This is a room divider/shelf. I thought it was relevant to our wall project.

Edible Wall

Perhaps Galina would like an edible wall installation next to her desk. She could grow herbs and even fruits and vegetables for faculty members' lunches. Terry could have a raspberry plant growing through her wall partition, supplanting the ubiquitous dish of candies on her desk. If the faculty center acquired a fish tank, as every institutional lobby building type should, the fish poop could feed the plants while the plants filter the fishes' water. To complete the loop, we will punch a skylight in the center of the ceiling so that a solar panel can run the vertical farm's water pump. Inka Biospheric Systems' Sun Curve (its vertical farm + fish tank + solar power design) has a battery which can even store enough power to run Galina's laptop, or charge her cell phone. Digital fabrication can be implemented to mill the lattice work for vine tendrils to grow up the wall. The extreme functionality as well as increasing popularity of "green" and "sustainable" architectural elements today makes the edible wall a clear choice to enhance Woodbury's image as a cutting edge institute for architectural learning.

http://dirt.asla.org/2009/11/19/edible-walls-grow-in-popularity/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/vertical-farm-fish-tank.php

Memorial Tree

The memorial tree was completed by australian architects M3architecture.

The tree marks the site where the first Australian Labor Party was established in 1891.

The tree is enclosed inside a wooden structure that supports 18ft timber pieces hanging from it. the finishes render the original tree shape that existed in the site. The installation uses a controlled grid that supports the timber pieces. Each timber has a unique cut at the tips that suggest the direction of the original surface that was used to cut the pieces in 3d environment. Installation time and costs and methods are not explained although much respect to the contractor that took upon this endeavor.

Random Photograph

"The Crystal Monster"

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/8142/the-crystal-monster.html

Designers Beverly Tang and Tod E. Kurt recently completed their "crystal monster" installation at Los Angeles’ Continental Gallery from laser cut sheets of acrylic, steel, and LED tape. It is over 12 feet long and the LED lighting can be controlled remotely. LED tape is a fascinating material I had up to now not yet encountered. The potential of electronics to be integrated into superthin materials (another example being the Kieran Timberlake "SmartWrap") would seem to hold much promise not only in the field of visual awesomeness, but also as easily adaptable and installable architecture (provided insulation is unnecessary or easily applied to the ultra-thin, smart layer).

Visual Information.

The installation of the wall uses illuminating panels to display the information surrounding the walls in real time. It calculates the electromagnetic fields, the amount of people, cars, and bikes that pass by the wall installation. In a way it reflects the surrounding and creates a light play with information that is received through infrared sensors surrounding the boards.

nook

Patrick Frey designed this stool made from a single piece of plastic for the young label VIAL.

The clinching pattern is milled into the flipside of a VarioLine board. Subsequently the stool will be folded into its extraordinary shape. The whole piece is fixed at the bottom by an aluminium catch – without cementation or welding.

http://www.dailytonic.com/nook-by-patrick-frey/

Objects

http://www.archdaily.com/40060/sebastopol-residence-turnbull-griffin-haesloop/


The Sebastopol Residence looks like an object in the landscape. A good-looking object, I would say, in a beautiful naturally landscaped setting. Inside of this object in the landscape are more objects - art objects. From inside the house, the landscape becomes backdrop, like a painting...another object.

How should design relate to its context? Do we want objects, - beautifully designed objects - in which we may house more objects, whether art, or furnishings, or...people? When nature becomes object, what prevents people from becoming object? Or perhaps they have already become the commodities, or consumable objects, Heidegger describes as "standing reserve."

Does designing in the closed setting of the office, or studio, staring into the computer, promote the creation of objects? To bring this idea beyond the specific instance of the Sebastopol Residence, does digital fabrication remove the craft of making which connects the designer to the specificity of the material and the context from which it comes? Is it possible to design beyond the object using digital fabrication and computerized design techniques in general?

I say yes, it is entirely possible to introduce craft and specificity into the process of digital design and fabrication. However, it will require an attitude toward technology beyond that of creating beautiful objects, similar to the attitude of revealing which Heidegger called "poesis." This attitude, I hope, can create a specificity and meaning to design which goes beyond objectness.

Scripting Life

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79443

Apparently a group of scientists is working on a programming language that can be ran on cells of bacteria. Right now the technology is at the state of modifying DNA to have the cells grow a certain way and create specific proteins, however this can be expanded to architecture in an almost sci-fi way. Imagine Biological cells as the building material. That would be the true definition of an aggregate system, where each cell would be programmed on how to grow and the space/architecture would come from the rules within each cell. The architectural equivalent of the bee swarm would be created.

Rip Curl Canyon

Rice Gallery commissioned this installation in collaboration with The Museum Fine Arts in Houston exhibition, The Modern West: American Landscape, 1890-1950 - The project required laminating over 20,000 strips (weighing approximately eight tons) of curved, industrially die-cut corrugated cardboard in twelve days. Incredibly strong and capable of supporting the weight of several people, the cardboard laminates operate as semi-monocoques with an intermediary plywood armature. The armature was made of standard wood materials – 2 x 4s and plywood – individually cut and CNC routered offsite to conform to the varying dimensions and curvature of the undulating cardboard shells.

http://www.ball-nogues.com/ripcurlcanyon/

Boys and their Toys Exhibition at LOT

The installation follows the idea of taking sound and making it visible. They created a 3D sound surface and then applied it to a array of plexiglass.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/8064/boys-and-their-toys-exhibition-at-lot.html

Taipei Pop Music Center

The proposal offers the usage of natural landscape in order to create interior and exterior spaces. Terrain of the hill-like project has been sectioned horisontally in order to create a filtering method to bring light inside and define the interior space.

James Turrell

James Turrell makes an art of defining immaterial with the immaterial. What is space, and what is light, and could one ever be perceived without the other? The two seem largely codependent. Turrell creates exceptional experiences with these two everyday, yet somehow sublime, mediums. His latest, and largest, is currently in production at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.