Paths

"Collect all the paths you can think of in a pile, pull out the 8 paths that 80% of your visitors come looking for, and that’s your home page."

A lot of planning is about information design, and it is very important to separate out how we experience data from how the user of a plan experiences it. We may think it hierarchies, but the user thinks in paths.

A good short blog post about the difference between paths and hierarchies. Could be important in the way that we think about our website or our plans.

Link

Via 37Signals: Signal Vs. Noise

"Think Star Wars storm trooper without the helmet"

Real Life Iron Man suit.

Link

Thanks, Matt!

Greensburg, KS

The two Kansas architecture schools are making lemonade out of lemons in Greensburg, Kansas, and using the tornado-destroyed town's rebuilding effort as a laboratory for sustainable building ideas.

Link

Thanks Matt for the tip!

The Whole World

Tell me you can watch this commercial and not say, "Yeah, the world IS awesome"

Pricey Home

The fifth richest man in the world is building a 27-story home for $2 billion.

Link

Via Kottke

County Surveyor Remains Humble, Despite Awesome Power

"While it does not affect me in the slightest, I can understand how some might find being sole protector of more than 900 miles of county-regulated drains impressive. Sexy, even."

Link

via Planetizen

British Coins

Awesome design from a graphic designer that had never done coins before.

Link

Via Kottke

Norman Mailer's Lego Utopia

It was too big to remove from his house when he died.

Link

Via
City of Sound

Non-automobile streets

New York Times article on making streets friendlier. Best word: Woonerf.

Link

Bonus: Commuting pictures

Via Kottke

Space Planning

Neat way of envisioning available space in facilities.

Link

via
Signal vs. Noise

Peach Pit Floors

link

Desire Paths

Desire Paths: Those worn-down pathways in the grass where informal routing has created trails that don't match the designed paved paths.

Here are a whole bunch of pictures of them: Link

Reusing Runways

Cool images from a design competition aimed at reusing an old triangular runway complex.

Link

Roof Leak

The water tank collects rain, bulges from the ceiling into the living room, and holds up the roof.

link

Attention HB&A Architects!!!

Please design this setup into all future buildings, for the purpose of freaking the pants off of people.


http://view.break.com/384045 - Watch more free videos

Tank. Limo.

LINK

The Year 2000

One from a set of 1910 illustrations that imagined the year 2000.

link

via BoingBoing

U.S. Americans Like Such As

This is very important commentary on mapping, and like such as.

The Real Bat Cave

Check this out. Super-rich homeowners in London are building extensions to their houses underground to avoid conservation regulations on their old homes. Huge, underground, 50 ft. deep extensions for pools, living space, and garages.

One home in north London even has a bespoke chute covered in a special slippery paint, which enables the owner, who loves swimming first thing in the morning, but hates the fuss of dressing, to step out of bed and slide straight into the water a couple of storeys below.

Link

BLDGBLOG Roundup

Aerial Conversationalists

Rotating Liverpool

Ant Urbanism

"Beneath the Neon"

An amazing article about a book about the huge underground flood control tunnel system under Las Vegas and the weird, creepy subculture that lives in them.

Link

Tornado Power

"...once the tornado achieves enough energy, there would be very little to stop it from escaping."

Inhabitat » COULD TORNADOES POWER YOUR HOUSE?

Stilt City

This is the same building, before and after the ground was raised up around it.


The link below leads to a fascinating description of how the entire town of Galveston was raised up. In 1900, a hurricane and associated flooding killed 6000 people, prompting city leaders to ambitiously propose that the whole town be elevated. So, they propped all of the buildings in town up as much as 17 feet, and filled in the ground underneath with silt.

Pruned: Galveston on Stilts

Serious Linkage

This is a long list of interesting, military-related links. Some are a little bit conspiracy-minded (like the hubbub about HAARP, pictured above).

Subtopia: Peripheral Milit_Urb 17