News: computer and electronics retailer Microsoft has become the first US retailer to sell MakerBot’s desktop 3D printers on the shop floor for customers to take home on the same day.
Microsoft has partnered with 3D printing manufacturer MakerBot to offer customers the chance to buy their own MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer from 18 retail stores across the USA. This move makes Microsoft the first retailer to sell MakerBot’s desktop printers outside of the company’s own New York store. Microsoft store customers will also be able to buy the PLA bioplastic material used by the printer and in-store 3D printing demonstrations will be available.
MakerBot has been testing 3D printing demonstrations at Microsoft stores in Seattle, San Francisco and Palo Alto, offering consumers a firsthand experience of 3D printing.
“We’ve seen tremendous interest and enthusiasm at the three initial ‘MakerBot Experience’ stores,” said MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis. “Rolling the program out to 15 additional Microsoft Stores supercharges our mission to bring 3D printing to more people.”
Read more about how 3D printing is changing the worlds of architecture, design, food and medicine in Print Shift, our one-off print-on-demand magazine all about additive manufacturing.
The MakerBot® Experience, our in-store 3D printing demonstration at the Microsoft retail store, is expanding from its roots in Seattle, San Francisco, and Palo Alto and sweeping the nation. Get yourself to a Microsoft Retail Store near you and grab your MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.
The Microsoft retail stores are the only full line stores outside of MakerBot’s own NYC store where you can purchase a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer in person and take it home the same day.
The full list of 18 Microsoft Stores that will sell MakerBot 3D printer and offer in-store demonstrations:
Scottsdale, AZ – Fashion Square Costa Mesa, CA – South Coast Plaza Mission Viejo, CA – The Shops at Mission Viejo Palo Alto, CA – Stanford Shopping Center San Diego, CA – Fashion Valley San Francisco, CA – Westfield San Francisco Centre Lone Tree, CO – Park Meadows Mall Danbury, CT – Danbury Fair Mall Atlanta, GA – Lenox Square Oak Brook, IL – Oakbrook Center Schaumburg, IL – Woodfield Mall Bloomington, MN – Mall of America Salem, NH – The Mall at Rockingham Park Bridgewater, NJ – Bridgewater Commons White Plains, NY – The Westchester Houston, TX – Houston Galleria McLean, VA – Tysons Corner Center Bellevue, WA – Bellevue Square
The shelves in this furniture by design graduate Emiel Remmelts only stay up thanks to concrete blocks, bricks, a glass vase and magazine file boxes propping up one end.
Utrecht product design graduate Emiel Remmelts prototyped a bookcase and clothes rail in his Stacked Objects graduation project.
An ash wood frame forms one side of each piece, whilst the shelves require objects to be positioned on the other side to hold them in position.
“I wanted to create a product which was inspired by the construction of buildings,” Remmelts told Dezeen. “During the design process, I experimented with many different materials, including bricks, concrete, tiles, steel, glass and wood.”
“The objects in the shelving are used to create a dynamic composition, comparable to the method of creating a collage. Each composition is unique and defines the appearance of the shelves,” Remmelts said.
Remmelts picked up one-off objects from flea markets, charity shops and building sites. “That way I’m forced to make new compositions with each shelf,” he explained. “When I pass a building site, I alway look for new materials and inspiration.”
Seeing off competition from architects including Zaha Hadid and Grimshaw, Herzog & de Meuron and Hassell‘s proposals were selected by a panel of architects and experts as the preferred option for the overhaul of the nineteenth-century Flinders Street Station and its surrounding spaces, including the restoration of the iconic dome and clock tower.
The winning design includes the construction of a new barrel-vaulted roof structure that envelops the station and brings dappled light and ventilation onto both new and improved station concourses. The architects also plan to add a new public art gallery dedicated to oceanic and contemporary art, a public plaza, a marketplace, an amphitheatre and a permanent home for some of the city’s cultural festival organisations.
Existing taxi ranks would be located to a more suitable location on Flinders Street, while the existing tram stop would be redesigned and a new cycle route would be inserted beneath the station in an old concourse, connecting with existing routes along the Yarra River.
“Our proposal respects the heritage, improves all aspects of the transport hub, and underscores its central civic nature with new cultural and public functions for all residents and visitors to Melbourne,” says the design team on the competition website.
