Faire avancer le schmilblick

Posted on May 29, 2012 by things magazine

The idea of a Heathrow Garden City splices all sort of current thinking together into a big, improbable melange. Greening over runways and building homes, schools, lakes and gardens smacks of fantasy urbanism, a post-technological Eden slash post-apocalyptic jungle that apparently lurks beneath the facade of technology and progress, waiting for its moment to sprout. This theme is a familiar underpinning to the work of J.G. Ballard, science fiction directors, image-makers and game designers.

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Just what is it that makes a vine-strewn urban panorama so fascinating? In the past we’ve mentioned Squint Opera’s Flooded London as an archetype of the genre, but there are parallels to be drawn with everything from the ruined New York of Crysis 3 to the encroaching new town that is ultimately reduced to ruins in Asterix’s Mansion of the Gods (a trenchant satire of France’s 60s and 70s-era rush to build new high-rise communities).

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Creating a verdant garden city atop the historical ruins of Heathrow – the bulk of which would surely be allowed to remain as cracked, weed-infested tarmac, half-collapsed hangars and vine-draped control tower – already sounds evocative. It demonstrates the importance of nostalgia in place-making, and the complex and little understood distinction between nostalgia and pastiche, at least in architectural terms.

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Graphite Journal on Metropolis II / Sir Basil Spence gives forth on the role of the architect, eye a-twinkling / Collapsing Cooling Towers / Polimekanos, a design studio / Two Wheels Plus, all things mobile and motorised / It’s Medicinal, ‘a glimpse into the world of medicinal cannabis’, a project by photographer Eugen Sakhnenko / London roads Olympic predicted impact map.

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From poster power to concrete’s unshakable image problem

Posted on May 28, 2012 by things magazine

A fascination with mechanical failure and human error. Auto accidents from the collection of the Boston Public Library (via MeFi). See also Fuck Yeah, Wrecks and the photographs of Arnold Odermatt (oft-cited by us, but still some of the most compelling images of the inherent dangers within modernity). The BPL also has magnificent sets of Travel Posters, Produce Crate Labels, magic posters and photographs of Boston’s Sewers by engineer Edgar Sutton Dorr.

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Concrete’s divisive power is remarkable. Few materials have become shortcuts not just for a whole genre but for a whole spectrum of design, a link that binds concrete inextricably to the personal and political failings of a small minority. That said, Metafilter doesn’t do Brutalism well at all, but the links that follow this short link to ten concrete London landmarks are worth pursuing, including this homage to the Tricorn (still a car park, we’d like to point out) / related, Brutalism and Booze, a great weblog unearthing forgotten architectural gems (and missteps) around London / also related, Invisible Paris has a post on the work of French architect Guillaume Gillet, best known for his epic but crumbling l’Eglise de Notre-Dame de Royan.

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Pack up your troubles

Posted on May 25, 2012 by things magazine

How do you escape from an oil rig? You use a freefall lifeboat, such as those manufactured by Verhoef. ‘The only aspect that is needed to clear the dangerzone is the ever available force of gravity. The specific design of the Verhoef Freefall Lifeboat made it possible for seamen to get away far from the disaster area in a matter of minutes. Lateron the design was perfected by adding features like self righting (even when it’s full of water) and a sprinkler system that can withstand the test of sailing a mile through a burning sea while the temperature inside the boat only reached 85°F. Extensive tests with the Verhoef Freefall Lifeboats, launched at up to 42 meters above sea level, were withstanded (sic) without a problem.’ Watch the 70-person Schat-Harding FF1200 set a launch height record of 55 metres.

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Someone has built it before, the roots of architectural inspiration / Preservation Lovin’, images and thoughts on architectural preservation / related, The War against Sixties Architecture, in particular the threat to the Mummers Theatre in Oklahoma by John Johansen. The Philip Johnson Glass House Blog on the enduring friendship between Johansen and his New Canaan neighbour Johnson: ‘[Johansen] lost touch with Johnson. “I didn’t see him for 15 or more years. And then I came to New Canaan to see my other friends there. We drove down his driveway late in the afternoon unannounced and I walked across the lawn, and he walked across to me, and we embraced each other, and he said “You’re just in time for martinis.”’

