With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Superman already knew it: Steered growth is the future of architecture.
The lower picture was taken at the Industrias Peñoles nano-chrystal architecture lab in Chihuahuan, Mexico where researchers are growing giant crystals. No seriously, the Cave of Crystals isn’t man made. It was discovered by Industrias Peñoles miners a thousand feet (300 meters) below Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert.
The Eco Pod is a experimental design proposal towards the production of clean and renewable energy, which should operate in old, abandoned buildings. Pending an eventual recovery, these buildings become vertical bioreactor that supports micro-algae which produce energy for the city.
The idea comes from the American studios Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab. It was created to stimulate the economy and ecology of the city of Boston. This way, structures, ruins of abandoned buildings are turned into high-impact capsules coated with multiple ground source of bio-fuels. In this case the micro-algae is 30 times more efficient per acre than traditional.
This picture was taken in Zambia by Sarah Los (NL) while on wildlife safari. Every fairly trained “NextNature spotter” should be able to distinguish the cellphone-tree masts from old-nature trees. But that’s odd; there are three of them in a row and all different species!? Does every cellular network provider plant its own tree family? It surely looks like a competition. Future designs are expected to look better, taller and greener.
Let us do a quick jungle safari ourselves. Read more »
By highlighting the geometric and mechanical structure of flowers, computer graphics illustrator Macoto Murayama produced these beautiful renderings. These flowers must not be seen as “just a simulation of old nature”; they are constructional studies, made to inspire (who wouldn’t want to live in a flower-tower?!).
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Peter Cook and Becky Northey are tree shapers. Their designs are so ten years ago; but still worth a post.
Materials used: water, sunlight, soil… and a sprout planted in 1998 of course. An examplary image of sustainable furniture.
Neo was here.
It is nature, but not like we know it when chairs biomimic the pelvis. This anatomic Ruby rockingchair was designed by Pouyan Mokhtarani, Tehran (Iran).
Crying, talking, sleeping, walking… not really, but this is what Cliff Richard’s concept could look like when laboratorised.
“To demonstrate a new method for fabricating three-dimensional living biological structures, researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) have created a 5-millimeter tall doll composed of living cells.
According to an announcement made on January 22 2009, the researchers created the tiny figurine by cultivating 100,000 cell capsules — 0.1-millimeter balls of collagen, each coated with dozens of skin cells — together inside a doll-shaped mold for one day. After the cell capsules had coalesced to form the doll-shaped mass of tissue, it was placed in a culture solution, where it reportedly survived for more than a day.
The struggle between the born and the made is being fought out in a wardrobe on Saturn.
By: 1stavemachine.com | Related: Sixties Last
Never, 1999. By Nina Saunders
Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.
Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both close and far from the eart (Low-Earth Orbit and GEO). Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).
So… I guess millionaires are paying Richard Branson tons of money to go see trash?
With their project ‘Rules of Six’ architects Aranda & Lasch envision an unpredictable, self-generating landscape of interlocking hexagons that could represent rooms, buildings or entire urban neighborhoods. The work explores self-assembly and modularity across scales. Using Rhino3D, high-density foam and an algorithm that mimicks the growth patterns of microscopic structures, they create a sprawling matrix of three-dimensional structures that can multiply indefinitely without sacrificing stability. Is this the organic-algorithmic city of tomorrow?
Growing buildings from crystal-like structures not only sounds utterly nextnature & fantastic, but also familiar: I bet these architects loved Superman’s Fortress of Solitude as kids.
The work was created for the Design and the Elastic Mind expo at MOMA New York. Have a look at their previous studies for more in-dept info.
