WURM APP

This app is too cool not to share . . . check it here via the WURM gallery

Busan, Korea 2003 vs. 2011

Over eight years ago I particpated in the Busan International Student Design Seminar (BIADS), hosted by the city of Busan. Concurrently the city hosted the Busan International Architectural Competition (BIARC). BIADS received attendance by most of the architectural colleges in Busan, something like 8-10 colleges as I recall. Five other Texas Tech students, Dean Vernooy and Professor Michael Mussotter joined together to vist South Korea and the seminar/competition. The event was well received by all parties and well celebrated.Today, as I skimmed through Bustler and Archinect I see the following rendering by Columbia University students. The exact same location as the competition and seminar. Busan has been acquiring and hosting competition after competition to design and develop Gwangalli Bay. I'll be interested to see the eventual developments in Busan as the city continues to grow, the different demographics, the population change and locations of populous etc. Busan Wiki busan demographics

Top 25 Architecture firms of 2011

Via Architectural Record July Issue

Ai Wei Wei released!

If you live on mars and have not heard...

Read on NYT | here

The Identity Project

THIS IS A FREE EVENT!! Thursday, June 2nd, @CTC International. The party starts at 7:30PM!

work sketches

did this little sketch at the office and while it's workstations layouts . . . cubicles . . . i think it has some potential to develop into a sweet series of sketches. what you think?

Wim Crouwel: Total Design

iconographics:wim crouwel
total design - wim's branding and identity company
iconographics short list of world's most iconic graphic designers . . .
wallpaper article on wim crouwel

a poignant figure in design, graphic design, branding and identity - the articles and links say it best!

Infographic on Infographics

So this little chart is of special interest to me at the moment. I am currently working on a little graphic for a client and as a result, I have been swimming amidst the infographic industry a bit more often then usual. Ivan Cash put together a graphic that collects and represents data on graphics that collect and represent data. I do wonder if this experiment could be extended into the abstract to create a beautiful self-referential loop up redundant information. (Like an xref in a xref)

I am also curious if anyone has done any infographic work on the side, or just for fun. I have a few examples on my site (link), but I would love to see some other examples from the BIG.

found via Public School

EUTHANASIA COASTER

This is a really interesting project by designer Julijonas Urbonas. He has been a background in the field of amusement park development that includes a tenure as a managing director of a Lithuanian Theme Park. His current work, influenced by his interested, is self-classified as the realm of "bodily-perceived aesthetics of gravitational theatre."

This project embelisshes and elaborates on this niche field of research with the proposed "Euthansia Coaster". This is best explained by the designer:

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once sad that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know.”

You can read more about the project here: Euthanasia Coaster.
Also be sure to look through the design group at: Design Interactions.

This idea caught my eye because it used architecture/engineering as a direct tool. Instead of housing a space with a specific function or using a structure for a specific purpose, this project is designed with a direct result in mind: pleasurable death. So much more creative then sticking your member into a light socket, this coaster is a bridge that transfers the passenger between states of being. Like a space tether to heaven. I wonder what other kinds of forms could result from this notion of abstract transference or being.

Just Visiting...

Joshua Nason / Jeff Nesbit / Victoria McReynolds / Daniel Pruske / Dustin White

Just Visiting is an exhibition of work from five Visiting Assistant Professors prior to their arrival in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University. This exhibition threads the diverse individuality of each professor’s background and trajectory to showcase a momentum of cultivated energy. Through modified timelines, Just Visiting maps previous projects, subjects of inquiry and the various locations inhabited by the visiting professors. Brought together, this features the myriad of ways in which one constructs a life of architecture and contextualizes the temporal nature of now.

See photos here