# Virtual race

Following you will see a commercial that have been done for a well know soda company, (it's not coca-cola!). This short 3D animation shows the ride of a race car on the Singapore Grand Prix street circuit.
It's a really interesting vision of the city , turning around the pilote and the car along the lap.

enjoy!

see also this past article

# Threat Level's 10 Favorite Paranoid Films by Wired

Wired.com publishes a top ten called Threat Level's 10 Favorite Paranoid Films. Question is what to think of yourself when you did see all of them like I did...

picture: Pi by Darren Aronofsky (1998)

# Giacomo Costa

Giacomo Costa is an Italian photographer creating visions of a future world where even sci-fi buildings would have rust and almost collapse. It could maybe be called post-future...

found on Archidose

# CRAZY MUMBAI /// Hanging Gardens

This building might not be so different from what used to be Nabuchodonosor's hanging gardens in antic Babylon. Pictures’ quality is unfortunately very poor but you might guess the building’s organization. Ground level is a car park with some weird columns carrying the building itself, then the storeys are organized as a vegetated terraced stair re-producing this aspect of hanging gardens.

# CRAZY MUMBAI /// Dabawalla

Dabawalla represents a urban dimension which does not really exist in western cities. Imagine that every day, your lunch is delivered to your office at the right time by fedex or ups ! That is basically what is happening in Mumbai thanks to Dabawalla. First, you obviously have to subscribe to a list to belong to this network. Then, every day, in the suburbs somebody of your family cook a wonderful lunch for you, puts it in a daba (hermetic cans) and brings it to the closest walla (carrier) who then take the train arriving at 11.30am to the Churchgate station in the centre of Mumbai. After that, walla(s) gather all the daba(s) to be as organised as they possibly can (and believe me they are !) to finally hit the road and deliver the lunch to you with a very systematic precision. Such a phenomena (we are talking about thousand of daba(s)) has urban consequences and provide a chain of food which, I believe does not exist anywhere else at this scale.

# Boiteaoutils on Indian time

I am now in Mumbai for several months to work to Serie and I'll thus try to let India influence boiteaoutils.
More later...

# Forêt épileptique by Berdaguer & Pejus

Forêt épileptique is an installation of French artists Christopher Berdaguer and Marie Pejus. They often propose some architectural scenarii related to the human body's chemistry. Forêt épileptique creates both a poetic scene and a very stressful perception of it for the visitor. See the video here (down the page)

Video 120min.
Collection Fond communal Marseille 1/3
ephemere installation : strobe lights, generator. A patch of forest lit by strobe lights set on frequencies oscillating between 9 and 12 hertz likely to trigger light-sensitive epileptical fits.

# Nic Clear's Bartlett Unit 15 / Interview with Ballardian

A film by Peter Kidger, produced for Nic Clear’s Unit 15 course, ‘Crash: Architectures of the Near Future’.

Here is an interview of Nic Clear by Ballardian Simon Sellars about his Unit 15 in the Bartlett where movies are being produced to express architecture or urban issues (See this wonderful video by Peter Kidger). Nic Clear called his 2008 studio Crash: Architectures of the Near Future as an homage to James Graham Ballard and the ambiguity he magnificiently describes in his novels.

# Trabeculae/Protosynthesis by Supermanoeuvre

Trabeculae is a project imagined by Supermanoeuvre, a young "practice" created by Dave Pigram (New York) and Iain Maxwell (London). What they define as projects, research and teaching (AA, Pratt and Michigan mostly) are more or less intermingling for a global creative attitude trying to generate architectures related to variable "social, cultural and ecological" parametrics.

In fact, Trabeculae is a project for last Beijing's Biennal extending a previous research called Protosynthesis which was first released for Marc Fornes' Philadelphia exhibition: Scriptedbypurpose.

Trabeculae is the result of reimagining the central atrium office tower. Replacing the traditionnal operation of repetitive extrusion, a heliotropic branching system actively seeks out those areas within the zoning envelope with greatest access to daylight. Forking and swelling in response to varing light conditions, the atrium is thus conceived as a site-specific network that traverses intellintelligently and freely from one facade to another. The atrium becomes the defining element of differentiation within otherwise normative floorplates while maintaining efficient floorscape ratios.
Within the atrium, a second order proliferation of the same system at a finer scale develops a structural meshwork - the trabeculae. The swellings and coagulationsof this topologically free structural network-within-a-network accomodate meeting & function rommes, bridges, and communication strairs as welll as supportng the attriums glazing.
An instantiation of the proto-synthesis algorithm this project embraces the specific heterogeneity of a given scenario and points towards the possibility of architecture speciation.

Project team: Dave Pigra, Iain Maxwell, Brad Rothenberg, Ezio Blasetti

# Venus grotto

Venus grotto is a totally artificial cave built for Ludwig II of Bavaria during second part of the XIXth century for his castle of Linderhof. The King wanted to reproduce the effect observed in Capri's blue grotto so he made a device of dynamos being set up to illuminate the grotto with several colors. It could probably be considered as one of the most expressive example of architectural lyrism.

