her – but what’s truly impressive here is both the lighting and all of those tiny, fuzzy fibers on her hat and sweater.

Finn Meinert Matthiesen

(image via: madmaximus83.deviantart.com)

It’s an idyllic scene – a romantic picnic with textured table linens, a glass wine bottle, fruit and a basket full of bread with a lilypad-covered lake in the background. German graphic designer Finn Meinert Matthiesen says he used 3D-Studio Max 2009, VRay and Photoshop to create this image.

Max Wahyudi

(image via: student.vfs.com)

It’s tempting to assume that Max Wahyudi must have just edited an image of Heath Ledger as The Joker for this image – such is its realism. But you can see the whole fascinating modeling process laid out step-by-step at Max’s website, as each element is carefully arranged and enhanced.

Max Kor

(image via: mkor.cgsociety.org)

Each tiny eyelash, fine little hair, bump, wrinkle and scar make this 3D CG image by Max Kor astonishingly realistic – not to mention the reflections on the figure’s chain mail. And this image isn’t even an example of the latest and greatest 3D technology – it was created in 2005, making it all the more impressive.

Ed Whetstone

(image via: edthehobbit.cgsociety.org)

“This project was all about texturing something deceptively simple, the Sultan of Slime, the humble snail,” artist Ed Whetstone explains. “Then, the challenge was to composite it convincingly onto a photographic plate. The trickiest bit was replicating the very particular pattern of bumps and protrusions that snails always exhibit. This particular snail isn’t based on any specific species, but a mishmash of ones I thought looked interesting.”

Pasquale Giacobelli

(image via: karma3d.cgsociety.org)

Pasquale Giacobelli’s images may not have quite the crispness and shocking realism as some of his fellow 3D artists, but his art has a special something that many of them are lacking – humanity. There’s something in the eyes of his subjects that seems more fully alive than most computer-generated portraits.

Cornelius Comanns

(image via: cernulois.cgsociety.org)

Reflections can be tough to get right in any artistic work, but Cornelius Comanns has certainly crafted them convincingly in this piece, featuring an ice cube and two ladybugs.

Alex Stratulat

(image via: alexstratulat.cgsociety.org)

It really takes a moment to realize you’re not looking at an actual photograph of a young woman in this 3D work of art by Alex Stratulat.

‘BUMPS In Beijing’: Breaking Free From Drab Slabs

2011-12-09T19:22:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, Travel & Places, Urban Images

Call it “urban jungle lite.” BUMPS In Beijing is a 5-building, mixed residential and commercial apartment complex located in the Chinese capital’s prestigious Chaoyang District. Japanese architect Keiichiro Sako’s neo-Metabolist “bumpy” design is a stylistic break from slab-sided traditional urban towers, providing optimum sunshine and breezy terraces that brighten up Beijing’s increasingly cramped skyline.

Smokin’ Stacks

(image via: Contemporist)
“BUMPS in Beijing”, a mixed-use, 5-building complex designed by Japanese architect Keiichiro Sako of SAKO Architects, is located in southwest Beijing’s desirable Chaoyang District.
(images via: Zeospot, ArNewDe and Globizen)
Even among a host of new and exciting highrise developments, BUMPS stands out – literally – thanks to its unusual stacked, staggered and yes: “bumpy” appearance.
(images via: Shearyadi’s World and World Architecture News)
BUMPS consists of four residential apartment buildings, each standing 80 meters (262.5 ft) tall and set at the corners of an imaginary square. The fifth member of the complex is a centrally located 6-story commercial building with a restaurant occupying most of the top floor.
(images via: Shearyadi’s World and Contemporist)
Right off the bat, BUMPS breaks with tradition by rotating the buildings’ footprints 45 degrees from the north-south axis. While seemingly unremarkable, one must consider that in Beijing almost all large buildings are oriented with a north-south plan. As Beijing is located north of the Earth’s equator, this means windows looking out of the north sides of these buildings will almost never catch direct sunlight.

Setback To Where You Once Belonged

(images via: Contemporist and World Architecture News)
Sako’s design for BUMPS was predicated on “daylighting” – introducing as much natural light as possible into each apartment unit regardless of its position in the complex. The 45 degree twist immediately doubled the sunlit facings. More ambitious was the staggered look of the individual apartment units and the visual effect the style imparted to the buildings as a whole.
(images via: ArchDaily and World Architecture News)
Looking at one of the towers, one can count 14 stories. Not so fast: each unit is made up of one white and one black module, with the upper section set back 2 meters (6.56 ft) from the lower. This allows each unit to offer not only an upstairs and downstairs, but an outdoor terrace as well.
(images via: Anchor Eighteen and Toki)
Repeated over the entire length, breadth and height of each tower, the series of setbacks gives the whole a unique modular appearance reminiscent of Tokyo’s famous Nakagin Capsule Tower (above, right) which actually WAS built from individual modules.

Let There Be Light!

(image via: Inhabitat)
The bumpy, blocky, Jenga-esque facades of the BUMPS complex with their interspersed rectangular modules remind some of stacked black & white shipping containers, though nothing so bare-bones basic would have a chance of being approved for Chaoyang. In contrast to some other neighborhoods in overcrowded Beijing, Chaoyang today boasts wide green belts, mature trees and widely separated highrise buildings. On the other hand, what’s the deal with the bus parking lot?
(images via: Modresdes, Wallpaper and PropGOluxury)
BUMPS lets in light through hundreds of 1-meter (3.28 ft) square windows. It remains to be seen if interior brightness levels will vary much from other designs offering floor-to-ceiling picture windows but it can be said, at least, that the wealth of identical square apertures add to the complex’s overall design aesthetic.
(image via: Izismile)
The total area of BUMPS is 103,218 square meters (1,111,065 sq ft), which befits its status as a landmark development Beijing urban planners are hoping will attract further projects to this part of Chaoyang. As always, the possibility remains that pressure from well-connected real estate moguls will result in overbuilding but at present, BUMPS literally stands alone as an urban island bathed in sunlight.

Inside Job

(images via: Shearyadi’s World and RoomU)
Construction on BUMPS began in 2006 and by late 2008 the complex was ready to welcome its first residents. If these interior images are any indication, BUMPS offers an abundance of linear space with very few obstructions or obtrusive load-bearing walls. Daylight entering through southeast and southwest facing windows penetrates all the way to the opposite sides, potentially saving on interior lighting costs over time.
(images via: Shearyadi’s World and SAKO)
Staircases linking upper and lower halves of the units are distinctive in their own right, formed from U-shaped segments in alternating black and white that make up the stair treads and the handrails.
(image via: SAKO)
On the downside, some residents may feel put off by the long inside walls and complete lack of any curved surfaces. Sometimes, efforts to increase a sense of spaciousness can impart a feeling of smallness from the perspective of the beholder. Reactions of anxiety, even alienation, have bedeviled urban planners since the first modern highrise apartment blocks were built in the early 1950s.
(image via: Zeospot)
Only time will tell if BUMPS In Beijing will succeed on an emotional level the way it has as a pure design on paper. New kid on the block? We kid you not!

Senior City-zens: The 10 Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities

2011-12-09T19:21:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places, Urbanism

Urban society may seem a modern phenomenon but cities have been around for a lot longer than one might think. Indeed, once nomadic tribes began to settle in one location, they saw that it was good, became fruitful, and multiplied. Decades, centuries and millennia passed while war, climate change and human migration all took their toll. Relatively few ancient cities have managed to survive the test of time. Here are 10 that have not only survived, but continue to thrive.

Damascus, Syria

(images via: Frederick Highland, Man In Demand and Historic Cities)
Damascus, the current capital of Syria, has a long and colorful history that stretches back nearly 12,000 years. Located in a fertile region well-watered by the Barada river, Damascus was a prime target of numerous kings and conquerors – and often wound up on the losing side.
(image via: EuroMesco)
Over 4 million people live in metropolitan Damascus today and, partly due to a skilfully constructed network of canals built nearly 3,500 years ago, boasts a multitude of parks and green spaces. Since 1979 Damascus has been UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Jericho, West Bank

(images via: Wikipedia and Bible Archaeology)
The ancient city of Jericho is the world’s oldest walled city, with evidence of stone fortifications dating back nearly 9,000 years; long before the “walls came tumblin’ down” events depicted in the Bible. Archaeological digs have turned up traces of habitation that are even older: up to 11,000 years ago!
(image via: SBF)
Not only has Jericho been continually inhabited for over one hundred centuries, scientists have uncovered a virtual layer cake of settlements – 20 in fact, built one on top of the other down to the present day. Now that’s something worth blowing your horn about… oh, wait.

Susa, Iran

(images via: Iran Facts)
Dating back to approximately 8000 BC, the ancient Iranian city of Susa rose to prominence again and again under Elamite, Babylonian, Achaemenian, Greek, Parthian, Sasanian and Persian civilizations.
(image via: CAIS News)
Today Susa is known as “Shush” though things have rarely been quiet there over its very long life. Susa is where the sole representation of the Code of Hammurabi was found. The 7-foot tall basalt stele was taken back to Susa in the 12th century BC and rediscovered in 1901. It now resides in Paris’ Louvre Museum.

Plovdiv, Bulgaria

(images via: Cultural Tourism and Virtual Tourist)
One way of measuring a city’s age is to note the number of names it has had. In the case of Plovdiv, the list begins with Eumolpias, changing to Philippoupolis when it was conquered by Philip II of Macedon (Alexander the Great’s father) in 342 BC. Centuries passed and Philippoupolis became Trimontium, then Philippoupolis again, then Paldin, Filibe and finally Plovdiv.
(image via: Discover Bulgaria)
Presently home to around 380,000 (580,000 in the metro area), Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second-largest city and one of Europe’s oldest – signs of urban activity there go back nearly 9,000 years.

Jerusalem

(images via: Hamline University and Pierre Tristam)
Holy to a number of the world’s leading religions, 5,000-year-old Jerusalem was already settled centuries before any of them had their tenets put to paper, papyrus or pre-fired clay. According to the entry on Jerusalem in Wikipedia, “In the course of its history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.”
(image via: Trip Advisor)
Sadly, those numbers are likely not the final score for this exceptional city 747,600 people call Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, Al-Quds and… home.

Tyre, Lebanon

(image via: Skyscraper City)
Source of prized Tyrian Purple dye and home base of those legendary master traders, the Phoenicians, Tyre was truly a wonder of the ancient world. The city was located on a walled island just off the coast of Lebanon and managed to thwart every siege until Alexander the Great built a causeway so his soldiers could march up to the city walls.
(image via: Sophismata)
(images via: Hezbollah Connect and El Baluarte De La Utopia)
The causeway changed the flow of the sea currents and caused the island to become permanently joined to the mainland. Today Tyre is Lebanon’s fourth-largest city and can proudly trace its history back nearly 6,000 years.

Athens, Greece

(images via: Erasmus Student Network, Destination 360 and BiblePlaces)
The capital of Greece is home to over 4 million today and is the 5th-most populous capital city in the EU. With its soaring Acropolis and majestic Parthenon symbolizing the golden age of Classical Greece and the foundation of Western civilization, Athens has been lived in for approximately 3,400 years.
(image via: Theodora)
The city has not always enjoyed prominence, however – by the early 19th century it had deteriorated to a backwater town with only a few thousand citizens. That all changed when Athens was named capital of Greece in 1834, with the city truly coming of age due to the many infrastructure improvements completed in time for the 2004 Olympic Games.

Lisbon, Portugal

(images via: Galen Fry Singer and Lgougo)
Due to its exceptional harbor situated where the Tagus river empties into the Atlantic Ocean, Lisbon has always been an ideal military and commercial location – incidentally attracting settlers to serve the soldiers and traders. Archaeologists have uncovered Phoenician objects at Lisbon dating back to 1200 BC; remnants of what was likely a Phoenician supply base for ships voyaging to and from the British Isles, an ancient source of tin.
(images via: Wall Street Meeting and John P Pratt)
Disaster struck Lisbon in 1755 when one of the most destructive earthquakes ever to strike Europe, accompanied by a massive tsunami and wildfires, leveled much of Lisbon and killed tens of thousands of residents.
(images via: Book Depository and Links On Waves)
Lisbon quickly bounced back from the disaster to regain her rank as one of Europe’s leading cities, a distinction she still holds today.

Varanasi, India

(image via: Sacred Destinations)
The city of Varanasi, formerly known to English-speakers as Benares, has been a religious and cultural center for at least 3,000 years. Over one million pilgrims from across the Hindu world visit Varanasi each year to participate in ceremonies and swim in the sacred Ganges river.
(image via: Without Borders)
Varanasi is as close to being a true “living city” as one could imagine. Every bit of space is utilized, every disused building is re-worked into a new purpose and over centuries of conflict and conquest, the city heals itself through the power of human conviction and devotion to a greater glory.

Cholula, Mexico

(images via: Webshots Travel and Cultura)
Arguably the oldest continually inhabited city in the western hemisphere, Choloula was a contemporary of more famous Teotihuacan yet never suffered the crisis that saw it’s neighbor abandoned in the 6th century AD. By the late Aztec period more than 100,000 people lived in Cholula, and the city near Puebla is home to over 90,000 today.
(image via: Rahuno)
Cholula rose to prominence in the 2nd century BC but settlement on a more modest scale goes back a further thousand years. The partially excavated monumental buildings at Cholula are among the largest in the world, with the Great Pyramid of Cholula being the largest man-made monument ever made! Its base covers approximately 25 acres and the pyramid’s total volume is estimated at 4.3 million cubic yards.
What’s it take to make a long-lived city? The same thing any realtor will tell you: location, location, location! Prime real estate does tend to attract the wrong crowd – conquerors have a way of ruining anyone’s backyard barbeque – but once all the fuss has died down people do what they’ve always done; keep on coming back for more.

Tilted In Your Favor: 13 More Famous Leaning Towers

2011-12-09T19:20:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places

Just as there’s more to food than pizza, there’s more to leaning towers than Pisa. These 13 slanted spires show that staying on the straight & narrow isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; though if gravity has anything to say about it, cracked up is destined to be their ultimate fate.

The Leaning Tower of Niles, Illinois, USA

(images via: Roadside America, City-Data and Jodola)
It may sound like the title of an episode of Frasier but The Leaning Tower Of Niles actually does exist, and has done so since 1934. A half-sized twin to the mother of all leaning towers in Pisa, Italy, the Illinois tribute stands 94 ft tall and leans outward 7 ft, 4 inches. You can’t enter this tower, however, as the exterior is just a facade built to disguise what is essentially just a water tower. It does have some pretty fountains around the base, however.

The Leaning Tower of San Pietro di Castello, Venice, Italy

(images via: Slowtrav)
Venice has it’s share of leaning towers, a consequence of great age and waterlogged soil. One of the most outstanding (if not entirely upstanding) is the Leaning Tower of San Pietro di Castello. Clad in bright but heavy Istrian stone, this charming bell tower has complemented San Martino church on the Venetian island of Burano since 1463.

Tower of the Milices, Rome, Italy

(images via: Virtual Tourist and Filor91)
The Torre delle Milizie was begun in the year 1200 and finished around 1280. Originally having three stories, a great earthquake in 1348 shook the top story to pieces. The main tower, however, has remained firmly standing though it has acquired a pronounced tilt over the past 800 years. Scientists and engineers examining the approximately 150 ft. tall Torre delle Milizie say its current 1.36 degree tilt towards the north-east will increase a further degree over the next 600 years, assuming another great earthquake doesn’t finish the job before then.

The Church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield, UK

(images via: Pictures Of England, Tywkiwdbi and Allposters)
The Church of St Mary and All Saints in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, has acquired many legends over the centuries to try and explain why its spire is so radically twisted. One of the more amusing purports that the spire was shocked to see a virgin getting married at the church and twisted around to get a better look. A more scientific explanation is that a shortage of skilled workers in the mid-1400s when the church was being built resulted in green, un-cured wood being used to construct the spire. When about 50 tons of lead shingles were attached to the spire, the wood couldn’t take the weight and began a slo-mo buckling from the stress.

The Greyfriars Tower, King’s Lynn, UK

(images via: James Rye, BBC and BC/West-Norfolk)
The 92 ft tall Greyfriars Tower is all that’s left of once-mighty Franciscan abbey demolished in 1538 during King Henry VIII’s purge of monasticism and dissolution of the abbeys. The tower was left standing because it was a useful landmark for seafarers – a lightless lighthouse as it were. With a current lean of 27 inches or approximately 1 degree (the Tower of Pisa leans 3.98 degrees), Greyfriars Tower was stabilized by workmen in 2006 after fears were expressed that it could collapse onto the Theatre Royal just adjacent.

Temple Church, Bristol, UK

(images via: Looking At Buildings, Archidave and ChurchCrawler)
Measured from the top, Bristol’s Temple Church leans out about 5 feet but is in no danger of toppling over. The 114 ft tall church, dating from 1312 and not completed until 1460, was built on the site of a dismantled church belonging to the Knights Templar. German bombing during World War II’s “Bristol Blitz” caused irreparable damage to the church’s interior and in 1958 the building was taken into state care by English Heritage.

Caerphilly Castle, Wales

(images via: InfoBritain, Planetware and Chronicle)
One of the medieval age’s largest and most formidable castles, Caerphilly Castle guarded the border between England and Wales while presenting a bulwark against any uprising by the Welsh. Construction on the castle was begun in 1268 by Gilbert de Clare and it was not significantly damaged until the English Civil War of the 1640′s, when one of its towers suffered a very obvious tilt. English Heritage, which now oversees the castle, has finished its restoration but decided to leave the leaning tower as is.

The Round Tower Of The Kilmacduagh Monastery, Ireland

(images via: Sacred Sites and A Student Of History)
At 110 feet, the Round Tower of the Kilmacduagh Monastery is the tallest of its kind in all Ireland. The tower, located near the town of Gort in County Galway, is smoothly finished with its entrance door opening 26 feet off the ground – a very effective refuge for the monks and their treasured religious relics when threatened by marauding Vikings (an all too common event). It’s estimated that the monastery was first established in the 7th century and the tower was built sometime in the 10th century. The tower leans outward some 1.5 feet but is in no danger of falling.

Suurhusen Church, East Frisia, Germany

(images via: Wikipedia, Solidaridad and Cafeterra)
Stated by the Guinness World Book of Records to be “the most tilted tower in the world”, the Suurhusen Church‘s highest point leans at an extreme angle of 5.1939 degrees, a startling stat only mitigated by the building’s relatively modest 90 ft height. Though constructed in 1450, the church tower only began to lean in the 19th century when the marshy land it was built upon was drained. The church steeple was closed in 1975 for safety reasons but was reopened a decade later – one must assume it’s now safer than it looks.

Oldehove Church Tower, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

(images via: Holland.com, Hindrik and Dromo)
The Old Tower in Leeuwarden, Fryslan, NL, was supposed to be even taller and grander than the images above show, but after construction began in 1529 and the tower reached a certain height and weight, it began to lean and all work on it was halted in 1533. It’s probably no coincidence that the tower’s main architect, Jacob van Aaken, died 1532 – such things don’t look good on one’s resume.

Oude Kerk, Delft, the Netherlands

(images via: The Great Mirror, White Valentine and 7is7)
The Oude Kerk (Old Church) in the Dutch city of Delft stands just over 245 feet high and leans about 6.5 feet away from vertical, quite noticable to somebody standing off to the side. Construction first began on the church in 1246 and the tower was built between 1325 and 1350. Inside the tower resides a massive bell weighing nearly 9 tons. The bell, cast in the year 1570, is only rung occasionally due to the fear of damaging vibrations but between you and I, who’d want a 9-ton bell swinging away at the top of a 245ft tall leaning tower?

Nevyansk “Falling Tower”, Sverdlovsk, Russia

(images via: Tesis-Yekaterinburg TA, Absolute Astronomy and Konstantin Grishin)
Nevyanskaya Tower leans into the chill wind coming off Russia’s Ural Mountains in the city of Sverdlovsk. Built in the first part of the 18th century, the 189 ft tall tower leans just over 7 ft out from the vertical. he tower was built by Akinfiy Demidov, an associate of Czar Peter the Great and a rumored counterfeiter – traces of gold and silver have been found in the tower’s main chimney.

Huqiu Tower, Suzhou City, China

(images via: Ironrodart, Phototravel and Good Wish Holiday)
The seven-story, 157 ft high, 8-sided Huqiu Tower was built between 959-961 on the city of Suzhou’s Tiger Hill. It didn’t start leaning until the 17th century. A curious feature of this tower is that it has no internal staircases – anyone wanting to visit the upper floors did so via the use of movable ladders. The top of the tower leans out by just over 7.5 feet, a consequence of the 7,000 ton tower being built partly on rock and partly on soil, causing 2 of the supporting columns to crack.
A new slant on architecture or a tower infernal? Beauty, even if flawed, remains in the eye of the beholder and symmetry is just one of many characteristics a noteworthy building can display.

Skyscraper, Interrupted: 12 Stalled Projects Around the World

2011-12-09T19:19:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design, Travel & Places, Urban Images

They were supposed to be shining examples of super-tall architecture, towers that celebrate the prosperity of their respective urban locations. But after the economic meltdown began in 2008, hundreds of promising projects around the world came to a grinding halt – even those in the middle of construction. Some of these 13 stalled skyscrapers may be completed if funds ever flow again, but others will sit in silence until developers come up with new ideas to take their places.

Calatrava’s Chicago Spire

(images via: thechicagospire.com, wikipedia)

It was a divisive idea from the get-go, with some Chicagoans applauding acclaimed architect Santiago Calatrava’s spiraling monolith design and others questioning its impact on the city’s skyline. But this skyscraper – which would have been the second-tallest in the world – will probably never be built. Today, the site is an abandoned hole in the ground, bereft even of construction equipment.

Nakheel Tower, Dubai

(images via: evolo, imre solt)

The planned centerpiece of Dubai’s famous man-made Palm Islands, Nakheel Tower – which was to be named “The Pinnacle” – would have consisted of three towers connected by ‘sky bridges’. Its projected height of 4,600 feet would have far eclipsed the Chicago Spire. The tower was canceled in December 2009 after the site had already been cleared and leveled.

Russia Tower, Moscow

(images via: foster + partners, wikimapia)

“In today’s economy, a project of such scale is no longer feasible for us and can no longer be justified.” This explanation was offered up by the developer of the Russia Tower in 2009 when the project was cancelled outright after months of inactivity at the construction site in Moscow, and the same could probably be said for every other building on this list. The Russia Tower aspired to be the world’s tallest building with 118 floors, 101 elevators, a capacity of 30,000 and a completion date of 2012.

Gran Torre Costanera, Santiago

(images via: urbanity.es, n0comment)

Santiago, Chile was to have been home to South America’s tallest skyscraper, the Gran Torre Costanera, a megastructure holding a six-level mall and two luxury hotels. 22 of 60 stories were completed before the project was halted in March, leaving an empty shell in the city’s business district.

250 West 55th Street, Manhattan

(images via: curbed ny)

“Fans of giant gaping pits, rejoice!” cried Curbed NY when developer Boston Properties announced that it would continue construction on the foundations of the glass office tower at 250 West 55th Street in Manhattan despite the fact that the building itself will probably never be finished. Today, the site is just a fenced-off hole in the ground, like so many others across the world.

56 Leonard Street, Manhattan

(images via: 56leonardtribeca, curbed ny)

They were supposed to be “houses stacked in the sky” – upscale, spacious living spaces in the heart of Manhattan designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Work began on the 56-story building in 2008 and was halted in early 2009. Unlike many others, this project hasn’t officially been declared dead, it’s just “frozen”, so there’s still hope that it will someday be completed.

Columbus Center, Boston

(images via: boston.com)

It took 13 years, but the plug was finally pulled on Boston’s Columbus Center when the developers failed to raise the necessary funds to finish it. The ambitious $800 million project would have been a complex of condos, hotels and stores straddling the Massachusetts Turnpike, but has sat empty for two years accumulating trash and graffiti. Boston.com provides a detailed interactive graphic showing what might have been.

Jean Nouvel’s Signal Tower, Paris

(images via: design boom)

The Western edge of Paris is in need of a face lift, and famed French architect Jean Nouvel aimed to add some modern eye candy with the Signal Tower, approved for construction in 2008. But the project was shelved in 2010 as investors got spooked by the ongoing economic difficulties. Nouvel originally stated that the project would continue once the economy picks up, but his firm has since abandoned it altogether.

The Leadenhall ‘Cheesegrater’ Building, London

(images via: wikipedia)

Whether affectionately or derisively, Londoners have taken to calling the design for 122 Leadenhall Street the ‘Cheesegrater’ due to its perforated steel frame and wedge shape. Construction of the new tower, which was supposed to take the place of the now-demolished 1969 building that previously occupied the site, has been delayed, but it seems possible that the 737-foot tower will someday be completed. The wedge shape is designed to preserve views of St. Paul’s Cathedral from Fleet Street.

U2 Tower, Dublin

(image via: the guardian, wikipedia)

U2 isn’t exactly known for being low-profile in any capacity, so perhaps it’s no surprise that this Irish mega-band planned to build their home country’s first skyscraper and tallest building. The U2 Tower would have perched a recording studio ‘pod’ atop a 120-meter-tall structure packed with 180 condominiums and planned to include wind turbines, solar panels and an exterior facade resembling fish scales. It was suspended indefinitely in 2008.

Leeds Lumiere Skyscraper

(image via: wikipedia)

Could Lumiere still snag the title of ‘Western Europe’s Tallest Residential Skyscraper’? Maybe – if it ever comes back from the dead. The project in Leeds, England was put on hold due to the credit crunch after foundation work began in 2008 and the developers long hoped that their vision for the two glass towers would someday come to fruition. However, in August 2010 they announced that they would enter voluntary liquidation, making completion unlikely.

Burj al Alam, Dubai

(images via: wikipedia)

510 meters tall and 108 stories, the Burj al Alam is quite a building. Designed to resemble a crystal flower, this skyscraper is under construction in the business bay area of Dubai and is slated to include 74 floors of office space, a 200-suite hotel, 27 floors of apartments, a sky garden, a Turkish bath and a helipad. The project has been delayed and renewed so many times since its inception in 2006 that it’s unclear whether it will ever be completed.

13 Tilted Architectural Wonders of the World

2011-12-09T19:17:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places

When you don’t place a structure – particularly a very tall structure – on a solid foundation, this is what happens. The building starts to lean, further and further each year, and though it may take centuries, it will
eventually come crashing down without serious efforts to stabilize it. That’s what is happening to most of these 13 leaning towers of the world, although a few are tilted on purpose.

This infographic from The Economist gives us an idea of just how much many of the buildings on this list are off-kilter, from Big Ben at just 0.26 degrees to the Suurhusen church tower in Germany at 5.19 degrees. Read on to learn more about each leaning tower.

Big Ben, London, UK

(images via: wikimedia commons)

That’s right, it’s barely visible to the naked eye, but British Parliament have officially reported that its Clock Tower (a.k.a. Big Ben) is leaning northwest by 0.26 degrees (17 inches.) The level of the tilt has increased to 0.9 millimeters a year since 2003, and it seems that underground developments including a parking lot and an extension of the London Underground have caused the problem. Cracks have formed in the walls and ceilings of the house of commons.

Tiger Hill Pagoda, China

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Suzhou, China has its very own leaning tower in the form of a pagoda. The Huqiu Tower, known as the Tiger Hill Pagoda after the hill that it was built upon around the year 960 CE, leans by roughly three degrees. 154 feet tall, the pagoda has gradually slanted because half the foundation is rock and the other half soil. Stabilization efforts, including pumping concrete into the soil, has helped to stop further leaning, but the top and bottom of the tower vary by 2.32 meters.

Two Towers of Bologna, Italy

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Bologna’s two most prominent towers – both of which lean at a considerable angle – are major landmarks of this Italian city. They were constructed between 1109 and 1119. The taller one is called Asinelli and the shorter Garisenda. Asineli stands at nearly 319 feet in height; it was withstood lightning strikes, fires, collapses and bombing attacks in World War II. Garisenda, which is cited several times in Dante’s Divine Comedy, began slanting in the 14th century due to the softening ground.

Oude Kerk, Delft, The Netherlands

(image via: wikimedia commons)

Built in 1246, Oude Kerk (Old Church) is the oldest building in Delft, and its leaning gothic tower was added between 1325 and 1350. Locals have feared that the tower, which was likely built on an old filled-up canal, would come tumbling down, and almost had the tower razed to the level of the church roof in 1843. Oude Kerk is the resting place of famed Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

Nevyansk Tower, Russia

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Younger by far than most of the towers on this list save Big Ben, the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk was built in the 18th century. Its exact construction date and purpose are unknown – some speculate that it was a watchtower, a bellower, a prison or perhaps even a laboratory for chemical experiments during the Soviet age. There are local legends that the angle of the tower is intentional; restorers say that it was a defect during construction that the architects attempted to remedy using specially trimmed bricks. Today there’s a three-degree deviation between the base and the middle part of the tower.

The Leaning Temple of Huma

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The world’s only leaning temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, stands in the Indian state of Orissa. It’s unknown whether the considerable lean of the tower was induced by design or by accident, but interestingly, while the edifice leans, the pinnacle is perpendicular to the ground. It’s possible that the tower began to lean due to flood- or earthquake-caused displacement of the rocky foundation.

Suurhusen Church Tower, Germany

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Suurhusen is the world’s most leaning tower that is unintentionally tilted. A late medieval steeple located in northwestern Germany, The Leaning Tower of Suurhusen is a brick gothic church that currently leans at an angle of 5.193 degrees – beating the far more famous Tower of Pisa by 1.22 degrees. It was originally built in the Middle Ages on a foundation of oak tree trunks preserved by marshy groundwater; when the land was drained in the 29th century the wood rotted, which caused the tilt.

Bad Frankenhausen Church Tower, Germany

(images via: panaramio)

An underground spring that winds beneath the entire town of Bad Frankenhausen in the eastern German state of Thuringia is leaching earth from below, making structures like the church tower extremely unstable. The church’s steeple has been slanting since at least 1640, reaching 4.8 degrees in recent years. Efforts to stabilize it have failed, and it seems that the steeple will soon be lost to collapse.

Tower of Pisa, Italy

(images via: carolyn conner, francisco antunes)

Of course, you knew this one was coming. The ‘Leaning’ Tower of Pisa is the world’s most infamous tilted building even though it’s not the oldest, the tallest or the furthest-leaning. But thanks to the open ground around the campanile of Pisa’s cathedral, the angle of the tower is startlingly clear, making for fantastic photo opportunities. Over 183 feet tall, the tower was built on a mere 9-foot-deep foundation, and it began sinking almost immediately after construction began in 1173, progressing beyond the second floor by 1178. By 1272, the tower was still unfinished, and engineers built upper floors with one side taller than the other to compensate for the tilt, making the tower curved. Stabilization efforts have continued over the centuries, and the tower was declared fully stable in May 2008 after removing the bells, cinching the tower with cables and removing earth under the raised side. Engineers say it has stopped moving for the first time in history, and that it will remain standing for at least 200 years.

Capital Gate Tower, Olympic Stadium & Gate of Europe

(images via: capitalgate.ae, wikipedia 1, 2)

Aging structures aren’t the only towers in the world that seem to tilt dangerously close to destruction. Just look at the Capital Gate Tower of Abu Dhabi, a mixed-use skyscraper reaching 520 feet into the sky with a dramatic 18-degree lean to the west. Capital Gate was named the ‘World’s furthest-leaning man-made tower’ by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2010. The tower is stabilized by the world’s first “pre-cambered core”, which includes a huge amount of concrete reinforced with steel, as well as 490 piles drilled nearly 100 feet into the earth.
Other intentionally leaning modern wonders include the Tower of Montreal at the Olympic Stadium and the Gate of Europe in Madrid. The Tower of Montreal is officially the world’s tallest leaning tower at 575.8 feet. The Gate of Europe towers are twin 374-foot-tall office buildings with an incline of 15 degrees.

7 Man-Made Architectural Wonders of the Ancient World

2011-12-09T19:16:00.001-08:00

By Steph in 7 Wonders Series, Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places

The Colosseum, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu are world-famous ancient architectural wonders, but they’re hardly the only man-made structures worthy of effusive praise, enthusiastic photography and economy-stimulating tourism. These 7 historical sites, ranging from an incredibly deep well in India to the cradle of Mayan civilization – complete with the world’s first highway system – are often overlooked, but represent some of the most jaw-dropping and mysterious engineering feats from ancient times to the medieval period.

Chand Baori, India

(images via: moolf)

Perhaps one of the most beautiful examples of patterns in architecture, the 10th century Chand Baori well in the Indian state of Rajasthan is the world’s deepest, extending 100 feet below the surface of the earth. Built as a solution to chronic water supply issues in this arid region, the well has a total of 3,500 steps in 13 levels arranged in an inverted ‘V’ shape and is adjacent to the Harshat Mata temple. The walls are so steep that when standing at the bottom, you sometimes can’t see people who are on the steps above you.
It’s difficult to imagine the construction process for such a complex stone structure with the technology available at the time. Local legend has it that ghosts built it in a single night; perhaps that accounts for its preternaturally preserved state as well.

Sacsayhuaman, Peru

(images via: world-mysteries)

How did the Incas move these massive stones? That’s just one of the mysteries surrounding Sacsayhuaman, an immense fortress located on the outskirts of the city of Cusco in Peru. While the much more famous Machu Picchu is renowned for its views, Sacsayhuaman is a marvel of engineering, confounding Spanish conquerors who were so amazed by the construction, they thought it must be the work of demons.
The largest of the boulders that make up the three dry stone walls of Sacsayhuaman – all carried from a quarry located over three kilometers away – weighs an estimated 120 tons. But the seemingly superhuman feat of moving these boulders is not the most incredible aspect of the ruins: even thousands of years later, the stones of the walls fit together with such precision, you can’t fit a piece of paper between them. This precision, along with the various stone shapes that fit together like a puzzle, is likely the reason that the structure has survived earthquakes that have devastated the area.

Leshan Giant Buddha, China

(images via: wikimedia commons, national geographic)

The largest carved stone Buddha in the world towers over 232 feet into the air, with fingers measuring 11 feet in length and 92-foot-long shoulders big enough to be basketball courts. Leshan Giant Buddha overlooks the confluence of three rivers in the Sichuan Province of China. Begun during the Tang Dynasty in the year 713, the Buddha was built at the behest of a monk called Hai Tong who hoped to supplicate the temperamental water spirits thought to be responsible for numerous boat accidents. It took thousands of workers more than 90 years to complete the project.
Seemingly cosmetic details are even more complex and meaningful than they look upon first glance. For example, the 1,021 buns in the Buddha’s coiled hair are part of drainage system that continues behind the ears, in the clothing and along the limbs, protecting the statue from water-related damage.

Teotihuacan, Mexico

(images via: travel this world)

A massive urban complex laid out to celestial, geographic and geodetic alignments, the Teotihuacan archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico contains some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas. The city was established around 100 BCE and may have had as many as 200,000 inhabitants during its prime in 450 CE. It has been called the first true urban center in the Americas; its remains measure at least two miles across but the city was likely much larger and its influence extended as far away as Guatemala. Very little is known of the Teotihuacan people or what may have caused the city’s decline, which occurred in the 8th or 9th century.
An astronomer-anthropologist named Anthony Aveni discovered that the grid of the city was based on a point of prime astronomical significance. The builders seem to have aligned the east-west axis of the city to the point on the horizon at which the sun sets on August 12th, the anniversary of the beginning of the current Mesoamerican calender cycle.
Strangely, thick sheets of shimmery mica were found within the tiers of the Pyramid of the Sun. Hidden between layers of stone, the mica clearly wasn’t decorative; today it is used as an insulator in electronics but it seems unlikely that these ancient people understood such properties. Furthermore, the particular type of mica used in the complex was reportedly traced to Brazil, nearly 2000 miles away. The Pyramid of the Sun has never been fully excavated.

Underground Churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia

(images via: wikimedia commons)

The tiny town of Lalibela, one of Ethiopia’s holiest cities, is home to 11 monolithic churches – all carved from the same block of red volcanic rock, with their roofs at ground level. Likely built during the 12th and 13th centuries, the rock-hewn churches include four that are fully free-standing, with the rest either partially attached at the sides to the rock or with ‘liberated’ facades. They’re connected to each other with a maze of underground tunnels, and their construction was engineered to take advantage of natural aquifers deep in the ground.

El Mirador, Guatemala

(images via: authentic maya, wikimedia commons, the history blog)

The 500,000-acre site of El Mirador in Guatemala is referred to as ‘the cradle of Maya civilization’ and contains not only five Preclassic Maya cities that pre-date the far more famous Tikal by at least 1,000 years, but also the world’s largest pyramid by volume and the remains of the world’s first highway system.
A remote site located deep in the jungle, El Mirador was’t ‘discovered’ until 1926, and wasn’t mapped until 1978. The civic center of the site measures about 10 square miles and contains around 35 ‘triadic’ structures, with ‘La Danta’ being the most notable at 230 feet tall. Its volume, 2,800,000 cubic meters, rivals that of far more well-known ancient pyramids around the world including those in Egypt. El Mirador is also home to a complex network of large roads, which once linked important architectural compounds and nearby cities.
The 500,000-acre site of El Mirador is threatened by looters, drug traffickers and deforestation, prompting the creation of a 810,000-acre national park in the region, which is currently being established by the Global Heritage Fund and the Guatemalan and U.S. governments.

The Lost City of Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan

(images via: wikimedia commons, abbas, national geographic)

4,500 years ago, Mohenjo-Daro was one of the largest early urban settlements in the world. It thrived for over a thousand years, but was completely forgotten until excavation revealed its ruins along the Indus River floodplain of what is now Pakistan in 1921. Abandoned around 1500 BCE for reasons unknown, Mohenjo-Daro has a planned layout based on a street grid of buildings made of mortared brick and likely housed around 35,000 residents.
Among many interesting features, what stands out the most about Mohenjo-Daro is plumbing and sewage system that was more sophisticated than what most Western households had until the 20th century. Not only did some home have indoor toilets, but there were actually sewage drains that ran below the streets.

10 Most Amazing Ancient Objects of Mystery in History

2011-12-09T19:12:00.003-08:00

By Steph in Environment & Nature, History & Factoids, Travel & Places

They’re evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, time travelers or lost civilizations like Atlantis – or perhaps they’re here to show us that some ancient peoples were far more advanced than we think. It’s hard not to get caught up in the mystery and intrigue of these puzzling and often bizarre ancient objects, most of which simply can’t be explained by modern science.

Antikythera Mechanism

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The world’s oldest computer predates Bill Gates only by about 2,000 years. In fact, the absolutely mind-boggling Antikythera Mechanism – a corroded clocklike object found among the ruins of a sunken ship – may prove that advanced scientific technology existed far earlier than we ever thought possible. Scientists have since discovered that this mysterious Greek invention predicted solar eclipses, organized the calendar in four-year cycles, and may well be linked to renowned astrologer and engineer Archimedes. Though no other such mechanisms have ever been found, experts believe that many more made around the same time in 100 B.C.E. once existed.

The Baigong Pipes

(image via: rense.com)

“Alien toilet found in China”. This is just one of many absurd headlines seen on the internet concerning the undoubtedly bizarre Baigong Pipes, rusty red iron pipes that lead into a pyramid atop Mount Baigong from a nearby salt water lake. What’s so strange about the pipes? Well, for one thing, they’re in an area that is completely inhospitable to man – no civilization is ever known to have lived there. They’re uniform in size and seem to have been created in an intentional pattern. No clear explanation exists for the presence of these pipes, and scientists don’t seem to agree on whether they could be natural occurrences.

