Entries to a Competition to Design a New Tower in London (1890)

The Public Domain Review: A selection of the more inventive entries to a competition to design a new tower for London. The year previous, 1889, saw the hugely successful Eiffel Tower go up in the centre of Paris, and the good people of London, not to be outdone, decided to get one of their own. A wonderful array of designs were put forward. Many were suspiciously similar to the Eiffel Tower and many erred on the wackier side of things…

The very practical design number 37 by Stewart, McLaren and Dunn was eventually chosen to be awarded the 500 guinea prize-money and built in Wembley Park. Construction began in 1892 but the company in charge of the erection, The Metropolitan Tower Company, soon ran into problems including falling chronically behind schedule due to marshy ground and then financial difficulties which eventually led to their liquidation in 1889. Construction ceased after only 47 metres had been completed.

(via @PublicDomainRev)

See also

• Descriptive illustrated catalogue of the sixty-eight competitive designs for the great tower for London — on archive.org
• The Pedway: Elevating London …a documentary on the post-war redevelopment in the City of London – focusing on the attempt to build an ambitious network of elevated walkways through the city. The film explores why the ‘Pedway’ scheme was unsuccessful and captures the abandoned remains that, unknown to the public, still haunt the square mile.
• Johnston100: a modernisation of TfL’s classic London Underground typeface

Skyline Chess — New York City Edition

Following the success of the London edition, we are delighted to present the next skyline in our range – New York City.

We are funding on Kickstarter to allow us to complete our first production run of sets and packaging – this will allow us to produce the full 32 piece chess set, complete with presentation box and folding board. Each set contains an information sheet with details on each building and how to set up the board.

We’ve chosen a range of buildings from across the city, some of which capture the essence of the early 1900’s construction boom and the growth of skyscraper architecture, through to their more contemporary counterparts, along with some of the city’s most recognisable silhouettes.

We gave careful consideration to selecting each piece on the board, to ensure that it both visually reflected the appropriate chess piece and also reflected the architectural status and scale of that building in the city.

King – One World Trade Tower

Queen – Empire State Building

Bishop – Chrysler Building

Knight – Flatiron Building

Rook – Guggenheim Museum

Pawn – Brownstone House

(via ARCHatlas)

See also

• Skyline Chess – New York City Edition on Kickstarter
• Beautiful and unusual chess sets — Some designs, as with the Communist Propaganda set, arose from ideology. Some were born out of wealth, such as the opulent rock crystal and silver set from 16th-century France. And some were made from necessity, such as the cardboard pieces created during the 900-day siege of Leningrad in World War II.
• Chess set architecture — As chess increased in popularity across Europe in the 1800s, the proliferation in the variety of chess sets caused confusion amongst competitors, especially those hailing from different countries.
• Architectural playing cards — designs by Italian architect Federico Babina.

How realistic are the fantasy castles from films and games?

Shad M Brooks is a huge, huge fan of swords and castles, amongst other geeky subjects, all of which he enthusiastically explores on his YouTube channel, Shadversity. I’ve been really enjoying his castles playlist.

Skyhold from Dragons Age Inquisition apparently gets quite a lot right…

However, he’s less complimentary about the ‘castles’ of Skyrim, which get some basics right but completely fall apart when you look at the details…

There’s some praise for The Lord of the Rings, but also a lot about the castles that doesn’t make sense…

It’s worth starting at the beginning of the playlist with the first two videos on fantasy vs. reality and the names and terms of a medieval castle parts.

In those videos Shad shows off and explains his own rather cool design for a more realistic fantasy castle he calls ‘Honor Guard’.

See also

• Dyson Logos is a prolific and talented creator of Dungeons and Dragons maps
• How game designers make dungeons: Durlag’s Tower
• Chess set architecture

• The Shandification of Fallout — ‘What do they eat?’

The Great Pyramid of Cholula

BBC: For an obscure temple no one’s heard of, Cholula holds an impressive array of records: it’s the largest pyramid on the planet, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza and nearly twice the volume.

