Suspiciously Like Red Communism, a video games blog. See for example this post on a little pastoral moment in Half Life 2 / The H Line, a weblog / Optimist Club, a fine tumblr / art and design portfolios at PutItOn.com / an open letter to Dwell magazine / a paper craft castle on the ocean at Tokyobling / The Casual Optimist, a weblog / Asking for Trouble, crafts and more.

Siloboy, 'I'm Alexander Michael, your site host, and the proud owner of this extraordinary relic of Cold War USA. This Atlas-F ICBM silo was designated by the US Airforce in 1960 as Boquett 556-5 or Lewis Missile Base.' The silo is currently being restored and enhanced in the High Cold War Camp style, or what one might call 'Ken Adam Baroque'.

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A rather lovely retro evocation of a '1967 Dodge Viper', a historical what-if. The advent of design blogs and sophisticated rendering software for everyday desktop computers has turned car design into far more of a populist art than it used to be, back in the arcane days of Pantone pens (although there's no denying the levels of skill involved). Sites like Car Design News, Coroflot and Car Body Design offer tutorials and portfolio space, with the classic marker pen rendering almost entirely usurped by 3D packages. Google a term like 'rendered speculation' and you're presented with a collection of imaginary machines.

It's surprising that there isn't more amateur architectural and urban experimental imagery, especially given the dominance of architectural CG imagery for planning and promotional purposes. Given that the auto industry is paranoid about the need to protect brand identities and intellectual properties, there is still a healthy amount of 'photochopping' going on as enthusiasts set about creating speculative alternative futures, even 'redesigning' current models. This activity has traditionally been the realm of students, usually with the explicit advocacy of the manufacturers themselves. However, there's a sense that brand identities are up for grabs, and that anyone can take a carefully constructed design language (or 'brand DNA') and attempt to steer it themselves.

So is pastiche and homage the architectural equivalent? Mash-ups aren't stylistic or even ideologically sympathetic, but usually directly opposed: Quinlan Terry stomping over Richard Rogers. Or Stirling up against One Poultry. The cut and pasted environment is still very much the realm of architects themselves, not gifted amateuers, illustrating the extent to which the physical environment is regulated and controlled by a tiny percentage of technicians and taste-makers.

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Liverpool Preservation Trust, a suitably splenetic weblog given the local environment / StoodThere, an attempt to build a 'list of 100 Greatest Places To Stand on the Planet' / post-Katrina, critiquing new homes in New Orleans / London Under Construction / 3D Realms has put up a selection of original Duke Nukem maps on its site, each one a miniature masterpiece of pixel-perfect design.

A gallery of Harlequin NASCAR romance novel covers. You can buy them here. An NYT article on the link-up notes that the NASCAR link is pitched at the more down-to-earth reader. 'Romance novels are changing these days. Old standbys, like romances set in the Regency period, continue to do well, as do stories set in Ireland and Scotland, but the fastest-growing category now is paranormal romances, books about vampires and werewolves in which the path to true love often entails looking past a guy's fangs and body hair to discover his inner self.' From the ridiculous to the sublime, old covers from Which. See also our set here.

Joe Moran on the sat nav's potential obliteration of tradition, with a welcome diversion into the history of Sat-nav, including the Jones Live-Map, 1991 Honda Electro Gyrator system.

Labels: architecture, linkage

posted by things at 16:15 / 1 comments