Archive for the 'architecture' category.
Jul 3 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | Add a Comment
During an afternoon’s feasting with our “Special Edition Pizza Thursday” pie from Pizza Suprema at the New York Bunker, I came across an interesting article from the Daily Mail in the UK. A Belgian architect named Vincent Callebaut recently released his plans for the “Lilypad,” a floating city of our future water-covered planet. The Lillypad will be able to float around the world like a giant ship, just in time for your favorite ecological doom-and-gloom scenario. It’s a pretty cool design, and according to the article, “centered around a lake which collects and then purifies rain water, the Lilypad will drift around the world following the ocean currents and streams.” This is an excellent idea as long as the poisoned ecology doesn’t also unleash a horde of giant “super frogs,” desperate for a place to rest their massive webbed feet.
An architect has come up with an innovative answer to rising sea levels - a city that floats around the world.
The self-contained ‘Lilypad’ city will be home to around 50,000 ‘climate refugees’ from the worst hit areas - including London.
Latest research predicts that sea levels could rise by up to 88cm - nearly 3ft - by the year 2100, putting many islands in the Pacific Ocean in danger.
Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director at theMechanism, a multi-disciplinary design agency with offices in New York, London and Durban, South Africa. Thanks to American news forecasts, Dave now lives in fear of everything.
Jun 22 | Posted by Jeffrey Barke | 3 comments
Has anyone been to this store yet? Is it actually as cool as the photographs look and the article sounds? "Visitors to the new Jil Sander store, which opened last week on the corner of Howard and Crosby Streets in SoHo, might be surprised to walk in and find the place totally empty." "Not a bag, shoe, or double-faced cashmere coat in sight."
The design "was a collaboration between Raf Simons, who has been the creative director of the minimalist luxury brand since 2005, and Germaine Kruip, a 38-year-old Dutch artist who creates quiet, meditative works using little more than space and light."
"The vast ground floor, which is entered from Howard Street, is anchored at each end with a system of louvers that rotate at regular intervals to enclose the entire space in whiteness or open it up to reflected glimpses of the outside. Kruip refers to this architectural intervention as the creation of a 'mind space.' And in fact, the space functions as a sort of portal—a conceptual air lock that allows you to smoothly acclimate from the borderland of Canal Street to the promise of a world where clean lines are next to godliness. Whether customers are indeed inspired to pause long enough to take it all in, or pass right through to the grand marble staircase and up to the second floor where the various Jil Sander collections are actually displayed, or simply turn around and walk out the door confused—remains to be seen."
Photos and quotes from the New York Times: "It's About…Nothing." Alix Browne. 22 June 2008. Photos by Germaine Kruip.
Jeffrey Barke is senior developer and information architect at theMechanism, a multimedia firm with offices in New York, London and Durban, South Africa.
May 28 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | 1 Comment
Anyone who flies inside what I’ve come to refer to as “mechanically–challenged, winged space parrots” – even semi-regularly – knows that the entire process of getting from “Point A” to “Point B” usually includes several points in-between and continues to devolve into a painfully demanding & hebetudinous operation. Whether getting to the airport only to experience the blitzkrieg of hundreds of hostile travelers trying to reach their destinations before anyone else; to the poorly designed automatic check-in kiosks; to worrying whether or not your regulation size bag will be squeezable into an undersized compartment above your head or forced below the plane because there simply are too many knuckleheads and not enough room. Worrying about whether or not you can bring a dollop of soap in a baggy, for fear that you’ll be forcefully held at gunpoint by security guards and trained attack wolves, makes the overall trip a consistently wearisome panic attack waiting to happen.
Thankfully, much like an Advil, cheerfully delivered by an enchanting Koala bear, Qantas Airlines is showing the obscenely wealthy that those headaches are over.
While on layover in Sydney or Melbourne, you me and the rest of the weariest travelers can merely dream of relaxing in luxury, nestled within the new Marc Newson-designed Qantas First Class Lounges. Designed like the futuristic lair of The Jetsons or James Bond, these fantastically designed chill-out spaces sport individual marble-lined shower suites, Payot cosmetics and Kevin Murphy hair products, as well as a library stocked with best selling books, magazines, newspapers and board games – all free for the price of a first class ticket. There’s also an ‘entertainment zone’ with plasma TVs and Sony play stations. A trip from Melbourne to Budapest will knock you back a little more than $14,000. Once again, great design becomes limited to only the people who can afford it.
But, for even that price, they are quite breathtaking, and give the “filthiest of the rich” an experience they are, I’m quite certain, already very used to: facials, internet, marble showers and plausibly, off-duty attack wolves that apply and lick perfectly posh and pedicured feet with all of the skin moisturizer and lotions airport security confiscated from my suitcase at the security check.
Aug 29 | Posted by Sharon | 2 comments
Once you drive through the Holland Tunnel, there’s a strip of highway in Jersey City where Dave Fletcher and I sometimes play a little game called “Spot the Hooker.” Chances are at any time of day or night, you will see a scantily clad lady trolling the lanes for her next conquest ready to check in to any one of the motels that litter this particular section of town. You won’t find the words “Hilton,” “Marriott” or even “Best” or “Western” in their names. You will however, see the words “Hourly Rates” and “Free HBO” pretty frequently.
However, during one of our games I noticed something beyond the hookers and the signs for mirrored rooms. I realized that each motel parking lot on this street of sin was designed to block the view of their customers’ cars. This was no accident. Drive a 1996 light blue Dodge minivan? Don’t worry…nobody will spot that tell-tale “Ask me about my (insert school here) honor student” bumper sticker. Borrowed your girlfriend’s Sentra for a night of fun with your new “friend” Candy? Well, your secret is safe behind that giant wall, curved fence or landscaped shrubbery.
Sure, you can call these motels sleazy but you can also call their parking lot design clever. Take a look for yourself next time you are driving through the shady side of “Anytown, USA”.
Sharon Terry is the Marketing Specialist for theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London. When she’s not hunting down hookers in the backstreets of New Jersey while listening to Bruce Springsteen, she’s busy trying to make theMechanism’s wisdom required reading in local corporate circles.
May 3 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | 1 Comment
Jane Jakobs was an American-born Canadian writer, best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which attacked postwar modernist urban renewal policies in the U.S.. She examined how cities should work from street design to how to them friendly for all forms of transport.
She died at the ripe old age of 89, and theMechanism salutes her.
Read a fantastic interview conducted by Metropolis Magazine in 2000 here.