The judges praised the scheme for its “beautiful and compelling integration of aspects of the original station design” and supported the decision to keep the height down on the east side, but increase it to the west.
“The extended vaulted forms provide a distinctive branding for the city, their eastern elevation to Swanston Street imaginatively recalls the intended – but not executed – proposition by Fawcett and Ashworth [the architects of the existing station building] of a family of variously scaled vaults,” they said. “At the same time, however, the language is clearly contemporary, underlined by the fact that the new line-up of vaults is bracketed by the pair of historic Flinders Street Station buildings facing the Swanston Street concourse.”
They continued:” The main train hall offers a celebratory experience of rail travel; its light-weight structure promises a filigree of ever-changing dappled light while providing ventilation, shelter and way-finding. The vaulted form will appeal to the universal collective memory of the great station terminuses of the past”.
The architects are awarded a $500,000 (£300,000) prize and the Victorian Government has two years to decide whether to proceed with the scheme.
The same team was not the winner of the public vote, as proposals by Colombian architects Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina topped the poll on the competition website.
Here’s a summary of the scheme from the competition website:
Flinders Street Station Design Competition Winner
Overall Design Merit
Decades after the people of Melbourne first talked about “meeting under the clocks” at Flinders Street Station, the HASSELL + Herzog and de Meuron proposal updates it for the 21st Century, turning it from a place to hurry through to a destination.
The overall design merit of the proposal can be seen in a new, major public art gallery, public plaza, amphitheatre, marketplace, and a permanent home for arts and cultural festival organisations. But we have also delivered the glory of the first 19th Century design for Flinders Street Station.
Transport Function
Transport function is greatly improved, with new or improved concourses making it easier to get in and out. New weather-proof vaulted roofs flood the platforms with dappled, natural light and ventilation. Taxi ranks are relocated to Flinders Street and the tram stop between the station and Federation Square redesigned to improve the connection across St Kilda Road. A bike path under the station through the old western concourse links cycle ways on the river and Elizabeth Street.
Cultural Heritage and Iconic Status
The cultural heritage and iconic status of the station is protected, with the built fabric that most people are familiar with – the Flinders Street building and corner entrance pavilion – are both retained, and paintwork returned to the original colours.
The vaulted roofs that greatly improve the passenger experience are inspired by features of the original design that were never realised. The new elements, particularly the Oceanic and Contemporary Art Gallery, enhance the station’s iconic status.
Urban Design and Precinct Integration
Good urban design and precinct integration breathe new life into the city, stitching it together. The restored station and the new art gallery fill the missing link between the cultural precinct encompassing St Kilda Road and Federation Square with the old Customs House and the Immigration Museum on Flinders Street.
The station itself is better integrated with the city, the river and Federation Square. Distinctive and memorable architecture sits with significant civic space and high quality public amenity.
From the outside this house in Nagoya by Japanese architect Tetsuo Kondo looks like a pile of overlapping boxes, but inside it opens up to form one big bright space (+ slideshow).
Photograph by Ken’ichi Suzuki
As the home to family of four, House in Chayagasaka was planned by Tetsuo Kondo as a single space so that residents can always see what’s going on elsewhere in the house.
Photograph by Ken’ichi Suzuki
“As both of the parents work, they wanted to have as many common areas as possible, in order to spend more time together as a family,” said Kondo. “So I decided to build a one-room house, with a lot of subtle balance between connected and separated areas.”
Photograph by Ken’ichi Suzuki
The main body of the two-storey building comprises six cuboidal volumes, with small gardens and balconies squeezed into the spaces between.
Photograph by Ken’ichi Suzuki
A white metal staircase winds up through the centre of house, beginning as a rectilinear form but soon adopting a curved shape.
This staircase leads up from a central living area to two children’s bedrooms and a bathroom, each set at a different level. Two final steps ascend to a terrace in the far corner of the building.
“When making a house for a young family with children that will soon grow up, and the developing area around the house will change fast, it seems to make sense to design a house with very open architecture,” added Kondo.
Glazed screens surround the two small gardens that puncture the volume of the house at ground floor level. One is positioned alongside a dining room at the rear, while the other pushes into the space of the living room.
