Our Planet

Taken 34 years ago by the crew on Appolo 17, this image of our planet is still timelessly beautiful. It reminds me of Galileo(1564-1642) who proposed the Earth, among other planets, rotates and orbits around the Sun (and therefore implied it was not flat), and got condemned to lifelong imprisonment by the Church at the time (but he was too old, too ill and famous so house arrest it was)...

Design:e2

This new series on PBS will be talking about sustainability and design and the whole nine yard. I am starting to lose interest in the whole sustainable design thing, and it is unsettling even for me. It is by any means a great thing that people talk about how sustainable practice to save the environment... But it is hard and no fun to design something just for that reason. It is like, William McDonough is great, but when you look at the buildings his did, they are simply quite uninteresting. The bottom line is, the sustainable practice should be like the building code, it is for the safety, health and welfare of the public (and the world), after that, it is still a long road to be a great design.

Down the Garden Path

My wife Eliza told me about this MFA graduation show at OSU. The artist name is Jaime Kennedy. The work is some kind of digital collage, printed and framed like B&W photograph. The level of detail and craftmanship is really amazing. The work has layers of symbolism to it. For the machine-like wings on the bird, they make the bird look so unnatural. But then I thought about human beings...

iPod Architecture

The first 24/365 open Apple store opened on Fifth Ave in Manhattan last Friday and this picture was taken at Friday Midnight. Crazy (or overly enthusiastic) people. It is the Louvre pyramid in cube form, entering the glass box down a spiral stair down to the below grade (or basement, which sounds worse) retail store. Designed by BCJ.

Big Dig House

It is refreshing to see something feel so... shall we say "west coast" in Massachusetts. What's even more interesting about this modernist house is that the architect reused sections of the Boston Big Dig's I-93 off ramp to form most of the floor and roof plates, among other structure like steel beam and such... By Cambridge MA based SingleSpeedDesign.

Botenical

I have seen more and more ornamental back to design, be it graphic or interior or product. The big part of it is the natural, organic quality, using planting profiles in an Art Nouveau way. This is by a graphic firm called WeWorkForThem in Baltimore Maryland. They formed an online store in 2001 called YouWorkForThem to sell all kinds of stuff they like as well their own design. This vector graphic being one of their own design, for sale.

Tokyo Surreal

I saw this from NY Times. Cell Brick is a small house designed by Yasuhiro Yamashita for a 50-year-old woman in Tokyo. Modular design to the extreme. More info at DesignBoom.

3D Cars

I have talked to some folks in the studio about the websites of Honda and Toyota having this 3D models of the new cars. The software they used is called Viewpoint, really cool, don't know if architects can utilize this to present their design with the clients... Check this Honda Element out.

Gehry's Sketches

M Ours said this "needs to be on the blog". So here you go. I guess it is supposed to be in theaters (NY and LA) this week. I don't know when it is coming to Columbus, anyone want to watch?

Moving Castle

It was a long story, but I finally watched Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" this weekend on DVD. As a Miyazaki's fan since a teenager and have watched all his animes, it is a weird feeling watching this latest one because it is hard to follow and understand even I have read original novel. The story is based on Diane Wynne Jones's fantacy children (and for adult too) fiction with the same name, and alot of Miyazaki's personal ideas layering on it. I will leave it to you (I know there are a few Miyazaki fans in our studio) to interpret it. What is revealing to me is that when a creative person (or master) gets older and gain more reputation, they tend to do something more personal and intuitive to them but hard to understand for people who try to appreciate it. Is creativity (or creative activity) ultimately about self-satistifying act? When the work and the creater are becoming one, are we appreciating the creater or the work itself?

Miyazaki's son is directing the next Studio Ghibli's anime, "Tale from Earthsea", to be released this summer in Japan.

Less is More

A Scion concept car t2B. It is definitely an improved version of xB. And the coolest thing is that the car has one door on the passenger side but two doors on the driver side. I hope it is in production soon...