© IntCDC, University of Stuttgart (via YouTube)
The bioinspired pavilion showcases how novel co-design processes that account concurrently for geometrical, material, structural, productional, environmental, and aesthetic requirements, together with advanced robotic fabrication techniques applied to natural materials, are capable to generate a unique architecture that is at the same time ecological and expressive.
The livMatS Pavilion is the latest outcome of a long-standing research collaboration between the Universities of Freiburg and Stuttgart. Developed by an interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers and biologists, the fibre construction in the Botanical Garden of the University of Freiburg utilizes robotics to create a net-like flax weave inspired by the wood structure of a cactus.
Besides being a strong believer in the interdisciplinary approach, I’ve been particularly hooked on design and architecture with an environmental focal point for quite a while now. The Pavilion reminds me of the visionary work of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Space10 or Neri Oxman, all of which I admire a lot, so I can’t wait to check the pavilion out in person.
intcdc.uni-stuttgart.de/research/building-demonstrators/bd-5
© UMG / Xavier Rudd / Axel Massin (via YouTube)
Music is a memory machine —one reason why I enjoy collecting records so much. Xavier Rudd for example was one of my favourite artists over a decade ago when I was still a student but already transitioning into a completely new phase of life. His old album ‘Solace‘ –I still own on CD– awakens a lot of happy memories of said carefree days whenever I put it on.
Currently my life is changing to a greater extent than ever before and even though I’m not trying to live barefoot, planning to move to Berlin and thinking about getting dreadlocks anymore –ironically I do have long hair for the very first time nowadays–, Rudd has been on heavy rotation again with his new song latterly. Now Stoney Creek for me will inevitable be linked to the life events of the challenging yet incredible fortunate last weeks.
Coz baby, the wind is blowing
And there ain’t no other place I’d rather be
And the wind owes me nothing
But it’s blown me here with you[…]
This is home
I am on Twitter, still, despite my better judgment, and it seems to me to be The extremely unforgiving medium in my life.
It is risky compositionally. You can delete a tweet, but you can’t edit a tweet. You can add to a tweet, but it’s hard to improve upon it.
It is risky socially. Every tweet is an invitation for scrutiny if not consultation if not correction if not misunderstanding if not rancor. Forgiveness, even if we agreed it still existed in the wider culture, I think we could probably agree it doesn’t really exist on Twitter. (“Never Tweet” is not terrible advice.)
While Twitter still refuses to provide its users the repeatedly brought up and widely requested edit button, Austin Kleon has a point for Blogging as a forgiving medium —published on his personal blog of course. Reaffirms my suggestion to move back from the centralised social media structures to self-contained, more private digital spaces, instead.
© Aeon (via Vimeo)
A drolly cheerful celebration of the very ordinary, Born to be Mild explores the uncommon hobbies practiced by the members of the Dull Men’s Club – an online community that connects ‘dull men, and women who appreciate dull men’.
aeon.co/videos/the-dull-men-s-club-where-being-extraordinarily-ordinary-is-celebrated
To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.
Earlier this year Caroline Busta wrote a comprehensive –and very interesting– online article about counterculture in the time of social media hegemony, touching on politics, technology and culture. The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram.
I came to the same conclusion as Massimo and many other designers—I don’t need a huge range of fonts of questionable quality to choose from, I only need a few high quality ones. So I created my own list of 5 fonts that I use most often.
Not sure, if I’d be able to strictly limit myself to five fonts like Massimo Vignelli, but I certainly have a bunch of fonts I keep coming back to more frequently. Guess I’m going to make a list of my favourite ‘five fonts’ covering the cited criteria and then try to use them whenever I start working on something new, as Matej Latin suggests in All you need is 5 fonts.
betterwebtype.com/articles/2021/06/07/all-you-need-is-5-fonts/
© Above&Below and Einar Fehrholz (via Vimeo)
Aquateque is a short film and multimedia installation exploring the river Ruhr through a variety of new media technologies. The diverse ecosystem of the surrounding is captured through audio, visual and 3d modelling tools and transformed into a generative augmented space. The project explores themes such as digital material ecology and neural networks as artistic tools to dream about alternative and fantastical worlds in which nature, machines and humans collide.
Over the past few decades, we have helped build a corporate culture that systematically prioritizes short-term gains over longer-term product health.
A well written, intriguingly designed online essay by Fabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga and Emily Curtin about provoking change through the work we do every day as digital product designers. I totally agree, the world needs a tech diet.
This dynamic hints at another shift: Even our most solid, real-world possessions are increasingly inseparable from the intangible and ephemeral digital world. Which means that as much as our relationship to digital possessions may be evolving, so is our relationship to tangible ones — and it’s not a relationship in which the consumer holds much power.
A great article by Dan Greene on The erosion of personal ownership in our increasingly connected world. I highly recommend checking out Internet of Shit on twitter afterwards to witness some of the ludicrous, unintentionally funny ramifications the internet of things holds when the current digital development goes bananas.
vox.com/the-goods/22387601/smart-fridge-car-personal-ownership-internet-things
© Ed Banger Records / Because Music / Genesis (via YouTube)
We were really attracted by the epic visual appeal of cymbal making: bronze, fire, hammers —something almost mythological and elemental like Vulcan or the Nibelungen. We chose Bosphorus Cymbals in Turkey because they had this very traditional process that barely changed in centuries; in this video I am just a link in the chain of production and quality control, after all these cymbals have been melted, hand hammered, and lathed into a musical object.
I’m not sure why Gaspard Augé created only such a short teaser video for the first single from his upcoming solo album, even though Force Majeure is already out in the –seemingly– full version on Spotify and YouTube (without a proper video). Either way I really would’ve liked to see more of the shown traditional craftsmanship paired with the driving electronic music —probably because Augé’s music helps me to cope better with the recently announced break-up of Daft Punk.
© Six N. Five (via Vimeo)
Ordinary, everyday objects are the ones who rebel in a high-class house. Hidden, invisible, concealed, they disrupt the harmony of the calculated interior design. A true class revolution takes place, where the underdogs rise up against a so-called perfection.
I’ve been a huge fan of the beautiful, hyper-realistic CGI Six N. Five crafts for quite a while now and the latest short –of which a special version was sold as a NFT– is no exception. The Revolt features the clean and smooth signature aesthetic, the strong physicality and the excellent fabric qualities I admire within the imagery of the studio from Barcelona.
Besides the linked video, there’s a free desktop-application for this piece which enables the user to roam the house freely and discover the individual furniture objects with, alongside other options, Virtual Reality hardware. And while the visual fidelity naturally looses some of its high quality when experienced through a current VR headset, I’m still impressed what the small studio was able to pull off with the different set pieces here.
The Accessibility Developer Guide is an initiative of Access for all, Swiss Foundation for technology adapted to people with disabilities. … The vision behind the Accessibility Developer Guide is to bridge the gap between providers of websites and users with special needs.
The Accessibility Developer Guide addresses a very important, but unfortunately often neglected component of website and web application design. Based on the experience of users with special needs as well as the knowledge of experienced web developers it provides help with the setup of tools, the basic knowledge needed for development and code examples to get things started.
… a starting point for a more expansive, and more critical discourse on website design. The engagement of liberal arts, humanities and engineering present in the architectural discourse is more timely than ever. Considering and expanding upon these aspects when building and critiquing websites may help us fulfilling our responsibility as contributors to the global digital infrastructure today.
A very interesting and quite different approach to think of web design as architecture. It actually makes complete sense considering the ten associated statements by Malte Müller, though. Definitely something to keep in mind for future online projects.