Next time your trapped in the office over the weekend with nothing to do, 3,000 post-it notes laying around, and about 10 extra hours to burn, try making a mural. This masterpiece was officially sanctioned by the boss, so you know. Here’s a full how-to.
British innovators Anab Jain and Stuart Wood have found a way to bring the interaction of natural light to a tabletop. Their project Light Play set out to examine the context of stressful and sedentary office based work. And from that created a table embeded with optical fibers that display a sunlight display grid on its surface by connecting the fibers to a second input grid placed on a window.
The blue and white Greek-themed paper coffee cup is a definitive New York icon and while up to 40% of paper go cups in New York are still of the blue Greek variety, it’s fast being replaced by other designs. Rodger Stevens of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn has delved into the history of the cups and has collected hundreds of them, displaying them in glass display cases at his home. They are all little bits of proof that this is New York and not someplace else, Stevens says.
Free food is available at every time of the year on the streets of Los Angeles. says the Fallen Fruit Project, which is mapping and promoting the harvest of fruit that hangs over public land in L.A. Besides nabbing free food, the group outlines other benefits of public harvesting. Public fruit is more efficient to grow than farmed fruit because it eliminates the cost of transport. Since it is not a mono-crop, as in an orchard of a single variety of apple, there are far less pests and less chemicals required. A further irony is that most of the public fruit in Los Angles is organic, blessed by neglect.
To train people for agriculture careers, a Japanese staffing company has built an urban farm in a Tokyo office tower basement. The project, called Pasona O2 is growing more than 1000 sqare meters of plants without natural sunlight in the basement of the 27-story Otemachi Nomura Building in Tokyo’s Otemachi district. The plants are sustained by artificial light from light-emitting diodes, metal halide lamps, and high-pressure sodium vapor lamps. The temperature of the room is controlled by computer, and the vegetables are grown by a pesticide-free method in which fertilizer and carbon dioxide are delivered by spraying.The “field” grows tomatoes, lettuces, strawberries, flowers and herbs and there’s a terraced paddy field used to grow rice.
Chicago is a place for people to go when they want to die. At any age, says Bill Callahan, the musician known as Smog. But have you tried the pizza, Bill? Accompanying an interview on the BBC Collective site are streams of songs and videos including a nice one of him singing Say Valley Maker in session on the BBC.
The latest work from British photographer Dan Holdsworth includes a series of images of the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The Gregorian exhibit is on view at London’s Store Gallery. And more of Holdsworth’s photos are at danholdsworth.com.
Think the housing bubble’s about ready to finally burst? One guy in L.A. is already shorting the housing market. An article in the L.A. Times writes about Mark A.R. Kleiman, a UCLA professor of public policy, who sold his 2,700-square foot, four-bedroom Mulholland Drive home and made a 62% gain over the price he paid in 1997 plus remodeling — and then he moved to an apartment in Brentwood. The article goes on to reinforce the common belief that maybe the end of the bubble may be near. If I could have found a Westside REIT, I could have shorted that, Kleiman said.
Built in 1968-69, the Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki was designed by Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen. Also know as the Church of the Rock, it’s built into solid rock and natural light brightens the inside through 180 glasses between the dome and the wall. More photos of architecture and landscape of Finland at muuka.com
Some great blurry photos from the It is Time exhibition at the Moscow House of Photography.
Britain’s Sun report that Her Majesty has acquired a Royal iPod.
Korean school children have been encouraged to plaster subway stations with bitter anti-Japanese drawings. I don’t get it either.
An English company is making the ultimate foosball table. The custom-made Opus table can really put you– or a hand-painted cast replica or you– in the game. Send us colour head/neck shots taken in natural light… and using a ball of “digital clay,” our digital sculptor will mould on-screen, creating a precise 3-d replica of the picture.
You think your commute is bad? Driving the Road of Death from Baghdad’s airport is so dangerous that the only way to stay protected is to ride in $275,000 armored buses called Rhino Runners.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Supercar!. Well, it’s really a 1968 Mazda 110s and the trippy brochure that promoted it. Check out the motherlode of old car manuals.
Some Brits have made a Flash Mob Opera. Seems perfect somehow. See a few scenes from the BBC.
Finally, directions for an origami Yoda (.pdf).
Funny little paintings from Brooklyn artist Edward del Rosario are on view at the Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, California
Beautiful work from New York photographer Clifford Ross. He takes photos of hurricane waves by standing in their path and clicking the shutter.
San Francisco architect Ollie Lundberg has built his Cazadero, CA country house out of salvaged parts from houses and offices that his firm built. And he lives in a decommissioned Icelandic car ferry docked in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco.