After reading your facial expressions, Solo Radio chooses music to play to match your mood. The device takes a photo of your face and then sends it to Microsoft, whose program analyzes it. Next, “Solo translates this information into a valence rating……
Continue Reading…
Inspired by the structure of DNA, the Dream Chaser concept also gives urban transportation an entirely new phenotype.
In the process of purchasing the car, people will be able to choose from a number of variations and customize the cockpit and body modules they wish. Cockpit and body modules can be combined and interchanged to adapt to the user’s unique tastes, comfort requirements, and performance needs.
Using belt traction suspension and a magnetic field between each, the units never actually come in contact. Rather, the cockpit module floats in stasis above the body. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the cockpits ability to transfer onto a fixed-track in order to complete long-distance, high-speed journeys as part of a new, integrated transport experience.
Designer: Yiwei Zhang
Apple has announced it will create a new London headquarters inside Battersea Power Station, taking over six floors of the former industrial building on the bank of the River Thames.
The tech giant plans to move 1,400 staff into the iconic 1930s power station by 2021. The building is currently undergoing redevelopment as part of a wider project to create 3,400 homes, a shopping centre, hotels, offices and an arts space in the vicinity.
Apple will rent over 46,000 square metres of newly created office space across six storeys of the power station’s former boiler house, which is being overhauled by British firm Wilkinson Eyre.
“We are delighted that Apple has chosen to make Battersea Power Station its home in 2021,” said Rob Tincknell, chief executive of the Battersea Power Station Development Company.
“It is testament to our fantastic building and the wider regeneration of the 42-acre site,” he added. “It has always been our clear objective to create one of London’s most thriving new communities and this commitment from Apple will undoubtedly help us achieve our goal.”
Apple’s move to Battersea will bring together staff currently spread across several London offices.
The company will occupy 40 per cent of the office space in the whole development, becoming the power station’s biggest tenant and the largest employer in the borough of Wandsworth.
“I am delighted that Apple is moving into Battersea Power Station, helping to generate new jobs and economic prosperity for Londoners,” said London mayor Sadiq Khan.
“It is a further sign that London is open to the biggest brands in the world and the leading city for trade and investment.”
A consortium of Malaysian investors, comprising developers SP Setia and Sime Darby plus the Employees Provident Fund pension fund, bought the site for £400 million in 2012.
The Giles Gilbert Scott-designed Battersea Power Station had been out of use since 1983 and the deal ended almost 30 years of speculation over the future of the site.
Rafael Viñoly’s 17-hectare masterplan for area will feature housing by British firms Ian Simpson Architects and dRMM, as well as a public square deigned by Bjarke Ingels – the Danish architect’s first project in the UK.
The £8 billion redevelopment will also see the addition of housing, shops, restaurants, a library, a hotel and a leisure centre by Frank Gehry and Norman Foster.
This will be Apple’s first major campus in London. The tech company is also putting its finishing touches to a ring-shaped headquarters designed by Foster + Partners in California.
The post Apple to set up campus in London’s Battersea Power Station appeared first on Dezeen.
Artist David Shrigley is set to unveil his gigantic “thumbs up” installation on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square tomorrow and has released a gif to accompany it.
David Shrigley is the latest British artist to create a sculpture for the empty stone plinth at the corner of the square, where the three other corner plinths are occupied by traditional sculptures of historic figures.
He has created a huge bronze hand with an elongated thumb in the “thumbs up” position. The sculpture is called Really Good.
“At the time I submitted that proposal, I really didn’t anticipate that I would actually be given the commission,” Shrigley told Dezeen in an interview that will be published in full tomorrow.
“It was written from the point of view of some kind of crazy political, policy statement, which said that if you say everything is good then it will act as some self-fulfilling prophecy and make everything good, and it would make London, the UK, the world a better place by doing that.”
Macclesfield-born Shrigley is known for his irreverent and opinionated drawings, which have increasingly been translated into physical objects, like the recent mascot for football team Partick Thistle.
He has produced a series of stories in gif format, published on the Giphy platform and on social media. The Really Good gif released this week is the latest addition.
Really Good is based on a series of similar drawings he made before the commission four years ago.
“I had made a few drawings of hands with really long thumbs – one drawing in particular that says ‘everything is good’,” he explained. “I kind of like that idea, and I guess it’s a stupid idea, that a thumbs up is a universal gesture of approval, and therefore if the thumb is a bit bigger, it must be an even greater approval.”
Shrigley is also set to release a book this month called Weak Messages Create Bad Situations: A Manifesto, in response to the “dark political times” facing the UK.
“Lots of individuals in society today are feeble-minded. They don’t know what the hell is going on,” says his introduction to the book. “Unfortunately many of these people are running the country. They don’t know the difference between a precious jewel and a piece of animal turd.”
Shrigley was behind the recent London is Open poster series on London’s underground network produced with mayor Sadiq Khan following the EU Referendum, and has been vocal about his dismay at the results of the vote.
