Welcome to

Following on from some of the ideas in the previous post Topotransegrity designed by Robert Neumayr explores how a responsive architecture can be introduced in public spaces challenging long-held assumptions about architecture as a passive arrangement It investigates todays networked ways that enable architecture itself to operate as an intelligent interface that connects spaces, users and performance criteria In real time and the impact such spatial configurations have on urban space and urban public life.

Topotransegrity is a kinetic structure, which constantly evaluates Its surroundings and reconfigures according to these changing conditions. It is a generic responsive structural system, which adapts to isolated spatial requirements. The structure is capable of various transformations, which range from small-scale surface articulations to large surface deformations, which can generate temporary enclosures. Such a responsive structure can multiply. Intensify and vary the potential uses of public spaces, which usually rely on external intervention to host new activities. Sensors, input devices and wireless networks are integrated into normally dead building materials to transform architectural space into complex intelligent operating systems.

The programme mode automates the basic functions of the structure. Directly related to the specific event schedule of its environment It drives the generic transformations, initiating and locating the deformations that control the access and the circulation within the public spaces. It also generates small emergent temporary spaces, which host ancillary programmes related to ongoing events. Finally it enables certain tiles of the structure’s sheared surface to pivot and thus allow for temporarily different degrees of transparency within the structures spatial arrangement

The crowd mode responds in real time to the movements and behavioural patterns of the visitors within the structure. It Influences the size, orientation and development of the temporary enclosures, previously established by the programme mode. Finally it affects the orientation of the surface’s tiles, based on the positions and sizes of the visitor crowds.

Finally the memory mode records, on a long-term basis, the paths and motion patterns chosen by Individual users, influencing the surface topography by indicating and levelling the most frequented parts. It defines the actual width of circulation spaces, temporary level connections, entrance areas and thresholds according to the number of visitors at every point in time during the period of use.

These three parallel modes of operation run simultaneously and add up to the structure’s complex, unpredictable user-dependant spatial configuration. The constantly changing three-dimensional space envelope interacts with its visitors in a permanent feedback loop, where the users reactions to spatial adaptation are fed back into the system to in turn update the spatial arrangements and individually customize the built environment to requirements at any given moment for any given pattern of use.

Website 

Originally by Ruairi from Interactive Architecture dot Org on April 11, 2006, 7:15pm

Thanks to restrictive stem-cell regulations, one of the United State’s top medical researchers is leaving for a job with a private biotech company. Kristen Philipkoski quizzes scientist Mahendra Rao.

Great… when are they going to realize that there are scientists in other countries? If we don’t do the research someone else will, and they patent the work and well end up buying from overseas. Silly George!

Originally from Wired News: Top Stories, ReBlogged by agmilmoe on Apr 10, 2006 at 09:45 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 10, 2006, 9:45am

Loyal reader Marshall K points out a Frappr Google Map of computer refurbishers across the U.S., a handy resource for anyone looking to recycle an old ‘puter or two. Thanks, Marshall!

 
Comment on this post

Related: Recycle your computer
Related: Reuse water with a toilet seat sink
Related: MacGyver Tip: Make sandals from an old tire

Originally from Lifehacker on April 12, 2006, 10:30am

Webmaster Eyes is an interesting tool that will show you the Google Page Rank of any link on a given page. A cool way to use it is to start at Google and enter some of your favorite keywords. The result will show you the various page ranks of pages in your search result.

This tends to prove the theory that Page Rank isn’t all that relevant. Kind of ironic when you think about it. Thanks to Amit for the tip.

 
Comment on this post

Related: Deleting things from Google’s cache
Related: Google Map Maker
Related: Download of the Day: View Rendered Source Chart

Originally from Lifehacker on April 11, 2006, 7:00pm

It’s true: ocassionally Mac applications crash. Happily, Macworld’s got the rundown for what to do when it happens, including the age old cureall - rebooting. But my favorite tip is to check out the console logs - really helpful text documents that constantly update with the state of your Mac.

Launch OS X’s Console utility (/Applications/Utilities). Click on the Logs button in the toolbar. From the list on the left, locate the CrashReporter folders (in your user folder/ Library/Logs and in /Library/Logs). In these folders are logs for every application on your Mac that has ever crashed.

Find the log file with the name of your problem program and select it. The output you’ll see here is too technical for most people. But occasionally you’ll find a clue to the cause of the crash — for example, a reference to a problematic plug-in.

 
Comment on this post

Related: Setting up Windows XP on a Mac with Bootcamp
Related: Dual boot OS X and Windows with Apple’s Bootcamp

Originally from Lifehacker on April 11, 2006, 10:00am

“The effort for Childcare, India aims to help more than 20 Million Indian Children who beg on the streets each day.”
Found this powerful ad on a very entertaining site for ad-lovers. It has some brilliant ideas. Fascinating, how the world of advertizing is close to the artworld, without either of the sides openly acknowledging the brotherhood. With a few notable
exceptions, of course.
(via)

Originally from New Art on April 10, 2006, 5:31pm

A mutiple choice question this time. What is the function of this concrete protrusion on the plains of the Negev Desert in southern Israel?

a) An ancient observatory for equatorial auroras.

b) A twenty-first century 10,000-square-meter “contemplative space” used by horny teens and meth junkies.

c) A twentieth century freedom sculpture commemorating an Israeli war victory.

d) A future astronomical viewing platform for the coming galactic collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies.

e) All of the above.

