Hasta La Ideas

We’ve grown accustomed to the stripped down folk sound of Sweden’s Kristian Matsson, better known as The Tallest Man on Earth. Reminiscent of the early American folk of Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, Matsson’s previous records featured analog recordings……

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A praying mantis that mimics an orchid attracts unsuspecting insects and then eats the duped..(Read…)

Paul McGeiver est un photographe passionné par la beauté et le charme de New York. En dressant le portrait du simple passant qui marche sur un pont ou en nous offrant une superbe vue sur les buildings illuminés, il capture des instants d’une rare beauté et ce, de jour comme de nuit. À découvrir.

News: Bjarke Ingel’s firm has unveiled plans for a recycling facility in Copenhagen, encased within a manmade hill that could double as a running track, picnic area or even a snowboarding slope (+ slideshow).

BIG was commissioned by waste management company Amagerforbrænding to create the 1,200-square-metre recycling centre at Sydhavns, the city’s southern port.

Conceived as “a public space rather than a piece of infrastructure”, the Sydhavns Recycling Center is designed as an artificial hill with recycling facilities in its centre and a grassy park over its top.

“As a society, our investment in waste management often ends up as utilitarian facilities of concrete boxes that constitute grey areas on our city maps,” explained BIG in a statement. “What if they could become attractive and lively urban spaces in the neighbourhoods they form part of?”

A sunken figure-of-eight at the centre of the hill will create two banks of recycling bins, laid out as a pair of roundabouts.

A tunnel-like opening at the north-east corner of the site will function as an entrance and exit for vehicles, allowing drivers to circumnavigate the entire space.

“In its simplest form the recycling station is a way to start thinking of our cities as integrated man-made ecosystems, where we don’t distinguish between the front and back of house,” said the firm.

These areas will be concealed by the surrounding grassy banks, where BIG plans to create fitness areas, viewpoints and picnic spaces, as well as a pathway overlooking the activities below.

“From the ridge of the crater, curious citizens can look into the recycling square and learn about the journey of recycled materials graphically illustrated on the inside of the crater wall,” added BIG.

One proposal image also show visitors snowboarding on the building.

The project is set to start on site later this year, and completion is pencilled in for 2016.

BIG is also working with Amagerforbrænding on a much larger project – the replacement of a 40-year-old waste incineration plant with a structure that will blow smoke rings and feature a ski slope on its roof.

Speaking to Dezeen last year, Bjarke Ingels said the project will “transform people’s perceptions” about public utility buildings. “Right now you can say it’s a science-fiction idea to have a power plant with smoke rings and ski slopes, but in three years they will skis on their power plants in Denmark.”

Sydhavns Recycling Center is one of four projects that BIG added to its website last week, including a loop-shaped country house that features a gallery for showcasing the clients’ car collection.

Project credits:

Client: Amagerforbrænding
Architect: BIG
Partners in charge: Bjarke Ingels, David Zahle
Project leader: Nanna Gyldholm Møller
Team: Julian Salazar, Jesper Henriksen, Karol Borkowski, Paolo Venturella, Tiago Sa, Rasmus Pedersen, Romain Pequin, Tobias Hjortdal

The post BIG reveals sunken recycling centre below
terrain for joggers and snowboarders appeared first on Dezeen.

Image above from the Safe Agua project courtesy of Designmatters.

As part of a new interview series on the Autodesk Foundation’s new blog, ImpactDesignHub.org, Allan Chochinov, Editor at Large of Core77 and Chair of the MFA Products of Design program at SVA discusses the Impact Design with Mariana Amatullo, a writer, educator, speaker, and student of design and social impact. She is the Vice President of the award-winning Designmatters Department at Art Center College of Art and Design which she co-founded in 2001. Mariana is a Design and Innovation and Non Profit Management Fellow at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, where her doctoral research focuses on the evolving role of design as a locus for social innovation. In the excerpt from the interview, below, Amatullo shares the 5 things we “know” about the working world in social innovation:

1. Interdisciplinary collaboration is the name of the game

Engaging in social innovation work through design is inherently about stepping into complexity; there is often a need to deal with “wicked problems”—a class of challenges that are complex and systemic in nature. The chances one has to succeed in coming up with new ideas that can be helpful and enhance society’s capacity to meet unmet needs typically requires a set of complementary expertise and experiences on your team. 

2. The ability to learn from mistakes matters

We touched a bit on this earlier: the importance of tolerating ambiguity, taking calculated risks, and accepting failure is part and parcel of the process of invention and experimentation. Social innovation briefs are often devoid of real clues that answer the question, “What does success look like?” So there is a lot of framing and reframing that happens, and it becomes paramount to not only fail fast, but to fail better and learn from that process. 

3. This is not work for the faint of heart

It takes patience, tenacity, courage, initiative, intrinsic motivation, resonant leadership, flexibility, integrity, maturity, humility and of course, imagination, intelligence and skill. 

4. Social innovation work can surprise you—for how addictive it is 

I think that sometimes there is an ingrained perception that social innovation work goes hand-in-hand with altruism. When you talk to folks who are hard-core social activists, social entrepreneurs, humanitarians, etc., you learn that yes—a drive for social change and finding purpose in one’s work—“making a difference” in people’s lives is an important driver. It is exciting and it is rewarding. But as a famous physician and founder of a global NGO once shared with me, as you get more and more immersed in the space, you pretty quickly learn that there is such adrenaline generated from the possibilities of action and impact. It can become a compulsive engagement of sorts that is hard to shake off…in the best possible way!

5. (And my all-time favorite): The sky’s the limit

I think it was the designer Bruce Mau that was once quoted as saying “now that we can do anything, what will we do?”   

Read the full interview with Mariana Amatullo on ImpactDesignHub.org