Never mind the largest pyramid – it’s the largest monument ever constructed anywhere, by any civilisation, to this day. To locals it’s aptly known as Tlachihualtepetl (“man-made mountain”). Thanks to the church on top, it’s also the oldest continuously occupied building on the continent.

In fact it’s not one pyramid at all, but a great Russian doll of a construction, consisting of no less than six, one on top of the other. It grew in stages, as successive civilisations improved on what had already been built.

“They made a conscious effort to maintain and in some cases display previous construction episodes. This is pretty novel, and shows deliberate efforts to link to the past.”
David Carballo, archaeologist

See also

• BBC Future: The giant pyramid hidden inside a mountain — This temple at Cholula dwarfs the Great Pyramid at Giza, yet it went unnoticed by Spanish invaders. Why?
• Wikipedia: The Great Pyramid of Cholula, also known as Tlachihualtepetl (Nahuatl for “artificial mountain”), is a huge complex located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. It is the largest archaeological site of a pyramid (temple) in the New World, as well as the largest pyramid known to exist in the world today.

• Traditions like Thanksgiving aren’t natural — They’re invented, and at the time of their invention they called to a past that’s not really there. An imagined past; a constructed authenticity that serves the purposes of the present.
• Mummy Brown and Other Historical Colors — Korwin Briggs looks at the history of some fascinating colours with this ‘digital approximation of paint-blobs-on-paper’.
• Primitive Technology: Making a bow and arrow — I made a bow and arrows in the wild using only natural materials and primitive tools I’d made previously from scratch (as usual). The tools used were a celt stone hatchet, a stone chisel, various stone blades and fire sticks.

Dokki1: The “citizen space” is the library of the future

Quartz: There’s hope for this new era in libraries, encapsulated in Denmark’s vast Dokki1, a mixed-used “citizen space” with meeting rooms, art installations, classrooms, performance stages, makers’ workshops, and playgrounds, in addition to the usual rows of bookshelves.

At 35,000 square meters, Dokki1 is the largest library in Scandinavia

“We aimed for—and have achieved—a cultural meeting place that will change people’s perceptions, not just of the harbourfront where Dokki1 is situated, but the entire city of Aarhus.”

See also

• Quartz: Denmark’s futuristic “citizen space” has been named the world’s best public library
• Forte Prenestino: a place of meeting, resistance, research and projects — The biggest social centre in Europe.
• Shanty mega-structures — These images consider how slums are frequently viewed as unsightly eyesores to be inevitably bull-dozed, leaving their inhabitants completely displaced.

Forte Prenestino: a place of meeting, resistance, research and projects

The entrance, after crossing the drawbridge, to Rome’s Forte Prenestino.

The cutting of the chain that locked the entry gate marked the beginning of thirty years of self-management of this space as a squat.

The biggest social centre in Europe

Abitare: Today, once you pass the drawbridge, you enter into a labyrinth-like structure with the underground and ground floors of the building alternating between multiple spaces dedicated to culture and social activities, while the upper floor is where the homes and dormitories are located.

The parade ground, during the celebrations for 1 May 2010.

Picture of the entrance to “Spazio uno”, one of the multipurpose rooms located on the ground floor. (Photo by Federica Tafuro)

Here, apart from numerous political and social activities, many artistic events have been organised.

Sculpture by Chiba and mural by MP5 for the hallway that, from the Infoshop, leads to the cinema and wine bar.

The artist Roonald Reiska, shot while he was painting the walls of one of the rooms, during the 2014 edition of Crack!

Fortopìa book cover.

Fortopia [free PDF and ebook downloads] tells the story of Forte Prenestino. A self-published book without a sale price, edited by a self-run publisher and with graphics by Valerio Bindi, it is made up of texts and images – some previously seen and some not – that celebrate the three decades of occupation of this place of meeting, resistance, research and projects.

(via ARCHatlas)

See also

• If you’re unemployed, it’s not because there isn’t any work
• It is not just the poor who are dependent on welfare — Poverty is not only the lack of income and wealth but also the poverty of power.

Archicards

Architectural playing card designs by Italian architect Federico Babina.