The floor steps down at the front of the house, defining the boundary of the master bedroom.
Photography is by Iwan Baan, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from Tetsuo Kondo Architects:
House in Chayagasaka
This is a private residential house for a family of four in Nagoya – a young couple and their two small children. The site is located close to a new metro station, in an area that is developing rapidly. As both of the parents work, they wanted to have as many common areas as possible, in order to spend more time together as a family. So I decided to build a one-room house, with a lot of subtle balance between connected and separated areas.
In this project, I tried to achieve architecture that welcomes a large variety of things, in a state where all the parts are mutually interrelated. This architecture is not one dominated by a strong system or built in a well-ordered manner, but rather one that incorporates various meanings and it seems difficult to understand why it was made that way. When making a house for a young family with children that will soon grow up, and the developing area around the house will change fast, it seems to make sense to design a house with very open architecture, one with balance that can accept diversity.
I designed a strange shaped one-room house by placing ordinary room-size boxes of variable shapes. I tried to deal at the same time with components which might normally not be directly related, such as widths, heights, structures, brightness, functions, shape, circulations, terrace, etc. The relationships between these things are very complex, and if one part would be changed, it would influence the whole building. However, from the perspective of a whole, it can be absorbed.
I think this type of architecture can achieve a new kind of residential comfort, by mixing various things including the present and the future course of life, as well as the history and culture of the location.
It manages to maintain the diversity of a certain state of equilibrium with order. The order should not constrain the system, but it should rather loosely define its relationship. I aimed to create an architecture in such a soft order.
Illustrative section
Location: Aichi, Japan Program: Private house Completion Period: September 2012 Total Floor Area : 89.55 sqm Site Area: 97.58 sqm Architect: Tetsuo Kondo Architects Structural Engineer: Konishi Structural Engineers
Surfaces appear to be stitched together with thick black thread in this fantasy bar and restaurant interior by Polish designer Karina Wiciak.
Szwalnia, which means “sewing room” in Polish, was designed by Karina Wiciak of design studio Wamhouse as the eighth in a twelve-part series of imagined interiors that includes a design based on a slaughterhouse.
“This design was inspired by everything related to tailoring, but applied in a more symbolic manner,” said the designer.
Each overlapping white surface is edged with dashed black lines, giving the impression that parts have been sewn together to form the rooms. This motif is also used on the bar and bases of glass-topped tables.
The space is divided by curtains of blue fabric, which is also hung behind the bar and draped over stairs.
Rows of giant tailor’s pins are stuck into the floor to create banisters and balustrades. Stools and chairs are reminiscent of oversized pin cushions.
Lamps shaped like curtain tassels hang from the ceiling and bobbins are mounted on the walls.
Wamhouse sent us the following project description:
Szwalnia is the eighth design from the XII collection
“Szwalnia” (which in Polish means “sewing room”) is a combination of modern design, minimalism, as well as a pinch of magic and fable-like atmosphere.
The background of the interior consists of white walls and floors “sewn” with black thread. Instead of typical partition walls, there are large surfaces of hanging cloth, which also form an untypical facing of the stairs. Enlarged tailor pins serve as characteristic ornaments, while also forming a balustrade, chair backrests, or hocker legs.
Small poufs, which resemble pincushions, also refer to the motif of a sewing room.
This distinctive interior is supplemented by lamps in the shape of curtain tassels, as well as wall ornaments in the form of knobs from an old sewing machine.
The “Szwalnia” design includes lamps called “chwost” (in Polish “tassel”), a “zszyty” table (in Polish “sewn”), as well as a chair, a hocker and a puff called “nabity” (in Polish “spiked”).
About the collection XII
The collection “XII” will consist of 12 thematic interior designs, together with furniture and fittings, which in each part will be interconnected, not only in terms of style, but also by name. Each subsequent design will be created within one month, and the entire collection will take one year to create.
Here, visualization is to constitute more than a design, which is thrown away after implementation of the interior design, but mainly an image, which has a deeper meaning and can function individually, for instance as a print on a wall, or even a CD cover.
These will not be interiors made to a specific order, but designs based on the author’s fantasy and his fascinations of various sorts. It will be possible to order a specific interior design in the form of adaptation of the selected part of the collection, on the basis of exclusivity.
