From creator Jose Guizar, The Windows of New York project is a weekly illustrated fix for an obsession that has increasingly grown in me since chance put me in this town. A product of countless steps of journey through the city streets, this is a collection of windows that somehow have caught my restless eye out from the never-ending buzz of the city. This project is part an ode to architecture and part a self-challenge to never stop looking up
— via WebUrbanist
A rose engine lathe (Wikipedia) is a type of geometric lathe used to produce complex radial engravings called Guilloché, which are used both for decorative and security (ie, anti-counterfeiting) purposes.
Those of you with more than $238,000 of disposable cash lying around may be irked to discover that the auction for this stunningly beautiful antique specimen is long closed. At least we can all still enjoy the gorgeous photographs, courtesy Massachusetts-based Skinner Auctioneers, who sealed the deal back in December. Their site is actually chock-a-block with beautiful old tools, instruments, and apparatus — via MAKE
Dutch artist Ingrid Siliakus has been designing and building paper architecture
ever since she began studying the work of Japanese architect Masahiro Chatani, the alleged founder of this origami-like model-making process.
Siliakus’s intricate designs emerge from single pieces of paper, their forms finalised after the artist experiments with countless trial runs and prototypes. Her meticulous metropolises layer paper silhouettes of buildings with their own cut-out negatives and the delicate shadows cast by their fragile facades — via Architizer
Ayrfield & Mortlake Bank wrecks in Homebush Bay, originally uploaded by Andy Brill.
Voltimeter, originally uploaded by sbszine.
The cattle ramp provides a great silhouette against the night sky — via Mike Salway
82/365_Cady fins, originally uploaded by red stilletto.
Designers Hilden & Diaz have created a fixture that can transport you to a dark forest with the flick of a light switch. When you turn on this chandelier, you’re suddenly engulfed in a tangle of tree-shaped shadows.
The designers say that this light sculpture, titled Forms in Nature, was inspired in form by the drawings of naturalist Ernst Haeckel. But the chaotic beauty of the chandelier is overshadowed by its effect on the room around it. Forms in Nature isn’t available for sale yet, but the designs say it is currently in production — via io9
i guess that pickfair deserves it’s own update, as it’s a pretty remarkable, monstrous, huge, strangely beautiful, ostentatious, emblematic, storied, oddball house. but, i’ll be honest, i felt kind of creepy and exposed taking pictures of this house as beverly hills residents drove by giving me baleful and withering looks — via moby los angeles architecture
Simon Berry is piggybacking on Coca-Cola’s distribution system to bring life-saving medicine to the places that need it most.
You can buy a Coke pretty much anywhere on Earth. Thanks to a vast network of local suppliers, Coca-Cola has almost completely solved distribution, getting its product into every nook and cranny where commerce reaches. There are places in the world where it’s easier to get a Coke than clean water. In the 1980s, Berry was an aid worker in Zambia, and when he looked at Coke’s success, he saw an opportunity.
Child mortality was very high and the second-biggest killer was diarrhoea, which is simple to prevent,
he says. The standard treatment is oral rehydration solution, or ORS, which is essentially salt, sugar and water. I had the idea of transporting ORS through the Coca-Cola system.
Unfortunately, the idea didn’t get off the ground. We had no telephone, let alone the internet, so it was hard to share the idea,
he says. Five years ago I thought I’d have another go. It was much easier to do that through Facebook.
In April 2008, he began a campaign on Facebook. A groundswell of support gave his project, dubbed ColaLife, the attention it needed to get noticed by the BBC and, through the British broadcaster, by Coca-Cola itself. ColaLife began collaborating with one of Coca-Cola’s African bottler/distributors, and the beverage giant shared advice and information about how its distribution network operates.
Eventually, ColaLife registered as an independent U.K. charity in 2011 and began a pilot program in Zambia — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Romain Jacquet-Lagreze’s Vertical Horizon
series is a photo essay — and book — exploring the rapid vertical expansion of one of the densest cities in the world. While images of Hong Kong’s skyline are common enough, Jacquet-Lagreze’s almost abstract photos of the city’s buildings, taken from an unerringly vertical, worm’s eye perspective, show an oppressive man-made environment — notably devoid of actual humans—that easily crowds the view of the camera lens, leaving only a small patch of sky visible in the middle of each composition — via Architizer
BCX Kraken Unleashed — via Base Camp X
The installation was created by Netherlands-based artist John Breed, and incorporated 145 shoes and legs in total, in conjunction with German shoe salon Breuninger — via io9
Glazed ceramic salt & pepper shakers shaped like octopi — via NeatoShop
When I got this sword, it was completely covered in blood rust.
Sword maker Francis Boyd is showing me yet another weapon pulled from yet another safe in the heavily fortified workshop behind his northern California home.
You can tell it’s blood,
he says matter-of-factly, because ordinary rust turns the grinding water brown. If it’s blood rust it bleeds, it looks like blood in the water. Even 2,000 years old, it bleeds. And it smells like a steak cooking, like cooked meat. I’ve encountered this before with Japanese swords from World War II. If there’s blood on the sword and you start polishing it, the sword bleeds. It comes with the territory.
Blood rust: I hadn’t thought of that. I guess it would turn water red, but the steak comment is kind of creeping me out, as is the growing realization that if these swords could talk, I couldn’t stomach half the tales they’d have to tell — via Collectors Weekly
A video about the beauty of creating…
Obviously I have been wanting to crochet these for a long time, but only recently got around to it, encouraged by a request from a great lab from my undergrad alma mater that uses them as a model organism. Here’s a pattern so you can do it too — via Wunderkammer
RSS – Posts