The Roman Dodecahedra

(image via: wikimedia commons)

These fist-sized bronze Roman artifacts found in France, Switzerland and Germany pose a fascinating problem for archaeologists: they just don’t have a clear purpose, but many are covered in symbols, some undecipherable and others relating to the Zodiac. But for all the speculation on their use, including that they may have been surveying instruments, some experts believe the Roman dodecahedra were merely decorative candlesticks.

Phaistos Disc

(image via: wikimedia commons)

There’s very little that we actually know for sure about the Phaistos Disc. It’s made of clay – check. It dates back to the second millenium B.C.E. – maybe. But its origin, meaning and purpose remain shrouded in mystery. Discovered in Crete, the disc is features i241 impressions of 45 distinct symbols, some of which are easily identifiable as people, tools, plants and animals. But because nothing else like it from the same time period has ever been found, archaelogists haven’t been able to provide a meaningful analysis of its content.

Baghdad Battery

(images via: world-mysteries.com)

What need would ancient people have for batteries when electronics did not yet exist? Found outside Baghdad, Iraq in 1936, the Baghdad Battery is a small clay jar containing an iron rod suspended in a copper cylinder which is soldered shut and sealed with asphalt. Replicas that have been made since then can produce small mounts of electricity, proving the battery’s capabilities, but the question of what the battery was used for many never be answered.

Voynich Manuscript

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Is the Voynich Manuscript evidence of a forgotten civilization, or merely an elaborate hoax? This handwritten book full of text that the world’s top cryptographers and codebreakers have never been able to decipher dates to the 15th century and was discovered in 1912 by book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich. If it is a hoax, it’s incredibly convincing, given how fluidly the text was written and the fact that statistical analysis has revealed patterns similar to those found in natural languages.

Shroud of Turin

(images via: wikimedia commons)

A linen cloth bearing the barely-visible image of a man with apparent crucifixion wounds became the center of both devotion and controversy when it was first discovered in the Middle Ages. Could this be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ? Radio carbon dating puts the origin of the shroud between 1260 C.E. and 1390 C.E., consistent with the theory that it was a forgery. But the results have been disputed and since then, a wide range of modern tests have been unable to explain the markings on the cloth.

The Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica

(images via: mordac.org)

They appear to be flawlessly round, ranging in size from just a few centimeters to over 6.6 feet in diameter, and are found all over the Diquis Delta and Isla de Cano in Costa Rica. Weighing up to 16 tons, it’s hard to imagine how humans could have moved these gigantic sculptures hewn from hard granodiorite – considering that the nearest quarry for that material is over 50 miles away from where the sculptures were found. Over three hundred of them are scattered across Costa Rica, but we’ll never know why – the people who made them back in 1,000 C.E. are long gone and had no written records.

The Coso Artifact

(image via: livinglost)

When a spark plug was found encased inside a 500,000-year-old lump of hard rock, self-professed paranormal investigators decided there were three possibilities for how it got there: A, it was created by an extremely advanced ancient civilization (maybe Atlantis?), B, aliens visited the earth during the time of dinosaurs or C, time travelers from the future left clues in the distant past. All three explanations are highly unlikely to say the least, but scientists haven’t been able to come up with a better explanation – probably due to the fact that the Coso Artifact has mysteriously disappeared and is thus unavailable for analysis.

The Maine Penny

(image via: maine state museum)

When a genuine Norse coin dating to the early 11th century was found among Native American ruins in Maine in 1957, it seemed to offer an intriguing piece of evidence that Vikings did indeed travel further south than Newfoundland long before the time of Christopher Columbus. And it could be so – but experts have their doubts. The fact that the ‘Maine Penny‘ was the only Norse artifact found at the site seems to indicate that it came to the site through native trade channels from Viking sources in Labrador and Newfoundland.

Virtual Reality: Futuristic Tools for Virtual Worlds

2011-12-09T19:12:00.001-08:00

By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Games & Gaming, Technology & Futurism

Virtual reality, much like the hovercar and living on the moon, is progressing slower than expected. Despite the fact that video game consoles don’t come with a full body suit yet, the technology has made some giant leaps in the past few years. Maybe it will just have to wait a few generations to catch up to our imagination. Here are 11 tools and ways that virtual reality is no longer virtual:

(Images via reversedreality, gazette.unc, edibleapple, technabob, smallbizaffinity)

Augmented reality is the baby brother of virtual reality, as it takes a half step in the right direction by combining the virtual world with the real one. Typically, augmented reality involves wearing a head set or using a mobile device that registers one’s location via GPS and visually matches landmarks to provide information. You may look at the Roman coliseum and see facts appear about gladiators, or see the names of all the restaurants on the street. This is the most immediately practical version of virtual reality, and a real step in the integration between man and machine.

(Images via wholesalelandparts, iowa, artslibrary, dbforums)

Visualizing data with technology has advanced an incredible amount in the last few decades. We no longer have to stare at grainy computer screens or hand drawn graphs. With the advancement of computer processing power has come the ability to visualize data in three dimensions. Whether it’s filling a giant screen with blazing graphs and three dimensional models, or a fully virtual experience that requires a headset, we’ve taken large steps towards making the fiction in television and film, a reality.

(Images via slashgear, gadgettastic, karennutton, newscientist)

Virtual reality chairs used to be a gamer’s dream, only a step below full fledged virtual reality. Sitting in a chair with two joysticks and a screen is a far cry from the 360 degree virtual environment we hope for, but it’s leagues better than the black and white pong of only a few decades ago.

(Images via escience, dailygalaxy, itclimasd)

Ever since the cult classic film The Wizard, which featured the premier of the Nintendo glove (a flop), an entire generation has felt the desire to own a glove that allows one to manipulate objects on a screen. Current technology is now advanced enough to allow tactile feedback in addition to allowing the manipulation of virtual objects. I’m sure a lot of readers are thinking “wake me up when they have a full suit that does this” but be patient! We’re getting there.

(Images via destructoid, dental.upenn, fredazar, medoto)

Virtual reality is a reality in many hospitals, just not in the way we typically imagine. Medical students are able to run simulations on virtual patients that are physically present in the form of a human-shaped doll (though the word “doll” doesn’t give these incredibly advanced, and expensive, tools much credit). Medical students are even able to practice procedures through physical and on-screen manipulations.

(Images via devorak.org, gearmoda, noobcake, warwick)

The virtual reality headset is typically what pops into mind when we think of virtual reality. Giant, clunky, and claustrophobic, the helmet tackles several of our senses at once by fully surrounding our head with a virtual display. Current headsets are able to produce sights, sounds, and smells. The ridiculously giant headset is slowly working its way down to a sleeker, more mobile style, but there’s still a long way to go.

(Images via neatorama, internet3d, huehueteoti, explainthatstuff)

Any fan of Star Trek is familiar with the holodeck, a room devoted to creating virtual environments that seem as real as anything in daily life. The virtual reality room is not quite to that level of sophistication, but they do allow one to be fully immersed in a simulation. Whether the room is for training purposes (such as a flight simulator), or as a tool to display data, they’re the closest we’ve come to our television counterparts.

(Images via virtualreality, doolwind)

Mobility in virtual worlds was a difficulty originally solved by simply not letting one move. You would either coast in-game, or use leaning to control direction. As silly and outdated as this appears today, we’ve come up with an arguably more silly looking solution that’s a thousand times more effective:

(Images via nushakor, impactlab, nanoflix, technovelgy)

Mobility has always been an issue when trying to make virtual reality functional. Unless all virtual reality takes place on an empty football field, someone with a giant helmet on their head is bound to crash into walls. Enter the sphere: Basically a giant hamster ball that allows one to feel movement while remaining stationary. This could very well be a fixture in your grandchildren’s living room one day.

(Images via foxnews, localstranger, washington, geekiegadgets)

Virtual reality is already being used to great effect in several therapeutic and rehabilitative ways. Soldiers are calmed after their return from war by showing them war-like scenes in a safe environment. People with phobias are able to confront their fears with the safety net of not having to physically approach the situation that scares them. People are even able to train on new wheelchairs before they’ve sat in one, or tackle complicated body issues after an amputation.

(Images via masternewmedia, io9, usm, camillamediasecondlife)

Some people are already experiencing the freedom and creativity of the virtual life through games like Second Life, which allow one to design and use an avatar in a virtual world to move about and express oneself. Free of the constraints of their normal lives, these people are able to let loose in an anonymous environment. Not everyone uses this new tool simply for entertainment, however, as many businesses use it to hold virtual events, and some schools even conduct academic lectures that can be attended from anywhere in the world. Right now this is all conducted via a computer screen, but at the current rate, it won’t be long before we’re able to experience virtual worlds in a full 360 degree environment.

3 Amazing 3D Graffiti Artists: Street Painting and Sidewalk Chalk Art

2011-12-09T19:10:00.001-08:00

By Urbanist in Graffiti & Drawing, Guerilla Marketing & Ads

(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Works of Creative and Geeky Art and Graffiti.)

Most people tend to think of graffiti as subversive art spraypainted in the dead of night on urban walls. Some artists, however, including Edgar Mueller, Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner, defy that stereotype, painting and chalking openly on city streets and sidewalks. Beyond merely entertaining crowds, their work has at times even broken world records. These street art images and biographies merely scratch the surface and begin to convey their amazing artistic talents.

Edgar Mueller is a world-famous street painter, perhaps best known for the above work: The Riverstreet River. At nearly 1000 square feet, this graffiti mural took up an entire city block. His other works often exhibit similar life-like qualities and take on renaissance themes.

Julian Beever is a sidewalk chalk artist whose work has appeared all across Europe. He skillfully and humorously plays up his illusions in a variety of ways, from interacting with the finished piece to making his street art’s evolution part of the work itself. Clearly, his artworks are as much intended to entertain himself as it is to dazzle the crowds that gather around them. His other street graffiti includes renderings of master artworks and pastel portraits.

Kurt Wenner‘s amazingly detailed street artworks conjure images of both Baroque religious murals and a Salvor Daliesque surrealism. They are somehow less tame than Mueller’s work, and far less playful than the art of Beever. Wenner is also an architectural designer in the US and Europe, fascinated with classical ornament tied to allegories and myths as well as literature and theater.

Runners Up featured in the street art images above come from around the world. Two are commercial pieces for Johnnie Walker in Tapei and EA Games in Italy, respectively. The lower work was a collaborative piece by four German artists, featured on Potsdammer Platz in the very heart of Berlin. For other alternative forms of creative urban street art, be sure to check out these articles on light graffiti, glowstick graffiti, reverse graffiti and guerilla marketing.

About Face: Unbelievably Hilarious Face Painting Art

2011-12-09T19:09:00.003-08:00

By Delana in Gadgets & Geek Art, Graffiti & Drawing

Remember going to birthday parties or the carnival as a child and getting your face painted? Face painting is fun and magical, and it lets us temporarily transform ourselves. You can be just about anything, from a fierce animal to a dainty fairy to a weird celebrity look-alike. Unfortunately, most of us stop getting our faces painting when we become adults. James Kuhn, however, picked up the habit as an adult – and ran with it.
James Kuhn has considered him an artist for his whole life, but it wasn’t until he grew up that he began painting his own face with a new theme every single day. He decided to do one new face painting a day for a year, in the vein of the other “365 days of self portraits” projects. He didn’t enjoy other 365 projects, saying they were self-indulgent or silly. So he decided to take another (arguably also silly) route by creating a masterpiece every day.

All of James’ paintings are done on himself, and he usually takes his own pictures as well. These are some of the most unique self-portraits ever, since he looks quite different in every one of them. If additional pieces are needed, he usually cuts them out of cardboard, paints them, and sticks them to his face as needed.

James is always looking for new inspiration for his creations. He has used everything from cartoon characters to his favorite foods to famous duos and groups, and everything in between. Some of the most amazing face portraits are those featuring two or more people. It’s fun to decipher how he divides up his existing facial features to create features for the characters.

His particular form of artistic body painting is just for fun, though his other artwork has been displayed in galleries. He believes that, overall, making money from art shouldn’t be an artist’s top priority; their goal should be to push through their fear and their conventional thinking to create something new and thought-provoking. His incredible face painting has gained him international attention, and he’s been featured on TV shows and in newspapers around the world.

The artist, who lives in Michigan, describes himself as a face paint illusionist, drag queen, performance artist, and full-time Christian. He’s recently been featured in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! picture book, and although the 365 days of self-portraits are over, he continues to create masterpieces on his own face. You can see many of his face paintings come to life on his YouTube channel.

13 Panoramic Street Artists Stencil Far & Spray Wide

2011-12-09T19:09:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design, Graffiti & Drawing, Urban & Street Art

Sweeping street art enlivens super-long walls and even entire buildings with bright, fun, thought-provoking paintings and illustrations. Including works by renowned urban artists like ROA, BLU, Phlegm and Mark Jenkins, this collection of large-scale graffiti, murals and other forms of street art shows how a little creativity can turn a depressed neighborhood or unremarkable cityscape into a cultural landmark.

Jetsonorama

(images via: vandalog)

Artist Jetsonorama created this massive, beautiful mural at a Navajo Nation reservation in response to the news that an Arizona ski resort planned to use reclaimed wastewater to make artificial snow on a mountain sacred to several North American tribes. The work, entitled ‘The People Speak For Themselves’, features the words of the artists’ friends emblazoned upon illustrations of their faces.

Da Mental Vaporz & More at Galore Festival

(images via: vandalog)

Da Mental Vaporz at Galore DK from Butterfly on Vimeo.
Da Mental Vaporz crew joined ROA and several other notable graffiti artists at Galore Festival in Copenhagen in September 2011, creating this super-long wall of work while they were there. Photographer S. Butterfly, who created the above video, says ““The mural is a satyrical reference to unscrupulous people who are willing to deface street art walls for profit. The DMV also incorporated a tribute to Kase 2 (RIP), as well as Copenhagen landmarks, including the infamous Christiania market, where you can find anything.” Segments of the mural were painted on removable panels which were later taken to the “street art shop”.

The Panda Crew

(images via: pandakroo)

Based mostly in Paris, Panda Crew is a collaboration of four artists bringing humorous cartoonish illustrations – often featuring pandas – to the walls of the world. While the collective often shows off smaller works like sketches on its blog, they also stretch out to cover entire walls and buildings.

ROA

(images via: roaweb.tumblr.com)

From WebUrbanist: “ROA is known for painting the dark, gritty side of nature – particularly animals that are not, to most, cute or lovable. Whether portraying rats slinking across urban surfaces, bedraggled creatures that have seen better days or the blood and guts beneath a bunny’s soft fur, ROA clearly has a soft spot for the duality of the natural world and the rich variety of creatures it contains. “For me they tell so much more about this world then any other creature, but maybe in a year I’ll only paint landscapes…” he said in an interview with FatCap.”

Phlegm

(images via: phlegmcomicnews)

Phlegm loves to find “unloved walls” and turn them into works of urban art, often covering vast surfaces with oversized animals and his signature telescope. The UK-based artist began his street art career after being “sucked into the art machine”, preferring to work for himself. He now puts out a highly successful comic that often gets snapped up as soon as it’s printed.

Aryz

(images via: unurth, designer daily)

How stunning is this ultra-saturated mural covering an entire building in Lodz, Poland? Artist Aryz completed it for the annual festival Galeria Urban Forms. Artist and illustrator Aryz is from Barcelona, and his work is highly distinguishable both for its style and its eye-popping vivid colors.

Suso33

(images via: susso33)

From Madrid comes Suso33, decking out buildings in Spain and other countries with leaping dancers and looming faces. The artist has a pretty amazing technique using both hands at the same time, as demonstrated in this video.

SatOne + ETAM Crew at Galeria Urban Forms

(images via: galeria urban forms)

Munich’s SatOne teamed up with the ETAM Crew of Poland to create this vivid, sweeping work of art for the Galeria Urban Forms festival in Lodz. With SatOne offering a futuristic, abstract style and ETAM supplying richly colored illustrative elements, this pairing was definitely an inspired one.

Alexandre Farto

(images via: photographyrea)

Fine art in a realistic style comes to the streets in large-scale works by Portuguese-born, London-residing artist Alexandre Farto. In one of his most lauded techniques, Farto lays down wheat-pasted paper and then scratches out the details, leaving behind the textured urban surface of the background. Farto, a.k.a. VHILS, also works with prints, billboards, metal and mixed media..

Mark Jenkins

(images via: xmarkjenkinsx.com)

This incredible installation goes beyond an impressive panoramic work of street art, adding a rather disturbing element: the dead body of the artist that created it. Or at least, that’s what it seems like to concerned passersby before they approach the stabbed figure and realize it’s just a mannequin. Jenkins has made a name for himself not as a graffiti artist but for his thoughtful and often shocking urban installations, which are often inserted into public spaces guerilla-style.

BLU

(images via: blublu.org, rob monroe)

Artist BLU brings together his most famous work in a series of stop-motion graffiti animations using a large concrete wall as a canvas. The Argentinian, whose real identity has never been revealed, is known for these digital shorts and for his vast body of murals which can be found all over Central and South America, in the West Bank, London, Spain, Germany and Eastern Europe as well as in his current home country of Italy.
BLU also created the incredibly long evolution mural, appropriately entitled A Very Long Story, photographed here by Rob Monroe.

Multiple Artists in China

(images via: yeinjee.com)

Could this be the world’s largest urban mural? A number of artists joined together to cover more than 200,000 square feet on 21 buildings in Qingdao, China’s Taidong commercial district. The work was completed in June 2008 for the Beijing Olympics.

Face Swap! Incredible Photoshop Identity Theft

2011-12-09T19:08:00.001-08:00

By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Guerilla Action & Art, Technology & Futurism

Photoshop is a geek’s favorite tool, and the internet’s best friend. Face swap sounds like a horrifying identity theft ring, but in reality it’s one of many memes that are bringing the wonders of photo manipulation to the masses.

Nic Cage is Everyone

(Images via screenjunkies, cinemablend, boingboing, unrealitymag, niccageaseveryone, theouthousers)

“Nic Cage is everyone” is one of the best memes making the internet rounds right now. It’s the anonymous internet’s attempt to make every recognizable celebrity into the most recognizable of them all, through some creative image manipulation.

Man Babies

(Images via blahbethany, 2pep, buzzfeed, knowyourmeme)

Every father wants their child to grow up to be like them. It’s less well known that every father also wants to be like their child. The man baby meme is the epitome of this movement, and it is disturbing.

Celebrity Face Swaps

(Images via knowyourmeme, weakstream, dailydawdle, iywib)

They say working together for a long period of time makes two people incredibly close. Famous couples, real life and fictional, are the perfect example of this.

Face Bombing

(Images via motherboard, funnyjunk, faceswaps)

Face bombing is when a face swap goes global. When every face in a photo is turned into a clone of the others, the hilarity goes through the roof. The creepy component also reaches its zenith.

Face Swap!

(Images via buzzfeed, themetapicture, yellowmeansgo)

A perfect face swap can make the day just a bit brighter, and terrifying. Male / female swaps are definitely the most effective.

Even More Man Babies

(Images via comedycentral, mtfunny, blahbthany, lukegilman, chiu-on-this, imglols)

There is something that messes with the mind when a man baby photo is faced down. The mind boggles, as all expectations are turned upside down.

Face Bombing Extravaganza

(Images via bite, knowyourmeme, netlore, faceswaps)

Welcome to the family reunion of your nightmares! A legion of clones that all look just like their parents, and their uncles, and their cousins…

Animal Hybrids

(Images via voooz, atomicbunker, freakingnews)

To finish on the most disturbing note, or why not make man’s best friend part man? Or get even stranger with even more unusual animals…

Jail-Safe Tagging: Spray Up Buildings in Augmented Reality

2011-12-09T19:07:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Gadgets & Geek Art, Graffiti & Drawing, Technology & Futurism

Graffiti is one of those art forms that really is only for the brave. It takes a fair amount of courage to risk arrest just to put your mark on the world. For everyone who has always wanted to engage in some heavy tagging without the fear of doing time in jail, the Street Tag app from Channel 4 lets you use your iPhone’s camera to spray paint in augmented reality – no furtive glances or cover of darkness required.

