Funny enough, this is the camera concept that had the photography world buzzing when numerous sources believed this was truly the next Canon G7X Mark III. Designer Riccardo Breccia got a lot of heat for this supposed hoax release (and why not, he may or may not have done something similar with the Google Pixel)… but all it really means is that he’s really really good at renderings! So take a gander at the all new flip screen, simplified controls/buttons, and a dedicated EV +/- dial. The only thing you’ll be bothered by is that it’s not real!
An iconic building does more than make a statement of its own; it anchors a block or neighborhood and converses with structures around it. Such is the case with Renzo Piano’s New York Times building, a towering masterwork in midtown Manhattan. But……
Elon Musk‘s infrastructure firm The Boring Company has revealed plans to bring its super-fast tunnel system to Chicago, where “autonomous electric skates” travelling up to 150 miles per hour will link the city’s Downtown area with O’Hare Airport.
The Boring Company‘s scheme was selected by the Chicago Infrastructure Trust (CIT) as the winning proposal bidding for the O’Hare Express service, the city’s mayor Rahm Emanuel revealed yesterday.
Called Chicago Express Loop, it will provide a super-high-speed underground connection between O’Hare International Airport’s Terminals 1-3 and Block 37 in Downtown Chicago, cutting the journey time to just 12 minutes.
This is much faster than the current options, which include the L train or driving via the often-congested expressway.
Passengers on the Chicago Express Loop will travel in driverless battery-powered pods, which will be pulled along a concrete track with electric lines at speeds of 125-150 miles per hour.
It is expected to be open 20 hours per day, every day of the week, with pods leaving each station every 30 seconds.
“Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates travelling at 125-150 miles per hour,” said The Boring Company on its website.
“It will take 12-minutes to travel from O’Hare to downtown,” it added. “The Chicago Express Loop is three to four times faster than existing transportation systems between O’Hare Airport and downtown Chicago.”
Musk’s company has already revealed plans for similar super-fast tunnel connections in Los Angeles, and between Washington DC and New York City, as part of its mission “to alleviate soul-destroying traffic by constructing safe, affordable, and environmentally-friendly public transportation systems”.
The “skates” will provide zero-emissions, while burrowing underground allows for a more direct link, as well as minimising noise and vibration.
Renderings of the Chicago proposal reveal a station at O’Hare featuring a series of platforms. Passengers can hop on and off the pods, which are modelled on the Model X sports utility vehicle (SUV) by Musk’s electric car brand Tesla.
Each will accommodate eight to 16 passengers, or a single passenger vehicle like a bicycle. Images show the vehicles to be glazed and fitted with benches, and luggage storage. The cabins will also be climate controlled and offer Wi-Fi connection.
The Boring Company, which Musk founded in 2016, will completely fund the project.
The scheme forms part of Musk’s long-term mission to overhaul public transport systems, which he described as “a pain in the ass” in January 2018.
The billionaire entrepreneur – who is also CEO of SpaceX – is known for inventing the high-speed transport Hyperloop link in 2013, but is no longer directly involved with any companies developing the technology.
A collaboration between Stockholm-based Note Design Studio and Korean brand Lagom Bath, this collection of bathroom object is a nod to the Scandinavian and Asian cultures’ mutual appreciation for design purity and simplicity. The minimalistic series includes bathroom cabinets, toilet roll holders, towel hooks, and lighting. Users will find a material mixture consisting of glass, metal, ceramics, natural ash, and plastic composite – each as aesthetically appealing as they are functionally water-resistant and tactile. Frill-free and simple, the collection acts as a sort of canvas you can paint with cozy towels, elegant grooming products and other artistic accessories.
With $10,000 each going to The Trevor Project and Lambda Legal—two organizations that offer support to the LGBTQ community in a multitude of ways—Warby Parker’s “Prism” collection of Haskell-style sunglasses offers a rainbow of colorways. From pink……
With just 15 days left until entries close for the inaugural Dezeen Awards, we’re announcing the 15 judges who will be naming the architects, designers and interior designers of the year.
Would you like to be crowned architect, designer or interior designer of the year at a high-profile awards ceremony in November? If so, then start working on your entries now!
