And the Best Tumblr Of The Week is…”Jony Ive Redesigns Things“
…Because everyone who knows anything about design knows that skeuomorphism is, like, the worst.
We think of 3-D printers as desktop machines, stagnant workhorses used to generate piecemeal shapes for humans to relocate in the real world. But a new, stunning piece of architecture by the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab brings all of those assumptions into question.
It’s called the Silk Pavilion, and it is what researchers call a “biological swarm approach to 3-D printing.” It is a beautiful structure constructed by 6,500 live silkworms, and may be the most epicly named piece of fabrication technology since the blowtorch.
Read more here: How MIT Is Hacking Thousands Of Worms To Print Buildings
This is what the iPhone would look like if it adhered to the Golden Ratio. Which it doesn’t.
Julia Solis takes photos of abandoned theaters.
The drama plays out in the abandoned theater as moisture invades the walls and causes the paint to peel off the walls, plaster decorations crumble to the floor, and velvet seats become dusty and mildewed.
Sonic Water lets you watch musical water dance inside a bottle cap. The installation is an exploration of cymatics (the study of vibration) by Sven Meyer & Kim Pörksen.
“Cymatics is like a magical tool that unveils the substance of things not seen. Sound does have form, and you can see that sound can affect matter and cause form in matter,” Pörksen tells Co.Design. “So maybe in the beginning there was sound, which shaped all matter. Indeed, we think sound has a fundamental influence on the formation of the universe itself.”
How do you overcome that fast-food temptation? Set that burger ablaze says photographer Henry Hargreaves.
Fungus is the Internet of the plant world
New research finds that plants regularly communicate through a vast, underground network.
5 Ways To Innovate By Cross-Pollinating Ideas
Tina Seelig details how to combine unlike concepts to find the next big thing.
- Combine unlike ideas.
- Talk to people.
- Build on existing ideas.
- Hire a diverse workforce.
- Use a metaphor.
Read the story here.
What Rihanna, Lady Gaga, And Britney Spears Eat Backstage, Rendered As Classic Still Lifes
“Britney Spears orders fish and chips, McDonald’s cheeseburgers without the buns, 100 prunes and figs, and, maybe most crucially, a framed photo of Princess Diana.”
An Artist Attempts To Draw All The Buildings In New York
John Gulliver Hancock is working on a new book called All the Buildings in New York.
This cataloging of buildings has “become an almost ritualistic undertaking, a therapy of sorts, helping me to organize the overwhelming infinity and chaos of New York into something I can know and understand.”
See and read more here.
THE 2013 INNOVATION BY DESIGN AWARDS AND CONFERENCE
Fast Company’s 2013 Innovation By Design Awards will celebrate the brilliant, inspiring ways designers are solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Finalists will be featured in the October 2013 issue of Fast Company. The competition will span virtually every design discipline.
(via fastcodesign)
See some of the world’s most beautiful abandoned places
Take a tour of the world’s apparently robust supply of empty castles, power plants, and churches—and witness the surprising grandeur of dilapidation.
A tired screenwriting trope is to use abandoned places as settings where one’s gory horror scenarios might unfold—the house nobody has been inside for years, the decrepit mental hospital kids dare each other to sneak into. But “abandoned” doesn’t always mean “scary.” In fact, in some cases, it can be downright breathtaking—and not in a strangulation kind of way.
