Art Deco was the dominant style of the interwar era, coming out of Paris in the 1920's and ruling the roost until World War II broke out. Randy Juster's Decopix - The Art Deco Resource has enough pictures of Art Deco architecture to send one hurtling into The Gernsback Continuum. If that's not enough then there's always the 11000+ images of the Flickr Art Deco Pool. But Art Deco wasn't just about architecture. On the Victoria and Albert Musem's Art Deco site one can view Art Deco objects in great detail, rotating them and listening to audio lectures on each object. But before Art Deco was a design aesthetic it was an art-style. Illustrations for the Art Deco Book in France has more than 170 images from the proponents of that then-new style (some images are not safe for work, especially in the George Barbier section).
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

Project Genesis - "It's destined to be the world's largest cruise ship—when launched next year, Royal Caribbean's US$1.24 billion Project Genesis will be 1,180 feet long, and carry 5400 passengers (6,400 at a pinch). It's the most expensive ship in history, and it's longer, wider and taller than the largest ocean liner ever built, (Cunard's QE II), 43 per cent larger in size than the world's largest cruise ship, (Freedom of the Seas [previously]) and remarkably, bigger than any military ship ever built, aircraft carriers included. In a world where choice of amenities count, Project Genesis has yet another trump card—in the the center of the ship is a lush, tropical park which opens to the sky." cf. The Lilypad
posted on Jun 24, 2008 - View this thread

The late, great Tony Wilson is being honoured today with a 24-hour long "intelligent" conversation in Manchester, England. Wilson was a musical Svengali par excellence. He co-founded Factory Records, helped discover both Joy Division and the Happy Mondays and has been credited with reviving the city that was cradle to the industrial revolution.
posted on Jun 21, 2008 - View this thread

Humble abode: Loftcube // Rucksack House // Micro-Compact Home // Superadobe // Zigzag Cabin // Tree Sphere // Mirador // La Petite Maison du Weekend _ all via.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Come, take a ride and look at some of the Islamic Art of the past. Or, you could call it Art of the Islamic World if you're so inclined. If not, then how about taking into account some of the major milestones of Islam throughout the centuries, from past till present (more examples here), including the art of Calligraphy and Architecture. Not to mention the Arab world's contribution to music, both old and new. [Previously mentioned, here, here, here, and here, with a wonderful comment from nickyskye as usual]
posted on May 29, 2008 - View this thread

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Two visions of the ideal city rise in the Persian Gulf: "Waterfront City will probably be where a lot of Middle Eastern investors will put their money—and where international architectural stars will build their putative landmarks—but if little Masdar develops successfully, it may hold much more important lessons for us all."
posted on Apr 27, 2008 - View this thread

Interactive Architecture is for both geeks and design freaks. Lots of interesting and WTF stuff here, like SandScapes, Funky Forests, Swarming Structures, Colour Responsive Chairs, and Jelly Architecture. Not to mention the amazing Touch, a tower with 4200 windows equipped with RGB color LEDs that can be controlled by passersby.
posted on Apr 26, 2008 - View this thread

Tokyo By Night - Just one of the posts on ArkiBlog, a blog about architecture and design. {via}
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Lust after some stair porn (don't miss the details of the hanging box stairs), visit some glass igloos, and get comfy in some iconic furniture. That and much more is at materialicious, a blog about "architecture + design + materials + products."
posted on Mar 23, 2008 - View this thread

The George W. Bush Presidential Library : visualizations
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

Stylish Blight (slideshow of awesome live/work architecture office) The outside says pure urban squalor, while the inside is pure awesomeness. Full story in today's NYT about the project. (via beebo)
posted on Mar 2, 2008 - View this thread

Eikongraphia - Browsable architecture design theory thingy.
posted on Feb 26, 2008 - View this thread

Superuse: Reusing can be beautiful, unusual, functional, and even illustrative of our culture of excess. (all links lead to the same site).
posted on Jan 19, 2008 - View this thread

MATSYS Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation.