Alvar Aalto

Walter Gropius

Card back

Frank Lloyd-Wright

Oscar Niemeyer

Zaha Hadid

Le Corbusier

Charlotte Perriand

“When I was young, I used to build a house with cards: why not use architecture to design cards?”

(via The Guardian)

See also

• Chess set architecture — Designing chess pieces seems to be a little like designing typefaces, but there are, perhaps, stronger architectural connections.
• Black & White: A ’70s board game about race, housing, and privilege — This satirical Monopoly-esque board game was made to underscore the socioeconomic disparities between Blacks & Whites.
• A game designed to be played in the distant future — Inspired by ancient board games like Mancala.
• An attempt to draw All the buildings in New York

See also

Shanty Mega-Structures by Lekan Jeyifo.

Makoko Waterfront

These images juxtapose sites of privileged and much coveted real-estate throughout Lagos, Nigeria with colossal vertical settlements, representing marginalized and impoverished communities. The images consider how slums are frequently viewed as unsightly eyesores to be inevitably bull-dozed, leaving their inhabitants completely displaced.

Idumota Roadway

Falomo Roundabout

Makoko Canal

Razing the homes and settlements of marginalized people is a practice that occurs from Chicago to Rio de Janiero, and throughout the world. So in this instance the dispossessed are given prominence and visibility albeit through a somewhat Dystopian vision that speaks to the fact that these communities often suffer from a lack of appropriate sanitation, electricity, medical services, and modern communications.

Lagos Street Aerial

Makoko Nighttime Aerial

• Artist illustrates how technology might doom and save the planet — Kazantsev constructs an eerie picture of the effects of climate change on humanity.
• Kowloon Walled City was a densely populated, largely ungoverned settlement in New Kowloon, Hong Kong.
• Solarpunk — Uninspired by the bland, white, sterile aesthetic of most futuristic science-fiction technology and architecture, Olivia Louise conceived of a new genre similar to steampunk, but with electronic technology, and an Art Nouveau veneer.
• How an architect who has never left North Korea imagines the future — an experiment between Koryo Tours and the North Korean architects, and looking at the future of sustainable tourism.
• The Pedway: Elevating London — a documentary on the post-war redevelopment in the City of London.

Share this:

Solarpunk is a wonderful new genre conceived by Olivia Louise.

Okay, so I’m pretty sure that by now everyone at least is aware of Steampunk, with it’s completely awesome Victorian sci-fi aesthetic. But what I want to see is Solarpunk – a plausible near-future sci-fi genre, which I like to imagine as based on updated Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian aesthetics, combined with a green and renewable energy movement to create a world in which children grow up being taught about building electronic tech as well as food gardening and other skills, and people have come back around to appreciating artisans and craftspeople, from stonemasons and smithies, to dress makers and jewelers, and everyone in between. A balance of sustainable energy-powered tech, environmental cities, and wicked cool aesthetics.

Character art by Olivia:

Here are some buzz words~

Natural colors! Art Nouveau! Handcrafted wares! Tailors and dressmakers! Streetcars! Airships! Stained glass window solar panels!!! Education in tech and food growing! Less corporate capitalism, and more small businesses! Solar rooftops and roadways! Communal greenhouses on top of apartments! Electric cars with old-fashioned looks! No-cars-allowed walkways lined with independent shops! Renewable energy-powered Art Nouveau-styled tech life!

Art by Imperial Boy

Can you imagine how pretty it would be to have stained glass windows everywhere that are actually solar panels? The tech is already headed in that direction! Or how about wide-brim hats, or parasols that are topped with discreet solar panel tech incorporated into the design, with ports you can stick your phone charger in to?

Read more on Olivia’s blog, under the Solarpunk tag.

(via Thiefree)

Share this:

How An Architect Who Has Never Left North Korea Imagines The Future

io9 spoke to Nick Bonner, founder of Koryo Tours who have been bringing travellers to North Korea since 1993. Bonner commissioned an architect to create a series of designs imagining how a future North Korea might accommodate a huge influx of tourists:

Many buildings in North Korea have what we in the West would call a retro-futuristic feel, so something that we have seen before, except this time we were pushing the eco side of it all.