Established and emerging designers will both receive recognition
Six of the Dezeen Awards categories have been specifically created to highlight the architects and designers producing the most outstanding work.
Among these categories, our panel of industry-leading judges will also be selecting the emerging designers and studios who they feel are set to make a big impact on the design world.
The winners of these six categories will be announced at the end of the ceremony on 27 November. Together with the three awards for best overall project in architecture, interiors and design, they make up part of the Ultimate Dezeen Awards, a top tier of nine accolades that will honour the most outstanding design talent of the year.
Read on to find out who will be judging your category:
Architect of the year and emerging architect of the year judges
› David Adjaye, founder of Adjaye Associates › Juergen Mayer, founder of architecture office J Mayer H › Sadie Morgan, founding director of architecture practice dRMM › Rossana Hu, founding partner of Neri&Hu › Carlo Ratti, founder of Carlo Ratti Associati and director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab
Interior designer of the year and emerging interior designer of the year judges
› Andre Fu, founder of Hong Kong design studio AFSO › Nick Jones, founder and CEO of Soho House › Ilse Crawford, founder of London-based interior design studio StudioIlse › David Kohn, director of London-based practice David Kohn Architects › Patrizia Moroso, art director of furniture brand Moroso
Designer of the year and emerging designer of the year judges
The abstract landscapes depicted in the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky offer a frightening look at the extent of human impact on Earth, says Owen Hatherley.
I’m in a gallery looking at several enormous photographs, though it isn’t clear that they are photographs, unless you look at the captions.
Some look like abstract expressionist paintings, swirls of paint dotted and dragged along a canvas, murky and intricate but completely without realism. But then I read the caption and it says “Phospor Tailings Pond #2, Polk County, Florida, USA, 2012”, or “Dryland Farming #17, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2011”. And what looks like an art-brut rendering of a series of daggers is “Salt Pans #25, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India, 2016”.
In just a couple of photographs, you can clearly see traces of familiar objects – cars parked amidst reservoirs in the graph-like constructivist image of “Pivot Irrigation/Suburb, South of Yuma, Arizona, USA, 2011”, or the clearly visible, if diagrammatic, pattern of descending paddy fields in “Rice Terrace #4, Western Yunnan Province, China”.
They all look pretty, at first. But when you try and piece together what you’re seeing, and try to relate it to any landscape you know, they’re frightening.
They all look pretty, at first
This is Water Matters, an exhibition by Canadian landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky at Phase 2, the gallery space inside the London office of multinational engineering firm Arup.
It is the second of two recent exhibitions of his work in London, the other being part of Photo London, in which he showcased some yet more experimental work that used augmented reality to place the viewer in his manufactured landscapes.
For some decades now, Burtynsky has been one of the most interesting photographers of the built environment; not necessarily of architecture, even though he did begin as an architectural photographer, but certainly of buildings.
He has spoken about an interest in finding the biggest manmade structures possible – dams, power stations, refineries, and most recently, huge industrial-agricultural transformations of the landscape – and documenting them, often in a series, as a means to understanding, rather than ignoring, the infrastructure and production networks that lie behind every aspect of modern life.
Seeing these two shows in London, though, posed difficult questions about what it is Burtynsky does; and how work that is evidently meant to be cautionary so often looks horribly beautiful.
Burtynsky’s photographs don’t moralise
Burtynsky’s books have straightforward names and subject matter, like Oil and Water, and their historical, analytic accompanying texts answer better than most the commonly made criticism made by Bertolt Brecht about industrial photography, that “a photograph of a factory tells us nothing about the social relations in that factory”, but tells us only whether that factory is “beautiful” or not.
Instead, Burtynsky orders the images into sequences that create links between only apparently disconnected things, like ship-breaking in Bangladesh, “towns” on the freeway in the US made up entirely of drive-in chains, landscapes of burning tyres that resemble the apocalyptic paintings of John Martin, immense spaces that he calls “inverted skyscrapers”, and so forth.
All are the direct result of the processes that get water into your taps and fuel into your vehicles. However, they’re not polemical as such, preferring a stark, hard look at a landscape rather than an argument against it. Where there are alternatives, they can be slightly sentimental. Water, for instance, juxtaposes totally unsustainable irrigated American desert suburbs with people bathing in the Ganges.