(all images via: Pop-Up City)

The free app turns your iPhone into a virtual spray paint can, letting you tag any building you want in broad daylight. Feel like defacing the Empire State Building with your name? Go for it. Want to leave a big smiley face on the Sears Tower? No worries. The augmented reality abilities hold your artwork in place on an image of the building so that you can spray away to your heart’s content. While the app is full of cool and a lot of fun to use, there is a slight learning curve involved. But once you get the hang of it, you can upload all of your masterpieces to an online gallery – complete with geo-tags – to share them with the world.

Twisty Mystery: Ancient Underground German Tunnels

2011-12-09T19:06:00.003-08:00

By Steph in History & Factoids, Travel & Places

Why would a network of cramped, claustrophobic tunnels emerge into the kitchens of farmhouses, the aisles of churches and the center of cemeteries? No one knows exactly why man-made subterranean systems like the Erdstall were built, but at least 700 of them exist in the German state of Bavaria alone, and many more are hidden across Europe, from Hungary to Spain.

One such network was discovered in the middle of a cattle pasture when a grazing dairy cow suddenly fell into the earth up to her hips, revealing an opening. The Erdstall system, located near Munich, is 82 feet long and is believed to have been built in the Middle Ages. The passages are so tight that one must crouch or crawl to get through, and oxygen is in low supply.
Local legend has it that they were built by elves, and they’ve earned the name “schrazelloch”, which means “goblin hole.” This may give an accurate idea of their size, but the tunnels are not, as locals imagined, escape routes from castles. Most are no longer than 165 feet. Some historians believe they may have been used to venerate the dead. Others believe they were hiding places during times of great unrest.

The tunnels have gained attention from archaeologists for the first time in recent months, who have ruled out their use as storage space or livestock housing. Curiously, very few archaeological artifacts have been found inside. For all of those that have been found, it is believed that another 90 percent remain undiscovered and unexplored.

Senior City-zens 2: The Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities

2011-12-09T19:06:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places, Urbanism

It takes a village… at first, at least. Whether that village grows into a city depends on many factors; whether it remains inhabited through centuries, even millennia, of war, natural disasters and environmental degradation is another thing altogether. Following up on our original post, here are ten more ancient, still-inhabited cities that have withstood the test of time.

Byblos, Lebanon

(images via: Middleeast.com, Saidon and LAU)
The city of Byblos, Lebanon has been a thriving urban center for at least 7,000 years but it really hit its stride around 3,200 years ago when it became an important player in the papyrus trade. In fact, the word “byblos” is Greek for “papyrus”, an early form of paper made from wetland plants that grew in Egypt’s Nile delta. From the word byblos we get the root word biblio, as in bibliogrphy.
(image via: Lebanon Embassy)
To the Phoenicians, master traders of the ancient world, Byblos went under the name of Gubla and later Gebal. Today its Arabic name is Jbeil and much of the city’s ancient and medieval glory is available for appreciation by natives and tourists alike.

Faiyum, Egypt

(images via: Westga, East Travel and Discount Travelogue)
Cities first rose up out of Egypt’s Faiyum Depression nearly 6,000 years ago, nourished by the life-giving water which collected in the low oasis west of the river Nile. In the heyday of Pharaonic Egypt the city was known as Crocodilopolis, the leading center for the cult of the crocodile-god Sobek. In the Roman era, citizens of Faiyum used a distinctive painting technique known as encaustic. The pigmented wax used to paint the portraits of the dead on their coffin lids has withstood the passage of time to a remarkable degree, as can be seen in the lifelike portrait at above top left.
(image via: TIXIK)
Faiyum today has a population of several hundred thousand and both it and the surrounding area are well watered by an effective system of canals first built around 1800 BC by the pharaoh Amenemhat I. Twelve massive waterwheels keep the flow steady and are a popular tourist attraction.

Gaziantep, Turkey

(images via: Kaliteliresimler, Resimle and BusinessWeek)
Gaziantep is the oldest inhabited city of Hittite origin – the Hittites were one of the great civilizations of the fertile crescent and jostled with Ancient Egypt for centuries. The Hittites were also the first to smelt and forge iron on a large scale, giving them a huge advantage over their rivals. Before the rise of the Hittites, however, Gaziantep was ruled by other civilizations including the ancient Akkadians approximately 5,000 years ago.
(image via: Hotel Club)
Gaziantep today is home to 1.5 million people and seems to be somewhat of an international real estate hotbed – wealthy foreigners have been swooping in, buying up old Turkish houses, and are restoring them for use as vacation homes.

Beirut, Lebanon

(images via: Habeeb and Orpheus Tours)
Beirut first entered the historical record in the 15th century BC, making the city at least 3,500 years old though archaeological finds have extended its timeline back an additional 1,500 years. Even the city’s name has remained remarkably consistent over the centuries – in ancient times it was known as Berytus.
(image via: Habeeb)
Today Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, a bustling cosmopolitan center with a population of just over 2 million. Its recent history has been as troubled as its ancient history… many residents can recall the sound of gunfire and bombs bursting in the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Aleppo, Syria

(images via: SeattlePI, Historische Alepposeife and National Geographic)
(image via: ALJV)
Situated at a strategic point between the Euphrates river and the Mediterranean Sea, Aleppo was prominent in the ancient world as a center of trade. Archaeological work has been difficult in Aleppo since the modern city sits directly atop a series ancient ones. Aleppo has had a tumultuous history in more ways than one. A deadly earthquake in the year 1138 AD killed as many as 230,000 people. The city had just begun to recover when it was conquered by the Mongols in 1260, 1280 and finally in 1400 by Tamerlane.
(image via: KRAFT)
Modern Aleppo from the air is one of the world’s most striking cities – the 13th century AD moated central citadel rising 150 feet into the sky resembles a meteor crater in reverse. The area of the Citadel shows evidence of human occupation going back 7,000 years though ancient Aleppo gradually grew into what we consider to be a city.

Asmara, Eritrea

(images via: Intl Listings, City Of Sound and J Watson)
Though Asmara’s recorded history only goes by 700 years, recent excavations in the city’s suburbs have uncovered an extensive urban settlement dating back as much as 3,000 years. According to a BBC report on what city life in ancient Asmara would have been like, “The settlement’s inhabitants lived in stone houses, ate cows and goats, drank beer, farmed fertile land and wore animal skins.” The more things change, the more they stay the same!
(image via: Asmera.nl)
Asmara looks like a typical modern city today, thanks (or no thanks) to Italian occupiers who revamped the city to a European plan following its conquest by Italy in 1889.

Cadiz, Spain

(images via: MSA Cultural Tours)
Gadir, Gades, Cadiz! That’s what a presumed sign on the immense city walls found 7 meters (roughly 21 feet) deep under Cadiz’ city center might read to, successively, Phoenician, Roman and Spanish visitors. Roman sources praised the beauty of Gades’ dancing girls but much earlier, like Lisbon, Gadir (meaning “The Fortress”) was a stopover for Phoenician ships plying the long tin route to and from the British Isles.
(image via: MSA Cultural Tours)
Though the recently discovered walls date back to the 8th century BC, most archaeologists agree the site on southern Spain’s Atlantic coast was a fully functioning city as long as 3,000 years ago, if not longer.

Xi’an, China

(images via: China Tourist, Theodora and Topren)
Over the past 3,000-odd years Xi’an has been the capital of 13 different imperial dynasties. The most striking reminder of Xi’an’s ancient glory comes in the form of the Terracotta Army, buried in the year 210 BC along with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Though most of the lifesized figurines have not been excavated, it’s estimated that the army consists of over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots pulled by 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses.
(image via: National Geographic Traveler)
Notice the rather large and obtrusive KFC billboard in the view of downtown Xi’an above? Not to worry, it’s not long for this world – as are 190 other designated “eyesores” due to be removed from Xi’an’s city center when their current contracts expire, after which time no new advertising contracts will be accepted. That’s one sign of the times we can all appreciate!

Rome, Italy

(images via: Saint Mary’s and Viator Travel Blog)
“The Eternal City”, Roman legends state that the city was founded in the year 753 BC by co-kings Romulus and Remus – who were raised by a she-wolf. Regardless of the fine details, Rome can trace its history back to those times. The city reached the height of its glory following the decline of Classical Greece and after the Roman army’s final victory over Carthage in the battle of Zama. By the time of Julius Caesar and the establishment of the Roman Empire, it could be said with certainty that “all roads lead to Rome”.
(image via: Innovawood)
Rome and Romans endured difficult times following the Empire’s last gasp in the year 476 AD but with the growth of Christianity it once again rose to pre-eminence. Much of Rome’s ancient glory has been lost but much still remains.

Istanbul, Turkey

(images via: MarvaoGuide and ERP-KIM Archive)
Rome’s successor after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Constantinople was founded by the Roman emperor Constantine in the year 330 AD and remained one of the world’s greatest and wealthiest cities throughout the medieval era. It was built on the site of an existing city named Byzantium which was founded by early Greek colonists in the early 7th century BC. After shining brightly for over 1,000 years, Constantinople finally succumbed to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and a new era in the city’s life began, this time under the name of Istanbul.
(image via: Kaletour)
The Blue Mosque, built between 1609 and 1616, is one of Istanbul’s most popular tourist attractions. In its awe-inspiring size, interior decoration and above all beauty, it ranks with Constantinople’s magnificent Hagia Sophia basilica (now a museum) commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the early 6th century AD.
Life attracts life, a pull made stronger with the passage of time. Those who have had the privilege and the pleasure of visiting an ancient city say they can feel the city’s lifeblood flowing down well-worn streets and pulsing through centuries-old marketplaces. Time passes; our lives flicker by like moths to a flame yet our eternal cities remain, burning bright, into the future.

16 Creative Tables with Potential Identity Crises

2011-12-09T19:05:00.001-08:00

By Mike in Environment & Nature, Furniture & Interiors, Urban & Street Art

From their earliest mention in ancient Egyptian inscriptions to the modern trestle and refectory styles we know so well, tables have come a long way. Today, new materials and design methods are injecting further creativity into modern tables – but are they having an identity crisis? These 16 table designs look like they are eager to be something else.

(Image: via John Nouanesing)

Old furniture can always be reinvented with a fresh, bright lick of paint. This table picks up the concept and runs with it – giving the illusion of a board dripping with a river of fresh red paint. Designer John Nouanesing hides function (the table legs) within illusion – it is likely a great deal sturdier than it first appears.

(Images: via Absolut Form and Amy Youngs)

Here is another table that seems to dispense with legs. Danish designer Essey’s Grand Illusion appears to be a tablecloth hovering in mid-air – but the clue is in the title. It is made from 3mm-thick acrylic, firm enough to magically suspend your coffee cup (David Copperfield would approve). More practically, for those with a penchant for countertop composting, the Digestive Table offers an earthier alternative – at its heart is a contained ecosystem to process food scraps and create rich fertilizer for indoor plants.

(Images: via Architecture MNP and Fernando And Humberto Campana)

A table that thinks it’s a cutlery drawer – called Precious Famine, this arresting web of metalwork is made of Christofle silverware. Don’t drop your spoon on this table – you’ll never find it again. In a similarly reflective mood, the Brasilia table appears to be salvaging Art from seven years of bad luck, by forming a mosaic of mirror shards. The inspiration is the chaotic jumble of stone that form the foundations of Brazil’s capital city.

(Images: via design boom and Anyroom)

These tables don’t want to keep still – or so it appears. The r.n.i. tables of Korean designer Chul An Kwak are modeled on running horses, but there’s a frond-like hint of the deep sea in those trailing legs. Anyroom’s Dance table looks similarly intent on being elsewhere, but more sedately, like a caterpillar.

(Images: via Julia West Home and James McAdam)

Surely we are now on firmer ground now, with this bedside table like a low dresser, and this tall table fit for a lamp? Not when the former folds out into a sofa (as easily and simply as sliding out a drawer) and the latter is a piece of furniture fit for an ancient Celtic warrior. James McAdam has designed the table as a response to the security fears of around half of Londoners, but it’s bound to hit a chord with the inhabitants of other thriving cities.

(Image: via Tineke Beunders)

In Japan, a third of a million people are gainfully employed in sending tiny steel balls bouncing around vertical tables. That seems to be the inspiration behind Marbelous, perhaps the world’s first piece of Pachinko furniture. Watch as the balls wind their way through the tabletop, corkscrew down the legs and collect in the feet (and be sure to watch out for any that have escaped onto the floor).

(Images: via design mong and Lee Stoetzel and Link Studios)

Not content to be just a table, the House On The Table wants to be your entire office. The draught round your legs may be disconcerting, but otherwise this table offers all the basics of a modern workspace, bookcase and all. Lee Stoetzel’s creation looks like it belongs on your shelf, but it is actually a table in disguise – whilst the Stink tree table (yes, that’s the name) cunningly masquerades as an ex-table. However, a closer look reveals that crack running through its centre is a beautifully crafted tree.

(Images: via Because We Can and CNET)

Perhaps modern technology is more to your liking – in which case, these tables are sure to please. The Wave is a coffee table inset with a network of motion-sensitive LEDs: wave your hand over its surface, and a ripple of light will follow your motion. A table to make the most of your best glassware. The HP Labs Misto table, on the other hand, thinks it is your computer screen, allowing you and your loved ones to view photos and movies and play games on its touch-sensitive surface.

(Image: via lovegrove and repucci)

And lastly, a table with a sense of real grandeur. The Concerto Table looks for all the world like a super-modern Grand Piano … until dinnertime, at which point drawers slide out to reveal your best silver cutlery. It’s also designed to be a musical centerpiece, thanks to the built-in housing for an iPod. But, sadly, there are no ivories to tinkle.

15 Creative Coffee Tables & Coffee Table Designs

2011-12-09T19:03:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Furniture & Interiors, Gadgets & Geek Art, Travel & Places, Urban & Street Art

No living room would be complete without its centerpiece: the coffee table. As a focus for family, friends, football and fun, the coffee table can’t be beat… but it CAN be OFFbeat, as these 15 creative coffee table designs show so well.

Noguchi Throws Down the Coaster

(images via: Classic Design and Noguchi Museum Store)
It’s hard to say what the first piece of furniture worthy of the name “coffee table” was or where it was conceived but for most of us the term brings up an image of the iconic Noguchi coffee table. First produced in 1944 in association with the Herman Miller company, Isamu Noguchi’s tour de force is a simple, organic, ultimately pleasing design that set the bar for urban cool.

Bring On the Coffee Cats

(images via: Retro To Go, Roomgoods and ProductWiki)
Noguchi’s very basic coffee table design has inspired numerous copies – or should we say homages? – over the last 60-odd years. The Moebius, Butterfly and Cross tables are all undeniably interesting but at the same time face a frustrating conundrum: how does one improve a superb minimalist design whose signature feature is its simple magnificence?

Domino Theory

(images via: SIDD and Design Spotter)
This dynamic coffee table design from Canada’s SIDD Fine Woodworking makes you think for a moment before setting down your mug o’ java. Better use a coaster before you do – each Domino is constructed by a single SIDD craftsman over a period of six weeks and bears the artisan’s signature on the underside.

Tune Up Your Room

(images via: Rowean Design and Walyou)
Any successful living room suggests a sense of peace and harmony to the user, and the latter quality is best expressed by the Fender Stratocaster coffee table from Fender Custom Furniture of Portland, Oregon. Solid maple construction is custom stained to evoke the warm, vintage look of Fender’s famous Stratocasters; enhanced by chrome plated tuning pegs and silk screened graphics. FCF has enjoyed great response with the Strat table and will be following it up with a coffee table based on the rockin’ Telecaster.

I Sea What You Did There…

(images via: Nerd Approved and Everything Nautical)
What’s up, dock? The Nautical Rowing Dory Coffee Table from Everything Nautical, of course. The 48-inch long table features detachable oars – for those REALLY rainy days, one assumes – and a fitted glass top that nestles just within the gunwales. A genuinely thoughtful design, the Nautical Dory includes a pair of removable shelves that allow you to set the table on end and use it as a bookshelf or, even better, a maritime curio case for your seashells & scrimshaw.

The Age of Aquariums

(images via: Gizmodo Germany and Shirley Aquatics)
Sticking with our nautical theme, it’s not really a surprise there are aquarium coffee tables… what IS odd is that there are so many. Perhaps it’s the way watching fish swim can be so relaxing; maybe having water in front of you can make one thirsty. No problems there, unless of course watching fish in front of you makes you hungry… and drive your cat crazy.

Take Me to Your Melitta

(images via: Seanmichaelragan.com)
Geek furniture doesn’t get much more geeky than the ZAP coffee table, a one-off, home made Space Invaders tribute from Sean Ragan of Austin, Texas. Layered with handmade Mexican Talavera tiles in cobalt blue and lemon yellow, the 38 by 51 inch table cost Ragan about $415 in materials – which he kindly posts spreadsheet-style for anyone who’s contemplating a similar project. Ragan is offering the table for sale so if your games room (what geeks call a living room) needs that finishing touch, you know who to call.

Save Space, Sit on a Table

(images via: Design Milk)
From Space Invaders to space savers: the hand-crafted Futaba coffee table unfolds into a stylish loveseat when unexpected guests arrive… from the Delta Quadrant. If it was just a little larger (or you were a little shorter), the Futaba could double as a sofa bed. Sleeping on your coffee table? It’s more likely than you think.

The Periodic Coffee Table of the Elements

(images via: Designboom and Element Displays)
There’s nothing worse than a geek with a sense of humor, unless it’s a geek with no sense of humor. In any case, the Periodic Table of the Elements would even make ol’ Mendeleev himself crack a smile, until he read the price tag ($8,550). Pricey or not, it’s a table… of the elements… get it? Not exactly a thigh-slapper but if you’re going to make a joke, at least carry it through to the end and that’s exactly what Element Displays has done. All of the elements are sealed into clear acrylic blocks and set into a 4-ft. wide burred oak table. Built-in lighting illuminates the blocks and the more reactive elements are sealed in inert Argon gas or mineral oil. There appear to be quite a few blocks labeled with the “radioactive” symbol, so unless you want your coffee re-heated for you we suggest using a lead coaster.

ROSIE says, Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me!

(images via: Engadget and Savant)
The world’s first interactive coffee table costs a cool $35,000 but like all new technology, the price should fall as the ROSIE Coffee Table Touchpanel Controller begins to fly off the shelves and into America’s homes. Featuring an Apple OS-X based operating system and an Intel processor, the ROSIE coffee table is really too good to rest coffee mugs on… and besides, spill-proofing the screen has been one of the biggest issues the Savant design team had to deal with. Isn’t this what Microsoft’s highly touted Surface table was supposed to do?

Godzilla’s iPhone, or Your Coffee Table?

(images via: iLounge and SlipperyBrick)
Not everyone has 35 grand to blow on a coffee table these days, but that doesn’t mean one must do without. Take the iPhone coffee table, crafted by iLounge readers Tuan Nguyen, Ken Thomas and associates from corrugate cardboard glued together with white glue. It’s not interactive but it does include a set of iPhone icon coasters coffee-sipping guests can use to rest their mugs on. The table doesn’t have an iPhone dock, unfortunately, but as it’s just a design concept made of cardboard perhaps that might be asking a bit much.

Coffee, Tea or Napalm?

(images via: Motoart)
Please return your Motoart coffee tables to the upright position… which would be a different position from the ones these genuine recycled aircraft parts assumed in their previous lives aboard F-4 Phantom fighters, Boeing 707 jetliners and B-52 Stratofortress bombers. Seriously, a coffee table made from chromed Phantom afterburner cans? That lights up at night with red LEDs? You know you want one.

The Coffee Table Book Lamp Table

(images via: Robot Nine)
Takeshi Ishiguro’s Book of Lights is the ultimate coffee table book – it’s a table top and reading light all in one. Granted, the three .06 watt LEDs don’t hold a candle to, well, a candle but this is one design project that favors form instead of function. Anyway, anyone who can combine a working lamp with a pop-up book deserves kudos in my, er, book.

