party on the patio

We quite enjoyed this series of artful photographs taken from a bird’s eye perspective of these vintage mosaic tile and concrete outdoor furnishings as captured by Jonathan Tan of Singapore’s public housing shared balconies. Put in context, these bright tables and stools reflect the optimism of the city-state’s Housing & Development Board’s efforts to help alleviate a housing crisis and foster a communal spirit and encourage neighbours to dine together on the decks. More at the link above.

skyline

We quite enjoyed this historical survey of the ever-upwardly mobile skyscrapers of New York City commencing with the Latting Observatory, a wooden tower erected the 1853 World’s Fair and decreased in stature afterwards in deference to the steeple of Trinity Church, which held the title of tallest building in the United States until 1869. The pictured 15 Park Row (Wolkenkratzer) was completed 1908 and was a pioneering edifice for its use of structural steel and was accorded protected status as a historic monument in 1999. More to explore from design boom at the link up top.

guerrilla greening

Via Colossal, a Honolulu-based design consortium imagines the transformation of some of the iconic urban corridors of world cities transformed through an aggressive and transfixing shift away from the concrete jungle to something living and sympathetically breathing with us. Learn more about their work and the study that’s gone into these visualisations at the link above.

7x7

one man’s trash: a preview (plus whole film) of a documentary about spelunking in New York City’s garbage  

dare mighty things: Martian rover Perseverance (previously) conducts first test flight of its airfoil drone

distant drums: the ‘Wilhelm Scream’—the stock effect of a man being eaten by an alligator  

personnage: the almond and pebble that inspired Joan Miró’s sculpture  

palace of culture: a choreographed tour of Lithuania’s Socialist Modernist architecture  

moon unit: Space X awarded NASA contract for lunar lander for the upcoming Artemis mission  

pegged: artist Helga Stentzel (previously) creates a clothes-line polar bear to raise awareness for climate change

shake shack

In the aftermath of the April 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires that ravaged San Francisco over five thousand refugee shelters were constructed to replace the tent cities that emerged in Golden Gate Park and other areas to prevent a follow-on public health crisis. Most of the sturdier habitations—cottages (it reminds us of this image) for which tenants paid a $2 per month rent—have been demolished over the ensuing century but at least a few dozen remain, conserved by a following of dedicated residents. More from JWZ and the San Francisco Chronicle at the link above.

7x7

cortège: the custom Land Rover hearse that will convey Prince Philip on his funeral procession

whiter-than-white: ultra-reflective coating (previously) could help cool the climate—via Slashdot  

eboracia: housing developer Keepmoat Holmes discovers sprawling Roman ruins in North Yorkshire  

elenctic debate: honing one’s critical thinking with the Socratic method 

emojinal rescue: the Unicode subcommittee reconvenes, heralding the coming of new glyphs  

ramshackle: illustrations of antient structures that survived the Great Fire of London before they were ultimately demolished  

pleurants: bright and bold floral urns for cremains

the principle of plenitude

While there is surely some artistic license for exuberant abundance at work in these Belle Époque parlours, drawing rooms, studies and grand halls, especially if commissioned by the landed-gentry to show off their ostentation in the best light, we quite enjoyed this conspicuously non-minimalist gallery of interiors. It’s quite the look book. The above title could apply to the taste in decorating these room, but is generally used to refer to a cosmological stance that the Universe contains all possible forms of existence, either always and forever in diversity or in a state where the range of miscellany accrues over time. Some houses and collections do the latter.

nüẉa

Framing what was formerly the stuff of science-fiction into fact that’s seeming just within our reach, we are treated to a virtual fly-through tour that one architectural studio envisions for Martian habitation with the cliffside self-sustaining settlement that could eventually accommodate a quarter of a million Earthlings at Tempe Mensa (see also) with construction beginning by 2054. Learn more at the links above.

under the sea

Informed by the futuristic pavilions constructed for the World Expo in Osaka (previously here, here and here), we were delighted to pay a virtual visit to the Ashizuri Underwater Observation Tower (see also) built in 1971 by architect Yoshikatsu Tsuboi (坪井善勝). Seven metres under the waves, submerged guests can view fish, coral and other marine life in this reserve along the Tatsukushi coast in Kochi prefecture. More at Design Boom at the link up top.

port authority trans-hudson

Though entertained throughout the 1940s and 1950s as a vehicle for urban renewal and to stimulate development, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller felt he had not gathered the sufficient and sustaining political and public will to sign the bill directing the construction of a World Trade Centre for Manhattan until this day in 1961 and fraught with zoning and controversy, not completed until twelve years later—almost to the day. The project, intended to rehabilitate the Port Authority where ridership was declining, displaced New York City’s Radio Row, a warehouse district that had existed since the 1920s which hosted many electronics goods stores and was a driver of innovation by proximity and saturation as well as affecting many tenants and small businesses in the dense waterfront neighbourhood. Many of the affected protested that the city should have gotten involved in a prestige project masquerading as social stimulus.

la pista automobilistica

Completed in 1923, this historical aerial photograph of the Lingotto building in Turin once housed the automotive factory of Fiat, with raw materials uniquely loaded on the ground floor and the assembly line moving up a helix of five storeys for completion with finished models emerging on a rooftop test track. Production of cars was eventually mothballed in 1982 but Renzo Piano redesigned the complex, preserving its character and race track—seen in the original 1969 heist movie The Italian Job—as a corporate headquarters and multipurpose centre with a hotel and convention space.