There are moments here, as in the two films that Jennifer Baichwal has made about his work, Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark, that can verge on Brass Eye’s distinction between “good science” and “bad science”. But in their own right, Burtynsky’s photographs don’t moralise: this is what the world looks like, this is what is necessary to maintain your lifestyle, make up your own mind.
His recent works, soon to be collected in a volume titled Anthropocene, depict what he calls a “great acceleration” in the transformation of the landscape by human beings. Some of the extremely drastic work on show at Arup comes from this idea, where it’s no longer clear what is human and what is natural, and the idea of an untainted Earth becomes absurd.
To document this, Burtynsky’s photographs have become increasingly high-tech in the way they are produced, not necessarily in the sense of digital manipulation – the photographic fictions used by a (sometimes superficially similar) photographer like Andreas Gursky – but in the use of drones and helicopters to take the pictures in the first place, allowing him vantage points that would otherwise be impossible.
It’s no longer clear what is human and what is natural
The ideas showcased at Photo London were similarly ambitious, not only the augmented reality, but the possibility of three-dimensionally printed versions of his photographs that you could enter, making these already huge and overwhelming images even more immersive, the next best thing to being there.
What has always been fascinating in Burtynsky’s photographs is the same as what has sometimes made them uncomfortable – the sublime, “a sense of awe at what we as a species were up to”, that you can get lost in, to the point where landfill is treated with the same panoramic grandeur as some sort of grand Victorian history painting, Phospor extraction is rendered as Jackson Pollock, and mining as Piranesi.
I wonder if that isn’t undercutting the apocalyptic critique that lies underneath these images.
Bertolt Brecht’s friend Walter Benjamin regarded one of the most indicative things about fascism to be an ability to regard destruction with pleasure, as a sublime spectacle. That is obviously not Burtynsky’s intention – he clearly wants viewers to think about the spaces he depicts, in order to understand them – but it’s often the effect, so lush and pictorial are the photographs. And they’re getting more and more so, the more elaborate the technology gets. They imply that we can understand the built environment as it really exists, but only if we, like Edward Burtynsky, are able to fly over them in a helicopter or send a drone to photograph them.
It would be nice to know as well what the disasters documented by his drones look like from the ground.
Imagine a blank wall, just waiting to be spray painted on. Imagine the kind of art that artists from different backgrounds could bring to that barren wall. Now imagine the wall is actually a toy figurine. Founder of the phenomenon Kidrobot, Paul Budnitz, and legendary toy artist Huck Gee get together 16 years after the Kidrobot sensation (and after having their toys inducted into the Museum of Modern Art) to bring Janky to the world.
Janky is a foxy little character, and a canvas for sixteen of the world’s most famous artists and designers. Paul and Huck reached out to big names like Pete Fowler, Junko Mizuno, Dalek, and many more, to create limited edition artist-designed toys. The Janky comes in over 24 designs, ranging from pop culture, to manga/comic art, to borderline psychedelic illustrations. The artists pour a bit of themselves into the Janky toy, creating something that stems from their interpretation, and the results are just drool-worthy.
Part of the joy is in owning a beautifully made Janky figurine, but the other part is its anticipation. You don’t choose a Janky, but rather, the Janky chooses you. Pledge an early bird amount of $28 and you get three Janky toys selected blindly and sent to you. Refer a friend and get another free Janky added to your pledge! Oh, there’s also a Pete Fowler collaborative 9-inch vinyl figure titled Maximillian Ca$h, and a supermassive 4-foot Janky to scare the bejeezus out of people trespassing your property!
Designers: Paul Budnitz & Huck Gee of Superplastic
Designer toys mash art, comics, animation and pop culture into limited edition works of art. If you’re into any of these things — or just love blue zombie hamsters with chainsaws — then Superplastic is for you!
Back them and they’ll send you brilliant first edition Janky Series One toys, created with super famous artists from around the world. There’s also a giant 8-inch SuperJanky by Mexican artist El Grand Chamaco, and Maximillian Ca$h, a psychedelic 9-inch vinyl raver by their hero, UK artist Pete Fowler!
