Hypothetical Development Corporation

This group takes sites and comes up with wildly implausible redevelopment concepts, and then hangs a sign on the building itself like a real developer.

Not to this level, but we do this too.

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Via Boing Boing

Hotel Room SCIF Tent

"We call them 99.9% infallible."
Interesting details about how the president sets up SCIFs when he's on the road.

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Via Kottke

Wall Dilation

The openings in this wall dilate depending on the intensity of the sunshine.




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Via Gizmodo

We Called Them Pillow Forts

The building material of choice for many budding architects...

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Via ACJIII

Experimental Cities Part 2: Seasteading

Alex Tabarrock offered a good summary of this movement/vision over at Marginal Revolution a while back.  As he points out, it touches on many of the same governance-related themes as the Charter Cities idea. From a design perspective, these cities-at-sea could be paradise islands for anti-automobile planner-types (which would make for an interesting mix of residents, as many of the early supporters have been libertarian-leaning). Actually, The Seasteading Institute has already held an architectural design competition. Looks like the topic could provide some entertaining exercises for all of you Sketchup artists...

So real it's unreal...

This impressive short film on architecture is said to be entirely CGI. I was recently at Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum, which is one of the subjects illustrated in the video, and this captures it amazingly well. Though I don't recall any spontaneous indoor cloud formation during my visit.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

LINK
Via MNOL

Transformer Room

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Different Rooms @ Yahoo! Video

Via Matt Orsillo

House of Cards

This architect had 44 days of free time to use 218,792 cards to build a giant house of cards.

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Via The Daily What

Glitter Competition

An architectural competition with these rules:

1. It's a drawing of architecture.
2. It uses glitter

Any takers?

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Via Kottke

LEED buildings are energy hogs?

When the Illinois study looked at cases where engineers had taken the time to labor over sophisticated energy models, it found that 75 percent of those buildings fell short of expectations. The fault presumably lay with building managers who made numerous small mistakes—overheating, overcooling, misusing timers, miscalibrating equipment.

Looks like an interesting article, although I'd have to cast doubt on the thoroughness of their research, given that they spelled Rick Fedrizzi's (he's the CEO of USGBC) name wrong in the first sentence.

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Via Planetizen

Camouflaged Airplane Hangar

The Army Corps of Engineers made this hangar look like a rural landscape during WWII!




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Via Gizmodo

How Sweet is This!

555 KUBIK_ extended version from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

I like the part from 3:00 to about 4:30

Via Gizmodo

Airport Design

Interesting slideshow showing the evolution of airport design.

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Via Freakonomics Blog

Architecture of Star Wars

Bright Tree Village is an exemplar of sustainable, low-tech development. This Ewok settlement on the forest moon of Endor follows the traditional pattern: thatched-roof huts are arranged on the main branches of a tree around the chief’s hut on the trunk. Rated BREEAM Excellent, the development - by architect Wicket W Warrick - makes use of locally sourced materials, is carbon-neutral and far exceeds Endor’s notoriously strict building regulations.

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Via Kottke

Wetland Machine

I'm not sure this would be legal in Colorado, but it's still cool.

Some of the runoff gets in an underground cistern. During dry weather, this storage tank provides water to the pond. During heavy rains, excess water flows from the pond into the rain garden, simulating the hydrological dynamics of a floodplain environment. Water seeps through the soil and gets naturally filtered.

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Via Pruned

Ugly and Non-Functional Public Housing

Really interesting pictures of the worst public housing projects in history.

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Via Kottke

Secret Passages

Who hasn't wanted a secret passage? Well there's a company that specializes: Creative Home Engineering


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Via Things

Bus Stop Designs

Hey! Take a look at these fun bus stop shelters.

What could we resuse to create practical spaces and art at the same time?

This purple bus shelter seems to resonate with Robert Venturi's house below...

http://blog.designpublic.com/

For more interesting bus shelters see Village of Joy's blog post:

http://villageofjoy.com/interesting-bus-stops-around-the-world/

And right in our backyard...

Denver University Station

Igloo Construction

Did you know that the blocks are arranged in a spiral?!




Via Kottke

Architecture and Interface

This is an interesting article from one of my favorite blogs about the parallels between the process of designing a building and the process of designing an interface. What could be more perfect for HB&A, since we do both every day!

One quote:

Good design supports intuitive pathways within the structure. The design accounts for the most common use cases and makes solving these use cases obvious. In our work, we always want users to have a sense of where they are and where they can go.

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