The author’s assumption was not to create trite, fashionable interiors, but non-standard places, full of symbols and metaphors, at the borderline between architecture and scenography.
Due to their nature, these are mostly commercial interiors, intended for use and reception by a larger group of people. Yet, it was not supposed to be an art gallery, in which art is merely watched, but places in which it could be put into use and to do virtually everything – depending on the purpose and function of the premises.
The author of the collection did not strive to artificially ascribe ideology to random ideas, but rather to make the entire design readable and coherent, and at the same time to design every item specifically for the given interior.
American architect Eric Fisher claims to have built the world’s largest residential cantilever with this house in Pittsburgh that protrudes by 16 metres to hover over the roof of a glass factory (+ slideshow).
Photograph by Eric Roth
Designed to house the owners of the factory, the Corten steel-clad Emerald Glass House was completed by Fisher Architecture in 2011, but the studio recently submitted it for entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Photograph by Eric Roth
The impressive cantilever forms the uppermost floor of the four-storey residence, which is set into a hillside to the south of the city. “It floats above the owner’s glass manufacturing facility like a foreman’s shack,” said Fisher.
The architect used Corten steel, mesh and exposed steel columns to create an industrial aesthetic, then added large areas of glazing to recognise the trade of the house’s residents.
This includes a fully glazed facade, designed as a beacon for visitors to the factory. Behind the facade, a living room occupies the whole cantilevered space, allowing the structure to function as a giant viewfinder.
Glass also surrounds the interior surfaces of the house’s concrete block core and was used for staircase balustrades and a breakfast counter in the kitchen.
Photography is by the architect, apart from where otherwise indicated.
Here’s a project description from Eric Fisher:
Emerald Art Glass House
The Emerald Art Glass House is a site-sensitive, cantilevered home for the owners of a glass company. This is contextual design: Located on Pittsburgh’s South Side slopes, it floats above the owner’s glass manufacturing facility like a foreman’s shack.
Photograph by Eric Roth
The home’s industrial forms and Corten steel siding relate to the factory below while a living roof connects the house visually to the verdant slopes beyond. In a building this public, it’s possible to make larger references: Pittsburgh’s neighbourhoods are cut off from one another both geographically and culturally. The new horizontally massed house and the US Steel tower, Pittsburgh’s tallest building, are Corten steel peers. Together, they establish a small but meaningful new dialogue between the residential slopes and the commercial city centre.
Photograph by Eric Roth
Glass products are featured throughout, celebrating the owner’s craft: A radical, north-facing, butted, “Greenheat” radiant-heated glass facade functions from outside as a sign for the glass factory and from inside as a view catcher. A unique, glass rain-screen system clads a concrete block core. Inside the core, a glass stairway winds its way from the ground floor to the kitchen.
Photograph by Eric Roth
And it’s green: 21st century architects must learn to recycle space in the same way we recycle our garbage – finding value in waste. Here, we are putting to use the unused space above the owner’s warehouse in this dense urban neighbourhood. Recycled materials are used throughout. As well, geothermal well-generated forced air complements the radiant heated floors and glass.
Photograph by Eric Roth
Extending three times farther than nearby Falling Water, the Emerald Art Glass House may be the world’s longest residential cantilever. As Jean Paul Sartre once wrote, ‘The human body always extends across the tool that it utilises: it is at the end of the telescope, which shows me the stars; it is my adaptation to those tools. When a structure cantilevers in a daring way, we imagine ourselves leaning out over the space below, which explains why it moves us. This is the thing with feathers, an object that disrupts daily life just enough to make one believe that there is maybe more to life than the humdrum.
This kindergarten in Gandia, eastern Spain, has a cloud-shaped courtyard that encloses six mulberry trees (+ slideshow).
The entrance to the single-storey Kid University by Paredes Pedrosa leads straight through to the central courtyard, which features an open-air theatre and sand pit, and is surrounded by classrooms split into two blocks.
The southern block contains a cafeteria, office, baby room, reading room, computer suite and art studio, while to the north-east of the courtyard is a music room, dance studio and indoor theatre.
Double-height glazing on the internal facing walls offers pupils a view out to the courtyard and brings in natural light, dappled by the maple trees. Most of the classrooms also have doors that lead directly outdoors.
