Rainbow House - or whimsy & inspiration

This house looks like a wonderful place to escape to for inspiration and a change of perspective. Enjoy the Goldilocks exploration below!


The Rainbow House, London from Ab Rogers Design on Vimeo.

Time is not just time these days

The act of telling time has become an art form, as much by the clock itself as by the individual looking to know the time. One day I will amass a clock & watch collection to sate my lust for such things - for the time being (har har) here are a few of my favorite

studio ve: manifold clock

from Designboom - Weblog

yiran qian: eye of the storm

from Designboom - Weblog

Wanted: The Time, In Abstract

from Fast Company - Design

Obligatory Designer Clock from Saikat Biswas on Vimeo.

&design: bird alarm clock

from Designboom - Weblog

English Flipclock by Karlsson

from MoCo Loco

Jormungand

from Sweet-Station

Phosphor E-Ink Watch

from MoCo Loco

Abstractions

2020 Vision

FrogDesign has imagined our not-too-distant future and it is all manners of wireless, digital, and open-faced. As FastCompany pointed out this future is a bit HAL-ian. It seems a a rather optimistic prediction, relying not only on a 10 year mass transition in the US in terms of privacy conception [we did all just freak out when Facebook tried to improve our experience of other sites using data we had already published on fb, right?], but also technology adoption and integration (this sort of thing will only work with a decent amount of mainstreaming). I'm all for optimism, its much better than the nightmarish futures I can imagine after catching up with a weeks worth of The Daily Show (you laugh while you cry), so I'm willing to embrace this vision, in part, and commence to wonder/question/concern. I appreciate that the "app for that" mentality will broaden and manifest itself in various forms, be it the fast food tray calorie counter, "i-see-i-buy" passerby enabled consumerism, or otherwise (see below).

One of the most striking predictions is this social metric called the "Whuffie":

"Whuffie is a conceptual social Metric based on what others think of you. In the future this Metric might actually be usable as real money. Why not? Celebrities are used to getting things for free based on their popularity. This is the same idea taken to its democratic extreme. Socializing will take on completely new dimensions when we can see everything public about a person right as we are talking with them."

This makes me think of having a Flattr button floating above me (as opposed to on a side bar - see up right of this page) only instead of Euros its some manner of virtual currency (likely created by the good folks at Ohai, that Susan Wu knows her virtual goods).

Beyond the sociological implications of such present (as in presented presently) information on individuals, this sort of visual field projection has other design implications. Are you wearing glasses or contacts that produces this information? Is our tech so advanced as to have holographic displays just floating about (projected via omnipresent projector pins or other bluetooth type devices)?

Its all a lot to consider, it also reminds me of Gargoyles in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. If I haven't told you before, I'm telling you now - read this book.

I'm off to imagine what privacy means to me now and in 10 years, I strongly suggest you do the same.

FrogDesign - 'Your Life in 2020'

all images courtesy of FrogDesign

URBN Center - Design for Education

I recently attended the Drexel hosted gathering at which Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd architects, Garth Rockcastle, FAIA & Jeffery Scherer, FAIA, presented part of their design for the new URBN Center @ Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. The audience of about 40 was a mix of design professionals (including a few members of the Design Advocacy Group), students, and faculty. The meeting was held in the building to be renovated (a Venturi original from the 1970s) and the space itself was set up as to allude to the future light-well planned to cut through the building. In the comments/question section of the program a few concerns were brought up regarding the project including revealing of structure both on the interior and on part of the exterior as well as the the name of the project "U-R-B-N makes it seem like we are incapable of spelling properly."

The most striking part of this event was the conversation I had with Garth Rockcastle. He was genuinely excited about the materials and technology planned for the space, not all of which were presented at this event. Some of these materials would allow for the space to transform visually throughout the day, and allow the space to be a physical manifestation of the learning going on in the space (building section, runway, billboard). He spoke of the conceptual layout of peripheral "private" spaces moving towards the central "public" spaces - and how he believed this would enhance learning by encouraging cross-disciplinary inspiration and collaboration. I really appreciate his enthusiasm, and have hopes for the design to accomplish this.

Overall, I was underwhelmed by the renderings, which I find congested and uninformative in terms of what really matters in a building of this type: the classrooms. As an art/design center there will be a variety of classroom environments, studio, computer lab, lecture, but those are not being presented, yet. I can only assume much is still being resolved concerning the particulars of these spaces - but as the Mike Glaser mentions in the video Drexel produced on the project - this building will be a tool to attract the best future students. Knowing whether or not you'll have dedicated workspace on campus can be quite the decider for students. This meeting seems to have been a courtesy to allow for some "public" commentary on the project - and I'm hoping for a fuller reveal in the coming months.

Presentation setup at 3501 Market Street

3501 Market Street, current

Exterior rendering of URBN Center

Partial model of 3501 Market Street with planned light-well

A two part video, which distractingly contains a few minutes of Drexel history and praise by Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell can be viewed here on Drexel's website about the project, including additional renderings of the space.

Rendering of planned light-well

Building a reality around a book...

I'm currently in a course titled "furniture investigations"
we will be developing a concept for our piece of furniture from a book of significance to us. the book i'm using is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. i am now to be refreshing my memory of this book, developing a reality around it, and from that extruding a story that shall serve as a touchstone for my design concept. i am not entirely certain about how to go about the reality/story development - in part, because NS does such a comprehensive job of elaborating the world in the book.

for now i'm hitched on a quote from the book:
condensing fact from the vapor of nuance

i'll see what if anything comes of this quote - and if the reality/story will evolve outside of the book, or perhaps, from within

I think I'm in designerlove