smokeview is a free application created by the national institute of standards and technology (nist) that can simulate the spread of a fire in any building. there are (at least) three ways to visualize the effect of fire, but only one can be perceived visually at a time: smoke, temperature and flame. to perceive these […]
Category Archives: architecture
virtual world
why are virtual worlds so similar to our own? i spotted jun fujiki‘s OLE coordinate system here at siggraph: it’s an application that allows you to design and inhabit physically impossible spaces. aside from being beutifully designed, it makes a good point – you can make worlds in the computer that are far more interesting […]
Also posted in 3d, perception, visualization
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3d-blog
lately virtual environments have come under fire because they are not so good at any of the things that 2-dimensional interfaces do so well, like chat, marketing and organizing information. what are they good for? fun! since wolfenstein 3d virtual three-dimensional environments have been the ideal way to explore complex worlds and shoot nazis. i […]
Also posted in 3d, blogogracy, marketing, perception, visualization
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upcycled architecture
when i wrote about the WOBO, the bottle’s designer john habraken wrote me to tell of another up-cycling project he did in the seventies, this time using discarded industrial materials like oil drums and car parts to build buildings (see his image above). i drummed up some images of the proposed designs: which reminds me […]
Also posted in fabrication, materials, open objects, upcycling
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apartment hunting
hbo’s voyeur is an on-line interactive that lets you spy on an apartment building, unit by unit, as strange things seem to happen involving the residents. it’s beautifully filmed, short and intriguing – probably because it seamlessly combines entertainment with the thrill of on-line research. as you try to piece together the events in a […]
Also posted in surveillance, visualization
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mini-house
martin ruiz de azua makes essential designs such as this minimalist house (above) and nest house (below). maybe with all of the layers of social isolation made possible by earphones and wearable displays, the substance of our physical isolation can be diminished to thin sheets of mylar or leaves in a net?
text-a-building
a cell phone can be used as a remote control to change the world around us: a number of projects reveal the potential of an SMS universal remote. IDEO built this interactive cube for vodafone in 2002 – it sits in the middle of a pond surrounded by offices, and in addition to playing news […]
Also posted in visualization
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pneumatic architecture
while inflatable buildings have been around for a while, they rarely take advantage of the natural dynamism of pneumatics. since festo’s original pneumatic building (top), inflatable building members have been used for dynamic structures such as muscle (middle, via interactivearchitecture) and the proposed whowhatwhenair (bottom) which is being fabricated for the mit campus as we […]
Also posted in materials
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