B_Complex, N_Table, Endless Ocean, Endless Sky (more), P_Wall. more.
posted on Jan 18, 2008 - View this thread

Two articles on how interaction may shape the buildings, work places and urban spaces of tomorrow: Design Week's Study takes sensory approach to improve office of the future [which mentions Duncan Wilson, who works with and blogs about this stuff]; and City of Sound's The Personal Well-Tempered Environment.
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

How to wash your hands and ride the elevators in the new New York Times Building.
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

…you are brilliant and subtle if you come from Iowa and really strange and you live as you live and you are always well taken care of if you come from Iowa.
posted on Dec 18, 2007 - View this thread

Ecoble, an environment design and living site includes some interesting stories and info: Man (Re)Builds Mexican Island Paradise on 250,000 Recycled Floating Bottles l Who Has the Oil? Geography of the World’s Most Contentious Resource l BituBlock - The Sustainable Building Block Built from Trash and Sewage
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - View this thread

City of Sound as it describes itself, is a blog about cities, design, architecture, media, music, etc. But calling it a blog really does it a disservice. City of Sound is a category-killer; amazingly dense, thoughtful, erudite, and compelling, it begins to catalog our urban identity. A bit of reminiscent of Metropolis magazine, if it was edited by Robert Rauschenberg. If you've not visited, do yourself a favor. It is a treasure trove.
posted on Nov 17, 2007 - View this thread

100 architecture blogs
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

The Solar Decathlon is a just-completed competition in which 20 teams of college and university students competed to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. View a photo gallery or take video tours of the homes. Inhabitat has been blogging the event - here's their view of Germany's winning entry.
posted on Oct 21, 2007 - View this thread

Associative Design - a study of new neighborhood models. requires QuickTime
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches is a Smashing Magazine article examining a variety of increasingly popular or novel information visualization employed on modern websites.
posted on Aug 7, 2007 - View this thread

"Future House Now is dedicated to exploring ideas about better living in family homes that are affordable, modern, efficient, healthy, environmentally responsible and available today."
posted on Jun 4, 2007 - View this thread

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.
posted on May 21, 2007 - View this thread

The website of London's Design Museum contains a wealth of resources. Explore the illustrated history of architecture and design, from the Anglepoise lamp to Buckminster Fuller. Read an interview with Dan Houser of Rockstar Games. Ponder the evolution of the humble chair.
posted on Apr 30, 2007 - View this thread

Super(-expensive) Playgrounds are nice to look at, but what makes a playground fun? Experiments in play: Snug & Outdoor (1, 2, 3) Mcdonald's (1, 2, 3) KaBOOM! (1, 2, 3) Boundless Play (1, 2, 3)
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Obselisk. The bastard child of a Mensa quiz and rattan furniture. Getting apart is probably ok, but I don't want to put it back together - particularly after drinky-poo's. But certainly a talking point - particularly at $9,890 . Via
posted on Apr 19, 2007 - View this thread

The Open Architecture Network "is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design." {via Cameron Sinclair's Ted Talk}
posted on Apr 14, 2007 - View this thread

This apartment is so cramped. I wish I could find a little extra space. (previously)
posted on Feb 28, 2007 - View this thread

Clip/Stamp/Fold. The current show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City explores an era when architecture was actually interesting. We go from "an elephant attacking the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan to a skyscraper made of Swiss cheese." On the way, we visit astronauts, bunkers, walking cities, and robots fucking – and it's all waiting for you inside these little magazines.
posted on Feb 7, 2007 - View this thread

Grandma's Kitchen (youtube), the Roller Toaster, the water-less washing machine, the sculptures of Gwon Osong, a crucifix-shaped mp3 player... some of the people and things found on CubeMe, a blog about "wonderful stuff".
posted on Dec 20, 2006 - View this thread

Architecture and the Velvet Fist of Happiness - click 'view the book" in the top left. {Flash, slight sound, NSFW}
posted on Dec 11, 2006 - View this thread

De Architectura, known also as The Ten Books of Architecture, is an exposition on architecture by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. Originally in Latin, here it is translated into English.
posted on Nov 9, 2006 - View this thread

Architectures of Control in Design. A blog examining product designs intended to restrict or enforce behavior. In the built environment, we see speed bumps and roundabouts with intentionally obscured visibility; in the digital environment, we see various species of DRM and trusted computing; and in other commerical products, we see car hoods only openable by licensed dealers, printer cartridges for only one sort of printer, and a set of shoes for children which detects the amount of steps they take in a day and translates that activity into the amount of TV they may watch. The control may be for economic reasons, for reasons of safety, or even simply to enforce social nicety - and for each of these reasons are the implications worth regarding . [via the excellent things]
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

