Hasta La Ideas

Wheel’s Up. A rendering of the New York Wheel, to be built on Staten Island.

Round and round she goes, and where she stops…well, it will be Staten Island. Start overcoming your acrophobia through therapeutic sketch-journaling now, design fans, because New York City is getting its very own London Eye-style “observation wheel,” and at 625 feet—roughly 60 stories—high, it will be the world’s tallest. Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose name one rarely hears in the same sentence as “world’s tallest”) and other city leaders joined representatives from the company in charge of the project yesterday for the announcement of plans for the New York Wheel, which will be built on the northeastern side of Staten Island and offer riders swell views of the Lower and Midtown Manhattan skylines, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn, and the New York Harbor. The mega Ferris Wheel was proposed in response to the NYC Economic Development Corp’s request for bids for projects that would increase economic growth, boost tourism, and create jobs on Staten Island.

The wheel will be nestled beside a large terminal building that will feature exhibitions about NYC history, alternative energy, and environmental sustainability—created in collaboration with Cornell’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Johnson and the global relief and development agency CARE. Meanwhile, both the wheel and the terminal building will be constructed with an eye to Platinum LEED certification. Among the architects, engineers, designers, and consultants who have been tapped to work on the project are Starneth (the Ferris Wheel specialists that built the London Eye) and Perkins Eastman. Construction on the New York Wheel is expected to begin in early 2014 with a grand opening scheduled for early 2016. If all goes according to plan, the 36 capsules will carry some of their first passengers on New Year’s Eve 2015.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The search for a worthy successor to Anthony Bannon has concluded, and Bruce Barnes (pictured) is the new director of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. He’ll take the helm of the world’s oldest museum of photography and one of the largest motion-picture archives next week. Barnes, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, is the president of American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, a private foundation based in New York that works to foster understanding and appreciation of American decorative art from the period around 1900. Before founding ADA1900, he served as CEO of Rochester-based online education company Element K.

“Having devoted most of the last seven years to collaborating with major museums across the country and furthering art scholarship, I am eager to apply my strategic and management skills to leading George Eastman House,” said Barnes in a statement announcing his appointment. “The house and a great many of the museum’s objects fall precisely within my longstanding interest in American art, decorative art, and architecture of the period from 1876 to 1940. My background in innovative online education will be invaluable to the creation of a virtual museum that will provide global access to its superb collections.” Barnes succeeds Bannon, who retired from George Eastman House earlier this year after 16 years in the position.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Inspired by the natural occurrence of water condensing onto leaves, the Leaf system uses the same principle to collect dew before filtering and turning it into usable water. A solar powered thermoregulator ensures the surface temp is always below the dewpoint of the surrounding air, triggering drops to form and slide into the carbon/sand filtering layers located in the “stem.” Depending on humidity, the unit can collect up to 15 liters of water every day!

Designer: Anurag Sarda

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(Autonomous Water Resource was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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What with the realities of urban life, the design of municipal benches is subject to any number of creativity restricting limitations—leaving our city landscapes lined with fairly generic, sturdy, functional and all just a little uninspiring public seating.

Teaming up with the London Design Festival organisers this year, renowned British manufacturer Established & Sons have commissioned a series of one off benches for the V&A’s epic John Madejski Garden space, specifying only the material each designer must use in their creation.

On a sunny day of festival going we snuck in some cheeky shots of revelers testing out the designer seating on display.

AL_A architects, creators of last years V&A doorway installation “Timber Wave” teamed up with Catalan ceramicists in Barcelona to produce their layered tile seating.

A magnificent, monolithic, mock-marble slab of bench from the guys at Industrial Facility.

Portuguese designer Fernando Brizio contributes a very Iberian pig hoof shaped bench made from his country’s finest cork.

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A Pac-man cheesecake from obsequies…(Read…)