Kramer’s Coffee Table Book

(images via: SONY Style and Press The Buttons)
No collection of coffee tables should be without Cosmo Kramer’s “coffee table book that turns into a coffee table”, as demonstrated by the hipster dufus himself on a very special Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. SONY liked the concept so much they employed the theme to package their 32-DVD Complete Series of Seinfeld set. This may be the only one of Kramer’s crazy concepts to ever reach fruition – on TV or in real life.

The Coffin Table

(images via: WebEcoist)
All good things must come to an end, and that includes you – whether you’ve been good or not. Prepare for the day you shuffle off this mortal coil with the Biodegradable Coffin coffee table from Halfway House Design. Designed by Charles Constantine of the Pratt Institute – we’re assuming that’s a school – the eco-friendly, biodegradable pine wood Memento coffee table will stylishly store books, games, wine… and one day, you.

17 Fluidly Fantastic Fountains and Water Sculptures

2011-12-09T19:02:00.003-08:00

By Delana in Architecture & Design, Urban & Street Art

What is it about moving water that fascinates us? The grace and beauty of flowing water, along with its ability to induce calm, are the biggest reasons we’re drawn to artful displays of H2O. From simple gravity-driven fountains to elaborate displays of dancing water and lights, these fountains, waterfalls and water sculptures are among the most celebrated, the most beautiful and the most interesting in the world.

Dubai Fountain – Burj Dubai, UAE

(images via: Emaar and TheDubaiMall)

The Dubai Fountain in Burj Dubai, UAE is among the largest and most technologically advanced fountains in the world. The $218 million fountain was unveiled in May of 2009. While it’s similar to the famed Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas, it’s 25% bigger and boasts water sprays as high as a 50-story building. But even more impressive than the facts and figures is the sheer beauty of the lighted water show. It’s nothing short of breathtaking.

Public Art Waterfalls – New York City

(images via: Gizmodo, UPI, The New York City Traveler)

In the summer of 2008, New Yorkers were treated to a large-scale public art project from Danish Artist Olafur Eliasson. Four towering waterfalls were placed at different locations in New York Harbor. They were carefully designed to avoid damage to the environment and wildlife, and no public funds were used in the project. For a few months, these waterfalls provided passers-by with a stunning view of water toppling back to its home from 90 to 120 feet up. Hailed as the most ambitious public art project in New York in several years, the waterfalls were meant to be a celebration of the revitalization of the waterfront.

Water Forest – Tacoma, Washington

(image via: Michael D. Martin)

Just outside of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, you’ll find a beautiful but beleaguered water sculpture project. The publicly-owned Water Forest was first erected in 2002, but was taken down soon after when one of the tubes was pushed over by a child. The city took the next seven years (and $174,000) to repair and improve the sculpture. The clear parts of the tubes, once made of glass, are now acrylic and much harder to damage. The 20 tubes have been made stronger to avoid any accidental injuries. The water flowing down the outside of each tube has been specially treated to avoid harming those who, for whatever reason, find it necessary to taste it. Overall, the display is breathtaking – especially at night, when green fiber-optic lights illuminate the structures.

Water Whirler – Wellington, New Zealand

(images via: Lyndon Hood/Scoop)

New Zealand sculptor Len Lye dreamed big – so big, in fact, that his sculpture concepts were mostly unrealized at the time of his death. He considered himself well before his time, as the structures he wanted to build were beyond the scope of technology in his lifetime. Following his death in 1980, two of his concepts have been made into reality. Water Whirler is one of these. The strong but flexible rod that makes up the central part of the sculpture features thin jets of water that spray out horizontally. As the rod whirls around and around on its base, the water jets form lovely and surprising patterns in the air. Water Whirler was unveiled in 2006 near Frank Kitts Park in Wellington.

Charybdis – Sunderland, England

(images via: William Pye)

This mesmerizing water sculpture was designed by British sculptor William Pye and sits in front of Seaham Hall in Sunderland. The clear cylinder holds filtered water that rushes around to create a beautiful air-core vortex. Thanks to the stairs on either side of the cylinder, viewers are able to climb up and look down into the eye of the vortex.

Archibald Fountain – Sydney, Australia

(images via: rjackb and colros)

Unveiled in 1932, Archibald Fountain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia has been called the country’s most impressive fountain. The funds for the fountain were provided by journalist J.F. Archibald in his will, with the stipulation that the fountain must be created by a French artist. Francois Sicard was awarded the project and created a truly beautiful piece of art that has become the centerpiece of Hyde Park.

Fountain of Wealth – Singapore

(image via: Wikipedia)

This gigantic fountain is the central feature of Suntec City mall in Singapore. The fountain stands at over 45 feet (13.8 meters) and is said to bring good fortune and wealth to those who walk around it three times while constantly touching the water. It was recorded in the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest fountain.

Banpo Bridge – Seoul, Korea

(image via: Freshome)

While it used to be a boring bridge over the Han River, the Banpo Bridge was transformed in 2008 into a gigantic, artful water display. The water is supplied by the river directly below and pumps through 9,380 nozzles to create this unique and memorable fountain. The bridge/fountain was intended to drive more tourism traffic to the city.

Friendship of Nations Fountain – Moscow, Russia

(image via: Effervescing Elephant)

The impressive Friendship of Nations fountain (also known as the People’s Friendship Fountain) is a unique display of 16 gilded statues, each representing one of the member nations of the former Soviet Union. The fountain sits in the large plaza just outside of the All-Russia Exhibition Center. The fountain and the entire plaza in which it sits can’t be missed if you’re visiting Moscow – they are a fascinating bit of Russian history.

Kanazawa Station Fountain Clock – Kanazawa, Japan

(images via: Inventorspot)

If you walked past this outdoor clock quickly, you may not notice anything unusual about it. But this is no ordinary digital clock – it’s actually a fountain using small jets of water to tell the time. The water can even spell out messages in English and Japanese. The jets are controlled by a computer system that tells them when to open, when to close, and how high to spray the water. The Kanazawa Station Fountain Clock is an amazingly unique and beautiful water display.

Water Writing Fountain and Dancing Water Fountain – Canal City, Japan

In the first video, this innovative fountain in the Canal City Mall uses falling droplets of water to shape words and pictures. The amazing display seems almost like magic, but it’s really just the perfectly-timed release of water from individual streams. The second video features just one of many such dancing water fountains in Japan, complete with soundtrack. The regular shows never fail to attract a crowd as the water seems to dance gracefully to the music.

La Joute Fountain – Montreal, Quebec

(image via: JRG Castro)

There are few water displays as dramatic as La Joute (“the joust”) Fountain in Montreal. The fountain runs on a 32-minute kinetic sequence that culminates on the hour with a stunning ring of fire encircling the central island. Created by Jean-Paul Riopelle in 1969, this unusual fountain currently sits in Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle in the Quartier International de Montreal.

Buckingham Fountain – Chicago, Illinois

(image via: Albany Tim)

Buckingham Fountain, a Chicago landmark, has been gracing the city with its towering spouts of water and memorable light and music shows since 1927. Every hour on the hour from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., from April to mid-October, the fountain marks the time by shooting a 150-foot spout of water into the air. The fountain is meant to represent Lake Michigan, while the four seahorses surrounding the central fountain symbolize the four states around the lake (Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin).

King Fahd’s Fountain – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

(image via: Wikipedia)

On the coast of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, this impressive fountain dominates the horizon. King Fahd’s Fountain, which has been in operation since 1985, is the tallest water jet in the world. Its spray reaches over 850 feet above the Red Sea from which it draws water. A beautiful sight at any time of the day, it is especially so at night when more than 500 spotlights illuminate the massive water jet.

Fontana del Pantheon and Fontana di Trevi – Rome, Italy

(images via: Andy Hay and Artorusrex)

Of course, no article about beautiful fountains would be complete without a mention of the amazing fountains in Rome. The Italian city is famed for its many stunning fountains, and two of the most celebrated are the Fountain of the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. The Fountain of the Pantheon was designed and sculpted in the 16th century and sits in the Piazza del Rotundo just in front of the Pantheon. The fountain itself and the marble figures there today are not the originals, but the fountain is still a magical part of Rome.
Any trip to Rome must also include a visit to the Trevi Fountain, one of the world’s most well-known and loved fountains. The Trevi Fountain has a long and interesting history, including many alterations and rebuildings. But today it remains an exceptional example of Italian sculpture and an icon of Rome itself.

Unusually Clever Living Room Furniture Designs: From Coffin Bookcases to Geek Coffee Tables

2011-12-09T19:02:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Furniture & Interiors, Urban & Street Art, Urban Videos, Various Uncategorized

(Check out our complete collection of 90 Creative Urban Furniture Designs.)

The living room is often the center of a house. It’s the place where families and visitors gather to talk, relax, and be entertained. The furnitures and decor in the living room can set the tone for everything that happens in that room. It follows that living room furniture is a main focus when a house is being decorated. If you’re anything but traditional, these unique and clever living room furniture designs may be right up your alley.
Love fancy cars but can’t afford to keep a whole one around? How about just the back end? This car couch (top) is nothing like the tacky versions from the 80s. This is smooth, luxurious Aston Martin DB6 – just like James Bond would sit on if he ever sat around watching movies and eating potato chips.
The Wave Chaise (bottom) is a new concept in teen seating/entertainment. This one piece of furniture contains everything your teenager (or you, if you’re game) might need entertainment-wise. Watch TV and movies, play video games, do homework, listen to CDs, read a book, talk on the phone or take a nap in this futuristic-looking pod.

This odd looking piece of furniture (top) may have been inspired by a toothbrush. The long noodly arms look comforting, but we wonder how difficult it would be to play video games while constantly batting the soft arms out of your face. This piece is a concept designed by a student at Bucks New University.
You may have heard of the world-famous motorized sofa. If you’re concerned about the environment and want to work out your calves without ever leaving your couch, the Couchbike gives you the best of all worlds. Although it’s not commercially available, its creators took it on a riding tour around the maritimes in Eastern Canada.

The Meltdown Chair (top left) is a fine example of art doubling as a useful object. The artist, Tom Price, heats a chair form and presses it into a pile of clear PVC hose to melt and char the plastic. When it’s done, it looks like a chair with springy supports. These may not be for everyone, but they do look oddly comfortable.
When you feel like cuddling but you need to get some reading done, the Octopus chair (top right) has you covered. Literally. Made from recycled jeans and polystyrene balls, the many legs of the Octopus chair will keep you cozy and protected as you catch up on the latest thriller novel.
Have your friends stopped answering your calls because they can’t stand to help you move all of your furniture into a new apartment yet again? Solve part of the problem with the inflatable massage chair (bottom right). It only weighs 18 pounds and can go from rolled up to fully inflated and ready to use in two minutes. Plus, what’s classier than an inflatable chair in your living room?
This sheep chair (bottom left) might take the trophy for classy living room furniture. With its three heads, soulful eyes and massive amounts of wool, this chair is part hellhound, part lambskin rug, and part really creepy throne.

If you’re like us, you’ve probably said to yourself many times, “Hm, I could really do with an open flame in my living room.” Now, just for you, there’s a coffee table (top) that lets you not only keep an open flame near your flowing curtains, but grow grass at the same time. The Fire and Ice coffee table features a fire pit on one side and a cavity on the other side for storage or growing grass. A sliding metal platform only allows you to display one side at a time.
The Cityscape (Dublin) table (top right) brings the Dublin skyline to mind while providing the perfect place to store your books and other oblong objects.
If you know someone who loves pinball, you can score major points in their book by making them this excellent pinball coffee table (bottom right). The idea of having an arcade machine that’s also everyday furniture is enough to thrill any geek.
Convertible furniture is a great way to maximize the space in your living area. Most of us are used to seeing pull-out sofas for this purpose, but a pull-out coffee table (bottom)? That’s exactly what Julia West Home has done here. The result is a simple pull-out bed that you’d never know was there by looking at the closed-up coffee table.
If it’s convertible furniture you’re interested in, take a good look at Fix it on the Wall Furniture (middle left) from designer John Nouanesing. When the furniture is not in use, each piece has its own place in the wall holder. When you need the tiny table and four cushions, simply pull them down, assemble, and enjoy your impromptu tea party.

These coffee tables are for the true nerds among us. The top, a working Nintendo controller protected by a layer of glass, was truly a labor of love for its proud owner. The table on the bottom sports a feature that most of us instantly recognize: the periodic table of elements. Each element is represented by a small sample of it safely embedded in acrylic so that even the dangerous elements can’t hurt you.

The design for these shelves is simply amazing. PLoP! shelves are made of corrugated cardboard to make them easy to carry around and set up in a new place. The shelves are collapsible, so whenever you need to hit the road quickly you can just remove your things from the shelves and fold it up. The units are also connectable, so you can have a long system of book shelves.

Finally, the “Eternaltainment Center.” This company provides double-duty furniture that today can be used for any number of applications, but when the owner kicks the bucket the main part of the furniture becomes a casket. They sell everything, from sofas to display cases to pool tables, all made from your future coffin. Is it just us, or is that concept just a little weird?
What’s your favorite piece of weird living room furniture? Let us know in the comments!

Wet And Wild: 10 Bizarre Public Water Fountains

2011-12-09T19:01:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Travel & Places

Water fountains are a unique art form combining sculpture, engineering, and more than a little imagination. While the world’s most famous fountains are a delight to the senses, others range from weird to wild to downright bizarre… like the ten described here. Now, let us spray.

Bodily Functions Fountain, London

(images via: Henan Museum and Kattaka)
Klaus Weber’s unusual (to say the least) fountain installation titled “The Big Giving” is at least eco-friendly: the water is continually recycled and the cocoon-like encrustations that envelope the statuesque sculptures are made from waste stone and industrial waste. This most unusual fountain was set up at the Southbank Centre in London, UK, and the images depicted here date from the autumn of 2007.
(image via: Trendhunter)
Though the vomiting individual is usually featured in reports on Weber’s creation, it actually includes a group of different figures displaying a variety of human bodily functions including sweating copiously from the armpits, urinating, and one poor fellow who suffers from the world’s worst post-nasal drip. The statues were modeled on Weber himself and a few selected friends.

Samson & The Lion, Prague

(images via: Tickets of Russia and eBay)
Rastrelli’s iconic scene of Samson wresting open the jaws of a lion has been a popular subject of both statuary and fountains for many centuries. One of most famous examples is in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of The Great Cascade.
(image via: Jez & TZ)
Another classic Samson & the Lion fountain can be found near Prague Castle in the Czech Republic’s capitol city, but something’s not quite right… could be the angle of the spray, might be a water pressure issue, or maybe it’s just me.

Jeanneke Pis, Brussels

(images via: Budget Places, Trekearth, Wikimapia and Elmada)
One of the most famous “odd” fountains in the world is the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium. Designed by Jerome Duquesnoy and erected (sorry) in approximately 1619, it replaced a similar peeing-boy fountain that dated back to 1388. You’d think the weight of over 600 years of history would be enough to discourage busybodies from messing with tradition but noooo… in 1987 and undoubtedly in the spirit of gender equality, Manneken was given a female counterpart: Jeanneke Pis. The blue limestone sculpture of a peacefully urinating little girl by Denis-Adrien Debouvrie stands – squats, actually – on the east side of Fidelity Alley running north off Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat.
(image via: Fotothing)
Rock the boat and you’ll have no end of trouble… as you might have guessed, once feminists were mollified with their own peeing statue, animal rights activists were next in line. The result? Zinneke Pis, the bronzed peeing stray dog, installed in 1998 in the same general area of downtown Brussels as Manneken Pis and Jeanneke Pis. Unlike its perennially propagating predecessors, however, Zinneke Pis has no plumbing and therefore pis-es not.

The Milkmaid of Bologna, Italy

(images via: Bored Panda and Casalingarevival)
Staying in the classical vein a might longer, we have the milking mermaid of Bologna… that’s Bologna, Italy; the fountain’s not made of bologna though that would be only slightly more bizarre.
(image via: Fecalface)
We’re not quite sure what the original artist had in mind here, but suffice to say that in those far-off days, long before Playboy or the Internet, gazing at fountains was pretty much the only game in town for young lads seeking to view erotic content.

Fontana Delle Tette, Italy

(image via: Suite101)
Lest you think Bologna’s boob fountain is a lone aberration, and also because where you find one breast you’re likely to find another, we present the Fontana delle Tette. Located in the old town center of the northeastern Italian city of Treviso, the Fontana delle Tette, or… hey, do we really need to translate?… dates from 1559AD – or by the looks of it, 36C.
(images via: Amb688, Ostaria de la Ombre and Anikita)
Every day is special in Treviso, or so the citizens of centuries past must have wished. The story goes that on designated holidays, victory celebrations, the election of a new mayor, or just for the heck of it, the water which usually spurted out from the statue’s breasts would be replaced by wine: red on the left, white on the right (or vice versa, it didn’t matter much). The fountain would dispense wine for 3 consecutive days and the citizens lapped it up… until boring old Napoleon turned off the taps when he invaded Treviso in 1797.

The Fountain Head(quarters), Austria

(images via: Travel Webshots and The Travelzine)
Looking like either a set from the 1960 film The Time Machine or Dr. Evil’s new lair from the upcoming Austin Powers flick, this huge, troll-like fountain is actually the entrance of the Swarovski headquarters in Wattens, Austria.
(image via: Wikimedia)
The Swarovski Kristallwelten, or Swarovski Crystal World, sits in the Austrian Tyrol like a jewel in a ring. If it looks like a fortress, that’s no accident: In 1892, firm owner Daniel Swarovski shifted the entire company out of Bohemia (today’s Czech Republic) to the wild & woolly Tyrol so that the tools and methods of the secretive company would remain firmly under wraps.

The Car Fountain, Italy

(images via: Oddity Central and Declubz)
The Car Fountain – nothing fancy, just a Seat Ibiza hatchback (a Spanish car) looking like it ran over a fire hydrant. Installed in Rome where there are plenty of cars and fountains – just not in the same space – The Car Fountain was designed by Spanish artist Juan Galdeano and intended to raise awareness about global warming… by, er, raising a car.
(image via: Oddity Central)
The the Spanish hatchback appears as though it’s riding atop a geyser of water, not to worry – there’s a hidden armature secreted within the column of foaming water that keeps the car positioned in place and immune from the vagaries of wind, water and the odd power outage.

Child Eater Fountain, Switzerland

(images via: The Earl of Steinway and Travelpod)
The Kindlifresserbrunnen (Child Eater Fountain, in German) or Ogre Fountain dates from 1544 and is one of many Gothic fountains dating from Bern’s golden age. The ogre that sits atop a tall tower is depicted biting hungrily into the head of a squirming baby while other fearful infants peek out from the bag slung over his shoulder. If anyone wonders why the Swiss are generally quiet, respectful, serious folks, it may be because their parents took them to see (and be traumatized by) the Ogre Fountain when they were young.
(image via: TripAdvisor)
Some say the Ogre Fountain has a somewhat shady origin, referring to its pointed hat – a device sometimes used to portray Jews in the Middle Ages. In any case, today’s tourists and residents of Bern don’t delve into the dark side of the fountain’s history… what they can see is dark and disturbing enough as it is.

Nightmare Fountain, Germany

(image via: Travel Webshots)
We’re calling this the Nightmare Fountain because, well, it fits. Located in Nurnberg, Germany, this surrealistic scene isn’t something most people would associate with serene, relaxing, cooling fountains. Instead we have what appears to be a murder scene frozen in burnished bronze while a giant iguana looks on. If you’re ever in Nurnberg and come across this fountain, throw a coin in… and wish it would go away.

Crown Fountain, USA

(image via: Everything Chicago)
Fountains have historically combined the bizarre and the beautiful, though not always in equal measure. This post has focused on the bizarre but in closing we present the Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park, a larger than life interactive public art exhibition that provides heaping helpings of strange and wonderful. Big it is – the pair of glass block faced, LCD screen backed towers anchor opposing ends of a shallow reflecting/wading pool.