The post David Shrigley releases “thumbs up” teaser for his Really Good Fourth Plinth sculpture appeared first on Dezeen.
Bored Bloomberg Terminal users rejoice, you can now tweet directly from the chat service, Instant Bloomberg (IB).
Terminal users have been able to access Twitter since 2013, but this marks the first time they can interact with the social network.
“Bloomberg is helping unlock the value of Twitter for corporate and financial professionals, while meeting the necessary high standards of communications compliance,” said Bloomberg global head of news and economics products, Ted Merz, in a statement.
Too early to tell if it’ll work, but this is interesting: Snapchat is reinventing themselves as Snap Inc.–and now calling themselves a camera company. “We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate,” they write.
To reinvent the camera, they’ve made a bold choice of form factor: They’ve opted to put it on the front of your face. (With dual lenses, it appears.) The video’s not super-informative, but shows you what they’re going for in terms of lifestyle:
These “Spectacles,” as they’re called, will wirelessly link to your Snapchat account. The only design features they’ve mentioned is that you tap the glasses to make a ten-second snap; a light comes on to alert people that you’re recording; and the glasses will recharge inside the included case. As of yet, there’s no announced release date.
What do you all think, is there room in the market for another image-shooting device? Cameras are a crowded field, with our phones taking up the casual market, GoPros sewing up the action market, mirrorless pocket models taking up the slack, et cetera. But it’s possible that their app’s popularity, and the lure of easy, always-ready-to-shoot capability, may prove irresistible to Snapchatters.
Il y a une semaine, le ciel de New York prenait une teinte rose et emplissait la Grosse Pomme de poésie au coucher du soleil. Une scène à la fois touchante et surprenante, qui pourrait sortir d’un récit de science-fiction, et causée par une trop grande pression atmosphérique. Dans ce type de situation, des particules de poussière sont retenues dans l’air et entrainent une modification de la perception des couleurs des rayons du soleil. Un phénomène à apprécier en images dans la suite de l’article.
@azeryesil
@deborahgenevra
@egyptianking420
@mr.liminal
@92.0712
@pizan27
@al3x.nyc
@jacquinyc9
@jacquinyc9
@baharekural
@newyorker_37
@miss.hannahrose
@mtalirr
@Alberta_Klipple
@ania_nyc
@theogandrea
@lolatwo2
Beijing Design Week 2016: German designer Thomas Schnur presents six pieces of furniture adapted from common objects like traffic cones and metal barriers for an exhibition in Beijing (+ slideshow).
Intended to celebrate everyday objects, The Fragments of the Ordinary exhibition features items including a black metal room divider, stackable felt side tables and a log-cabin-style chair.
“The objects are reflecting certain ideas – they transfer daily life situations into pieces of furniture,” explained Schnur.
Related story: Thomas Schnur’s wire Grid functions as a storage system
“It is important to me that, despite their cross-references, the products, which are often created from familiar fragments, are able to develop the greatest possible degree of autonomy.”
“In this way, they allow for associations but, beyond this, develop their own potential for becoming autonomous products,” he said.
The exhibition features a room divider with a simple black metal frame, developed as an interpretation of metal traffic barriers.. A sheet of felt can be used to cover the structure for more privacy and better sound absorption.
The triangular Felt stool is designed to be stacked, resembling street traffic cones. Schnur chose the material as it is both lightweight and sound-absorbing.
The Forest chair, which is set against a backdrop of greenery, is made from chestnut wood. A stack of cylindrical pieces of wood form the base, referencing the design of seating in forests and villages that are crafted out of tree trunks.
The Rubber Table, which is a development of Schnur’s previous lamp designs, is bendy when picked up. But its plug-like feet make it sturdy when placed down.
Also on display is a miniature version of the Holzbank bench, as well as a pair of brick side tables, which feature a wooden top and bottom.
One of the tables is completely yellow, while the other has a yellow top and base, white bricks and grey joints.
Schnur works from a studio in Cologne. He often works with simple materials for his projects, with other recent examples including a gridded storage system than can be used to display plants, hang up clothes or as a framework for shelves.
The Fragments of the Ordinary exhibition is located at No 27, Neiwubu Street, Dongcheng District. It is taking place as part of the German Design Hub during this year’s Beijing Design Week, which runs from 23 September to 7 October 2016.
Photography is by Alexander Böhle.
The post Thomas Schnur exhibits furniture pieces based on objects found in the street appeared first on Dezeen.
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to make humankind a “spacefaring civilisation” by starting manned missions to Mars as soon as 2022.
In a keynote presentation to the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday, Musk outlined a timeline to create a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet in six years.
He means to make interplanetary colonisation feasible in order to avoid “an inevitable extinction event”.
“The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilisation and multi-planetary species,” he said. “What I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible – like it’s something we can achieve in our lifetimes.”
Billionaire Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, with the goals of enabling Mars colonisation and reducing space travel costs.
