I really liked Clay Shirky's essay on the relationship between physical space and creativity. It's one of those classic, Shirkian riffs that includes a bunch of seemingly glib and merely clever ideas and culminates with a thing that ties it all together and makes you realize that a bunch of stuff you've been taking for granted is REALLY important and a bit weird.
In this video of his talk at PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Clay Shirky talks about the work of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. After working there as an assistant professor for almost ten years, Shirky describes five student projects that he thinks are pushing the creative boundaries - from interface design to how people cluster to build new work. At the end of the talk, the technology thought-leader compares creatives as members of a philharmonic orchestra and wonders if any rules can be drawn from looking at such an ensemble.
People sit in front of a house built upside-down by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozhanski, in the western Austrian village of Terfens May 5, 2012. The project is meant to serve as a new tourist attraction in the area, and is now open for public viewing.
The Long Forgotten blog -- the world's greatest source of informed critical speculation about the design thinking behind the Haunted Mansions at the Disney parks -- has just put up a smashing post about dueling theories of the intentions (conscious and subconscious) of the Mansion's creators. In the middle of that post is this remarkable photo, showing the Mansion's facade, and the ride building behind it, outside the railway berm, in what was once the parking lot. I've never seen this shot before -- I'm riveted by the sight of the ride's apparent structure and the huge, actual structure behind it.
Add to this the surprisingly flexible limits of "realistic" presentation under any circumstances, not just haunted houses, and things really become loose. Few films or rides concern themselves too much with reconciling inside and outside architecture. Someone with a perfect sense of architectural space may wince once in awhile, "knowing" that if the character really did turn left down that hallway, he should by rights walk smack into the outer wall of the house, but for the most part such concerns are ignored. This includes size considerations. With the HM, even if we discard about a third of the show building as housing an outdoor scene (the graveyard), the square footage of the house we experience is still much larger than anything that could pass for the "original" house remodeled into the current Mansion.
Flavorwire has published an image gallery of 10 buildings constructed entirely of books. Above: Home, a self-sustained book igloo designed by Colombian artist Miler Lagos (We've featured this one on Boing Boing before). Dig the rest of Flavorpill's picks here.
Hammock-tent-makers Tentstile have a new 5-8 person model -- string it up between a couple-three massive trees and it becomes a treetop aerie, far above the madding crowd of critters and hikers.
Tentsile combines the comfort and versatility of a hammock with the usable space and security of a tent. The ultra portable structure uniquely employs tension forces to provide separation from wildlife, including insects, snakes and other predators but also from sand storms, earth tremors, cold or wet ground, debris or contamination.
In Changsha, China, a 30-story hotel project went from blueprint and prefab parts to finished building in fifteen days. Some are questioning how the construction project could possibly be safe, but the builder defends it. From reporter Jonathan Kaiman, the Los Angeles Times' man in Changsha:
In early December, Liu Zhangning was tending her cabbage patch when she saw a tall yellow construction crane in the distance. At night, the work lights made it seem like day.
Fifteen days later, a 30-story hotel towered over her village on the outskirts of the city like a glass and steel obelisk.
"I couldn't really believe it," Liu said. "They built that thing in under a month."
Cornell's Franz Nigl and Jeremy Blum demonstrate their truss-climbing robot in this video, which accompanies a paper accepted into IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine. The robot can climb and reconfigure the trusses in a 3D structure, redesigning a building on the fly, autonomously. It would be pretty cool to see a swarm of these running a genetic algorithm, dynamically redesigning a skyscraper.
This video presents a robot capable of autonomously traversing and manipulating a 3D truss structure. The robot is able to approach and traverse multiple structural joints using a combination of translational and rotational motions. A key factor in allowing reliable motion and engagements is the use of specially designed structural building blocks comprised of bidirectional geared rods. A set of traversal plans, each comprised of basic motion primitives, were analyzed for speed, robustness, and repeatability. Paths covering eight joints are demonstrated, as well as automatic element assembly and disassembly. We suggest that the robot architecture and truss module design, such as the one presented here, could open the door to robotically assembled, maintained, and reconfigured structures that would ordinarily be difficult, risky, or time consuming for humans to construct.
Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin shoots buildings around his town of Ghent and then mashes them up into impossible (and beautiful) structures he calls "Fictions."
Dujardin's website is a bit cumbersome (all Flash, all the time), but Freshome has a flat gallery of the photos.
Oh, this makes me so sad. Tony Alleyne, the trekkie, club DJ, and "house-modder" who redesigned his British flat to be a faithful replica of the Starship Enterprise? Looks like he may lose it in divorce proceedings. His ex owns the flat, and wants to sell it as "a conventional dwelling," according to tabloid reports.
British tabloid The Sunbroke the bummer news a couple of days ago, and quoted Alleyne: "To say I'm gutted is an understatement. It is my life's work. I admit there were tears."
Alleyne estimates that redoing the project in a new apartment would cost more than USD $150K.
More from MSNBC, which also covered the tale of Alleyne's epic Trek home when it first made the internet rounds five years ago:
When msnbc TV reported on the apartment back in 2006, Alleyne was about to file for bankruptcy over the money spent on renovations, and said he had hoped to start a business transforming homes for other "Star Trek" fans.
Msnbc TV did another segment on Alleyne in 2007 when he was apparently also hoping to sell the tricked-out home, which includes a mock transporter.
"Most people thought I was barmy," Alleyne said at the time. "I mean, you could go spend the time down the pub or in a nightclub or whatever ... I decided to live in a spaceship." He says on his website, which bills him as a "24th century interior designer," that he became hooked on science fiction at age 11.
A construction expert who worked on the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy and a multi-storey carpark under the houses of parliament in central London, said there was nothing to worry about, and it would take 10,000 years to reach an angle of concern.
Above, a man walks through a tunnel of Google homepage logos at the Google campus near Venice Beach, in Los Angeles. Below, Googler Katharine Ng zooms in to Paris on panoramic Google Maps screens. And, a man walks past the iconic pair of giant binoculars designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen at an entrance of Google's new LA home. The 100,000 square-foot campus was designed by architect Frank Gehry. Around 500 employees develop video advertising for YouTube, parts of the Google+ social network and the Chrome Web browser at the site. (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)
A UK project called Ekinoid aims to produce free/open plans for spherical houses that perch on poles seven feet off the ground. The goal is a house that can be built in a week.
Ekinoid homes will be designed to be as easy as is pratically possible to fabricate (ideally using no expert knowledge or skills), house a family of three/four, and will take under one week to build. Ideally, the main structure should last over 100 years (and then be recycled).
Build each town using unskilled labour.
All parts of an Ekinoid home will be designed to suit the local climate and terrain, and will be delivered on-site for fabrication. We think one crane (possibly two) and a team of approximately four people (one skilled, three unskilled) would be adequate for the one-week construction of each house; and after, these newly-skilled people (the new owners) might then help to build more Ekinoid homes, and train new owners. This training would, in principle, work exponentially and would therefore service the whole new community in a very short time.
All the land under the houses would remain useful and accessible.
This LEAPFactory Refuge Gervasutti is an alpine refuge commissioned by CAI Torino, the Italian Alpine Club. It perches, cantilevered, on a mountainside, offering accommodations and safety to mountain-climbers. It's got a clever prefab design, and is intended to reduce the amount of waste left on mountainsides by climbers.
Each module is entirely prefabricated, from the outer protective shell to the interior fittings. All the modules were transported by helicopter thanks to their light weight and assembled on site in just a few hours.
The modules’ particular design means that they can be planned and constructed based on the specific requirements and can be customised depending on the location where they are to be positioned, in order to make them in keeping with the surrounding environment.
Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song from China won Evolo magazine's 
