The business of architecture
Cathy Hutchinson controls a robotic arm and takes a sip of coffee. She is directing the arm via signals transmitted directly from the motor cortex section of her brain What is it? A team at Brown University in the United States, led by Professor John Donoghue, has developed an electronic device, called BrainGate, that is surgically... Continue Reading →
What is it? Running since 1981, NASA's shuttle program will come to an end in just 12 days. On the 21st of July, space shuttle Atlantis will return from its 135th and final mission to the international space station and the United States of America will lose its ability to send men and women into... Continue Reading →
(View House, Rosario, Argentina) What is it? The title of a lecture given yesterday evening at the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University by Mark Lee of American architecture practice, Johnston Marklee. Lee presented a number of the practice's projects to the predominantly student audience, both complete and current, spanning countries as amazingly diverse... Continue Reading →
What do we mean? Google announced this week the release of its Chrome operating system, paired with two new Chromebooks from Samsung and Acer. A "completely new model of computing", Chrome OS is a cleverly extrapolated version of the existing Google Docs idea, with users accessing all basic computing applications online, together with their stored... Continue Reading →
What is it? The comic genius behind XKCD, Randall Munroe, has put together this chart comparing the radiation doses received from various activities, giving graphical measurements in sieverts, the unit that quantifies the affect ionising radiation has on the human body: We receive 0.1 microsieverts of radiation from eating a banana. We received 0.05 microsieverts... Continue Reading →
What is it? Frank Gehry's first building in Australia, the Dr Chau Chak Wing building at the University of Technology Sydney, revealed last week and discussed in an IndesignLive post viewable here. IndesignLive makes some peculiar comments about the design ideas behind the building: "The east-facing façade will be made of a buff-coloured brick reminiscent... Continue Reading →
What is it? First introduced to us via a Coolboom newsletter, they are collages assembled from found photographs by American artist, Jim Kazanjian, creating mesmerising black and white worlds from pieces of the everyday. What do we think? Kazanjian favours deserts, cemetaries, marshland and earthquake-damaged freeways as the settings for his work. Combined with crumbling houses, abandoned shrines... Continue Reading →