Some neat type experiments from Bulgaria-based designer Mihail Mihaylov.
(via Grain Edit)
Spider web or hand-cut street map?
Cool-
Cities around the country are in da Vinci mode with shows about Leonardo da Vinci’s art and inventions. In New York, “Leonardo Da Vinci’s Workshop: Inventor + Artist + Dreamer,” opens Nov. 20 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition and runs through April 4. The show offers full-scale, interactive models of da Vinci’s inventions, including his ideas for the airplane, automobile, robot knight and mechanical lion. In Baltimore, “Da Vinci — The Genius: A Traveling Exhibit” at the Maryland Science Center through Jan. 31 features some of his inventions, anatomical drawings and writings, plus “secrets of ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’ revealed in 3D animation. “
In Atlanta, an exhibit of sculptures and sketches by da Vinci and his contemporaries is at the High Museum, including some never before seen outside of Europe, borrowed from the Vatican’s art collection, the Louvre in Paris and the royal collection at Windsor Castle in England.
Michael Beirut on “5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks”
Pulling from his collected notes and sketches from over three decades, renowned graphic designer Michael Bierut shares five simple secrets for doing great creative work.
If the concept wasn’t obnoxious enough, they had to go with that name, too? From their website, they write:
Why are we doing this? The way we see it, companies need an alternative to both current ad agencies as well as current crowdsourcing platforms. One that offers the strategic direction, engagement and relationship management that agencies deliver today, but one that also delivers the engagement, cultural relevance, results and return on investment that crowdsourcing {if managed and directed well} can deliver.
From my point of view, the advantage of actually building a team that includes production and creative talent is that you get to shape that team around the firm’s creative vision. Crowdsourcing does not afford you that long-term vision. It’s pretty much the epitome of myopia.
from a Lebbeus Woods post on a New Babylon project:
Some time ago, I was speaking with Peter Cook, the founder of Archigram, about the Situationists and, in particular, Constant Nieuwenhuys—the artist and visionary architect—and he told me a story. “In 1959 or ’60, Mike Webb (a founding member of Archigram) and I attended a lecture given by Constant on his “New Babylon” project. We were just graduating from architecture school, but Mike leaned over to me during the lecture and whispered “we can do it better!” And so, a couple of years later, they did it at least differently, setting off a revolution in architecture that reverberates to the present day. What both Constant and Archigram did was imagine architecture as a leading instrument of social change, through the making of ideal or utopian architectural projects. The difference between them is that the projects and the ideals they expressed stand on opposite sides of a cultural divide.
(via But Does it Float)
This textile was created by harvesting silk from female orb spiders and then hand-weaving it.
This design marvel is an astonishing fusion of science, art, craft, and I imagine, incredible dexterity. The tapestry gets its golden color from the spider’s silk which is naturally a saffron hue. The fabric is not dyed. The silk, which is hardly visible when extracted from the spider’s spinneret, by hand, is then carefully woven strand by strand into a thread for use on a loom. Dozens of native Malagasy “handlers” are employed in the spider collection, harnessing, silk extraction and weaving. A rich pattern of subtle geometric shapes that reference traditional images of animals and birds are intricately woven into the golden fabric.
This is truly amazing.
GOOD profiles project proposals to revitalize the Greenwich South area of New York City:
The ideas range from the totally do-able to the just plain zany… Morphosis (image above) re-envisioned the entire southern tip of Manhattan (above) as a sustainable “Battery North.” WORKac’s “plug-in” tower, a mixed-use, cantilevered structure, would have rows of brownstones six stories in the air… A few firms specifically wanted to tackle the six-acre hole of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, a gaping scar across Greenwich South. Architecture Research Office wants a public market, park, and recycling center over the tunnel approach. Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis and Transolar Climate Engineering (above) want to build a vertical park over the tunnel’s entrance that cleans and filters the air emitted from the cars entering it. And for reasons that aren’t quite clear, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer wants to use the space to project images of a sun onto a 30-meter meteorological balloon (to remind us that global warming is closer than we think?).
Cool post from BLDBLOG profiling the work of Margaret Bursa…
Very nice new work from Pentagram.
Via Michael Anissimov we hear that the second generation of the RepRap self-replication machine, codenamed “Mendel”, is nearly ready for public release. Meaning that you could buy one (if you found someone who’d sell you one), but you could also build your own from the free open-source plans found at the RepRap website; the parts will cost you around US$650.
This is an interactive update on the Eames film, Powers of Ten. So cool.
From Information Aesthetics:
The interface used for Cell Size and Scale [genetics.utah.edu] travels through the space from 1 meter to 1 trillionth of a meter in single, continuous scrollbar swipe, revealing the relative size of a grain of rice to that of a rhinovirus or a water molecule.
The whole website is full of interactive infographics, similar to John Kyrk’s examples.
See also:
- Nano Journeys
- Nikon Universal Scale
- Powers of Ten Movie
- All the Water in the World
- Sizeasy
- Relative Planet Size
![This is an interactive update on the Eames film, Powers of Ten. So cool.
From Information Aesthetics:
The interface used for Cell Size and Scale [genetics.utah.edu] travels through the space from 1 meter to 1 trillionth of a meter in single, continuous scrollbar swipe, revealing the relative size of a grain of rice to that of a rhinovirus or a water molecule.
The whole website is full of interactive infographics, similar to John Kyrk’s examples.
See also:- Nano Journeys- Nikon Universal Scale- Powers of Ten Movie- All the Water in the World- Sizeasy- Relative Planet Size](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ksbvogNrCN1qzw5oyo1_500.jpg)
Viget’s Mindy Wagner thinks you should know Amy Martin, creator of this poster:
This year’s WPA-style “be a good citizen” posters are equally tongue-in-cheek, with slogans such as “Keep The Present Inevitable”. I love the little jokes hidden within her illustrations. (Note the frog with three front legs…)
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