# Hemeroscopium House by Antón García- Abril

This incredible house mostly built by enormous prefab concrete beams has been designed by the Madrid based architect Antón García- Abril (Ensamble Studio).

found via Archinect

# Lecture of James Auger for LIFT 09

Here is a lecture of James Auger from Auger/Loizeau for LIFT 09 presenting some more or less crazy design with more or less irony. See the second part of the lecture for devices stealing spiders' preys or producing energy thanks to a mouse trap !

# Rouse[D] Competition

Rouse[D] is a competition in order to re-invent Detroit in any scale. Competition just opened and will stop on july 31st. The jury has been chosen in a (re)generation of international young architects:

David Pigram of SUPERMANOUEVRE
Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY
Skylar Tibbits of SJET
Michael Ashley of MASH-ARKT
David Jackowski of ALVATRON STUDIO
Peter Macapia of DORA
Brian Dubois of 2:37AM
Jason K. Johnson of FUTURE CITIES LAB

# Woven Source by Peter Vikar (Angewandte)

Woven Source is Peter Vikar's 2008 diploma project for Greg Lynn Angewandte's studio in Vienna. He introduces his project this way:

This project explores a thick structural facade system for a contemporary library in downtown of Budapest. From one side, it reinvents the operation and relation to physical content and at the same time, it shifts the usage of the library towars a more city and event oriented direction.

The facade system combines the potential of structure, circulation, visual effect, enveloppe, and also creates smaller interior and exterior divisions. The majors components of this thick skin are the two interweaving layers constructed out of bent contourlines and straight stiffering members. Structurally, it works as a constant transition between a classical diagrid and a space turss condition. Due to the sophisticated control system, the skins gradiently changes the porosity of the facade and controls the amount of light for the interior spaces.

# Wind 3.0 by Studio Roosegaarde 4.0

This installation has been designed by Rotterdam based Studio Roosegaarde 4.0 and reacts organically like to noise and movement. Check the other works on their websites !

# Urban Mobs

Urban Mobs is a program sponsored by Orange (France Telecom) which proposes to track for a moment, all the phone movements and phone calls in a city during a special event (football games, parties etc.).
Cities are so far, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Cracovie, Varsovie, Bucarest
You can thus observe the global animation of all this figures as a pulsation of the crowd.

# Blog World

What is happening when on blogspot you click on "next blog" which randomly generates a link to another blog ?
- A Spanish guy telling the story of his life
- A Norvegian girl who apparently is questionning herself about her best haircut
- A Finland woman really into babies' clothes
- An Argentina guy who seems to spend his life for cars and especially volkswagen Beetle
- A Malaysian woman interested into finance investments
This way of expressing oneself is interesting in the fact that it develops a system of reputation which increase or decrease the amount of "listeners" of what one has to say whatever the topic.

# Taipei Performing Arts Centre by NL Architects

You may already have seen the winner OMA project of this Performing Arts Centre in Taipei, but this was NL Architects' entry. It looks retro-future and seems to inspire itself from Paul Andreu's Roissy 1 and Rogers and Piano's Pompidou Centre.
found on Archdaily

# What can a body do ? a Spinozist issue.

However, no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature, in so far as she is regarded as extension. No one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions; nor need I call attention to the fact that many actions are observed in the lower animals, which far transcend human sagacity, and that somnambulists do many things in their sleep, which they would not venture to do when awake: these instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at.
Again, no one knows how or by what means the mind moves the body, nor how many various degrees of motion it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it.

Spinoza, Ethics, Note of the Proposition II of the Part III
trad: R.H.M. Elwes

Personne, il est vrai, n’a jusqu’à présent déterminé ce que peut le Corps, c'est-à-dire l’expérience n’a enseigné à personne jusqu’à présent ce que, par les seules lois de la Nature considérée en tant seulement que corporelle, le Corps ne peut faire et ce qu’il ne peut pas faire à moins d’être déterminé par l’Ame. Personne en effet ne connaît si exactement la structure du Corps qu’il ait pu en expliquer toutes les fonctions, pour ne rien dire ici de ce que l’on observe maintes fois dans les Bêtes qui dépasse de beaucoup la sagacité humaine, et de ce que font souvent les somnambules pendant le sommeil, qu’ils n’oseraient pas pendant la veille, et ce la montre assez que le Corps peut, par les seules lois de sa nature, beaucoup de choses qui causent à son Ame de l’étonnement. Nul ne sait, en outre, en quelle condition ou par quels moyens l’Ame meut le Corps, ni combien de degrés de mouvement elle peut lui imprime et avec quelle vitesse elle peut le mouvoir.

Spinoza, Ethique, Scolie de la Proposition II de la Troisième partie
Flammarion 1965, trad :Charles Appuhn

picture: Exhibition Our body just arrived in Paris

# Gianni Pettena's clay house

The clay house is the second installation created by Gianni Pettena and his students from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City (1972). First one was the tumbleweeds catcher I already post one month ago and this second one simply consists in covering the entire exterior surface of a very trivial house with clay. The interesting process here happens between the time clay is applied on the surface and the time it actually dries out. During this moment, the material was "alive", retracting itself, creating cracks and being explored by insect.