Floors are lined with linoleum and the ceilings are covered with cork to absorb sound.
The exterior facades and roof are clad in white ceramic tiles. The roof is sloped away from the centre, preventing rain water running into the courtyard.
In the north-west of the courtyard children can look out toward the nearby Serpis river that runs through the city.
A former water basin has been refurbished for swimming and water games.
UPI. Kid University in Gandia Paredes Pedrosa, arquitectos
The Kid University in Gandia (UPI) is an experimental initiative proposed by the Municipality of Gandía. The UPI is not a conventional kindergarten, but a group of specialised classrooms and workshops located in a natural setting where kids can develop their creativity and have fun beyond a school context.
The proposed volume does not alter the Ausias March Park’s layout. Indeed, it respects the position of six existing white mulberry trees, arranging the classrooms around them and shaping a central lobed courtyard. Library, computers, painting, photography, auditorium, theatre and music classrooms are arranged around the mulberry trees.
This courtyard is the core of the Kid University, linking open spaces, covered areas and indoor rooms. Towards the exterior, the building exhibits a sober and continuous facade, serving as a sort of palisade, that avoids building up fences.
White coloured ceramic tiles are the material both for facades and roof. There is continuity in the material that builds up the whole exterior of the building. From the outside, the building intends to be a light, white ceramic fence where the shade of the nearby trees is reflected.
Vernacular architecture in this Mediterranean area uses ceramic that does not need any maintenance and adapts naturally to its mild climate. In summer it reflects the strong local light and protects inside from high temperatures.
Ceramics are designed as three-dimensional pieces with a can shaped mould that resembles a continuous bamboo fence. The pieces are double faced and the flat side is used for the roof.
In the patio, the facades are built with wooden carpentries painted white, so there is a transparency between inside and outside and all mulberry trees can be seen from the classrooms. In the inside finishing’s is linoleum for pavements and cork for ceilings as sound absorbent material, combined with the concrete structure walls.
Sustainability is achieved by the own concept of the building. Cost was tight and both structure and construction are finishing’s and conditioning. The interior is shaded from the intense summer sun by the mulberry trees that attenuate solar irradiation and cast scattered shadows to the interior of classrooms. And so artificial light is reduced to the essential.
In winter, mulberry trees have no leaves and sun light enters freely into the classrooms. Once spring has transformed the trees and they are full of leaves they become a natural shade for children.
In the outside the ceramic continuous walls bear naturally the patina of time and have no maintenance. The only openings are the entrance fence and a large window overlooking the historical centre. The sloped ceramic roof attenuates solar irradiation and conducts water from rain to the patio and to the trees where a central playground has a circular sand pit and a circular bench for telling stories and outdoor music.
A nearby old water basin is refurbished for children swimming and water games.
Project: 2010. Construction: 2010-2011 Location: Parque Ausías March, Gandía. Valencia Architects: Angela García de Paredes and Ignacio Pedrosa Project team: Álvaro Oliver, Álvaro Rábano, Lucía Guadalajara, Ángel Camacho, Laura Pacheco Technical control: Antonio García Blay Structure: Alfonso G. Gaite. GOGAITE, S.L. Mechanical engineer: JG S.A. Location: Ausías March Park, Gandía Client: Municipality of Gandía Contractor: Alesa Proyectos y Contratas S.A. Tiles: Ceràmica Cumella Floor area: 1075 sqm. Programme: multiple classrooms and workshops, cafeteria, administration
Dezeen Watch Store: the newest addition to our collection is the Stop2Go watch by Mondaine, a classic timepiece inspired by Swiss railway clocks.
Stop2Go incorporates a unique time keeping feature that is inspired by the mechanism of Swiss railway clocks. The sweeping red second hand completes a full revolution in 58 seconds, then waits for two seconds at the 12 o’clock position, allowing the minute hand to move on before the next rotation starts.
The timepiece includes a 41mm stainless steel case that fixes to the leather strap with steel braces. The easy-to-read, minimal design places emphasis on the markings and the distinctive red hand, which resembles a railway guard’s signalling disc.
The original Swiss Railway Clock was designed over 70 years ago by Zurich-born engineer Hans Hilfiker and has become a Swiss design classic, included in twentieth century design collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Design Museum in London.