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Paragliding Simulator for Google Earth / illustrations by Marcos Martinez / illustrations by Adam Cruft / A Nave do bom gosto, architecture and design / beta knowledge, ‘raw data and weak signals for futures research’ / The Little Magazine Coalition, a new publishing collective (via MagCulture) / the UK railway accident archive, plotted on a map / Cutaway Mania at Invisible Themepark / an exhaustive collection of medical kits at the WW2 US Medical Research Centre.

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Back to dial up

Posted on May 24, 2012 by things magazine

Patrick Baty is a historic paint consultant. His weblog includes such gems as the Traditional British Colours used in the Coronation of King George VI, complete with the colours of the British army and heraldic colours: ‘There are five colours used in heraldry and two metals. Metals when not shown in gold or silver are represented by yellow and white respectively. It is one of the rules of heraldry that colour should not be placed on colour nor metal on metal and great care therefore, has to be taken in the use of white and gold in flag designing which is, strictly speaking, a branch of heraldry.’

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Run out grooves catalogued at Vinyl Remarks. A Porky Prime Cut and more, the story of George Peckham (via Ask) / for when a lilo isn’t enough, the Sports Park 60 complex / ‘I have seen the maps with which she studied geography. The parallels and meridians were made of wire; the boundaries of kingdoms and provinces of embroidery in linen, silk, or wool of various thickness’. From Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works. See also An Atlas for the Blind. And, perhaps, Taryn Simon’s image of Playboy’s Braille Edition / Fuck Yeah, Cartography / the Rotary Mechanical Smartphone, an object by Richard Clarkson.

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Ducking and Covering

Posted on May 23, 2012 by things magazine

The story of the Atomic Honeymooners: ‘The bride-and-groom-to-be were chosen from among at least one hundred similarly nuptial-minded teams. Paul Indianer, [owner of Bomb Shelters, Inc], remembers that he chose Mel and Maria because he noticed on the entry form that Mel was a graduate of Miami Beach Senior High, Mr. Indianer’s alma mater. Maria’s stunning appearance did not hurt their chances either. So on July 12, 1959, the winning couple tied the knot in an outdoor ceremony attended by friends, family and county officials. Directly after the reception – wedding cake leftovers in tow – the newly minted Mininsons descended into a 12-ft. deep, 6 x 14ft. wide shelter – and the annals of Atomic Pop Culture. Sheriff Tom Kelly, Chief of Dade County Civil Defense, officially sealed the Exit Hatch and a large calendar – marking the days until that seal would be broken – sat waiting to be X-’d off as each of the 14 days passed.’ At the epic Conelrad, a treasure trove of memories, memorabilia and sounds from the high era of Atomic paranoia. Above image from ‘Duck and Cover‘, the old classic, posted by Behind the Curtain.

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Other things. The creators of the technologies we take for granted are dying: Ceefax instigator Colin McIntyre, remote control champion Eugene Polley / ‘The Japanese are flocking to appreciate the aesthetic charms of industrial sites with factory tours… an emerging niche tourist trade fuelled by kojo moe – “factory infatuation” – an enthusiasm that has taken root among young urbanites whose lives are increasingly remote from Japan’s manufacturing base’.

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The Hooden Utilitarian on Reading Drawings: Architecture and Comics, structure, framing and progress through the page. Includes scans of Robert Crumb’s amazing ‘A Short History of America‘ and more / the mystery of the dark day / West Green Road, photographs by Greg White / Our French Connection. Baldwin heads to Kentucky.

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The Land-Rover Defender 110 Lego model, by Sheepo’s Garage / Virtual Globetrotting’s residential category is a snoopy helicopter-powered tour of the living arrangements of the 1%, with the odd architectural gem thrown in / South Florida Postcards / the art of the architectural capriccio, a post on fantasy landscapes at Country Houses / Melvin the Mini Machine. Complicated solution to a simple problem, in the grand tradition of Rube Goldberg. Via Dezeen.