The Jackie Robinson of architecture. An orphaned African American boy from downtown Los Angeles, Paul Revere Williams wanted to be an architect, and when he mentioned his career goal the high school guidance counselor ”stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars... Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?”. Therefore, Williams learned to read and draw upside down -- he knew that white clients would not sit next to him -- graduated from USC and in 1924 became the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi. In a 50-year long extraordinary career, he designed landmarks like the Theme restaurant at Los Angeles International Airport (with Welton Becket), the LA County Courthouse, the Hollywood YMCA, Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, restored the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of his most interesting buildings, like the La Concha Motel in Las Vegas have either been razed to the ground or, like the "Batman house", aka 160 S San Rafael mansion in Pasadena, have been destroyed by fire. Now, Williams' historic Morris Landau House has been cut into 21 separate pieces and sits in a Santa Clarita storage yard, rotting away. More inside.
posted on Jul 2, 2006 - View this thread

New York City has been trying to revamp its street furniture for nearly a decade and last Fall, deals were struck between a British architecture firm and a Spanish outdoor firm in a 1 billion dollar deal. Recently the designs for public toilets, bus stop shelters, and (my favorite) a modernized clean newsstand were released.
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

Carlo Mollino [Polaroids section NSFW] A student of the occult, he was an Architect, Designer, race car enthusiast and photographer [NSFW]
posted on Feb 1, 2006 - View this thread

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue - Cool photo essay about a beautiful building
posted on Jan 28, 2006 - View this thread

This apartment is so cramped. I wish I could find a little extra space.
posted on Dec 26, 2005 - View this thread

The Alvin Lustig Archive - "Alvin Lustig's contributions to the design of books and book jackets, magazines, interiors, and textiles as well as his teachings would have made him a credible candidate for the AIGA Lifetime Achievement award when he was alive...Lustig created monuments of ingenuity and objects of aesthetic pleasure." The archive collects over 400 examples of his book, architectural, and ad-design work (see also AIGA's list of Lustig's Top-10 designs). Via HOW magazine...
posted on Dec 20, 2005 - View this thread

Soft Cinema is a software+video project by media-theorist Lev Manovich, which 'mines the creative possibilities at the intersection of software culture, cinema, and architecture.' While perhaps more intriguing in prospect than in practice, it seems at least a noteworthy attempt at making something new. A DVD version of the project was released earlier this year.
posted on Nov 17, 2005 - View this thread

Welcome to EUROBAD '74, an exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974.
posted on Oct 3, 2005 - View this thread

Patent Room is a collection of early 20th Century industrial design culled from the archives of the U.S. Patent Office, featuring architecture, automobiles, toys, and trains.
posted on Aug 3, 2005 - View this thread

Design Observer and the New York Times (reg. req'd) on modernism.
posted on May 16, 2005 - View this thread

The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are floating above the city, in the sky". John Lautner's Chemosphere residence is the product of a fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place. Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant. Now publisher Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully restored (.pdf) by Frank Escher.
posted on Apr 7, 2005 - View this thread

Green roofs "are living, vegetative roofing alternatives designed in stark contrast to the many standard non-porous roof choices."
posted on Mar 12, 2005 - View this thread

Resources for lighting designers and enthusiasts: The Lighting Wiki; [extensive] Glossary of Lighting Terminology (and another); Lighting Design Resources (inc. "Fun with Light"; and Professional Lighting Resources.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

Fabulous images of the Moscow Metro underground, also known as "the people's palaces". Click "M"s on the entry map to view gorgeous (often architecturally surreal) panoramic images, and visit the picture gallery for sweet details. Via Jorgen at Viewropa.
posted on Jan 14, 2005 - View this thread

Charles Eames (1907-78) and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America's twentieth century. Their lives and work represented the nation's defining social movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the economy's shift from making goods to the producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. This Library of Congress exhibit outlines major themes of the Eames' life and voluminous works, including architecture, furniture, and the film Powers of Ten. It is wonderfully illustrated with artifacts, photos of their life and work, and examples from the Eames' collection of 350,000 slides.
posted on Jan 12, 2005 - View this thread

New! Fast! Automatic! Now! Archigram!
posted on Sep 30, 2004 - View this thread

Virtual tour of the new Seattle Central Library. Built from a critically acclaimed design by Rem Koolhaas, this library opens Sunday. The design makes me want to paint my staircase bright yellow, or maybe move to Seattle.
posted on May 20, 2004 - View this thread