Mondaine has been producing watches inspired by the original design since the mid-1980s when the brand was granted an official license from the Federal Swiss Railway.
News: a map that illustrates global forest densities using wood textures has won a competition to reinvent the tessellated world map designed 70 years ago by American architect and visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller.
First presented in 1943, Fuller’s Dymaxion Map projects the world map onto the surface of a three-dimensional icosahedron that can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. It is said to be the first two-dimensional map of the entire surface of Earth that reveals our planet as one, without inaccurately distorting or splitting up the land.
A team comprising designer Nicole Santucci and San Francisco firm Woodcut Maps was selected as the winner of the Dymax Redux competition to redesign the seminal map, which was launched in April by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) in New York to coincide with the map’s 70th anniversary.
The winning design, called Dymaxion Woodocean World, illustrates forest densities across the world through the use of different coloured wood textures. Darker wood refers to a higher ratio of trees to land space.
Dymaxion Woodocan World by Nicole Santucci and Woodcut Maps
“Nicole Santucci and team created a wonderful display of global forest densities, an ever-increasing important issue with the continued abuses of deforestation,” said the BFI. “What’s more an actual woodcut version of the map was made in the process, allowing the 2D version to transform into an icosahedral globe,” the institute added.
Will Elkins, manager at the Buckminster Fuller Institute said: “They went above and beyond our call by creating a powerful display of relevant information using the subject matter itself as a medium. The idea, craftsmanship and end result are stunning.”
A hand-drawn map of clouds swirling over the earth by French designer Anne-Gaelle Amiot has been selected as the runner-up. Other finalists include a map that illustrates 75,000 years of ancestral migration and another that shows the availability of safe drinking water around the world. Three of the 11 finalists also received acknowledgments from graphic designer Nicholas Felton, artist Mary Mattingly and architect and close friend of Fuller, Shoji Sadao.
R. Buckminster Fuller holding his folded Dymaxion Map. Image: Life magazine, 1943
The article illustrated different uses for the map and included a full-colour printable version with instructions for how it can be easily transformed from a 2D map to a 3D globe.
Image: Life magazine, 1943
“Fuller’s Dymaxion World embodies his effort to resolve the dilemma of cartography: how to depict as a flat surface this spherical world, with true scale, true direction and correct configuration at one and the same time,” wrote Life Magazine in 1943.
Sections of a printable Dymaxion Map, as featured in Life magazine, 1943
Fuller designed the map as a way to visualise the whole planet with greater accuracy and to in turn better equip humans to address global challenges.
Article in Life magazine, 1943
The winners and nine finalists of the Dymax Redux contest will be exhibited at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York later this year. The Dymaxion Woodocean Map will be available to buy from the BFI soon.
Here’s the press release from BFI, including full details of the winning designs:
DYMAX REDUX Winner Selected
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is happy to announce the winner of DYMAX REDUX, an open call to create a new and inspiring interpretation of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map. Dymaxion Wood Ocean World by Nicole Santucci of Woodcut Maps (San Francisco, CA) has been selected as the winner out of a pool of over 300 entrants from 42 countries. Clouds Dymaxion Map by Anne-Gaelle Amiot of France was selected as the runner up.
“This was the first contest of its kind organised by BFI, and the response and interest has been amazing. We are thrilled to have such a high level of submissions and look forward to doing more similar initiatives in the future” says BFI Executive Director Elizabeth Thompson, noting the great press coverage to-date.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute will produce the winning entry as a poster and include it in with the BFI online educational resource store. In addition, we have highlighted three entries that were chosen by our guest critics – Nicholas Felton, Mary Mattingly and Shoji Sadao – as their favourite individual picks. The winner and runner-up along with the other nine finalists will be featured at an in-person exhibition at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, scheduled for later this fall.
The Winner: Dymaxion Woodocean World by Nicole Santucci + Woodcut Maps, United States
Nicole Santucci and team created a wonderful display of global forest densities, an ever-increasing important issue with the continued abuses of deforestation. What’s more an actual woodcut version of the map was made in the process, allowing the 2-D version to transform into an icosahedral globe. As BFI Store Coordinator Will Elkins put it “They went above and beyond our call by creating a powerful display of relevant information using the subject matter itself as a medium. The idea, craftsmanship and end result are stunning.”
