MetaFilter posts tagged with buildings and architecture

Treehouses for grownups

madamjujujive — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:56:00 -0800

Whole Tree Architecture - if you'd like a house built by pioneering architect Roald Gundersen, your first step might be to hike in your nearby woods to choose some young, wind-bent, and diseased "Charlie Brown" trees. Small diameter round trees have 150% the strength of milled lumber and twice the strength of steel in tension. Besides structural and environmental advantages, whole trees make for some beautiful and naturally sculptured environments. From the NY Times article: "And when the trees are left whole, they sequester carbon. “For every ton of wood, a ton and a half of carbon dioxide is locked up,” he said, whereas producing a ton of steel releases two to five tons of carbon. So the more whole wood is used in place of steel, the less carbon is pumped into the air. These passive solar structures also need very little or no supplemental heat. Tom Spaulding, the executive director of Angelic Organics Learning Center, near Rockford, Ill., northwest of Chicago, knows about this because he commissioned Mr. Gundersen to build a 1,600-square-foot training center in 2003. He said: “In the middle of winter, on a 20-below day, we’re in shorts, with the windows and doors open. And we don’t burn a bit of petroleum."

Detroit schools urban exploration & reclamation.

Item — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:49:39 -0800

Urban exploration has been featured here once or twice before, but Jim Griffioen's site photo-documenting his discoveries in and around Detroit deserves a look. Griffioen was recently interviewed [direct mp3 link] on the American Public Media radio program The Story. Jim is most interested in schools. He's taken photos of trees growing through books and other things left behind. Recently Jim has gone beyond documenting what he sees and is reclaiming what he finds. He collects abandoned library books and other school supplies and gives them to community centers. Previously - blog post by Griffioen on Detroit's abandoned Belle Isle Zoo

Bruxellisation

Artw — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:22:21 -0800

Top 10 comic book cities

Zero carbon emission living: ingenuity and woolly hats

rongorongo — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:44:40 -0800

The Reas' previous house was destroyed in a winter storm - such are the perils of living on Unst - most northerly of the Shetland isles. On re-building the pensioner couple have constructed what they claim is the world's first occupied zero carbon emission house - using off the shelf materials. Here is a video interview with them and a few more details about the house. More on the somewhat confusing definitions of zero-energy buildings. (Unst - population about 700 - also boasts its own unique bus shelter).

100 Abandoned Houses in Detroit

dersins — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:33:51 -0800

100 Abandoned Houses. A photo essay from Detroit-based photographer Kevin Bauman.

I Have Seen the Elephant

Miko — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:01:09 -0800

It's 1881. You're real estate speculator James Lafferty, and you've just bought a large parcel of empty, scrubby shoreside land just south of Atlantic City. Problem is, it's cut off from the AC streetcar line by a deep tidal creek. How do you entice potential buyers to make the trek over the inlet and look at your property? Build a giant elephant, of course. Capitalizing on the celebrity of P. T. Barnum's famous Jumbo, Lafferty built 65-foot tall Lucy the Elephant, the first of three giant elephants Lafferty built (followed by Cape May's Light of Asia and Coney Island's Elephantine Colossus). He even took out a patent on the very idea of buildings shaped like animals. Though threatened by decades of neglect and rot, the Save Lucy Committee began preservation efforts in 1970, moving her to her present site and giving her a complete restoration. Photo of the Elephantine Colossus Lucy the Elephant jingle [warning: earworm] Great collection of antique Lucy postcards, many incorrectly identifying her as a hotel (she never was, but the Turkish Pavilion from the Philadelphia Centennial was moved to a site behind her and operated as a hotel)

Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain

Artw — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:39:53 -0800

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?

Eikongraphia

carter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:59:55 -0800

Eikongraphia - Browsable architecture design theory thingy.

A Shell of a House

dersins — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:48:31 -0800

The Nautilus House is pretty awesome. A little more.

Tiny buildings made of paper.

dobbs — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:33:33 -0800

Tiny Buildings - "a collection of tiny buildings handcrafted from business cards, packaging and other nice papers."

Put Wet Towels On The Sensor

Xurando — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:23:54 -0800

How to wash your hands and ride the elevators in the new New York Times Building.

