The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by infini
on Sep 1, 2011 -
3 comments
Triangulation Blog is done by industrial designer, art director
Emilio Gomariz, and covers photography, art installations, product design, architecture, animation, technological and digital projects. Gomariz also does
Base Times Height Divided By 2, an experimental, scientific and technologic extension of Triangulation Blog.
posted by netbros
on Oct 25, 2010 -
4 comments
Room With A View. Has the view out of your living room window become boring and stale? No problem, build yourself a million dollar
Rotating Home. A former office manager, self prclaimed "hobbyist" Al Johnstone has built quite the
technological feat [PDF] despite having no engineering background, obtaining around 30 patents in the process.
posted by afx114
on Feb 13, 2006 -
19 comments
Badgirs (Farsi) or
barjeels (Arabic) are
windcatchers that work as low-tech air conditioners. The city of
Yazd, Iran is probably best known for them. Badgirs are built so that they can be opened to catch the wind from different directions, the air is then cooled as it travels down the tower, and in turn cools the rooms below. When there is no wind, air in the tower is heated and rises, which draws cooler air from the courtyard into the house. (There is no URL to link to for the search result for “badgir” on
Encyclopaedia Iranica, but I recommend checking out their definition and diagrams even though you’ll have to go through three different PDF pages.) Badgirs have been around in some form “since the New Kingdom (1500- 300 BC) in Egypt”, but global warming might make them ineffective.
(scroll down to #16-#18) Variations, such as
malqafs, can be found from
Egypt to
Pakistan. You can get
a modern one for your own house. You can win an
award shaped like one
for advancements in sustainable development. Or you could just stay in the Fairmont Dubai Hotel which is shaped like a
huge badgir. So even after all this, I still don't know what those sticks sticking out of the sides are for.
posted by lobakgo
on Jul 10, 2003 -
28 comments
