Interact with some digital art
If you live in Wellington or are lucky enough to be visiting over the next week, you might want to head along to Massey University’s public lecture on digital interactive art.
Beethoven Festival Hall performs
You won’t find many squares in Zaha Hadid Architect’s fluid urban design concept for a new Beethoven Festival Hall in Bonn, Germany. In designing the building, the aim is to link the city of Bonn to the Rhine River promenade and in the process, create a dynamic riverside environment for the public to enjoy.
Linteloo feels good, looks great
‘Cosy’ is not a word that sits comfortably when describing most high end contemporary furniture. But that’s precisely the label export manager of renowned Dutch firm Linteloo uses to define the ambience of his products.
Straddling traffic congestion
What better way to optimise road space and ease traffic jams than by creating a bus that doesn’t require its own lane, but rather drives over cars on the road? The "three-dimensional fast bus" allows cars less than 2 meters high to travel underneath the upper level carrying passengers, and it's coming to Beijing.
Best in show
The Best Awards finalists were announced today and there's a delicious selection of Kiwi genius on display
Nick Smith gets spatial on design
The state of urban planning in New Zealand has been a contentious issue for sometime now, and in a recent speech to the New Zealand Planning Institute at their Auckland Spatial Plan conference, Nick Smith revealed the Government’s plans to make urban and infrastructure planning a more effective process, both nationally and in the context of Auckland’s Super City.
Semi-Snapshot: Storm Thorgerson gets blurry
A curious man to interview, Storm Thorgerson unleashes his childhood dream on us (sort of) — to be a romantic lead on a galeon boat. He also talks about those other talents of his — graphic design and filmmaking. And of course, the sexual behaviour of small rodents.
You thought we wouldn’t notice? We did.
Here’s a website bound to stoke the fires of designers who’ve ever had their work mirrored or outright copied. “You thought we wouldn’t notice” brings design work mimicry into the limelight of shame.
Pulchritude my data
Data can be boring, but it can also be a beautiful thing. Simon Todd examines how the godfather of data visualisation, David McCandless, transforms everyday bland data into a “picture sandwich”.
Anything but timid yet strangely liveable
It’s a striking, colourful home with unusual, sometimes awkward angles in an assortment of materials that looms large over a prominent corner near Narrowneck beach. Opened up to the neighbours for a fundraising tour, the provocative home of David Mitchell and Julie Stout stirred quite a reaction.
Hooked on plastic
The recycling bin may no longer be the sole destination for your plastic bottles thanks to this enlightening concept by designers Lie Zhong-Fa, Lee Sang-Bong & Ji Jung-Ah. The + (Plus) Conjunctive Flash Light doubles as a regular torch AND a lamp for illuminating your campsite, or as the designers suggest, your living room.
Designing for a dictator
Can designing for a dictator actually be virtuous? That’s the question posed by editor of Co.Design Cliff Kuang when he speaks to contemporary architect Bjarke Ingels of architect firm BIG. The firm is famous for a number of international projects, but the recent commission by the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev – who runs an infamously dictatorial and corrupt government — to build the Astana National Library, is undoubtedly the most controversial yet.
Tuesday Chew: James Warren – attracted to the eccentric and the enduring
Buoyed by fleeting objects of desire, nomadic child turned architect JAMES WARREN toys with the idea of producing enduring designs that have lifetime guarantees. We chat to the man who has found his feet designing for the built environment.
10 Typefaces of the Decade
What are the top 10 typefaces of the decade? While that may be open to debate, Paul Shaw reckons he’s got the best 10 pinned dow
The Transcendent City - autonomous, artificially intelligent, sustainable
Ever wondered what a city operating entirely on artificial intelligence would look like? Richard Hardy, a Bartlett School of Architecture graduate, created this stunning Transcendant City movie as a reaction to a society that is currently not responding effectively to environmental dangers. “Transcendence” in this case refers to a point when artificial intelligence has reached or surpassed that of the human.