(images via: Ganzel Group, Therese Flanagan, Environment Debate and Manuel Medrano)
Spanish artist Jaume Plensa designed the Crown Fountain to be a tribute to the people of Chicago. The faces that appear to spit streams of water out from the towers are those of 1,000 Chicagoans rotated at random. Though water only flows from mid-spring to mid-fall each year in consideration of Chicago’s often blustery winter weather, the LCD screens are on full time.
The Crown Fountain epitomizes what fountains should be: places of mutual interest that suit and satisfy the public’s need for something curious yet familiar, and if these installations are sometimes weird, strange, even bizarre… well, sometimes so are we.

10 (More) Pieces of Clever Transforming Furniture: From Tetris Tables to Rooms in a Box

2011-12-09T19:00:00.001-08:00

By Urbanist in Featured Articles, Furniture & Interiors, Urban & Street Art

(Check out our complete collection of Unusual, Creative and Transforming Furniture.)

Why is transforming furniture so alluring? Does it appeal to our sense that innovation is progress, the fact that fewer materials for more uses is sustainable or simply a return to the childhood love of things that we can actively change and shape as we wish? Whatever the reason, these designs range from humorous and impractical to jaw-droppingly cool. Be sure to scroll all the way down: the best (pictured briefly above) has been saved for last and check here for more unusual urban furniture.

This comfy number is not one nor two but three pieces of furniture in one: a sofa, lounger and a chair. A good deal of transforming furniture looks or feels better in one configuration or another, but this three-in-one by Roel Verhagen-Kaptein is appealing in each of its transformations.
Normally we think of convertible furniture as transforming from one useful thing into something else with a practical function. These simply elegant folding chairs by Studio Dror collapse into something you might actually want to use simply for wall decoration: a simpler refined furniture solution than sticking cheap folding chairs back into the closet.

Next time you go on a picnic with some friends you may want to grab a second basket, the so-called Mealbox by Igland Design. Fourteen puzzle pieces slip out of this simple container and assemble into a table and chairs that seat six – a humorous variation on fast food.

Compact, clever and portable, the Fence Chair by Alain Berteau is a simple blend of traditional picket fence vernacular and sustainable modularity. The repeated use of a single simple form allows for compact shipping and the seats can be split or joined as needed.

A storable box or subtle side table by all appearances, this articulated shelving system by Bertrand Pinceman folds out into a rather nice bookcase. It is designed to work both on its side and upright.

Marta Antoszkeiwicz‘s design is not like most transforming furniture that relies on clever bends, twists and hidden tricks to work. This simple table and chairs set relies only on sliding pieces under and out from under one another. The result, though, is impressive: chairs that go well with the table in either configuration and don’t look like extra elements.

Similar in principle to a Murphy bed (which folds down from the wall when needed) this cabinet dining room set has everything one needs to sit down to a comfortable meal and then slides back into place. Neat as this complete furniture solution sounds, though, it isn’t clear how much space is needed behind-the-scenes to make it work.

Yellow might not be the best color, but you have to appreciate this simply brilliant Tetris-based Chairs + Table design. Aside from the sofa, bed, and chairs-and-tables configuration these also pack up nicely to be stored. The material is designed to be soft enough to be comfortable but resilient enough to work as an eating or work surface. Also, one could imagine that, with sufficient pieces, other creative furniture constructions would be possible.

We’re all familiar with beds that fold out from sofas, but few do so as easily and elegantly as this one by Flou. In Modernist tradition, the form of the bed is also partly visible in the form of the couch with each fold-out layer articulated individually.

Now this one is particularly strange: a stove and kitchen workspace that doubles as a comfortable chair? An odd combination to be sure, but it is a step in an interesting direction. This kind of out-of-the-box thinking could result in furniture that not only serves a similar function to its counterpart but that would have different purposes in various rooms around a house.

Would you believe that everything shown in the above image can be fit into a box that is less than 3 feet by 4 feet? The creative furniture within can be carried, unpacked and rapidly assembled by just two people. It probably goes without saying but: the box itself is also reused in the final results. Check out the video below to see the boxed room in action and go here to see more awesome urban furniture!

Thanks in part to TreeHugger, Inhabitat, FresHome and Neatorama

Thirst Class: 10 Wet, Wild & Wacky Water Towers

2011-12-09T18:59:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, Gadgets & Geek Art, Travel & Places

Water towers aren’t designed to showcase art but they sure do tend to attract it! These 10 wet, wild & wacky water towers advertise civic pride, celebrate local industries, and in the process do double duty storing millions of gallons of cool, clear water… and for that, we say tanks.

Smiley Face Water Tower, Grand Forks, ND

(images via: Sketched Out TV, GFPeck and Eric E Johnson)
Smiley-face water towers can be found in any number of American towns from coast to coast, and why not? Their message is positive and apolitical; their design is simple and their cost is cheap. The Smiley Face Water Tower in Grand Forks, North Dakota, one of the nation’s most famous smiling water towers, sadly grins no more. Built in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression, the tower’s easygoing grin, saucy wink and smart baby blue cap & bow tie added a drop of good cheer – coming and going – to countless thousands of citizens and travelers.
(images via: Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks Herald and Grand Forks Herald)
All good things must come to an end, and on October 7th, 2009, after 77 long years, the end finally came for Grand Forks’ Smiley Face Water Tower. Its bulbous, lead-free painted replacement just a few blocks away also sports a smile (though not a bow tie) and can hold much more water in the bargain. Somehow, though, it’s just not the same. It doesn’t even wink.

Tybee Island Water Tower

(images via: Savannah Winds and Landmark Hunter)
Tybee Island is the easternmost place in the state of Georgia and was the first place James Oglethorpe landed before moving on to Savannah. More notoriously, the US Air Force lost a hydrogen bomb just off the coast of Tybee Island in 1958 and it remains there to this day.citizens.
(image via: Waymarking/GA Cacher)
Perhaps in order to deflect attention from what some say is a ticking time bomb, the good people of Tybee Island set up a water tower decorated around its base with a fleet of endangered Loggerhead Turtles. Just keep thinking happy thoughts, citizens.

Corncob Water Tower,

(images via: Chad Johnson, Rianpie and WorldFlicks)
The Corncob Water Tower at the Seneca Foods plant in Rochester, MN, is said to be the “World’s Largest Ear of Corn.” It’s anatomically correct as well, having the correct number of kernels per row. The tower is yet another Great Depression feel-good project, having been built in 1931. It’s been re-painted several times and a night lighting system added sometime later adds a golden glow to the Rochester night.
(image via: Chad Johnson)
Small as water towers go, the 60ft tall Seneca Foods tower has a capacity of 50,000 gallons. It’s typical of water towers constructed to serve a single specific factory instead of your average-sized neighborhood.

Rosemont Water Tower

(images via: Tnemec and IgoUgo/FromChicago)
The Rosemont Water Tower was built in 1982 and has since become widely recognized for its artistic paint job, renewed in 1990 and 1998. The large capacity (500,000 gallon) tower is of the modern, inverted-teardrop design.
(image via: Anneh632)
Modern water towers have lost a certain amount of individuality – most are painted white or pale pastel hues in order to reflect heat. The Rosemont Water Tower goes against the grain with its bold, bright colors and the rose design itself, which breaks the monotony of the structure into green stem and red rose.

Earthoid Water Tank, Germantown, MD

(images via: Frankenstein vs The World, Roadside America and Germantown Patch)
The 33-year-old Earthoid Water Tank sits on the Germantown Campus of Montgomery College in Germantown, Maryland. The 100ft tall globular tank holds an impressive 2 million gallons and displays a very accurate, difficult to paint reproduction of Our Planet in all its oceanic, typhoon-infested glory by artist Peter Freudenberg.
(image via: DC Scorpio Blog)
The Earthoid Water Tank survived a close brush with municipal economics in early 2011 when local authorities were asked to choose between restoring Freudenberg’s mural or repainting the tank as a baseball. Luckily, common sense won out and restoration is in progress. “The Earthoid has become quite a symbol for the community as well as Montgomery College,” stated Montgomery County Commissioner Gene Counihan. “It is one of the most significant landmarks in Montgomery County.” I’m guessing a 100ft tall baseball would be too, Gene, but the Earthoid is way cooler.

Peach Water Tower, Gaffney, SC

(images via: Pine Street Studios, Wendyvee’s Roadside Wonders and Daughter of Opinion)
If your name is James and you’ve lost a giant peach, the town of Gaffney, South Carolina would like a word. Kudos to the un-named artist or artists who painted the so-called “Peachoid” in 1981 for emphasizing its peachiness with a seven ton, 60-ft long leaf, thus distracting the attention of those who instead see a massive orange gluteus maximus.
(image via: Marc Mesa/ Fine Art America)
The million-gallon Peachoid is situated along Interstate 85 in Gaffney, the “Peach Capital of South Carolina.” It was painted by a local artist who, it is said, studied local peaches for hours in order to get the look down pat. Fifty gallons of paint in a total of twenty different colors were used.

Brooks Catsup Water Tower, Collinsville, IL

(images via: Roadside America, Army.Arch and Route 66 Ambassador)
Blood might be thicker than water but we can’t very well have a Blood Tower, can we? Well, maybe the Red Cross can but for the rest of us, the Brooks Catsup Water Tower in Collinsville, Illinois will have to do. Erected in 1949, “The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle” served the Brooks Catsup factory into the 1960s when catsup production was moved to Indiana.
(image via: Anneh632)
Emptied of water, the tower was used as a warehouse until 1993 when the company sold the remainder of its facilities in Collinsville. A local preservation committee then took up the task of repairing, maintaining and spiffying up the tower as required. It’s a labor of love locally and one with international ramifications: visitors from around the globe have heard of the Brooks Catsup Water Tower and some even visit Collinsville to see it in person. What say ye to that, Colonel Mustard?

Dole Pineapple Water Tower, Honolulu, HI

(images via: A Pineapple Heart and Honolulu Star-Bulletin)
How dya like THEM pineapples? The Dole pineapple water tower weighed a hefty 30 tons when filled with 100,000 gallons of water, which it often was while serving the needs of Dole’s flagship Honolulu plant. Erected way back in 1927, the tower was used up until 1989. Though efforts were made to preserve this historic Honolulu landmark, rust and corrosion issues led to the tower’s being dismantled in October of 1993.
(image via: Tiny Pineapple)
The Dole pineapple water tower is perhaps the only structure of its kind to have been memorialized: a detailed shadow of the tower similar to the one it would have cast in bygone days has been painted onto the outside wall of a neighboring office building. Now that, my friends, is sweet!

“The Eyes of Texas”

(images via: Austin Chronicle and Dons)
Projection artist Luke Savisky managed to freak out a good number of Austin, Texas’ residents on 2006′s First Night (December 31st). Using a smooth-sided, organically round water tower as his canvas, Savisky’s oversized eyes doubtless convinced Austinites that Big Brother was indeed watching.
(image via: Shuttershrink)
Savisky’s unique example of projection art was both effective and impermanent – the Green Water Treatment Plant water tower used as a backdrop looked none the worse for wear the next morning. How many of those celebrating New Years Eve in Austin could say the same?

Old Forester Water Tower, Louisville, KY

(images via: Links@Louisville, Roadside America, Geocaching and OhioBarns)
Oh to live in a town where the taps dispensed bourbon… the water tower would be a giant Old Forester Bourbon bottle, and that’s when I woke up. Citizens of Louisville, Kentucky are living that dream – well, not the bourbon flowing from taps part but there IS a huge bourbon bottle water tower just west of downtown and its been there, looming over Brown-Forman’s headquarters building, since 1936.
(image via: EC Leatherberry)
The Old Forester Water Tower celebrates and commemorates Old Forester Bourbon, America’s first glass-bottled bourbon which has been in production non-stop – including during Prohibition – since 1870. Times have changed since then, and since the dark Depression years when the water tower was constructed. Folks still enjoy Old Forester bourbon, especially around Kentucky Derby time, but the neighborhood where the water tower stands has seen better days… BYOB and perhaps a trusty sidearm if you’re going to take a look in person.

(image via: Tamron)
It ain’t easy being an attractive water tower, stuck out in the open season in and season out, often for numerous decades. Though what’s inside is what really counts, water towers have the ability to instill a sense of pride, community and affection just by looking good or at least, appearing unique. The very best (and, come to think of it, the very worst) are simply out standing in their fields.

Chalkboarding: Applied Art of White & Black Typography

2011-12-09T18:58:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Architecture & Design, Graffiti & Drawing, Urban Images

Chalk is frequently used as a medium in street art, but it’s never been quite this sophisticated and downright stunning before. Graphic designer Dana Tanamachi does unique custom chalkboard lettering that’s so precise and so gorgeous it will take your breath away.

By day Dana Tanamachi is a designer with Louise Fili Ltd, a well-known lettering studio that creates some of the most memorable typography work in the world. But by night she freelances as a chalk artist, turning sticks of chalk and boring blackboards into amazing works of lettering art.

The intricate details and beautiful flourishes bring to mind the lost art of classic sign painting. Some of the letters seem to almost jump off of the page, giving these temporary works of art an added dimension that makes them all the more appealing.

Even though she doesn’t use any kind of stencil, pattern or transparency to create her works of typography art, Dana’s creations are always precise and sharp. The fact that most of us can’t write in a straight line on a chalkboard, let alone create gorgeous letter pictures, makes her art all the more impressive.

As beautiful and memorable as these pieces are, they are also entirely temporary. Chalk doesn’t last forever, after all, and chances are that the chalkboard owners will need to reuse that space for something else eventually. Knowing that the lovely letters will soon be wiped into oblivion makes us feel almost as though we’re looking at a frozen moment in time, gazing at art that is here today but will be gone tomorrow.

42 Prefab Buildings & Flat Pack Furniture Designs

2011-12-09T18:57:00.003-08:00

By Urbanist in Architecture & Design, Environment & Nature, Furniture & Interiors

When a prefab home or building solution is required it can kick a design-oriented mind into high gear – the search for a visually appealing yet functional solution can be incredibly motivating. These creative designers are no exception. Prefabrication, modularity and portability also translate well into the world of furniture design, where versatile kit-based and flat-pack products can be more easily made and sustainably shipped.

Prefab is becoming a major buzz word in the world of contemporary architectural design. Prefabricated and flat-pack homes, buildings and furniture represent the possibilities of partial mass production and extreme portability fused into aesthetically awesome finished products. The challenge is to combine the need for mobility and sustainability with a building design that appeals to clients and overcomes potentially negative stereotypes (such as shoddy workmanship or poor design) that are conventionally associated with prefab. Click the thumbnails below for more images of and information on these amazing designs:

: Prefab Mobile Home Design

: Prefab Office Studio Design

: Small Portable Prefab Module

: Portable Prefab Miniature Module

: Wooden Cargo Container Prefab

: Configurable Prefab House Designs

: Steel Concrete Prefab Home

: Small Modern Prefab Home

: Complex Creative Prefab Design

: Cargo Container Home

: Dome Home Architectural Designs

: Creative Modern Mobile Home

: Prefab Modern House Boat Design

: Flat Pack House Design

: Creative Flat Pack Furniture Designs

: Curved Plywood Prefab Furniture Designs

: Flat Pack Cardboard Furniture

: Flat Pack Metal Furniture Designs

: Flat Pack Wooden Furniture Designs

Twisted Typography: Barbed-Wire to Cigarette-Pack Fonts

2011-12-09T18:57:00.001-08:00

By Marc in Various Uncategorized

The most the layman knows about Typography tends to be that Comic Sans is inappropriate for business correspondence and that Times New Roman works just fine. Beyond the most basic fonts in your favorite word processor, there is an entire artistic movement pushing forward the quality and variety of typographic styles.

(Images via freelancewebdesigner, freelancewebdesigner, cretique, smashingapps, seattlegraphix, smashingapps)

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words can also create a picture. If someone had handed Gutenberg a paintbrush, it wouldn’t be surprising if he had come up with something along the lines of these portraits.

(Images via thisiscolossal, typeandimage, antsmagazine, brandclay, monsteractive, parsons)

When a font emerges into three dimensions, it’s able to convey emotion in a way not typically experienced on the page or screen. Some artists celebrate the effect something as simple as a stylish font can have on us, by bringing it into three dimensions and lending it a physical dimension that makes it more real.

(Images via thisiscolossal, sixrevisions)

People can create fonts too, but not always in a way that’s appealing to the eye. Artists will sometimes try anything to snap people out of their reverie and pay attention; even if it requires a little pinch.

(Images via scene360, outtheway)

Words made out of paper are a unique twist in the art department. Whether one hangs these on their wall, or keeps them laying down on a desk, they would be an excellent reminder of the beauty of the written word.

(Images via squidoo, 1stwebdesigner, thehypeoftype)

Some typography lovers embrace the real down and dirty grunge style, adding rust and vintage fading into their fonts with reckless abandon. It’s good to be reminded that words are not always clean and detached – they are a very real part of our everyday existence.

(Images via iheartguts, alias3dmedia)

Words can be an integral part of any art project, blending the visual with the written allows a viewer to interact more deeply with the art.

(Images via typedimage, anamorphosis-kate, sirdab)

Some typography art is simply beautiful. Other artists take their work to exhibition calls and attempt to send a clearer message than can be achieved through words alone.

(Images via anoizes, idnworld, invadespace, photoshopwebsite, oneradiotabaco, smashingapps)

The perfect bridge between a word and its meaning involves a visual representation of the word’s definition. The word “coffee” spelled out in coffee stains is a great example of fusing emotion with design.

(Images via thisiscolossal, cravogolina, beautiful-views, thisiscolossal)

Looking at the font list in any modern word processing program makes it seem like there can’t be much more to create. How many variations on such simple shapes can their be? The incredible influx of new and exotic typefaces are a clear repudiation of anyone who claims the end of typography is near.

More Creative Furniture for Cramped Urban Living: 20 Pieces of Ingenious ‘Flat Pack’ Furniture

2011-12-09T18:56:00.001-08:00

By Urbanist in Architecture & Design, Furniture & Interiors

(Check out our complete collection of Unusual, Creative and Transforming Furniture.)

[Above: flat pack book case design by Jeremy Grove]

Flat pack furniture is exactly what it sounds like: furniture that starts out entirely as sheets of wood, metal or even cardboard. In addition to being clever and simply aesthetically awesome, flat pack furniture is also eco-friendly and highly creative. Without further ado, here are 20 more examples of incredibly compact and transforming flat-pack furniture for cramped urban living.

Designer Keiji Ashizawa has applied flat-pack design principles in developing his sleek set of furniture objects including the above chairs and stools. Like giant versions of 3D toy puzzles or model cars, there is a playful aspect to these powerful industrial-produced sturdy-yet-elegant metal designs.

RawStudio is the brainchild of Nick Rawcliffe, a talented designer with an impressive resume. He studied at the Bauhaus and Royal College of Art before moving to work in Japan. His furniture work is as eclectic as his background, which is difficult to pin down stylistically between his studio’s slotted and hanging chairs.

In the same puzzle-piece tradition of the above examples in wood and metal David Graas‘s stool and chair designs take the best possible advantage of the strengths of cardboard to create sturdy furniture that also has a strangely unique style and come in a compact form.

The desFurniture group designs impressively simple pieces of furniture that “push the boundaries of efficiency while maintaining craftsmanship.” Much of their work is created out of a single sheet of plywood and requires no fasteners, adhesives or complex tools. These combine aspects of portable, elegant, simple and ecological furniture design. Shown above are a single-panel lounger, stool, chair and bookcase.

Similar in concept to desFurniture, students of the Ryerson School of Furniture Design created a series of creative furniture pieces each from a single 4×4 foot sheet of plywood. The above desk, laptop stand and tables were each created using this strictly limited amount of material and demonstrate an impressive range of possibilities.
So now that you’ve seen the possibilities of flat-pack design, why not build outsdie the box with a cool flat-pack house? Talk about a great conversation piece! Alternatively, for something more within reach, how about a creative flat-pack book shelf where you flip the supports open and the shelves fall into place? Another possibility for anyone with a saw and a piece of plywood: build your own!