The Runner-Up: Clouds Dymaxion Map by Anne-Gaelle Amiot, France
Anne-Gaelle Amiot used NASA satellite imagery to create this absolutely beautiful hand-drawn depiction of a reality that is almost always edited from our maps: cloud patterns circling above Earth. Anne-Gaelle describes the idea and process “One of the particularism of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion projection is to give the vision of an unified world. From the space, the Earth appears to us covered, englobed by the cloud masses which circulate around it. By drawing a static image, capture of clouds position in one particular moment, the sensation of a whole is created. The result have the aspect of an abstract pattern, a huge melt where it is impossible to dissociate lands, seas, oceans.”
Nicholas Felton Pick: Map of My Family by Geoff Christou, Canada
“This map makes the best use of the Dymaxion projection, by highlighting information that is primarily land-based and allowing for the paths to extend in an unbroken fashion throughout the world.” – Nicholas Felton
Mary Mattingly Pick: Spaceship Earth: Climatic Regions by Ray Simpson, United States
“Eliminates human-made borders and focuses on mapping the shifting yet distinct climactic planes. This utopian projection relies only on geographic and geologic borders, truly a project Buckminster Fuller would appreciate.” – Mary Mattingly
Shoji Sadao Pick: In Deep Water by Amanda R. Johnson, United States
“A dramatic graphic take off on the map and gives important information about one of the basic problems that needs to be solved.” – Shoji Sadao
About DYMAX REDUX:
70 years ago Life magazine published Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map. With an undistorted projection of the Earth’s surface, ability to be easily reconfigured and transform from a 2-D map to a 3-D globe, the Dymaxion Map (patented in 1946) was a cartographic breakthrough and its iconic design has inspired generations since.
In celebration of the map’s publication anniversary, the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) is calling on today’s graphic designers, visual artists, and citizen cartographers to create a new and inspiring interpretation of the Dymaxion Map. BFI will publish notable entries within an online gallery, feature the selected finalists in a gallery exhibition in New York City and select one winning entry to be produced as a 36″ x 24″ poster and offered for sale within our online store.
BFI is seeking submissions across the creative spectrum and will be selecting the winner based on originality, aesthetic beauty and informative qualities. The contest is open to all and will provide entrants with a high-res image to use as ‘canvas’. Submissions must employ or contain obvious reference to the map’s foundational grid and adhere to specific size and resolution requirements.
About the Buckminster Fuller Institute
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and the health of our planet’s ecosystems. We aim to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity.
Our programs combine unique insight into global trends and local needs with a comprehensive approach to design. We encourage participants to conceive and apply transformative strategies based on a crucial synthesis of whole systems thinking, Nature’s fundamental principles, and an ethically driven worldview.
By facilitating convergence across the disciplines of art, science, design and technology, our work extends the profoundly relevant legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller. In this way, we strive to catalyse the collective intelligence required to fully address the unprecedented challenges before us.
Presented during Belgrade Design Week 2013, Zaha Hadid’s designs show how the curving buildings will integrate with the riverside neighbourhood of the city’s historic Dorcol quarter.
Image by Stereograph
The 94,000 square-metre complex will replace an unused and inaccessible site with a five-star hotel, art galleries, a conference centre, a department store and shops, as well as residential accommodation and offices, just 500 metres from the city centre.
Image by Stereograph
Speaking at the presentation, Zaha Hadid Architects’ Christos Passas said: “All of our projects are unique and every time a project is proposed to us we know we have to create something new, to design something that is distinctive and adapted to the task, to the client, to local context.”
He continued: “This one should not only fit in, but also have a positive impact on the environment in which it is located, and of course, the integration between nature and architecture is also very important. New architecture, in terms of vision, should not be constrained by old forms. Architecture operates on many levels, it should include a particular location and context, and the building can also absorb the context in various ways, which makes the entire complex functional.”
“This project is very sensitive of the environment, but at the same time it can be a symbol of a new era for Serbia,” he concluded.
Construction of the Beko Masterplan will commence next year as part of a €200 million regeneration project that also includes a waterfront public space by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and a new bridge across the Sava River.
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