““We weren’t fully going back to nature with our plan,” Mr. Cassell said. “We thought of it more as engineered ecology. But if you look at the history of Manhattan, we have pushed nature off the island and replaced it with man-made infrastructure. What we can do is start to reintegrate things and make the […]
Link to article here. “Synthetic-biology-based approaches to design practices, which have a material engagement with design and engineering practices, propose a new set of conditions in which architectures can alter their characteristics to suit changing environmental conditions. Living materials raise the possibility that buildings can make a positive impact on their local surroundings by performing […]
Emily Badgers, from The Atlantic, talks about 5 planning moves that could have prevented or at least mitigated some aspects of flooding in New York. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/10/5-ideas-could-have-prevented-flooding-new-york/3754/
“An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future. This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US. ” http://hint.fm/wind/
3D-printed spider robot skitters where humans can’t “Roboticists from German research group Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have used a 3D printing process to create a terrifying spider-like octoped that skitters over hurdles and jumps over gaps.”
“Honeywell has already started helping the police to set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing’s most populated districts, where several Olympic sites are located.” “All of this also highlights the increasingly intense overlap between film production, the political administration of urban space, and […]