Every Janky comes in its own sealed surprise box, so you never know which you’ll get till you open the box. Some are secret, some are rare – the chance of getting a specific toy is marked under the toy! Back them and get just a few… or a full case of 24!
Everything is limited edition! When something’s gone, it’s gone forever.
Superplastic was created by Kidrobot founder Paul Budnitz and legendary toy artist Huck Gee.
The artists they work with are brilliant, talented creators who deserve our love and support!
Team Superplastic
Paul Budnitz is a well-known artist and entrepreneur. He founded Superplastic, Kidrobot (he left in 2012), Budnitz Bicycles & Ello. Paul makes books, films, & lots of other stuff.
Huck Gee is head of design for Superplastic. His custom toys sell for as much as $50K and he exhibits everywhere.
Toys by Paul and Huck are featured in the collection of MoMa.
They both wear size 13 sneakers, which probably explains why Janky has such big shoes.
For athletes and sport enthusiasts alike, an injury can drastically hinder their ability to partake in the activity that they love, and staggeringly, they are 400% more likely to injure themselves again after the initial injury, the prospect of this may lead to uncertainty and a loss of enjoinment.
Ara is a smart rehabilitation device that, using a plethora of senses, provides the user’s therapist with smart insights and increased amounts of data to allow them to make a well informed and personalized decision, this speed up the recovery process. An app allows the user to track their progress in real time and advise them on taking breaks during exercises or stimulate the injury to avoid the joint becoming stiff.
As Ara is designed to be worn always, the minimal design and thin form allows it to sit virtually unnoticed beneath clothing, and the soft-touch fabric combined with the flexible internal components makes it comfortable to wear!
As soon as an individual gets injured, he/she receives Ara, who starts to monitor the injury. This information is then shared with the therapist which enables him/her to take data driven decisions and inform the patient about their injury and how to get better. Through this, patients will receive a personalised rehabilitation experience which ends with teaching individuals how to prevent the injury from happening again. Furthermore this device can be used by individuals and athletes who then reduce the risk of injuries from happening by working on preventive training. All this data can then be collected in a general database which in turn helps healthcare providers get a better understanding of the injury and optimise the rehabilitation processes for each individual.
MEET ARA, THE SMART REHABILITATION BRACELET
Through constant sensing Ara provides an increased amount of insights for the therapists to take humanized and data driven decisions. Which results in a more informed, easier, faster and reassured rehabilitation experience for the patient. The concept consists of three main items, a bracelet (to monitor the patients injury), an app (to communicate and adapt the therapy) and a charging unit. Since patients will be wearing Ara throughout the biggest part of the day, they do not wish to wear technology visually, but just get the benefits. Because of this a minimal design was created on the outside of the product.
EMPOWERING PATIENTS
The patient app empowers patients to take an active role into their own rehabilitation. It will show users their medical information, such as the facts about their injury, and how it has evolved over time. It will show the activity of the day and warn them if they should let the knee rest for a while, or stimulate them to do more, to make sure the knee doesn’t turn stiff. Through the contact page patients and therapists are able to communicate about the injury in a secure way and also share photos and videos when they would like more precise feedback. By showing the improvement over time patients will be motivated to continue their training and the app will allow patients to celebrate and share achievements with their environment.
LIVE FEEDBACK
One of the biggest problems with rehabilitation is to know when you have done enough exercises for the day. If patients push themselves too far, they risk further injuring the knee, instead of rehabilitating it. To ensure that patients don’t push themselves too far Ara has several vibration engines integrated into the bracelet. These will vibrate when direct feedback is needed, for example when they need to take a break. Ara comes with an App that will give life feedback to patients when performing these exercises and will serve as their personal rehabilitation coach.
REMOTE MONITORING
Nowadays the therapist sees patients roughly once a month. A large part of these meetings consists of the therapists performing checks to see how the injury is evolving. By sharing the information that Ara collects with the therapists this will no longer be needed and the time can be spend on the treatment. Furthermore the application allows the therapists to perform remote monitoring of the patients and to adapt their therapy when this is needed. Ara will share the results and make recommendations but the final decisions stays with the therapists.