7x7

a tree grows in brooklyn: a map of New York’s great perennials  

no wine before its time: an interview with the director of Orson Welles’ infamous commercial for Paul Masson’s California champagne  

foley artists: the talented individuals who help make supplemental sounds for nature documentaries  

what level of wood panelling is this: McMansion Hell yearbook 1979—previously  

riding the rails: the portfolio of Wang Fuchun (RIP), celebrated photographer best known for capturing the narrative train travel  

schwarzschild radius: the Event Horizon Telescope—previously—takes another picture of the black hole  

hempire state: New York poised to legalise cannabis

8x8

topsy-turvy: the architecture of the upside-down  

forever blowing bubbles: the symbols of Wall Street, capitalism protest art  

hashtag hastings: remix your own Bayeux Tapestry (previously)—via Kottke 

sit, ubu, sit: Pablo Picasso called the injured owl he discovered and nursed back to health by that name partly out of assonance with ‘hibou,’ French for hoot, and the obnoxious Alfred Jarry character  

voyager station: orbiting cruise ship set to open as early as 2027—via the always excellent Nag on the Lake 

0 bby or star wars retrofitted: remastering the franchise with references to what’s been revealed in the past four decades  

tailpipe: visualising carbon dioxide emissions through a driving game—via Waxy  

bright and airy: an inside-out concept residential project with lots of ventilation

won’t you take me to comfort town?

Nag on the Lake’s Picture of the Day transports us to housing estate completed in 2019, first conceived in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis built on the campus of a moribund rubber factory on Kyiv’s industrial Left Bank, perplexingly to the right of the Dnieper river. Painted and clad in a fashion to suggest children’s wooden building block architecture, the affordable low-rise apartment blocks are a colourful contrast to the landscape of older so-called krushchevki, the housing scheme promoted under Soviet rule whose necessary up-keep did not always carry over when ownership transferred into individual stakeholders.

6x6

spongmonkey: though not a cultural shibboleth for myself personally, this history of the Quiznos’ submarine sandwich franchise’s mascot was an interesting object lesson in internet culture—via Miss Cellania  

backmasking: fun with that portrait animation application, via Super Punch  

puce chintz alert: a truly cursed McMansion built in 1978  

micro-face: a fascinating, multistage look at the process of acquiring a super hero with the Planet Money podcast  

garage mahal: vlogger pays house-calls to the ostentatiously wealthy, asks what they do for a living

previous tenants: buildings that used to be a Blockbuster video rental shop—in the tradition of This Used to be a Pizza Hut—via Things Magazine

6x6

affiche: early Art Deco posters of René Magritte  

dogs of war: a public service announcement issuing guidance on how to disable Boston Dynamics weaponised Spot units  

whitewash: thankfully, President Biden is able to overturn “beautiful” architecture executive order that would mandate neo-classicism in federal buildings 

clothes peg: the clothesline animals of Helga Stentzel 

second life: exploring and conserving the abandoned spaces of the internet  

mask media: brilliant Soviet Kazakh health promotion campaigns from the 1970s—see also

axonometric projection

Via Things Magazine, we discover the portfolio of Margarethe Fröhlich (*1901 - †2001), architectural illustrator and modeller, who created straightforward yet expressive interiors to allow clients to preview their rooms with furnishings. Working in Munich, Prague, London and then New York, Fröhlich collaborated with Raymond Loewy (previously) and went on to teach at Columbia University. The title refers to the specific foreshortening techniques that allows a viewer to perceive more than one side of an object on a flat surface without overt distortion by skewing the axes and angles. In contrast to the auxiliary view of an ensemble depicted from one of the primary presentations—that is, front, back, left, right bottom or top, an axonometric picture does not privilege any principle axis and instead creates the illusion—the lines of sight—of two in parallel. More to explore at the links above.

5x5

vanishing london: the Topographical Society laments and documents changes to the city—1900 to 1939 

a murder of crows: a captivating thread about accidentally creating a fiercely loyal avian regimen 

kaitenzushi: a 1948 proposal to move diners from course to course  

genius loci: an investigation into the character Tom Bombadil from the Middle Earth legendarium 

forwarding address: moving a Victorian mansion in San Francisco

saut de loup

Via Miss Cellania’s links, we learn about the ingenious landscaping technique that goes by the above or more commonly hâ-hâ, thought either to reflect the element of surprise by those coming across the invisible barriers or an abbreviation of half retaining wall, half-ditch, which creates walls and controls access without interrupting the view, see also here and here. See several examples from Amusing Planet at the link above.

7x7

penn station’s half century: vignettes of the original New York Beaux Arts transportation hub painstaking brought to life to experience the station prior to its 1957 demolition and renovation 

delightful creatures: drone captures manatees and dolphins frolicking in Florida Everglades 

raven story: Alaska Tlingit artist features on new US postage stamp with a depiction of the trickster spirit

poisonous green: the paint that might have been the death of Napoleon and other toxic tinctures—see previously  

de-programming: interviews with children of parents radicalised by QAnon trying to get their moms and dads back 

morph and mindbuffer: a mesmerising hypersurface of a globe composed of expanding isohedrons 

preservation watch: conservationists fear that the iconic, Art Deco lobby of the McGraw-Hill Building might be under threat