(Answer)

In the Archives:
Is Dani Karavan a cargo cultist?
Landscape challenge #2
Landscape challenge #1

Originally from Pruned on April 7, 2006, 6:12pm

For those eager to know, the correct answer to the Landscape challenge #3 is D — the perfect venue to witness the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies coalescing into a new galaxy. And here is a fantastic preview of that intergalactic collision from astronomer John Dubinsky and composer John Kameel Farah.

“The harsh reality of the distant universe with all of its violent interactions seems remote from our human existence and all might seem to be quiet and normal in our home the Milky Way. But it seems likely that in a mere 3 billion years, our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda and the Milky Way will fall together and have a close collision. They will likely merge and be reborn as a single giant elliptical galaxy over the course of another billion years or so. How might this metamorphosis play out and what might you see if you looked up at night over the next 4 billion years!”

And I have to ask: can landscape architecture, whose mastery of time distinguishes it from architecture and most other related fields, concern itself with time scales in the billions?

Link:
GRAVITAS: Portraits of a Universe in Motion

(Spotted at Moon River)

Originally from Pruned on April 10, 2006, 11:44pm

[Images: Nepal's government put the capital, Kathmandu, under curfew for a third day, as protesters risked being shot while vowing defiance of King Gyanendra's rule. Three protesters have been killed already. Photos by AP. Read more in the BBC]

Originally from Subtopia on April 9, 2006, 6:57pm

Originally from Tinselman on April 10, 2006, 4:39pm

Originally from Tinselman on April 10, 2006, 12:28pm

Just playing catch up with a couple of articles.
Can you imagine what Manhattan would look like if a nuclear bomb exploded there? Well, just in case you can’t this article (which can be read in full here) paints a pretty graphic picture. While an electromagnetic pulse ripples roughly 4 kilometres and wipes out all of the electronics in that range, “the shock wave levels every building within a half-kilometre, killing everyone inside, and severely damages virtually all buildings for a kilometre in every direction.”
Wow, talk about making “the unimaginable” imaginable. Then, “detonation temperatures of millions of degrees ignite a firestorm that rapidly engulfs the area, generating winds of 600 kilometres an hour.”
Walls of flame belched across the landscape at 375 miles an hour.

[Image: Remains of bombed tenements in Second Avenue in Radnor Park, March 1941.]

Ahh….scenes scorched into the American psyche since those epic imaginary days embalmed in the Cold War. Just when the atomic nightmare seemed to almost be reduced to the filmic rubble of a pale and redundant scene played out too many times in our heads, the nuclear complex goes and revs up its engines again full bore hyping tensions with Iran, and warning of foreboding new terrorist threats that could conceivably (the article tells us) drop “a 45-kilogram lump of weapons-grade uranium” onto another similar lump and “from a height of about 1.8 metres [could] produce a blast of 5 to 10 kilotons.” That’s apparently a good 5 to 10 thousand tons of TNT.
This fear detonates from the concern that too much highly enriched uranium is floating around today from old and raided Soviet bunkers that could sooner or later end up in the wrong hands (many times over).

[Pokhran in Rajasthan, May 1974, NTI.]

With the now (what is almost) banal spectacularity of Hollywood effect, “The explosion scoops out a crater 20 metres across and 10 metres deep, sending thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive debris into the air as a cloud of dust.”
It’s Manhattan splattered into a searing post-urban aerosol of indiscriminant material and debris, whirling through — wake after wake – an ignited atmospheric grinder; the metropolis as urban corpse set sail in a billion dismembered parts, grafted, confused, singed along the way like some biblical hail storm raining down the shrapnel concrete and steel bits of an entire city back down onto itself; an infernal image of civilization made leftover in a single flash.
The article goes on to describe a whole pharmaceutical dream of ingestible radiation countermeasures, alluding to perhaps another future classic apocalyptic flick where catatonic pill-popping zombie survivors wander tunnels and pace the contaminated wreckage in search of escape, buried loved ones, or perhaps something to eat.

Speaking of lost wreckage and something to nibble on, a couple of weeks ago New York City transit officials discovered an old Cold War fall out shelter (or, perhaps just a dusty storage unit?) holed up in the base structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, stocked with empty water drums, medical supplies and boxes of 44-year-old crackers with special survival instructions for eating them.

