artoo-deco

Author and artisan Kurt W Zimmerman has crafted an retro R2 unit in a style that evokes the Art Deco movement. Zimmerman uses his droids (this one also being radio-controlled and naturally makes all  the boops and blips that we expect and understand) and other custom props to inspire school children and visit the hospital-bound to and fund raise for raise charitable contributions.

tables and triage

Before the design duo created furnishings that defined the Mid-Century Modern era, Charles and Ray Eames developed splints, prosthetics and a body litter (a stretcher, a gurney) for the US Navy ahead of America’s entry into World War II.
More on the Eames’ other surprising projects here and here. The skills honed in mass-producing these medical devices conferred on them the talent and feel for working plywood that was expressed a few years later in their iconic, undulating lounges. Every item in this chain, from the form-fitting splint that could protect a wounded leg to the classic chairs, reflects real homage to the human body and how it carries itself. Take a peek at the splints as part of an exhibition in Leeds courtesy of Hyperallergic that explores the place of sculpture and design in prosthetic limbs and the process of healing and making whole.

step-by-step

Although it may have seemed like adding insult to injury to field-test the innovative idea of incremental architecture in a community just devastated by an earthquake to deliver half-houses, but as Kottke shares with this fascinating look into the subject, perhaps sometimes it takes a crisis to exploit and explore other option, like this neighbourhood in Chile that is not typical public housing. By furnishing a new resident with not a completely finished home but rather an on-going project that can be developed according to how one’s family grows or according to one’s trade, people aren’t just occupants—temporary or long-term—and become co-creators and invested in the building.

merseyside

The only acceptable reclama that for changing a duly christened ship’s namesake would be of course to honour a living and buoyant luminary like Sir David Attenborough. Boaty McBoatface does not go away entirely, however, as one of the auxiliary vessels of this scientific ship, now the RRS Sir David Attenborough and forever twain, is called the “Boaty.”

sietch

Working in conjunction with UC Berkeley and the Peace Corps, a San Francisco-based laboratory has produced a prototype atmospheric well that, powered by wind alone, can harvest litres of clean water. The Water Seer’s turbine push air into a buried condensation chamber (cache) to be collected as needed and is a completely closed system, requiring no extra plumbing or purification-process—very similar to the techniques that Frank Herbert described for the Fremen of the desert world of Arrakis.

filibuster

Consulting the extensive archives of Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, we learn on this day in 1939, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington had its premiere, first shown in the US capital.

Our faithful chronicler provides the additional anecdote that when American films were banned in occupied France a couple years later, many cinemas screened the Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur movie as their last picture show before the ban went into effect. One theatre even played it continuously for a month leading up to the prohibition. (More here via Messy Nessy Chic on the entertainment scene of Paris under the Nazis.) You can watch the entire classic at the link up top but I’d suggest that movie theatres might treat audiences to a healthy dose of Democracy before that country votes.