The project was commissioned in-house – an experiment between Koryo Tours and the North Korean architects, and looking at the future of sustainable tourism. When we started taking the first tours to North Korea in 1993, only a small handful of people were visiting, but now we take over 2,000 a year (more than half of all the foreigners who visit). It still remains the least-visited country in the world, but also one of the most interesting experiences possible.

Share this:

Paleo-Future:

Kevin Kidney has uploaded some amazing Magic Highway, U.S.A. images taken straight from publicity stills of the era.

(via Overhead Compartment)

Share this:

Infographic by South China Morning Post

I also found these brilliant cross sections by Zoohaus via Arch Daily:

Quatrefoil: ‘The Fancy Shape’

Episode 106 of 99% Invisible investigates the history and meaning behind the quatrefoil, which you may simply recognise as ‘that fancy shape’:

The quatrefoil has been re-interpreted and re-contextualized in a phenomenon to which architectural and art historians refer as “iconographical drift.” The associations with the shape are constantly shifting depending on where it’s used, who is using it, and what purpose it is used for.

Yet no matter where it’s used, it implies the same thing: fanciness.

(Images: Owen Jones: The Grammar of Ornament, sourced from the University of Wisconsin’s digital archive of decorative arts by Eric Gjerde)

The Pedway: Elevating London

The Pedway: Elevating London

…a documentary on the post-war redevelopment in the City of London – focusing on the attempt to build an ambitious network of elevated walkways through the city. The film explores why the ‘Pedway’ scheme was unsuccessful and captures the abandoned remains that, unknown to the public, still haunt the square mile.

What really struck me about this documentary was how well the supporting stock footage and photography was researched and used. I never felt like I was just watching filler material just put in for something to look at.

Share this:

io9 has a detailed look at the new bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek Into Darkness.

I’m in total agreement with commenter MonkeyT:

So where are the actual dynamic words and numbers people communicate with? All the consoles are either video game controllers or playskool desks.
“How much antimatter do we have?” “Err… three out of four glowing buttons, sir.”
“How fast are we going?” “No red lights yet, sir. All blue.”
“Red-thingy moving toward the green-thingy. I think we’re the green-thingy…”

In the 2009 movie we barely got to see the bridge, and what we did see was a blur of fast editing, a camera that never settled down and that infamous lens flare. Into Darkness probably won’t need a detailed set that looks like it might be the center of operations for a functioning starship either, it just needs flash. Shame really.

Share this:

An attempt to draw All The Buildings in New York, by James Gulliver Hancock.

Preliminary atlas of gizmo landscapes

A preliminary atlas of gizmo landscapes, the mines (extraction), factories (assembly), server farms (collation) and cell towers (transmission) that invisibly make our magical devices be what they are and do what they do.

Until we see that the iPhone is as thoroughly entangled into a network of landscapes as any more obviously geological infrastructure (the highway, both imposing carefully limited slopes across every topography it encounters and grinding/crushing/re-laying igneous material onto those slopes) or industrial product (the car, fueled by condensed and liquefied geology), we will consistently misunderstand it.
Rob Holmes (2010)

There’s also a 2012 follow up post, an atlas of iphone landscapes, which references (the later disgraced) This American Life episode Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory. I’m not sure why he’s picking on the iPhone; the same observations are true of any smartphone.

Chess set architecture

Designing chess pieces seems to be a little like designing typefaces. There’s a lot of variety, but in the really elegant, refined pieces it’s the subtle attention to details that makes all the difference.

There are, perhaps, stronger architectural connections.

The heights of the pieces reflects the facade of the Parthanon

Daniel Weil has created a new design for the chess set which is making its debut at the World Chess Candidates Tournament in London.

Carrying through the Classical theme, Weil linked the eight major chess pieces to the eight columns of the façade of the Parthanon. He redrew the height of the pieces to reflect the pitch of the façade, so that the pieces before play would evoke the structure of a Classical building.

There are also ergonomic considerations. Weil developed the idea of a ‘north hold’, where the piece is held between the index finger and thumb, and a ‘south hold’, where it is cupped in the hand for more ‘theatrical disdain’.

More on designweek.co.uk.