Fireflies Inspire Brighter LEDs – using the jagged scales on a firefly’s abdomen as a guide, researchers from Belgium, France, and Canada have developed an overlay for LED’s that increases light output by 55%. Via ThomasNet’s Industry Market Trends. … the jagged-scale modification can be made post-production on conventional LEDs. …
The magazine, ArchiAfrica, has been redesigned and is now based in Accra (used to be Amsterdam). Take a look around both the digital edition of the magazine and the website for a glimpse into a world that’s little-covered in the Western architectural press. Our mission is to broaden the …
GIZMODO – The Tiny Transforming Apartment That Packs Eight Rooms into 350 Square Feet – 5 and a half minute video of Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger.com, showing us through his very small New York apartment (he’s the one who says it’s 420 sq ft). It’s beautifully outfitted with hidden …
The Power of a Hot Body – catchy title, and a good idea. Why waste the heat generated by hundreds of people waiting in a subway station and the friction of trains on tracks? This NYTimes opinion piece cites examples from Paris, Minnesota, and Sweden. Idly mingling, a human …
Saw this great Venetian library renovation in Lotus 151 (p 42) by Michele De Lucchi, the Biblioteca di Storia dell’Arte in a wing of the Fondazione Cini, a former dormitory for Benedictine monks. If you have a few minutes, treat yourself to a visit to De Lucchi’s website, aMDL …
A number of architecture and design magazines make their content accessible online only to subscribers, so the best way for a nonsubscriber to see this material is to visit a local library. Here’s what caught my eye during my latest library visit. Landscape Architecture Magazine (Jan 2013 issue) i-Tree article (p 22) …
We’re In This Together: What the Dutch Know About Flooding That We Don’t – The Dutch attitude toward flood control is very different from that in the U.S. Being a much smaller country where everyone shares the dangers of flooding, the Dutch have developed a collective approach to mitigation. That collectivist …
Knocking Down Huge Buildings Quietly, Floor by Floor – Japanese construction firm Taisei has developed a new system for taking down a building that reduces noise and dust pollution dramatically. It involves housing the crew and machinery in a structure at the top of the building, called the “big …
China’s Wang Shu: From builder to Pritzker-winning architect – the first Chinese architect to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize talks about traditional Chinese architecture, the importance of nature, and applying those traditional principles and methods in his own projects. … if you look at Chinese traditional buildings, you …
10 Projects We’re Following in 2013 – Azure lists ten innovative projects from around the world that will be completed or near completion in 2013.
Wayback Machine: Now with 240,000,000,000 URLs – the web archive now covers from late 1996 to Dec 9, 2012. If you don’t know about this great resource already, the Wayback Machine is part of the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions …
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2012 is filled with statistics and observations on tall buildings, from 2012, trends from 1960-2014, by location, material, and function, and by global region. Although the pace of completions slowed in 2012, there is no indication of a …
AIArchitect article explains why Renzo Piano’s first U.S. project has won this award for a building that exhibits consistent excellence in function and design over time. The Menil Collection, in Houston, was selected for the 2013 AIA Twenty-five Year Award. As Renzo Piano’s, Hon. FAIA, first …
A Network of Open Access Search Platforms from Springer – great overview on the Intellogist of online platforms created by science publisher Springer for free access to journal articles. These open-access Springer portals can provide valuable non-patent literature (NPL) prior art for patent searchers and may serve as a useful supplement to searches …
The ABC Of Architects: An Animated List of Famous Designers And Their Buildings – one and a half minutes of fun, famous buildings by famous architects animated by Andrea Stinga and Federico Gonzalez of Ombu Architecture. Their tumblr site has more famous architects condensed to a wonderful graphic essence. It’s worth browsing through …
Selected quotes from The Economist’s latest survey of company executives (mostly from North America and Europe) about their outlook for doing business in Asia, Investing in an accelerating Asia? (37-p PDF). After a slowdown in 2012, executives expect better things in 2013 Companies are expecting their sales to grow twice …
Happy 150th birthday to the world’s oldest underground train system. Learn more at Transport for London. The London Transport Museum has a timeline, the London Evening Standard has stories from 150 Londoners, the BBC features stamps and related stories, MSN News lists things you didn’t know about the Underground, Huffington Post has a collection …
The wrong goodbye of Barnes and Noble – post from independent publisher Melville House on the possible, some would say probable, demise of Barnes & Noble, our last big chain bookstore. The author says it best (bolding added): If you include the company’s college stores, this is going to mean …