PREVENTION – SPORT ENHANCING
Ara can also be used by individuals who wish to reduce the risk of injuries from happening in the first place. This is done by using one bracelet on each leg when doing exercises. This since the balance and motion of the legs in comparison is more important then to get precise data of the knee. The performance app will teach people the proper techniques and methods adapted to their desired activities and built. For example when you are a basketball player it will focus more on your technique of landing whilst for soccer a quicker reaction time of the muscles is more important.
DESIGNED FOR SUSTAINABILITY
Ara is designed with sustainability in mind. This means that it is developed not only thinking of what happens to the product in this lifecycle but also its next. Through the use of a QR code Ara is linked to a product passport which shows how to disassemble to product and gain back its materials and components.
DESIGNED FOR DISASSEMBLY
By simply cutting the blue thread on the outside of the product and polling on the blue tag, the product is disassembled in all the different components it contains. The textiles can be composted and used for their biological nutrients and the sensors and technology slab can be easily recycled by just melting the plastic outer layer of the components.
THE MATERIAL PASSPORT
The biggest advantage of using a material passport with the product is that we can close the information loop in the supply chain, and the lack of quality assurance. The material passport helps to prepare the way for products and projects to fit within the circular economy. Material passports can be used by a broad range of stakeholders: from product manufacturers (know how the product is made and where everything is located), building/system owners and users (knowhow of what you own, how much the product is actually worth), to disassembly companies (how to recycle and disassemble), and material suppliers (how to use materials to enable them to up-cycle).
SUSTAINABILITY FOR PROFITABILITY
Traditionally when we think of sustainability, we consider that products will be more expensive to produce. With Ara we prove that it is profitable to be sustainable. By thinking of sustainability form the very beginning the assembly and recovery process of the product have been optimised, and since companies will be able to reuse all the materials and components they will gain back value from what otherwise would be considered waste.
The Parasole may be called a sock because the correct term for it hasn’t been invented yet. A hybrid between a sock and shoe, the Parasole wraps itself around your feet but gives them support and structure, letting your feet breathe, while giving them the compression and protection they need. These socks can be easily worn with shoes, or even as shoes, letting them massage your feet and prevent everyday fatigue.
Designed to be much more than just a fabric sock, the Parasole was made to be a recovery sock that would do the work of an athletic sock, giving your feet support while compressing them to relieve pressure points. Made from a sweat-wicking fabric, the sock comes with 360 degrees of breathability, making sure your feet never get sweaty or smelly. The socks even come with a breathable/flexible sole of their own, created using 3D generative design. Wearing them gives your feet support, allowing you to use the socks with regular shoes for added comfort, or even without shoes, like you would wear socks around the house. The polymer sole resists abrasion too, letting you wear the Parasole outdoors, or even at the gym, for the most comfortable sock/shoe experience.
The Parasole was designed with the properties of an athletic sock, to relieve foot pain caused by daily activities. As many as 51% of Americans end up limiting their daily activities because of foot fatigue, and the Parasole was created to tackle it. Whether worn as is, or even inside a shoe, the Parasole hugs your feet, cushions your sole and gives support to the arch of your foot, while remaining completely breathable. Its Ultra-Fresh coating contains anti-microbial and anti-odor properties, making sure your feet and the sock stay healthy and odor free at all times. Washing the Parasole is just as easy as washing a regular sock. The sole can either be dusted off, rinsed, or the entire Parasole can be easily machine washed, making it as good as new!
Parasoles are the world’s first 3D recovery footwear that combine the comfort and freedom of a compression sock with key properties of a supportive insole, and traction and protection of an outsole.
Their Patent Pending technology is engineered with a generative designed polymer sole providing dynamic arch support, improved pressure distribution, and micro-cushioning.
Foot pain can have a profound impact on quality of life. A recent survey by The American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) found that 77% of Americans have experienced foot pain and 51% have limited activity because of foot pain.
Many turn to insoles or prescription orthotics to help alleviate the pain, which is great, but what happens when we take off our shoes? We are left with an unsupported fatigued foot, which causes us to walk awkwardly while trying to avoid the pain, or look for the closest place to sit down and get off our feet.
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.