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Looking at the stars

Posted on May 22, 2012 by things magazine

Following on from yesterday’s post, browse a sampling of the National Air and Space Museum’s aviation and space object collections. There are also photo archives and technical drawings and an amazing cache of drawings, paintings and prints chronicling the early days of the space programme. A very small sampling (more at the things tumblr): Range safety television, Don Brown; Cameramen, Alan E. Cober, 1972; Depiction of a Lunar Module Trainer, Alan E. Cober, undated; Crawler Ready to Pull Back to Gantry, Fletcher Martin, undated; Before Liftoff, Tom O’Hara, 1968; Tourists Waiting for Apollo Launch (above), Nicholas Solovioff, undated; VAB Side View, Apollo 11, Robert T. McCall, 1969.

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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is a best-seller in Finland in the first Finnish edition since 1978, after a 1974 translation was effectively self-censored and a Finnish-language edition was sent via Sweden. From here: ‘Professor Jukka Kemppinen added that in 1974 Finland had its work cut out for it in getting the Soviet Union to keep its hands off of Finnish affairs. Publishing The Gulag Archipelago would certainly not have been in line with this policy of appeasement. Publishers and authors, and even students followed in the footsteps of the state. Researcher Juhani Sipilä recalled how an appeal was sent from the University of Tampere to Tammi Publishers urging the company to refrain from publishing works by Solzhenitsyn, lest relations with the eastern neighbour be jeopardised. [Publisher Sofi] Oksanen also sees the shadow of self-censorship in Finland to be a long one – as is the case in many other countries, especially Russia. “And self-censorship can be used to destroy a nation’s memory. Reality appears as if through a frosty glass.”’ Via Books from Finland.

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Historic simulations

Posted on May 21, 2012 by things magazine

We loved this book: scans from the 1984 publication Creative Computer Graphics, by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton (via Coudal). Jankel and Morton created Max Headroom, inspiration for the still mysterious Max Headroom pirate TV incident, recently solved by redid (allegedly). The book featured plenty of stills from simulators built be the likes of Evans & Sutherland (now reduced to making planetariums, but a short overview of the company history here). We never actually saw these sims in motion – YouTube can solve that today, such as this short extract of the CT5 flight simulator in action from 1981 – but when the real world equivalent was Fighter Pilot (from 1983), it was hard not to feel short-changed.

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We also like the original, pre-CGI simulators that used terrain boards, ‘scale models of terrain, over which moved a television camera that was connected to controls on the flight simulator. The trainee saw an image in the simulator that corresponded to what he or she would see if flying a real airplane over that terrain’. The Smithsonian also has one for a helicopter simulation, while this Ilyushin IL-18 Simulator uses conveyor belts to give the impression of movement. Visit Vintage Computer Graphics for more visual ephemera, including this proto version of Google Earth. Related, inside Industrial Light and Magic in the 1980s. Also related, Cockpit View Landing London City Airport At Night.

Posted in technology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Catalogues and Collections, part 2

Posted on May 18, 2012 by things magazine

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Things magazine is always looking, but the sad reality is that if it’s not on the internet it doesn’t exist for us. And that’s a problem. Our own archives are a case in point; until we get our house in order and bring the back issues into the digital realm, they’re just blank indexes, as useless as a card index without a physical library. This post is a belated follow-up post of sorts to Catalogues and Collections, a musing on whether the internet was ‘a city or a museum.’ Our instinct guides us to the latter definition, although we know that the urban metaphor is far more exciting and dynamic, especially in this era of clouds and clusters, distributed computing, personal networks, off-site data, cross platform synchronisation, dissipated data and the ongoing diaspora of the object into the digital bit.

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The world wide wunderkammer keeps a million stories in its many-drawered facade. But the web has also made collections a public activity, rather than a private one, a return to the heyday of the philanthropic domestic museum. The new acts of personal curatorship are multiplied a thousand times over, and the only architecture needed to house the collections are the mundane bits of code that form the source of every website. Our predilection for weblogs that construct larger narratives from links, like Wilkmanshire takes the right approach, over those that isolate and scrutinize each individual destination.