Just Your Type: Amazing Kooky Typography and Fonts

2011-12-09T18:55:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Architecture & Design, Gadgets & Geek Art

The art of typography goes far beyond Arial and Helvetica. There is a certain elegance in the way that typographers can take a standard set of letters and turn them into unique and lovely works of art with little more than a few flourishes. These fonts are shining examples of what can be done with the alphabet we all know and love when some creativity and ingenuity are applied.

Vladimir Koncar’s Wonderful World of Letters

Vladimir Koncar, a Croatian artist, seems fascinated with turning everyday objects into letters. He’s taken everything from pills to cigarette butts to even dirt and hair and turned them into some of the most unique fonts ever. Paper clips, cacti, beer bottle caps – he collects items and uses them to create detailed alphabets, which he then uses to spell out his thoughts at the time.

For Koncar, this unusual exercise in typography is an escape from tedious commercial assignments. As any artist or designer knows, creating solely for others is the quickest way to kill the joy in one’s art – so a release like this one is entirely necessary. Luckily for us, Koncar’s personal project is fantastically entertaining.

The little phrases written out as examples for each font provide Koncar a link between the letters and the materials used to create them. It’s the same for many of us: we choose a specific font to get across a certain message when it’s called for. These wonderful and strange typography sets allow an unprecedented degree of visual connection between the message and the medium.

Google Maps Typography

(images via: Dornob)

The world is full of fascinating things, and Rhett Dashwood proved that when he found the entire alphabet in various locations with Google Maps. To make the challenge more interesting, the search was limited to just Victoria, Australia – which Rhett searched mile by mile for months on Google Maps. If you’d like to see each location for yourself, Rhett’s website includes all of the locations so that you can see the letters in context on their respective maps.

Alphabet City

Those of us who are in love with letters, words and typography can relate to projecting a kind of personality on each letter of the alphabet. Scott Teplin puts an interesting spin on that practice with his Alphabet City prints: each letter of the alphabet is turned into a 3D home, complete with furnishings and appliances.

(images via: x-ing books)

The idea is definitely unique and borders on bizarre, but somehow it works wonderfully. Each letter is like its own little dollhouse, and peering into every picture is like sharing a moment of life with the occupants. The retro-but-modern prints are all available individually from the artist or all together as a book.

Andrew Byrom’s Adventures in Typography

Andrew Byrom creates a fascinating variety of fonts – from those that could conceivably be used on a computer to those that have to be experienced in real life, physical form. “Grab Me,” above, is a character set made of metal grab bars installed on a wall. Some of Byrom’s other creations include letters made from box kites and Venetian blinds.

(images via: Andrew Byrom)

Byrom is a master of bridging the design gap between 3D rendered images and 3D physical objects in his typography designs. This set, called “Interiors,” is actually constructed of welded tubular steel, just like furniture.

Ideographic Alphabet

(images via: Amandine Alessandra)

Graphic designer Amandine Alessandra makes a powerful statement about how we perceive objects with her ideographic (symbol-based) alphabet. The characters are all formed from a chair which is selectively covered and uncovered in certain spots to create each one. According to the designer, the font is only to be used to discuss the specific chair from which the letters are formed.

The Amazing Alphabet Object

(images via: Dornob)

An alphabet that’s rendered in both glowing physical form and in abstracted print form is already pretty amazing. But this set of characters is even more so due to the fact that every character is created by one simple shape: the squiggly black one above. By turning the shape this way and that, every letter in the alphabet can be produced from the viewer’s point of view.

(images via: Hijack Your Life)

Human bodies used to form letters are really nothing new, but the Backbreaker font from Hijack Your Life is exceptional. The entire alphabet was photographed during a single photoshoot, and each letter uses no more than two people (and maybe some windblown bits of cloth). It’s a truly beautiful set of letters made even more compelling by the lovely Netherlands beach on which it was photographed.

20 Eye-Catching Pieces of ‘Recycled’ Urban Furniture: Geeky and Green Adaptive Reuse Design Projects

2011-12-09T18:54:00.001-08:00

By Urbanist in Environment & Nature, Furniture & Interiors, Urban & Street Art

(Check out our complete collection of 70 Works of Recycled Art and Design.)

Do you ever get sick of people telling you to recycle? Well, these furniture designers prove recycling can be a lot more interesting than stuffing cans, bottles and cardboard into the proper containers. A ‘bathtub couch’ and ‘shopping cart chair’ may not be your cup of tea but there is something for everyone in this collection. Who knows, you might even be inspired to find new uses for old stuff around the house after seeing some of these bizarre recycled furniture designs.

The Castor Canadensis design collective has a solution for folks who aren’t sure what to do with old fluorescent light tubes: use them as light fixtures! While the design is not overly complex it is rather elegant in its simplicity. Also, the fixtures are great for diffusing the light and work remarkably well to illuminate an interior living or dining space.

While not exactly ergonomic the adaption of a shopping cart into a chair seems rather reasonable once you see the result: a detailed and structurally-sound seat that bends and gives slightly where needed but also provides a good deal of support and a place to rest one’s arms. Still, these and other shopping cart chairs might be better suited to a BBQ setting than to a formal dining set.

Old sports equipment has a way of accumulating. Some things we outgrow, some things we ‘replace’ only to find the originals later behind some pile in the garage. Instead of discarding all of that stuff why not find a clever way to reuse it? Maybe the skateboard table or baseball bat chair aren’t your style but perhaps you know a sports fan in need of a sporty recycled furniture birthday present.

Not every piece of ‘recycled furniture’ has to be fancy. These crushed-can furniture pieces are extremely simple in theory but quite colorful in practice. They aren’t suited for every interior design scheme but they are robust and would work great for outdoor furniture in a rugged environment. After all, would anyone really notice the rust on these?

If you’ve ever remodeled a bathroom you know just how big and awkward old bathtubs can be and getting one out of the house to be recycled or scrapped is no easy task. With a few simple modifications the designers over at Reestore have found a way to deal with these clunky relics. Whether the solution is a potentially romantic love seat or an entirely kitch creation is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.

A dishwasher drum seems an unlikely candidate for reuse until you see this recycled dishwasher drum table in action. Once transformed, this odd object is surprisingly suited to its new roll as the base of a simple cylindrical side table. The perforations in the site create interesting lighting patters and the hollow center makes this a light and versatile addition to any home.

Once you smash and bend that bike wheel enough it has nowhere to go but the dumpster, right? Wrong if you’re Andrew Gregg who distorts these seemingly broken pieces even further in the pursuit of a higher goal. The results clearly show the objects’ origins but are nonetheless original, dynamic, eye-catching and even useful compositions.

As everything related to computers gets smaller fewer and fewer people need their old CDs, particularly the burned copies of things that are somewhere on hard drive or a iPhone anyway. Simple reuses for these included coasters and gaudy dangling decorations of course, but the chair above is a pretty compact way to reuse loads of them all at once. That being said, one has to wonder whether this CD chair could possibly be comfortable.

Not every piece of old clothing is fit for the Salvation Army. Some things are too full of holes or, well, let’s face it, too embarrassingly outdated for you to subject even a total stranger to. With this simple and material-light clothing container furniture you can simply stuff your old clothes (ideally after one last wash of course) into a new shape and use as plush and padded furniture.

Newspaper has to be one of the most ubiquitous recyclables on the planet and processing newspapers into reusable materials is itself energy-consuming. Instead, people with the time and inclination could take a hint from the above design: folding, wrapping and weaving newspaper can create surprisingly strong, naturally variegated and colorful recycled newspaper baskets.

Cleaning out the drawers always seems to turn up a surprising number of throwaway pens. By the time we get to these many are dried out or otherwise dysfunctional. Up close it may look tacky but from a distance this disposable pen chandelier has some grace to it. Plus if you ever needed a pen you’d at least know where to find one.

Retro is great but for most of us the faked retro items at the local hipster shop are just a bit too contrived. Lamponi Lamps is the real deal: they use vintage appliances and automobile parts to create elaborate and remarkably elegant lamps. There is a kind of retrofuturism at work here with an authenticity rarely found in faux-historical interior furnishings. There are some more great green furniture items and unusually cool recycling projects at Inhabitat and Ecoble as well as some neat recycled art over at CultCase.

In Your (Type)Face: 12 Textual Examples of Typography Art

2011-12-09T18:53:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Architecture & Design, Furniture & Interiors, Graffiti & Drawing

Typography is traditionally a rather flat pursuit: letters on a page, as beautifully designed as they may be, are still just two-dimensional images. But a growing number of artists and designers are bringing typography off of the paper and into the real world. These incredible works of physical typography span fine art, furniture design, public art and even home décor, bringing the intangible nature of languages into a touchable three-dimensional world.

Marc Ruygrok

(images via: Marc Ruygrok)

In the area of typographic sculpture, there is probably no designer more prolific than Marc Ruygrok. The Dutch artist has been constructing stunning type-based sculptures and installations since the early 1980s. His sculptures (mostly in Dutch, but some in English) can be found all over the Netherlands, many of them in public spaces.

Information Leak (Part 2) by Richard J. Evans

(images via: Richard J. Evans)

Laser-cut wooden letters spill out of a faucet, overflow a sink basin and make their way toward the floor in this graceful sculpture. Richard J. Evans completed Information Leak as his final major college project in 2009. The designer wanted to convey how easy it is for information to spill out unintentionally in the Internet Age, and how sometimes it almost feels like it’s pooling up all around us.

I Am the River by Jay Quercia

(images via: Jay Quercia)

On white concrete walls, three-dimensional cardboard letters spell out “i am THE RIVER in search of AN OCEAN.” The beautiful complexity of the statement is offset by the simplicity of the brown cardboard words. Jay Quercia’s installation for the University of Connecticut reflects a feeling most of us are familiar with: being constantly in a state of change, always reaching for the next stage of life.

Type & Form 3D Sculpture by PostSpectacular

(images via: Karsten Schmidt)

London design studio PostSpectacular, headed by Karsten Schmidt, was asked to produce a cover for Print Magazine’s August 2008 issue. After using a complex system to digitally “build” the letters, Schmidt then turned his digital model into a physical sculpture with the use of a 3D printer. The result is a block of words that can actually be touched, held and manipulated. Read more about the creative and manufacturing process from PostSpectacular.

Write a Bike by Juri Zaech

(images via: Juri Zaech)

Designer Juri Zaech’s conceptual bikes feature frames that spell out the owners’ names. While maybe not the most practical or performance-driven bike design ever, it is certainly one of the most beautiful. Juri is currently looking for a way to produce a real, physical prototype of the clever bike concept.

Word Mobiles by Ebon Heath

(images via: VisionWidget)

Brooklyn-based artist Ebon Heath feels that we are bombarded by information: visible, audible and intangible words surround us at every moment. His paper mobiles are made from jumbles of words that take letters and phrases off of the page, off of the billboards and storefronts, out of the computer monitor and mobile phone, and turn them into objects that can interact with our three-dimensional world.

Venetian by Andrew Byrom

(images via: Andrew Byrom)

Accomplished designer and professor Andrew Byrom noticed that Venetian blinds, when pulled and shaped just so, could form the basis of an interesting font. Byrom, no stranger to coaxing letters out of unusual objects, tugged and tied eight sets of hanging Venetian blinds into the word “Style.”

Talk by Andy Mangold

(images via: Andy Mangold)

Using a lovely pixel-based font he designed himself, design student Andy Mangold built the word “talk” out of nothing but sections of two-inch wooden dowel.

Typography Kaleidoscopes by Katerina Orlikova

(images via: Katerina Orlikova)

This student project was inspired by the interplay of light and typography. Katerina Orlikova used letters cut from colored transparent material to construct five kaleidoscopes that turned the very familiar shapes of letters into foreign and odd-looking abstract shapes.

Coffee on Typography by Peter Haggard

(images via: Peter Haggard)

This clever table from designer Peter Haggard seeks to join typography and furniture in novel ways: by exploring what a table would look like as a letter, and by featuring clusters of CNC-cut words on top.

“We” Sculpture by Jaume Plensa

(images via: Jaume Plensa)

Sitting in Vancouver (from October 2009 to Summer 2011) is a strange and wonderful man: the We sculpture from artist Jaume Plensa. Designed for the Vancouver Biennale open-air art exhibition, the sculpture is made up of characters from several different alphabets that come together in the shape of a seated human. Visitors can walk inside the sculpture and surround themselves with letters, creating a one-of-a-kind art experience (and fantastic photo opportunity).

Vai Com Deus Façade by R2 Design

(images via: R2 Design)

This stunning building façade, blending typography and architecture, graced the front of a former chapel-turned-gallery in Lisbon, Portugal. Recalling the years of classical art when art was created for religious purposes, R2 decided to put religion into their design…in a way. The three-dimensional phrases jutting out of the wall are familiar sayings like “for the love of God,” “may God be with you,” and “when God closes a door, he always opens a window.”

Adaptive Reuse: 20 Brilliant Recycled Buildings

2011-12-09T18:52:00.001-08:00

By Urbanist in Architecture & Design, Environment & Nature

Recycling discarded materials into new buildings and adapting disused structures to new uses is not just about sustainability – it is also about savvy innovation and stylish adaptation. Some architects build modular wonders from existing units (such as shipping containers). Others draw from recycled, found and local materials (or entire old buildings) to create aesthetically amazing designs that brilliantly blend old and new.

Spiral island (shown above) is just one such example: an incredible mobile private island floating on 250,000 recycled plastic bottles off the coast of Mexico. From a pre-industrial pigsty converted to a postmodern home and a magnificent monastery built from a million glass bottles to adaptively reused cargo containers, airplane hangars and water towers, here are twenty awesome more examples of brilliantly creative and sustainably innovative recycled architecture. Click below to learn more:

: Recycled Glass Bottle Building

: Pig Sty Building into House Conversion

: Recycled Trailer Theatrical Set Design

: Stonefridge the Recycled Fringe Henge

: Water Tower House Adaptive Reuse

: Airplane Hangar to Indoor Water Park Conversion

: High Line Railroad to City Park Conversion

: Adaptive Reuse of Garage as House

: Container City Modular Mixed Use Buildings

: Transforming Cargo Container Home Module

: Shipping Container Office and Shop Tower

: Creative Shipping Container Playground Design

: Cleverly Camouflaged Cargo Container Home

: Giant Cargo Container Hotel Building

: Modular Cargo Container Housing Designs

: Super Sustainable Cargo Container Home

: Amazing Recycled Metal Sculpture Park

: Art Park Created from Recycled Materials

: Recycled Plastic Bottle Igloo Building

: Structural Sand Bag Walled House

: Even More Amazing Recycled Architecture

: Even More Cargo Container Buildings

: Creative Recycled Material Furniture Designs

: Creative Recycled Art Made from Trash

Totally Typography: 18 Textual Packaging Designs

2011-12-09T18:51:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design

These 18 packaging designs, found on everything from trash bags to gourmet cheese, don’t need fancy graphics or photography to stand out on the shelf. They employ the beauty of text, in flourishing or minimalist sans-serif typefaces, carefully chosen and arranged to convey the identity of the brand.

Hand-Drawn Text by The Manual Co.

(image via: invadespace.com)

Modern and visually engaging, this hand-drawn packaging was produced for boots, bags and accessories by The Manual Co.

Chocolate Cut-Outs by Niamh Richardson

(image via: lovelypackage)

Typography cut-outs characterize this fresh modern packaging by Niamh Richardson. “The text on the front of the packaging was die-cut by hand into rough brown paper, chosen to suggest the organic chocolate. This reveals the bright aluminum foil beneath, which distinguishes each flavour of chocolate. The minimal design reflects the simple, honest ethics of the brand: organic, fairtrade and eco-friendly.”

One Village Coffee by Able Design

(image via: designed by able)

Eye-catching text covers the packaging for One Village Coffee, designed by Able of Philadelphia. A simple color palette of white, brown and blue keeps the design from being too busy.

So Good… Naturally by JJAAKK Design

(image via: lovely package)

The So Good… Naturally packaging by JJAAKK Design features large, quirky hand-drawn text. “Design concepts for a line of organic nuts and trail mixes. Hand-drawn type, patterns and a natural color palette make this packaging feel right at home on your next hike.”

Sivaris Rice by Pepe Gimeno

(image via: lovely package)

Not only does Sivaris Rice stand out for its unusual tube-shaped packaging, but the stark colored typography against the natural paper backing will please any grocery shopping design enthusiast.

Organic Farm by Lindsay Perkins

(image via: packaging of the world)

Lindsay Perkins of the Savannah College of Art and Design designed this typography-covered packaging for a small, local organic farm in rural Maine. “Since all produce grown at organic farms is just a little bit different from each other, I decided to make everything about the packaging, just a little bit different from each other. All type used in the packaging is hand rendered in the shape of grass.”

100% Chocolate Cafe

(image via: thedieline.com)

Each of 100% Chocolate Cafe’s 56 flavors – including cheese and black pepper – are boldly numbered on brightly colored packaging, making it easy for enthusiasts to quickly locate their favorites among the large displays.

Lega-Lega T-Shirts by MIT

(image via: mit.hr)

No, those containers aren’t filled with milk or candy – they’re innovative packaging for t-shirts by Lega-Lega. MIT Dizaijn Studio in Croatia covered the cartons in typography.

Askul Garbage Bag

(image via: packaging design archive)

The cardboard box for Askul Garbage Bags, by Stockholm Design Lab, features typography tumbling toward a trash pile.

Winner Wine

(image via: lovely package)

The arrangement of the hand-drawn font on this box of Winner-brand wine, designed by Constantinos Spaliaras, creates a subtle geometric pattern.

Niche Wine Co. by Top Shelf Creative

(image via: topshelfcreative.com)

Top Shelf Creative and Geoff Vreeken made Niche Wine stand out on the shelves with basic black type on an off-white background. “The idea was to bring a craft beer feel to the wine category. A masculine, old letterpress approach used to demonstrate the fact that the winery is essentially a four-person, hands-on operation … much like craft brewing.”

Brie Bistro Packaging

(image via: idkommunikation.com)
‘Brie Bistro’, a brand name of cheese from Swedish dairy company Skånemejerier, is spelled out in a few choice fonts on this packaging design by ID Kommunikation. “Our task was to give the product a new packaging design reflecting the qualities of the cheese and making it stand out from the crowd. The final result is a purely graphic design with inspiration from the beloved French cuisine and old time brasseries.”

Azita’s Hot Sauces & Dry Rubs

(image via: the dieline)

Type is subtly and not-so-subtly integrated into the packaging for various hot sauces and dry rubs by Azita. Whether blended into the background or featured in bold contrast, this typography has become part of the brand’s identity.

Toast-Its Wine

(image via: toast-its.com)

A gift service called Toast-Its sends out an individual label design for practically any occasion from dinner parties to weddings. Each label is primarily made up of typography.

Before Grain Dog & Cat Food by 29 Agency

(image via: 29agency.com)

The ‘Before Grain’ brand of dog and cat food got a major makeover thanks to Dallas-based 29 Agency. 29 Agency specializes in high-end boutique pet foods, and it shows in this typography-on-black design scheme.

From Our Farms by Si Thorpe

(image via: lovely package)

Why shouldn’t products like eggs get well-designed packaging, too? Designer Si Thorpe of the UK gave this ethically minded egg company a clean look with typography that’s a little rough around the edges for a screen-printed effect.

Grown Botanical Alchemy

(image via: graphic dirt)

A variety of serif typefaces in different scales give Grown Botanical Alchemy’s packaging a simple and sophisticated feel.

Waitrose Herbs by Lewis Moberly

(image via: lewis moberly)

Clean packaging featuring type in black and red lets the beauty of the herbs themselves stand out in this design by Lewis Moberly for Waitrose Herbs.

Bright Ideas: 41 Bold, Beautiful + Bizarre Recycled Lamps

2011-12-09T18:50:00.001-08:00

By Delana in Architecture & Design, Environment & Nature, Furniture & Interiors

Recycled materials are a hot commodity for designers as many of them try their hand at creating environmentally-friendly designs. Whether they are saving objects from the landfill or simply finding a new way to use items that we see every day, the creators of these novel lamp designs all incorporate recycled materials and the result is some truly impressive illumination.

