Dezeen Wire: architecture and design blog Designitecture have published an update to YAMoPo, a list of the most popular architecture and design websites in the world, and have ranked Dezeen in sixth place. See the results in full here.
The YAMoPo (Yet Another Most Popular) list was originally created by architecture blog Archdaily but hadn’t been revised since 2009.
Dezeen Wire: following the news that esteemed architecture critic Paul Goldberger has left The New Yorker magazine for a position at Vanity Fair, the New York Observer‘s real estate correspondent Matt Chaban claims that the current lack of a replacement for Mr. Goldberger is symptomatic of a decline in quality architecture criticism throughout the printed media – New York Observer
Dezeen Wire: Dezeen has been named #01 in the Best Blogs list of top 50 design blogs. See the full list here.
Our latest video looks at the prototyping process behind museum displays
Dezeen Wire: Grafik magazine is to cease publication once again. The graphic design magazine only reopened under new ownership in February this year after its previous owners went into administration in June 2010.
Read a statement from the magazine’s editorial team and owners Woodbridge & Rees here and read critic Rick Poynor’s take on the news here.
An online gallery streamlines the interaction between users and content
Hastening to bridge the gap between traditional media’s tendency to over-curate and the Internet’s overflow of content, Melissa Jones has relaunched Dream the End, an online space for art, music, poetry and film. With a homepage curated by guest editors, the site will update regularly as new virtual “editions” are released. The content comes from a mix of emerging artists and lesser-known figures from the past, with exclusive mixtapes available for streaming. It’s a great way to escape from quotidian demands and browse creative interests without the deluge of commentary and criticism.
Dream the End is unique in that it isn’t set up in a rational, linear browsing interface but rather resembles a cloud, with content scattered around a page lacking typical navigation features. Clicking on a piece of art will take you to a gallery of that artist’s work, and selecting a few lines from a poem will show you the piece in its entirety, accompanied by a blurb about the artist. The “random view” button at the bottom of every page redirects to a new homepage with different content, so the browsing possibilities are endless. All the while, because the site’s streaming music isn’t page-specific, visitors can enjoy listening to new music while they explore other mediums.
The widely appealing art selection includes an impressive range of works, from Sean Kerman’s “Female Lying,” a muted image Jones excerpted from a ’70s-era photography reference book on the human figure, and “Hand,” a recent piece by Chinese artist Hai Tien that harkens tranquil tropical flowers; to the more contemporary styles of Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser, whose minimalist black-and-white piece “Ad B4” juxtaposes with Rupprecht Geiger’s bold “Geist Und Materie 1,” an example of artist’s late geometric-inspired work, which he painted at the age of 96.
“As an antidote to the increasingly chatter-driven online environment, I wanted the design of the site to be a uniquely distilled sensory experience,” says Jones in a press release. “Dream the End is where people can see what’s good and hear what’s good, and not just read about it.” The success of Dream the End lies in its simplicity. The layout requires users to follow their interests around the site without worrying about what is current, relevant, or otherwise popular.
Refresh!, the first edition of Dream the End is now live and ready to browse.
Logitech’s new iPad-based universal remote offers total media control for home entertainment systems
Logitech‘s new Harmony Link promises to make the home media experience a breeze through its unique combination of hardware device and iPad app system. Designed to enhance how we interact with our entire entertainment center, Harmony Link is like the ultimate universal remote. The hockey puck-sized transmitter connects to the Harmony Link app on an iPad over wifi, giving users the ability to control up to eight devices with their iPad.
By converting iPad commands into infrared signals, the system allows wireless control of any IR-compatible device including TVs, DVD players, stereos and even VCRs. In addition to simulating classic universal remotes, the Harmony Link also gives the user access to a live TV guide with menu options for all the attached devices, which lets you toggle seamlessly between the different media.
The system is also intuitive enough to know what you want when tapping between choices, switching the correct devices off and on and changing inputs with the swipe of a finger. Standard iPad gestures adjust volume, playback and other controls.
The system is now available for $100 from Logitech, and the iPad app is a free download from iTunes. Mobile versions will also be available for the iPod Touch and iPhone from the Apple App store and an Android version from the Android Market are both coming soon.
Chinese architects Biad UFO build Beijing’s latest architectural feat
Hand in hand with China’s overall rapid growth and explosive urbanization, recent years have seen a wave of high-design architecture. The
Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s spectacular CCTV tower, opened in 2008 to house the nation’s central television headquarters, is a fantastic example of forward-thinking architecture exploring contemporary concepts of shape and form. Now another Chinese media mogul is taking a swing at making their mark on Beijing’s urban landscape, picking up where projects like the CCTV building left off after the boom spurred by the 2008 Olympics. The Phoenix International Media Center, scheduled to be completed in 2012, currently stands half complete adjacent to Chaoyang Park, signaling the ongoing development of radical architecture in the country as well as Chinese architects themselves, not to mention the strength of Chinese TV networks.
