Serendipity Book

Magic Mushrooms the size of trees

Spotted this months ago but forgot about it. Now summer has gone I fear it may have been taken down so now is the time to preserve it for posterity.

For years now, some of the Piccadilly Line trains on the London Underground have included a great illustration called "Above Ground" that shows the progression of the Piccadilly Line from above as it weaves its way across London through a number of key landmarks and tourist destinations.

As part of the Thin Cities programme, Transport for London commissioned a new version which features a fantastical post-apocalyptic reinterpretation of this classic image by an artist called Nils Norman. It shows a future London seemingly covered in Eden Project domes, triffid-like robotic creatures and a forest of oak tree sized psilocybin mushrooms.

This is just the lower section of it, you can find a decent PDF of it here.

Foster's New Beijing Terminal

The Guardian treats us to some images of the construction of the forthcoming Beijing airport terminal designed by Sir Norman Foster:

That last image reminds me of the sneak preview of T5 we got earlier this year. Very impressive it was too. Sadly cameras were not permitted.

Waster

You'll all have seen this famous 1999 image of a supermarket, '99c' by Andreas Gursky which vividly illustrates the overwhelming choice on offer in a modern grocery store:

If you like that, you may like some of the work of Chris Jordan. Some of his images featured in the pages of The Guardian today. His work is designed to draw attention to the volume of waste created by a modern consumer society. Much of it creates a similar visual impact to Gursky's '99c'.

His image 'Cans Seurat', below, depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds, to recreate the pointillist masterpiece 'The Walk' by Georges Seurat. The full size image is 60" by 92".

At partial zoom:

Close up:

That's not my desk

Oh, to be surrounded by furniture like this at work.

I just can't think of a chair that would do it justice.

From Conran UK or USA

Bridge Installation at the London Design Festival

The London Design Festival last September included this spectacular installation called  Bridge, by Michael Cross. It features a series of steps that rise out of the water as you walk across them, as if walking on water.

An estimated 300,000 people from over 30 countries attended the 2006 festival which was centred on the Truman Brewery. The 2007 festival starts on the 15th September for 10 days and will be hubbed around the South Bank.

MIT > Digitally-controlled Walls Made of Water

Our digital and physical works blur further as MIT News reports that MIT architects and engineers have created a building that is literally made of water that features liquid curtains for walls - curtains that not only can be programmed to display images or messages but can also sense an approaching object and automatically part to let it through.

The "digital water pavilion" - an interactive structure made of digitally controlled water curtains - will be located at the entrance to Expo Zaragoza 2008, in front of a new bridge designed by Zaha Hadid. The structure will contain an exhibition area, a cafe and various public spaces."

"To understand the concept of digital water, imagine something like an inkjet printer on a large scale, which controls droplets of falling water," explains Carlo Ratti, head of MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory.

Rati added: "In the Nineties, digital technology led us to fantasize about distant virtual worlds. Today we have moved on: the future of architecture might deal with digitally augmented environments, where bits and atoms seamlessly merge."

Poème électronique

“Poème électronique,” by Le Corbusier, Ian Xenakis, and Edgar Varèse, was created for the Philips pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair held in Brussels:

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is just pretentious art wank but let's remember two things: 1) It was 1958 and colour TV was only just getting off the ground and, most importantly, 2) this was paid for by Philips as a way of showing that they were at the cutting edge, so it is corporate-sponsored pretentious art wank marketing communications.

On the first point, remember that it wasn't until 1961 that Walt Disney really broke through in the U.S. on NBC with his "Wonderful World of Color" series (see below for the original intro sequence) and it wasn't until 1967 that the BBC introduced regular colour broadcasts (initially only on BBC Two).

Dwell's interviews with Design Leaders

In this interesting interview for Dwell, Christopher Deam talks about his modern take on the Airstream.

This is the second of a series of interviews entitled Design Leaders created for Dwell by TinBike Productions.

The wonderful Beau Kristan Bouverat and Jordan Olshansky at Tinbike / True Stories in San Francisco worked with us on a big project like this last year. They created a fantastic 45 minute documentary film about the future of consumer electronics based on expert talking heads. It was really well received by the client so thanks again for all your help fellas. Highly recommended.

Gormley statues go to work

  Gormley statues go to work 
  Originally uploaded by T L J.

More abuse of the Gormley statues on Waterloo bridge. Here the RNLI have sprung one into service as a tin-rattler.

Valencia Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences)

Wanted to share some photographs of Santiago Calatrava's astonishing City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia that I found whilst browing for 'cities' & 'architecture' on Flickr.

People may sneer about cities employing starchitects (that nice portmanteau of the phrase 'star architects') but seeing these photos has just put the city of Valencia on my short break shortlist for sure.

Photo credits:
1) Tony Blay
2 & 3) Victor Puig Vilarrubis (aka 45street)
4) Raimon (aka Marathoniano)