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There’s also a minor key to the notion of a vast, interlinked but never-ending collection. The collector is striving for the impossible but also the inevitable – that the collection will never be finished and will eventually consume you, perhaps even literally as its components tumble from overstuffed shelves, blocks access to doors and rooms and chokes you out of your living space. The internet serves to reinforce this sense of futility; nothing will ever be comprehensive, ever again. Just as there exists the cliched architectural paradox of the library that is never big enough to contain the deluge of books. And just as in real life as online, we are in danger of focusing on the vessel not the contents, leaving the ideal of completeness as fantasy.

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‘There is a risk that every extra effort put into building up archives – however important their potential contents – is one less effort made to construct what may one day fill it’, novelist Vincenzo Latronico in Domus 937, June 2010. We’ve no idea why the image above should be of Cloud City.

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Limited theatrical release

Posted on May 18, 2012 by things magazine

A while back we linked to Adam Curtis’s post, The Bitch, The Stud and The Prawn, within which he traced all sorts of merry paths through contemporary culture culminating in a strange period of deliberately low-key, almost unwatchable films made purely as a means of dodging tax on investments: ‘There appeared to be a legal loophole, under rules passed in 1997, that offered tax advantages for people willing to invest in British films, which allowed them to defer payments until after the film had been released and turned a profit. The investors believed they could nonetheless claim tax relief on the whole of their pledged investment, including the deferred payment. [Film company] Little Wing claimed they could make up to 140% profit as a result.’ That loophole was closed, but bad films still get made in their hundreds, and there seem to be mechanisms still in place that make funding them attractive. We were reminded of this by a blog post by Phill Barron, explaining why the very lowly takings (£38) for his film Strippers versus Werewolves are very much to be expected. The horror comedy genre seems to be the gilt-edged hedge fund of cinematic investments – a company called Clear Focus Productions is currently seeking investment in its forthcoming spectacular, Sucker Slam, with extensive, complicated, information about incentives to tempt you.

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Some other things. A selection of visual essays from In Focus; 75 Years Since The Hindenburg Disaster, Views From the Night Sky: London and the UK (photographs by Jason Hawkes), Star City and the Baikonur Cosmodrome / staying in Russia, the wooden skyscraper of Arkhangelsk (more) burnt down ten days ago.

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Experimental episodes of TV shows / extremely helpful computer tips / the demolition and construction of a new building in Paris / all about the Beechcraft Starship / quotes and thoughts at Time Immemorial / on 56 Up and the intersection of technology and memory: Looking Back, Looking Forward, at tmn. See also this recent Guardian story. Related, The baby time-lapse trend.

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Conceptualism and product design

Posted on May 16, 2012 by things magazine

Concept designs exist in that strange hinterland where desire and technology haven’t quite caught up with one another, where technolust is stoked by the technically impossible and brands are rendered down to their bare essentials. The most recent ‘idea’ to catch our eye was this concept design for a physical ‘Instagram camera‘, a splice of Polaroid aesthetics with as-yet-undiscovered technology. In the past few years, the concept design has emerged as a calling card for emerging designers, a way of demonstrating how adept one is at distilling the essence of a brand into an easily digested object. It goes without saying that concept design is pure design – there are no troublesome engineers on hand to quibble with factors like cost, practicality and realism. Sites like Coroflot, Behance and CarbonMade are awash with fantasy products that are as much about branding as they are about an understanding of manufacturing processes and materials. Notable imaginary projects include Alexandre Verdier’s VW Microbus, the Holga D by Saikat Biswas, the Antrepo Minu Tuner and Time Tuner, any number of concept yachts, and the NAU-designed Stratocruiser, a ‘lifestyle Zeppelin’. Creating a conceptual product is an essential part of a designer’s education, but the emergence of photo-realistic rendering is paired with the new role of thinking about product as brand extension or enhancement. As consumers, we are not only buying into a company’s present, but it’s future.

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