His announcement brings forward the date for its first manned mission to the planet and throws light on how the aeronautics company intends to achieve it.
Related story: Elon Musk unveils vision for self-driving electric buses and trucks in Tesla masterplan
The first settlers would be taken to Mars on SpaceX’s Mars Vehicle – a combination of a spaceship and a reusable rocket booster.
A larger version of the company’s Falcon9, the rocket would return to Earth after detaching from the spaceship, which would continue the journey to Mars carrying up to 100 passengers.
The rocket could then be reused – up to 1000 times, according to Musk – to launch further ships and other modules into space. This reuse helps to reduce costs.
To make the prospect accessible, Musk argued that a ticket to Mars should be reduced to rival the cost of buying a house.
“If we can get the cost of moving to Mars to be the same price as a median-priced house in the US of about $250,000 then I think the probability of establishing a civilisation would be relatively high,” said Musk.
Related story: 10 bizarre proposals for 3D-printed NASA bases on Mars
His plans for the initial investment required to construct the technology were less clear. The Guardian reports that Musk reiterated two elements of SpaceX’s existing business model to the congress – sending cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station and launching satellites.
He is also providing some of the funding personally.
“The reason I am personally accruing assets is to fund this,” he said. “I really have no other purpose than to make life interplanetary.”
He plans to name the first spaceship to make the journey to Mars Heart of Gold – a tribute to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
As well as their ambitious plans for the red planet, Musk and SpaceX have devised the Hyperloop supersonic transport system to link Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes – which he believes could be built within a decade.
There has been a growing interest in Mars colonisation since NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover landed on the planet in 2012.
In 2013, over 200,000 people applied for a one-way ticket to join a Mars settlement, and last year NASA ran a competition to find proposals for 3D-printed housing on the red planet.
Even architecture studio Foster + Partners has been investigating the possibilities for building on the planet.
More conceptual plans for colonising the red planet include Alberto Villanueva’s proposal to terraform using towers formed by bacteria.
The post Elon Musk announces plans to start colonising Mars in six years appeared first on Dezeen.
London Design Festival 2016: in this exclusive movie produced by Dezeen for MINI, the brand’s Oke Hauser explains why they worked with architect Asif Khan to install plant-filled pavilions across east London.
Khan‘s Forests installation for MINI consisted of three translucent box-shaped structures filled with plants, which were constructed across Shoreditch for London Design Festival last week.
The aim was to present ideas for how unused public areas could be developed to create shared spaces for people to meet, work and relax outside of their private office or home environments.
“The installation explores a concept called Third Place,” explains Hauser, who was the project manager for Forests.
Related story: MINI presents shared living spaces as a solution to the affordable housing crisis in cities
“It’s not your home, it’s not your workplace, it’s the space in between that you use just for a certain amount of time.”
Each of the pavilions consisted of an aluminium frame clad with translucent polycarbonate plastic and lined with plants, which Hauser says emphasised the semi-public nature of the structures.
“Polycarbonate is an ideal material to communicate this aspect of something private happening in public,” he explains in the film.
“Plants are something that of course everybody has at home. So it’s a nice small element to connect your private space with this shared one.”
Each of the three box-like structures – named Connect, Create and Relax – was designed for a different purpose.
The Relax room was elevated from the ground, requiring visitors to walk up a small hill made from rubber mulch to crawl into it from underneath.
“It is all about zooming out of the city to get a different perspective on things,” Hauser says.
The Connect structure was a corridor-like space featuring a long communal table to encourage people to meet and interact.
“It is all about bringing people together,” Hauser explains. “You can invite your friends and have dinner together, so it’s really about connectivity in a very analogue sense.”
The final pavilion featured reconfigurable bleacher-style seating and power outlets for laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
“The Create space is about bringing people together to have inspirational working moments,” Hauser says.
Following on from an installation by Japanese firm ON design during Milan Design Week this year, Forests is the latest project in the car brand’s ongoing MINI Living initiative, which is exploring potential future solutions for urban living as cities get increasingly crowded and expensive.
Although Khan’s installation is conceptual, Hauser says that the issues it attempts to address are real.
“Architecture right now – and especially development – is stuck on quite old solutions from the last century that are very static and inflexible,” he says.
Subscribe to Dezeen’s YouTube channel for the latest architecture and design movies
“This installation is about creating inspiration. It’s a way to think about what the future could look like and how we could activate leftover space as extensions of our private space. That’s what the MINI Living installation is all about.”
MINI Forests was open to the public during the London Design Festival from 17 to 25 September 2016.
This movie was filmed by Dezeen in London for MINI. The music featured is by Dutch artist Y’Skid.
Dezeen is currently collaborating with the car brand on our Most Loved video series celebrating design objects that have found a special place in people’s hearts.
You can watch all the movies on our YouTube playlist:
The post Asif Khan creates “space in between” homes and workplaces with Forests installation for MINI appeared first on Dezeen.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