[Images: Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War, John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times]

With all this renewed nuclear tension boiling up around the world, the discovery of this spat up little fossil is a silly archaeological trace of the eerie paranoia that governed the American psyche for decades while posturing with the Soviet Union, but also makes us wonder: has the Cold War really ended, or is it something that constantly lurks just below the surface, regurgitating itself up off the geopolitical backburner when it needs to, playing the earth for a hollow museum of nuclear urbanism inscrolled in synchronous economic timebelts perpetuated by run-on projections of post-future nuclear war? Today, the ‘Long War’ enters its capsule.

Originally from Subtopia on April 12, 2006, 12:34am

“We no longer use Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) in any of our products and have found plywood alternatives that are made with E1 classification low urea formaldehyde glues. …. currently the most stringent in the world.“ And for their sofa and chair frames those plywoods are FSC certified. Koskela make a line of upmarket furniture and lighting. They also handle the curious Mongolian goat hair carpet we mentioned previously. Steel unused in the furniture manufacture is salvaged via scrap metal merchants.

(This post continues on the site)

Originally by warren from Treehugger on April 11, 2006, 11:36am

Sun Microsystems today announced its new Sun Ray desktop computers which are being marketed as eco-friendly machines. The two machines, known as Sun Ray 2 and Sun Ray 2FS, provide “thin” clients, as opposed to full desktop PCs, or “fat” clients. The Sun Ray 2 client boasts very low typical power consumption — approximately four watts, compared to a typical PC which consumes over 80 watts. More information can be found at the Sun Ray home page. :: Via Yahoo Finance

Originally by justin from Treehugger on April 12, 2006, 11:32am

Soundly chastised for presenting the Sustain MiniHome, which most commenters thought overpriced, we thought we would offer up an alternative from Maui Instant Cottages. It is true that when one subtracts style, proportion, sustainable materials, well thought out and useable spaces, and adds steel and vinyl, one can save a lot of money.

(This post continues on the site)

Originally by lloyd from Treehugger on April 12, 2006, 7:21am

First there were trainspotters and now we have cloudspotters—a growing group who celebrate the wonders of the clouds in the sky. The Cloud Appreciation Society’s Manifesto states that “we believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and life would be immeasurably poorer without them”. “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now”. The Society believes that clouds are “nature’s poetry” and to celebrate them they have created a website as their spiritual home.

(This post continues on the site)

Originally by Bonnie from Treehugger on April 12, 2006, 6:12am

The walls dividing the game universe are coming down.

I’m waiting for the virtual world financial markets to go totally mainstream. But this is an important first step. –AM

Originally posted by larskflem from del.icio.us/tag/future, ReBlogged by agmilmoe on Apr 11, 2006 at 12:52 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 11, 2006, 12:52pm

via Sivacracy, April 9, 2006:
Lessig on ‘Who Owns Culture’ [Link]         
                              

This is a great lecture Larry gave at the New York Public Library last year.
[View on Google Video]

via PR Newswire:
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig to Speak at New York Public Library on April 7 (2005)

Pair to Explore the Topics of Copyright, Downloading and File-Sharing in Who Owns Culture?

SAN FRANCISCO, March 3 /PRNewswire/ — On April 7, the New York Public Library and Wired Magazine will present musician, songwriter and author Jeff Tweedy and Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig in a discussion moderated by Wired Magazine contributing editor Steven Johnson. The engagement Who Owns Culture? will explore the artistic, commercial and legal issues that surround the Internet-enabled freeing of culture. It is part of the new series Live From the NYPL.

Jeff Tweedy, whose band Wilco recently earned two Grammy awards for their current Nonesuch Records release A ghost is born has openly embraced the culture of digital downloading and file-sharing by routinely offering free
downloads of live music and new music on the Wilco Web site wilcoworld.net. "A piece of art is not a loaf of bread," explains Tweedy. "When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience."

"We need to listen more to those who teach by what they do," says Lawrence Lessig. "Jeff Tweedy, and Wilco, have done a great deal to teach all of us  something important about creativity." [...]

Great lecture… check it out. –AM

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist, ReBlogged by agmilmoe on Apr 11, 2006 at 12:46 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 11, 2006, 12:46pm

“Many video services have started offering new features like editing and remixability in an attempt to snatch a piece of the ever-expanding online video pie. But for the average user–who just wants to post a video on the ‘net and share it with some friends–there are already too many options out there. All one really wants to know is, which site is going to work, with the least amount of hassle?”

Originally from unmediated on April 10, 2006, 12:40pm

From Nature:

People who have had near-death experiences are more likely to mix up dreams and reality than those who have not, researchers say. At times of extreme danger or trauma, many people report out-of-body experiences, seeing intense lights, or a feeling of peace. "Near-death experiences are more common than people realize," says neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, lead author of the study published in Neurology.

Via the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, based in Federal Way, Washington, Nelson found 55 people who reported near-death experiences after traumatic incidents such as car accidents or heart surgery. He also interviewed an equal number who had not had any such experiences. Of those who reported near-death experiences, 60% also reported having had at least one incident where they felt sleep and wakefulness blurred together. For those without a near-death experience the figure was 24%.

More here.

Originally by Azra Raza from 3quarksdaily on April 11, 2006, 4:45am