As drones are becoming part of our horizon, urban infrastructures adapt to them. The team of Avoid Obvious Architects was asked to redesign highway G107 and its surrounding area in Bao’an, Shenzhen (China); together with Tetra Architects & Planners they proposed a utopian superhighway.
This Bricklaying Robot can build low-cost houses in just two days. Initially developed to meet labor shortages, at 1.000 bricks an hour the robot is perfectly capable of working on its own. The machine was named Hadrian after the fourteenth Emperor of Rome, known for his significant building projects during the Roman Empire. This new technology means more affordable houses in the future, that additionally could be filled with robotic self-assembling furniture.
Source: Fastbrick Robotics
Behold food technologist Prof. Atze Jan van der Goot and his 3x30x60 cm mega steak! The taste is a bit bland still but the texture resembles animal muscle tissue, which gives it a great ‘bite’. The mega steak was grown in a laboratory at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) with a process that, according to the researchers, resembles the baking of bread. And it is vegetarian too.
As Pokémon Go is currently available in 90 countries over the world, the game is slowly taking over our planet. Nowadays people know more Pokémon than bird or tree species. However, avid players have probably noticed that some of the first generation Pokémon are not obtainable in the game yet.
Kids can now explore the Himalayas just using a new Google Maps app. A 500-foot Yeti, named Verne, will guide them on a virtual tour of the planet’s highest peaks. The company has combined 3D graphics with their maps to create a unique experience for adventurous kids to traverse the outside world, staying inside.
Virtual worlds, printed food, living cities, wild robots – we’re so surrounded by technology that it’s becoming our next nature. How can we live in harmony with it? The Next Nature Network is a 21st century nature organization that wants to go forward – not back – to nature. We stir debate, create events, exhibitions, publications and products that bring biology and technology into balance. Because ultimately, we may not just have to save the pandas but the people too. Will you join us?
The 5th largest airline in the United States, JetBlue, is growing potatoes at Terminal 5 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The urban organic garden was built from a large amount of stacked recycled milk crates and can produce approximately 1.000 pounds of potatoes per season, and about 2.000 herb plants. The signature potatoes are, indeed, blue.
Today we introduce the Queen Bee Drone, a regal character of our coloring book, What’s flying there?. The Queen Bee Drone leads and takes care of her swarm. She is designed to look just like a regular bee, but she is programmed to solve the “emergencies” of our time.
“I’m sliding my finger to the right of the screen to answer the call” is the modern translation of “I’m picking up the phone”. Even to the younger generation, who have never literally picked up or hung up the phone, the contemporary version sounds odd. But hanging up the phone really doesn’t make any sense today. Phrases like “rewinding the tape”, “dialing the phone”, or “cranking the engine” are called skeuonyms, expressions left over from a technology no longer used.
Read the entire Next Nature is… series.
It seems the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have taken the going-green trend to the ultimate extreme. Earlier this week, the women’s diving pool at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre mysteriously turned swampy green. The color change happened overnight in just one of the pools, arousing a great deal of speculation.
On the main street of Ljubljana, Slovenia – green capital of Europe – artist Martin Bricelj Baraga set up a sculpture that measures the blueness of the sky. The self-sufficient installation fully operates on solar energy and functions both as monument and as open source software, which visualizes the air quality of the city. The work pays homage to the 18th century ‘Cyanometer’ attributed to Horace-Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss physicist who designed a circular tool to systematically document the blueness on a scale of fifty-three shades of blue, ranging from white to black. See for yourself!
Source: Designboom