pharmacopoea

As we face a medical crisis that threatens to return health care to pre-industrial levels, researchers have been scouring the natural world for novel compounds that have not yet been overcome by anti-microbial resistance (here, read about how that dragnet might be extended with citizen science)—as even the most potent in our limited quiver of antibiotics have been vanquished due to our abuse and overuse. Scientists and care-takers in Australia have discovered that the milk of Tasmanian devils have six-fold the immunity boosters of human milk and can combat some of the most dread pathogens that linger in what ought to be the cleanest of places. I wonder if these carnivorous marsupials might one day be our salvation and it really punctuates the fact that we diminish any part and parcel of Nature at our peril, since who knows what’s already been lost.

royal remembrancer

Every year in early October the city of London for the past eight centuries the city of London pays a symbolic, token rent to the monarch of six horseshoes, sixty-one nails, an axe and a knife plus eleven pounds sterling. The office of Remembrancer of the Crown was established in order to keep tabs on rents and assizes, although the whereabouts of these specific properties are time out of mind. Other estates around England are stipulated to annually or situationally render such things as a single white rose, a French flag, port wine, or a straw bed for visiting dignitaries.

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.”