Phoenix, a large satellite TV provider, will eventually move their programming operations there, in addition to housing other businesses, offices and restaurants. The shape of the building recalls yet another famously stunning example of what’s been happening to Beijing’s cityscape of late, the Herzog and De Meuron “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium. Here, the architects have managed to give the basket-like shape a sense of movement, reminiscent of a sea sponge or jellyfish. Digital renderings have the feel of the command bridge on a futuristic space station. The ambitious project has already drummed up a lot of interest, putting it on the shortlist for the 2009 World Architecture Festival and in the Verso Est Chinese Cultural Landscape exhibit at MAXXI in Rome.
Unlike the CCTV tower, the Media Center was designed by BIAD UFo, a firm based in China. An impressive example of the nation’s homegrown architectural talents in the country, it hints at the potential future of Chinese design as more and more buildings spring up.
Photos via Designboom
Story via 120Walker
Additional reporting by Meghan Killeen and Greg Stefano
MIT Media Lab study looks to effect urban development through Google Street View-powered surveys
Remember the feeling the first time walking down a desolate street in a foreign city or waiting on the corner in a new neighborhood to meet a friend? We all constantly judge our surroundings, whether knowingly or subconsciously; our ability to determine our level of safety, advantage or opportunity from our perceived situation is an essential evolutionary tool for survival. While usually these judgements happen on minute levels, a new project from the MIT Media Lab seeks to tap the power of the information within these determinations on a large, collective scale.
The crowd-sourced urban survey, Place Pulse, is run by Phil Salesses, Anthony Devincenzi and Cesar Hidalgo, all of the MIT Media Lab, and Mauro Martino of Northeastern University Center for Complex Network Research. This team of technologists, researchers, designers and artists use the work of Kevin Lynch from the 1960s as a jumping off point for understanding urban perception, taking advantage of today’s tools to expose large test groups to urban imagery.
With a goal of improving an urban population’s overall happiness by understanding how people perceive certain areas, the surveys present participants with two side-by-side images and three topical questions—”Which place looks more unique?”; “Which place looks more upper class?; and “Which place looks safer?” The source images come from Google Street View, and surveys are created and taken by a willing community of participants. Capitalizing on geolocation services and social networks creates easily-visualizable data on a near global scale.
The data produced determines which urban features create certain perceptions. Laying the answers to these questions into graphs and combining them with the graphs of other participants makes up what the researchers call a “perception network.” This network of data can then be analyzed to make assumptions about general perception of certain areas, assisting in forming hypotheses about urban planning and development.
While still in the very early stages, the project presents a fascinating way to use what have become everyday technologies to conduct massive social experiments. The resulting dataset has the potential to impact city design and to assist local governments in targeting problem areas to improve inhabitant happiness. The more people who participate, the greater the success, so head over to the project and take the survey. Final results will be available 14 August 2011.
New software streams all your favorite videos to your iPad
Adding to their suite of streaming video utilities, Boxee recently released the Boxee for iPad application, introducing massive potential for streamlining online video experiences.
Designed for all iPad users, the app consolidates all sources for online video into one location with three separate pipelines—Friends, Watch Later and Featured (edited by Boxee). With the ability to link to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, it automatically populates your feed with new videos from “friends” across social networking platforms.
For those who don’t spend workdays watching videos sent by coworkers, great aunts or your mom’s college roommate, “Watch Later” lets you queue up videos from TED, YouTube, Cool Hunting or any number of other video sites for viewing at your leisure.
The sister desktop software, Boxee Media Manager, works with the iPad app to turn your machine into a iPad-friendly media server. For either Macs or PCs, the media manager wirelessly stream all video content—in any format—from computers directly to iPads, eliminating the need for conversion or using third-party serving software. Those who already own the Boxee Box, the brand’s physical device, you can use Boxee for iPad to stream any of videos directly from iPads to your home TVs, perfect for watching scared kittens or baby badgers on the big screen.
As digital media providers fight it out, it’s rare to find a company offering streaming coverage in so many forms and for such a wide audience. The fact that Boxee designed their app for both Mac and PC users, that it easily works as a media server and is directed at their current customer base as well as non-Boxee users is quite an impressive and comprehensive approach for D-Link. The ability to aggregate online videos might not be for everyone, but the other features are worth the download alone—considering both Boxee for iPad and the Boxee Media Manager are free.
This increased transparency, allowing for greater access and user experience, is part of what has made us Boxee fans from the beginning. Hopefully, this new move sets the stage for more thoughtful, well rounded utilities like this, just the tip of the iceberg for the future of streaming media.
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