Tokyo design for the softly blind. Interior to industrial.
posted on Dec 15, 2003 - View this thread

Mitsubishi Virtual Design Museum - look at the past, present, and future of industrial design in Japan. :: via Yesterday's Tomorrows::
posted on Dec 8, 2003 - View this thread

Is This All There Is To Modern Design? Although Design Within Reach is a commercial website, it's well put together, with interesting features that provide biographies and a a potted history of modern furniture design. However, like the plethora of coffee-table books on the subject, the uncomfortable (!) feeling remains that it crystalizes the accepted and the historical - the so-called modern classics - rather than engage with what is truly contemporary. This is, after all, highly traditional modernism and post-modernism. And it's rife. Where is the avant-garde? Is there one on view to ordinary mortals? You end up feeling that the truly new designs - this century's, after all - are being swept under the carpet, awaiting some boring committee process of consensus and approval.
posted on Sep 29, 2003 - View this thread

The Blur Building. Now you can spend your day in a literal fog.
posted on Sep 28, 2003 - View this thread

I So Want This House It Hurts. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is up for sale. If price was no object and location wasn't a problem, where would you choose to really live? What architect, living or dead; what building, available or not, would you choose? [NYT reg. required for main link..]
posted on May 31, 2003 - View this thread

Libeskind's "wedge of light" WTC design isn't what you thought. Specifically, if you thought that sunlight would shine down on the plaza at precisely the interval between the time the first tower was hit, and the time the last tower fell...no. That's not what Libeskind meant after all. Actually, there would be shadows, it turns out. From other buildings! So funny, so pathetic.
posted on May 1, 2003 - View this thread

Things to scale. Mostly terrifying. IE users can drag around.
posted on Apr 28, 2003 - View this thread

SITE Environmental Design did some pretty cool things for now-defunct big-box retailer Best back in the '70's and early '80's. Unfortunately, all but two of their Best stores have been razed or transformed into plain boxes; and one of those is under threat. They may not have been Chartres Cathedral, but they were certainly more interesting than the standard Wal-Mart or Best Buy architecture.
posted on Apr 4, 2003 - View this thread

Verner Panton, a fantastic Danish architect and designer known for his wild interiors and furniture. “Most people spend their lives housing in dreary, grey-beige conformity, mortally afraid of using colours.” He definitely was not afraid. Tak skal du have, Verner!
posted on Jan 13, 2003 - View this thread

Reader-submitted designs for the WTC I know I'm going to hell for saying this, but some of these are tremendously funny...
posted on Dec 4, 2002 - View this thread

Googie? Does your bowling alley have an inexplicable Tiki motif? Does your neighbor's house vaguely resemble a flying saucer? Does your coffee shop suggest, architecturally, that the secrets of the atom are being exploited within? Well now, you can call it by name. Googie. Who knew?
posted on Oct 31, 2002 - View this thread

The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted on Oct 8, 2002 - View this thread

Now that's more like it. Finally a design for rebuilding the WTC that captures the appropriate spirit. Far better than the other designs I've seen. No doubt some will think it too much, though. What's your opinion?
posted on Jun 24, 2002 - View this thread

A new temple for new technology (NY Times). The digital arts organization Eyebeam have chosen a design by the web-savvy firm of Diller+Scofidio to build their new Museum of Art and Technology, from a shortlist of thirteen. Any thoughts on architecture for new media? And iMac-colored buildings?
posted on Mar 21, 2002 - View this thread

Did the Microflat leave you with a bad taste? Does your New York, LA, or Sydney accommodations leave something to be desired? Or do you like something more round? If so, then try the TurnON, the new prototype by Alles Wird Gut. Be the first one on your block to sit in one of these bad boys.
posted on Feb 18, 2002 - View this thread

The New WTC? The Max Protech Gallery in Manhattan has an exhibit of sketches and designs from artists, architects, and others with their ideas on how the World Trade Center could be rebuilt
posted on Jan 20, 2002 - View this thread

Why is American architecture so bad? "American architecture is, as a rule, conventional, bland, and dull. This is true almost across the board: from public buildings sponsored by federal or state governments to commercial buildings; from privately sponsored civic institutions, such as museums and concert halls, to local community centers and religious sanctuaries; from public-housing projects to private housing."
posted on Dec 24, 2001 - View this thread