Ruinous America

dersins — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:13:31 -0800

American Ruins: a gallery of photgraphs by Chuck Hutchinson. "a gallery of houses, barns, automobiles and businesses that have become the ruins on the landscape of America."

Unusual Homes. Amazing Architecture. Strange Places. Fascinating People.

dersins — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:44:58 -0800

Unusual Life Dot Com: Unusual Homes. Amazing Architecture. Strange Places. Fascinating People.

speculative landscapes and radical reconstruction

salvia — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:48:44 -0800

An interview with Lebbeus Woods -- designer and illustrator of speculative futuristic landscapes and buildings. Woods just set up his own website, which has an amazing quantity of drawings, photographs, and text focusing on his lesser known projects [for those willing to deal with a frustrating flash interface and sound. It's better in IE than Firefox.] From his comments at a recent conference (transcript, summary with video) and the overview to his website, it appears he wants to start some conversations.

Our father who art in elevator shafts

dersins — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:58:20 -0800

A Paternoster lift [wiki] is a cyclic elevator with "an endless chain of cabins moving at a moderate speed; some passing downward past a line of entrances and other cages moving upward past another set of openings. Passengers may embark or alight at any floor whenever they please, without delay. " (As seen on TV!) They're still in use in the the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and the UK among other places. (Via this list of interesting elevators.)

More abandoned places, because they're creepy and beautiful

dersins — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:07:13 -0800

Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of abandoned places in Ohio, from the Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really is was one, and it's been discussed here before), to various and sundry prisons, government installations, hotels, hosiptals, houses and more. And don't miss the old vs. new galleries, either.

Abandoned but not forgotten.

dersins — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:00:27 -0800

Abandoned places: A satellite facility. A drag strip. A sports arena. A factory. A highway. A school. Another factory. An industrial park. A missile site. A church. A brewery. And much more at Abandoned But Not Forgotten. (Warning: Web 0.2 site with very large photos of variable quality...)

An innovative design for an office building - No screwing around

psmealey — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:30:19 -0800

Helix — a 1D skyscraper with a single corridor. The principle is a cylindrical building with a helical shape for the floor. The slope of the floor is 1.5% (it rises by 1.5 cm every meter), thus hardly noticeable. The height of each ’storey’ is 3 meters, so that when you walk 200 meters along the corridor, you have walked a full circle, but you end up one ’storey’ above or below your starting point.

America's favorite architecture?

Burhanistan — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:57:02 -0800

Americas Favorite Architecture - The American Institute of Architecture lists its 150 most favorite buildings as ranked by its members. Zoom-able photos and building information herein. You can also rate your top five.

Creating the framework for a consumer-oriented society

arse_hat — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 10:13:24 -0800

Unintelligent Design. The History Images of Sze Tsung Leong. "Then there's the other type of history that is recorded in the fabric of cities. This includes the houses that are being destroyed; it has to do with the history of quotidian things, really, the layers of history that have slowly accumulated. The loss of this fabric the spaces and histories particular to different cities means that the particular cultural value and artistic qualities they contain, are lost." also here and here.

dwarfing historic St. Petersburg

nickyskye — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:57:05 -0800

There are already some strange Soviet buildings. Gazprom intends to build these unusual skyscrapers in St. Petersburg. Maybe they will include caviar vending machines?

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue

Afroblanco — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:28:53 -0800

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue - Cool photo essay about a beautiful building

I'm Mental For Kirkbride

KevinSkomsvold — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:03:01 -0800

Kirkbride Buildings. Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century. AKA:The Kirkbride Plan. [more stuff inside]

Urban Exploration Commandos

peacay — Tue, 24 May 2005 20:45:03 -0800

Action Squad – Urban Adventurers

"In a nutshell, Action Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms. We climb buildings, sneak into factories, crawl through all kinds of tunnels, spelunk old brewery caves, poke around abandoned buildings, and run across the rooftops."

Missions of the Action Squad are fully documented with descriptions, photographs (historical & intraoperative) and sometimes maps but always with a sense of wonder at the urban flotsam they enjoy exploring.
This is my particular favourite but poke around, there's a fair bit in this gem of a site worth exploring from the armchair. [via]

TALL Buildings

riffola — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 08:38:36 -0800

Tall Buildings (Flash required)