little people / black and white future (?)
From the blog of Lebbeus Woods comes an entry entitled "Utopia Redux" which features a series of images by Cooper Union student Daniel Meriador. They depict a strange and silent technological architecture of humankind, juxtaposed, or floating whimsically, against degraded or hostile-seeming landscapes. Using photo-montage, the images are disarmingly simple, and almost iconographic. The typical elements of classic science fiction →
The Perils of Progress
There is often a moral dimension to the popular fear and resistance associated with technological, social and environmental change. This kind of fear ("future-shock" immediately comes to mind) involves the struggle to cope with new modes of living, as well as a sense of loss for the old. We can never go back to the way things used to be. →
What New Worlds look like
Across Plastic Futures, we have often discussed what the future looks like (or, more precisely, how it is imagined and depicted). In Plastic Futures 1, for instance, we noticed that images of the future (often sci-fi) quite often involve grandiose scenes of enormity in which people become minute figures. So, in Plastic Futures 2 with the next group of participants, →
Crown Casino: ‘A snarling, digitised mutilation’
“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.” -- J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006). "But →
Sublime/Ridiculous
I'm still very interested in the idea of floating islands as a paradigm for future architectures. This has arisen out of my responses to a range of future challenges such as future sea-level rise, increasing population, the possible future reliance on aquaculture for food. I suspect it also stems from the Australian cultural (and my personal) connection to the coast →
emotion deflection + adjustment mask – edam
Been sitting on this idea for a while now, and after discussions of similar train of thoughts over the last few weeks, I just had to do something. Coincidently, as I am typing this post, pia sent in couple of Philips research touching on similar grounds. Were there moments when you wished you weren't as transparent as you were; your →
“the slippage of contemporary life into sci-fi”
In yet another onto-it post (from 2006) by Geoff Manaugh on his BLDGBLOG he throws up some enticing potentials about future aeroplanes printed out of plastic and the imagined potential of bio-printing. But where it gets really interesting for me, is where he starts to discuss how contemporary life is slipping into sci-fi, and "Science-fiction and social realism will become one →
Warming via cremation + BLDGBLOG
This blog, BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh, is very good. I suspect his book may be worth getting. He will be speaking at the Parallax conference in Melbourne in late April/early May. I was particularly warmed by this post on heating via cremation.
Redefining the role of architects
This is to add to Pia's earlier post on the future of design. (decided to do a new post instead of a comment since i realised I am having too much to pour on this topic). This is going to be highly subjective. Architects has traditionally been linked to the term 'builder'. As a builder, we are expected to build, to →
Idiocracy (2006)
I am really looking forward to The Age of the Stupid and its the perspective it is coming from. To add on to the topic of future in a more cynical/comical manner, try this film Idiocracy (2006). When two people awake from a 500-year deep freeze, they find that the world has decayed into a glorified garbage dump. Commercialism and anti-intellectualism →
future of design
John Thackara asks: What would architects design, if they did not design buildings? What would designers design, if they did not design products, or posters? He is not convinced that architects and other designers should limit their capacities to design-for-production, or for individual expression.
The Age of Stupid
The Age of Stupid: final trailer, Feb 2009 HD from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.
Performing Urban Futures
If any of you thought we were a little off-beam reading Stanislavski and building characters, here is an example of some others doing something similar: Urban Futures: a performance based approach to residential design
Dirt under the fingernails
Ok, as promised, this is the bit of text I wrote recently which I said I'd post once i got my ailing computer back. I must say that this erupted out of my morning coffee at a cafe, and while I like aspects of it, other bits irk me. The bit that irks me is that the focus is largely →
White, Fibre Fabulosity: Tokyo fibre 09 Senseware
Like a white swan landing on the reflective lake at just the right moment, this exhibition is coming. Following my earlier post, Extreme Textiles, I just stumbled across this post on the Design Boom blog The site for this delicious looking exhibition is here: Tokyo fibre 09 Senseware It's pure magic. check it out. I especially like the filter mask moulded →
Living Out of Time Challenge.
Living With the Tudors (watch the trailer at this link) is something like the inverse of where we're heading: living out of time, just forward rather than backward. This is our challenge.
Engineered textiles
In terms of structures/construction and new materials, I suspect a good case could be made that the area of engineered textiles will be significant leader of future possibilities, largely because of their potential for integrating so many capacities into the one material. An exhibition in 2005 at the Cooper Hewitt museum, EXTREME TEXTILES, explored some of the potential via some →
Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine | Video on TED.com
Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine | Video on TED.com. This is a talk by a 19yr old who is trying to find a way to approach cancer in radically new ways. It had me returning to a future fiction story I started to write in the early-mid 90s, in which the capacity to develop cancerous cells had become →
Innovation Watch – Trends, Innovation and the Future
Innovation Watch - Trends, Innovation and the Future. This site appears to offer a wealth of relevant information.
The Last Question
Trecia's last post reminded me that I've been meaning to share with you a short story by Isaac Asimov called "The Last Question" that I read when I was a kid. It seems pretty dated in many ways (it was written in 1956) but there is an underlying theme in it that has stuck with me. I've always thought of →
Rhinoplasty.
The first line of the algorithm streamed through his brain and he felt a burning sensation in his sinuses as the pattern formed itself in his mind’s eye. The job wasn’t going to pay, and it wasn’t particularly challenging in itself, but he felt it was a worthwhile thing to be helping these refugees. They were from London this lot. →
Life in the 40s.
A few questions about what life could be like in 2040-50: 1. Resources & Waste - What will things - e.g. food, clothing, buildings, tools - be made of in the future? How will people deal with resource depletion and waste from manufacturing and consumption? 2. Climate - Is dangerous climate change inevitable and if so how fast is it occurring? What →