Obsolete Technology Made Useful

(images via: EcoLocalizer, Local Housing Trends, EcoFriend)

When a particular type of technology falls out of favor and it is no longer used by anyone, it usually results in a big load of trash – or a box of unused items in the storage closet (we’re looking at you, VHS tapes). Instead of pitching these relics of the past, some inventive folks are turning them into lighting fixtures worthy of an archaic technology museum. Photographic slides, old traffic lights and floppy disks all make for some wildly interesting lamps and lights.

(images via: Sexy Gadgets and VaroLogic)

Old cassette tapes and a classic iMac G4 are transformed into some truly unique lamps that would brighten any home or workplace. It takes a creative mind to look at something that most people would consider trash and see only possibilities.

From Garbage to Gorgeous

(images via: Keetsa, Keetsa, System Design Studio, WebEcoist, CraziestGadgets)

Among the most fascinating recycled lamps are those made from actual trash – either pulled from the bin or saved especially for a particular project. Diverse items like empty spray paint cans (top left), empty glass bottles (top right), used-up disposable lighters (middle left), cardboard banana boxes (middle right) and spent printer toner cartridges (bottom) have been transformed into surprisingly stylish lighting.

(images via: Ouno Design, EcoSalon, Technabob, Luis Luna, Rodrigo Alonso)

Some of the most memorable designs are born more out of necessity than creativity. Working with the materials at hand rather than going out in search of something new can produce spectacularly creative results. Here, everything from plastic cups to newspapers to drinking glasses are repurposed – even old light bulbs are used in a delightfully playful fixture that allows them to continue providing light long after their filaments have burned out. At bottom is a project from Rodrigo Alonso that uses crushed electronic waste, waste plastic and smelted aluminum cans to create beautiful new lamps from mostly recycled materials.

(images via: Craftster, The Lighting Blog, io9)

At times, the recycled materials and the finished product have equal importance, such as in the cases of these recycled lamps. Soda tabs, an old wine bottle and discarded computer parts contribute to lamps that are not only beneficial to the environment, but are conversation starters as well.

(images via: Luis Luna, Sarah Turner, Inhabitat)

In the hands of creative individuals, just about anything can become a stunning light. Used plasticware, old plastic drinks bottles, and even an old martini shaker are turned into entirely new products that just happen to be made from “old” components. The availability of lamp kits and free online lamp-making instructions have made the pursuit of recycled lamp making accessible to just about everyone.

(images via: Walking-Things)

For those who don’t feel creative enough to invent a whole lamp out of recycled items, this product requires nothing more than a few minutes and nine empty plastic bottles. You just insert the bottles and plug in the cord, and you have an instant recycled lamp that you can proudly proclaim you made yourself.

Strange but Stunning

(images via: GeekAlerts, Craftster, Treehugger, Superuse, Design Engine, Bright Lights Little City)

Some designers create their recycled lamps with such bizarre materials that it is hard to imagine where their inspiration may have come from. From top left: melted Lego blocks, plastic ice cream spoons, ping-pong balls, baby dolls, plastic plates and paper cocktail umbrellas all serve as foundations for some of the weirdest recycled lamps to ever grace a living room.

(images via: Inhabitat, Studio Verissimo, The Lighting Blog, Igor Pinigin)

Even items which would seem to be miles away from items that most people would use to create lamps are fair game. Disposable pens, plastic coffee stirrers, ceramic bowls and even real chicken eggs are the materials that just happened to arouse some designers’ creativity. These unusual lamps manage to look sophisticated even though they are, logically speaking, made from trash.

(images via: Roadside Scholar, The Craft Junkie Blog, Domestic Construction, A Little Polish)

How many of these designs would you bring into your own home? Many of them give few hints as to their previous lives and simply look like expensive designer home accessories. Here, cut paper, old detergent bottles, teacups and used milk jugs are transformed into truly stunning lighting fixtures unlike any others.

(images via: Community Warehouse, Architecture Idea, EcoFriend, Gradient Magazine)

It seems that there is literally no end to the creative ideas behind recycled lamps and lights. Pictured: a coffee urn, old globes, used (and cleaned) chopsticks, and real beach balls are all highly unconventional materials to make lamps from, but somehow they work – and the finished products are unquestionably stylish.

Pretty Packaging: 15 Illustrated Boxes, Bottles & More

2011-12-09T18:49:00.003-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design, Graffiti & Drawing

Flourishes, hand-written text, bright colors and amazingly intricate drawings draw us in to take a closer look at the packaging of soap, cider, wine, salsa, coffee and other products. These 15 ultra-artistic packaging designs are the opposite of all-black minimalism, but just as effective at attracting our attention to items we might not have noticed otherwise.

Tempt Cider

(images via: the dieline)

Dazzling illustrations of dragonflies, jewels, bird cages and partially nude figures will certainly tempt you to pick up a can or bottle of this cider, designed by Danish brand DDB Denmark, to take a closer look.
“The concept is build on the that cider keeps a secret,” the designers say. “You can not smell or taste it but cider is an alchohol. You get tempted by the innocent look, the fruity smell and the refreshing taste. You are too couriuos to avoid a sip and suddenly it´s you that have a secret. Therefore the cider got the name Tempt.
The design is characterised by the innocent look at the first glance but by looking closer you will find small secrets and hidden details.”

Bold City Brewery by Kendrick Kidd

(images via: kendrick kidd)

All of the packaging for Bold City Brewery of Jacksonville, Florida is ultra-colorful and attention-grabbing thanks to the artistry of designer Kendrick Kidd. From the labels on the bottles to the tap handles. Each type of beer gets an appropriate illustration, like the adorable dog on Duke’s Brown Ale and a campfire on the Smokey Porter.

Milk Cocktail by Studio Hattomonkey

(images via: coroflot)

Who could resist picking up a box of strawberry milk – even if you don’t like strawberry milk – when it looks like this? Russian design firm Studio Hattomonkey uses the image of a well-known superhero to make this conceptual packaging stand out.

Leap Organics by Moxie Sozo and Charles Bloom

(image via: lovelypackage)

Lush imagery evoking the wild, natural sources of scents like lavender, clove, eucalyptus and anise adorn the outside of these soap wrappers, designed by Moxie Sozo and illustrated by Charles Bloom for organic soap company Leap Organics.

INQ Mobile by Alberto Cerriteno

(images vía: alberto cerriteno)

Artist Alberto Cerriteno lent his highly distinctive style to packaging for INQ Mobile, resulting in a box that looks absolutely unlike anything you’ve ever seen at a cell phone shop.

The Quest Wine by Studio Lost & Found

(images via: studio lost and found)

What could better serve as a visual for a wine called ‘Quest’ than a series of knights in jaunty poses? Made by a winery called Chalice Bridge, the limited release range of wines represents ‘the Holy Grail of winemaking’. Tokyo-based illustrator Skye Ogden provided the illustrations.

Rabbit Children CD Package by Brian Danaher

(images via: brian danaher)

CD packaging like this recalls the medium’s heyday, when the case and insert were often as eagerly anticipated as the music itself. Brian Danaher designed this limited edition letterpress printed packaging for Rabbit Children’s EP ‘Cemetery Friends’, saying, “The packaging helped create awareness for the new release by standing out from the generic CD comps and digital download codes typically sent by most labels.”

Kraken Rum Media Kit

(images via: the dieline)

First of all, this rum is called ‘The Kraken’, giving it automatic awesome points. Second, it’s got an amazingly illustrated label. But take a look at the press package certain lucky members of the media received as part of the rum’s promotion. Packaging blog The Dieline received this box from Proximo Spirits, which is set up as a “proof” kit with each included element offering evidence that the mythical Kraken sea monster really does exist.

Cerveceria Sagrada

(images via: packaging of the world)

Designer José Guízar drew inspiration from ‘kitschy’ Lucha Libre, one of the most iconic symbols of Mexican pop culture, for this series of Mexican beers.
“The whole concept behind the brand and packaging is inspired by the golden era of lucha in the 1950′s, when movie heroes were not Superman or the X-Men — but El Santo and his wingmen, who fought creepy monsters driving a silver ’52 Alfa Romeo with surf music on the background. The variety of styles are named after fictional characters also inspired by the vintage lucha style; “Black King” Imperial Stout, “Blond Gomez” Lager and “The Vampire’s Son” Red Ale.”

Greenpharma by Grupo Habermas

(images via: grupo habermas)

If you’re going to give a product a cool name like Snake Venom Cream, you’d be remiss not to put an image of a snake on the package. Grupo Habermas helps natural cosmetic line Greenpharma strengthen its brand with simple and elegant illustrations, paired with embossed text in bold colors.

Fruta del Diablo Salsa by Moxie Sozo

(images via: moxie sozo)

Moxie Sozo gives an unknown brand a whole lot of shelf presence with this strikingly illustrated packaging. “By using hand-drawn illustrations inspired by the woodcuts of Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada, we were able to lend authenticity to the salsa while reinforcing the product’s heritage in traditional Mexican cuisine.”

Bella Vie Wine

(images via: packaging of the world)

A ‘refreshingly sweet and fruity’ wine called Bella Vie gets an uber-feminine look in this packaging by Ziggurat Brands, marketed toward women who aren’t exactly wine-savvy.
“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’! What they don’t necessarily want is to know all about the provenance of wine, the complexity of flavour, all of that flowery, fruity nonsense. It’s Friday night, everyone’s round for a pizza, crack open a bottle or three and enjoy…Treasury Wines asked us to develop abrand of rose designed for young women – a market that has very little interest in traditional wine language, codes or cues. ‘Bella Vie’ is bright, bold and simply, unashamedly about having a goodtime all the time.”

MLK by Depot WPF Branding Agency

(images via: depotwpf.ru)

Modern and minimalist, this definitely isn’t your typical big-brand dairy line – and that’s exactly what Depot WPF Branding Agency of Russia was going for in the packaging for MLK. The illustrated images on the packaging were drawn from photos of the actual farm on which the milk is produced.
“As for the illustrations, we used natural farming patterns – a family farm, where the products are produced in a traditional way. Illustrations are hand-made (with a pencil) which enables to stress the hand-made production process.”

Origin Coffee by A-Side Studio

(images via: the dieline)

The illustrations commissioned for the labeling of Origin Coffee aren’t just pretty pictures to peer at in the grocery store. These artist-designed works, curated by A-Side Studio, form a traveling exhibition which accompanies Cornwall, England’s Origin Coffee to tasting events.

Wicked Energy Drink by Kian Forreal

(images via: lovelypackage)

Traditional flash style comes to the Wicked Energy drink courtesy of tattoo artist/illustrator Kian Forreal. The design is bright and eye-catching, fittingly energetic for its purpose.

43 Bright and Beautiful Jack O Lanterns

2011-12-09T18:49:00.001-08:00

By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art

This Halloween it’s time to create the greatest Jack O Lantern that has ever graced the front porch. Startle trick-or-treaters, make neighbors jealous, and munch candy while admiring the flickering flame in the perfectly carved pumpkin.

(Images via indyposted, chrocodiles, thegrip, lennyvasbinder)

Some of the best pumpkins are more sculpture than anything else. With extreme depth and no space for the typical candle, they are truly works of art.

(Images via trendhunter, digitalbusstop)

Many people regret eating too much candy on Halloween, and it’s nice to know that Jack O Lanterns sometimes share that pain. While a bit crude, there’s a great three dimensional quality to this kind of pumpkin carving.

(Images via picchore, picasaweb, mentalfloss)

Compelling (and terrifying) film characters are great pumpkin fodder. While it’s not easy to carve a wonderfully realistic predator recreation, a martian is perfectly doable.

(Images via guidespot, geektonic, blissmassacre, digitalbusstop, royaltutorial, thehitman)

These Jack O Lantern examples may not be mind-blowing, but they’d still outshine nearly every pumpkin in the neighborhood. Spend a little more time this year and show some true creativity.

(Images via underneaththejunipertree, surfwithberserk, gypsyredtint, ebaumsworld)

Anthropomorphized pumpkins are delightfully comedic. It’s especially strange to see pumpkins with realistic teeth grinning with creepy stares and stem noses, but it adds a great contrasting quality to the typical Jack O Lantern’s glowing face.

(Images via coolpicturegallery, indyposted, indyposted, lennyvasbinder, lennyvasbinder, nerdnirvana, izismile)

The realism attainable with such an odd medium as a pumpkin is shocking and impressive. Incredible detail, fantastic expression, and creative execution combine to form exhibit-worthy creations.

(Images via indescribableme, mindlessmirth, westseattleblog, menupages, ypcommando)

Yes, pumpkins are cannibals. This is why it’s always important to keep smaller pumpkins well away from the voracious, larger pumpkins.

(Images via babble, extremehalloween, lifehacker, completenewengland, holidash)

Some Halloween fanatics would argue that a Justin Bieber Jack O Lantern is one of the scariest on the block, but it’s doubtful that this would stop someone from placing it next to their front door.

(Images via intricateart, ashleigh-animation, favim, gravewithaview, jasonmarkjones)

Tim Burton is the godfather of Halloween in his own way, and a multitude of pumpkins have been carved to honor his contribution to spooky culture.

(Images via outta-this-world, documentingreality)

Any manipulated material is inevitably used by Star Wars fans to pay homage to their favorite film series. As always, the fans bring an incredible amount of detail to the difficult task of forging a pumpkin into something epic.

13 Modern Minimalist Movie Posters by Matt Owen

2011-12-09T18:47:00.001-08:00

By Steph in Architecture & Design, Graffiti & Drawing

It may take 120 minutes to tell a story, but it doesn’t take much more than a few bold, graphic images to tell viewers what the story is about. Graphic designer Matt Owen produces brilliant minimalist movie posters for classic and modern films using the most basic of elements in an incredibly clever way.
Choosing imagery that best sums up a film – like a map of the mall for Dawn of the Dead, a shower curtain rod for Psycho and carnival gates for Zombieland – Owen effortlessly captures the plot.

A single pair of cracked eyeglasses leaves no doubt as to which film it’s representing in the case of A Christmas Story. Others, conceived as diagrams, get just a tiny bit more complex while still providing as little information as possible.

See more posters at Matt Owen’s blog.

Enter The Dragon Building: Beijing China’s Pangu Plaza

2011-12-09T18:46:00.001-08:00

By Steve in Architecture & Design, Travel & Places, Various Uncategorized

Fire-breathing dragon, Olympic torch, or both? The Pangu Plaza complex is the latest architectural wonder reshaping Beijing China‘s increasingly Dubai-esque skyline, a product of architects eager to make their mark and city planners happily throwing cash their way.

Chinese Puzzle

(image via: Skyscraper City)
The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing were, among other things, China’s long-awaited opportunity to welcome the world and show off her astonishing progress. Beijing, in particular, revealed herself as much, much more than the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Dozens of architectural showpieces which sprung up in conjunction with China’s booming economy over the past half-decade have succeeded in transforming the city’s skyline.
(images via: 2012LondonOlympics)
One building, however, remains shrouded in mystery long after construction nets and scaffolding have come down: the Pangu Plaza. It’s certainly visible enough: look out from the National Stadium (casually known as the Bird’s Nest) in the direction of the National Aquatics Center, or the Water Cube, and you’ll spy an odd grouping of buildings festooned with hundreds of small windows, the tallest of which sporting a massive LCD screen.
(images via: Foveros and GLP)
Most observers commenting on the Pangu Plaza assume it was built for the 2008 Olympics along with its more famous neighbors. Not so: it may share their general location in the designated Olympic Zone but much of the complex was incomplete as the Opening Ceremonies commanded the attention of billions worldwide.
(image via: HISS Journal)
In addition, the tallest building has been likened to an Olympic torch crowned with a windblown, leaping flame. Not so: all 5 towers in the Pangu Plaza are linked lengthwise along their shared first three floors and the so-called “torch” topping the tallest tower is actually meant to represent a dragon’s head.

Dragon The Line

(images via: RTz13, Sotosoroto and PanguPlaza.com)
Thus put into context, one can discern the line of buildings forming a traditional Chinese dragon. The spaces between the buildings contribute to the overall visual impression of a dragon’s undulating body. Then again, pick up the entire complex and plunk it into downtown Omaha, Nebraska, and you could believe it was an architectural steam locomotive towing a quartet of boxcars.
(images via: Global Times, RBA and Skyscrapers of Beijing)
Though each of the 5 component buildings doesn’t really stand out quantitatively or esthetically, the whole of the complex is something greater than the just being sum of the parts. For one thing, some of the buildings have specific functions: the “tail” building is one of the world’s only two 7-star hotels while another building is a self-contained shopping mall.
(images via: 2012LondonOlympics and Luxury Insider)
The remainder is comprised of office space, residential apartments priced in the millions of dollars, and secured parking garages. Even the tops of the buildings have been put to use as rooftop Chinese courtyards, equipped with sliding roofs that provide shelter during winter and/or inclement weather.
(images via: Foveros, thewamphyri and Ddtmmm)
Stats, you want stats? Here we go… from one end to the other, Pangu Plaza stretches the length of seven football fields. The four smaller buildings each stand 23-stories tall but the “dragon’s head” grabs the limelight. It’s 191.65 m (628.77 feet) in height, comprising 39 stories with 5 more stories extending below ground level.
(image via: Pieter Dubbleman)
Visitors move through the building via 29 elevators and 6 escalators. Embedded into the glass & white granite walls of the buildings are seven huge LED screens with a total area of 3400 square meters (36,600 sq ft). The largest, 900 square meter (9,688 sq ft) screen happens to be the biggest such screen in China.

Peking (Slam) Dunk

(images via: Harrowgate Country and GLP)
Pangu Plaza was designed by Li Zuyuan (above, right) of C.Y. Lee & Partners, the Taiwan-based architecture firm responsible for Taipei 101 (above, left), the world’s tallest building until surpassed by Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
(images via: Foveros and Skyscraper City)
The fact that a Chinese architect was able to win such a significant contract is a hopeful sign for those who feel too much money has been “thrown at” foreign architects who turn a blind eye to Chinese architectural traditions. Indeed, more than a few of Beijing’s skyscrapers look sorely out of place… we’re looking at you, Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV Headquarters Building (above, right), and it’s not easy.
(images via: Sochina.net, Seven Stars Hotel and Booked.net)
With that said, Pangu Plaza is not without controversy. The complex was originally one of a mixed bag of Olympics-related construction projects approved by Beijing vice-mayor Liu Zhihua. In 2006, the high-living Liu had his wings clipped by a governmental oversight board after being accused of corruption and for leading a “decadent lifestyle.”
(image via: Foveros)
If the old adage of the candy store owner occasionally samples his own wares can be applied, then perhaps Liu Zhihua was seen once too often dining at Pangu Plaza’s $600 per person Japanese restaurant. Try the fugu, Liu.
(images via: Luxury Insider)
Other rumors concerning Pangu Plaza have made the rounds, most involving big names with even bigger bank accounts. “We have had a lot of very important guests,” stated Cai Xiaomin, a spokeswoman for Beijing Pangu Investment.
(image via: Supermow)
The Chinese developer doesn’t deny they want Pangu Plaza to be a preferred destination for “the elite of the world”, but company reps won’t comment whether Bill Gates paid $800,000 to rent a high-rise courtyard apartment for a year – one that sells outright for $17 million. They do, on the other hand, confirm that Warren Buffett made rental inquiries on one of the courtyard condos and that former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stayed in a luxury hotel suite during the Olympics. That’s about as elite as you can get, amiright?

(images via: Nice Swine, Extremely Weird Stuff, Harrowgate Country and Lindenhouse)
Love it or hate it… there seems to be little middle ground when it comes to judging Pangu Plaza and the curiously ambivalent attitude of the developers only adds to the project’s mystique. Architectural celebration of Chinese culture, overpriced line of refined commieblocks, or a little of both? Whatever one thinks of Pangu Plaza, I think we can all agree that this “Dragon House on Steroids” could have ended up quite differently