Architecture
aardvarchaeology | October 24, 2014 Landsjö castle. State of knowledge after the 2014 excavations.
I'm giving a talk on Landsjö castle to the Kimstad Historical Society next week, and while preparing my presentation I made a sketch plan of this summer's discoveries regarding the plan. The ruin just barely breaks the turf, so we didn't know much about the castle's layout beforehand except that it had a 60-metre straight stretch of perimeter wall along the west side and that it cannot have been rectangular.
Our main architectural discoveries in two July weeks of digging and clearing brush were as follows.
1. A wall divides the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2011First, on Saturday, around noon, I observed this on Commonwealth Avenue:
Because it's not like it's going to rain for the next 24 hours or anything.
Second, we are once again reminded how poorly the Boylston Street Apple store fits with the Boston environment:
Although they're protected against rocket propelled grenades too! (sorta).
Anyway, everything is still working for now (even the wireless, though I have emergency back up intertoobz too!).
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2011As someone who spent several years working across the street from the Frank Gehry designed Stata Center and had more than a few meeting there, I appreciate Joe Queenan's wicked satire:
An Iowa-based philanthropist and architecture aficionado has offered a $300 million reward to any city anywhere in the world that dares to hire someone other than Frank Gehry to design its gleaming new art museum.
"Don't get me wrong, I like iconoclastic, swoopy structures that look like bashed-in sardine cans as much as the next guy," says the philanthropist, who wishes to remain nameless for fear of enraging…
mikethemadbiologist | May 24, 2010(Click to embiggen)
Don't worry, I'm not describing Boston Mayor Menino's latest harebrained scheme. Esplanade Magazine, which is some great architecture/real estate porn (and it's free!), describes an effort in 1907, during the heyday of the City Beautiful Movement, to build an island in the Charles River. It didn't happen due to opposition from Beacon Hill residents (naturally...) who opposed what would have been called St. Botolph's* island. But imagine if the island had been built (from Esplanade Magazine):
It's May, almost time for Commencement, and you are sunning yourself at the BU…
grrlscientist | May 3, 2010tags: Hong Kong Architect Transforms Shoebox Apartment into 24 Rooms, efficient living, home life, architecture, technology, Gary Chang, streaming video
Life is cramped in Manhattan, but if you have enough money and imagination, you can convert your shoebox into a livable space, as this Hong Kong architect did. Find out how award-winning Hong Kong architect, Gary Chang, managed to squeeze 24 rooms -- including a home cinema and ''spa'' -- into 32 square meters (344 square feet) of apartment space.
grrlscientist | May 2, 2010tags: Helsingin tuomiokirkko, Suurkirkko, Helsinki Cathedral, Helsinki, Finland, travel, cities, architecture, photography
Helsingin tuomiokirkko or Suurkirkko (Helsinki Cathedral), Helsinki, Finland.
This is an Evangelical Lutheran cathedral located in the center of Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 23 July 2009 [larger view]
My spouse has made arrangements for us to return to gorgeous Helsinki, Finland. We will attend his student's defense, and hang out in the city. I already have plans to photograph Suomenlinna, the Luonnontieteellinen Museo (our hotel is across the street from…
ddobbs | February 5, 2010By Alex Rowan. This is lovely.
Do the full screen, HD if you've got it.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2009Figuring how Stonehenge was built--in your backyard:
Truly awesome.
mikethemadbiologist | July 25, 2009By way of Universal Hub, I came across this video of Boston in the 1920s. Not only is neat to see a lot of the same buildings, but I find it really interesting that Boston is described as conservative (whereas today, according to the Real America Propaganda, we are Homofascist Horde central). Of course, Boston is conservative in many ways: it has a strong sense of history, and it isn't particularly wild and crazy (it's fun, but it's not Vegas either).
Anyway, here's the video:
You have to love the announcer's voice too.
mikethemadbiologist | May 26, 2009Having recently returned from the ASM (American Society for Microbiology) General Meeting held in Philadelphia, I'm convinced that it should be held there every year--or, at least, it should be the permanent East Coast venue.
When I go to a meeting, I want several things:
Stuff to do. Restaurants, museums, and so on.
Things need to be accessible. That means I have to be able to walk to them or take public transit (I don't want to have to rent a car just to leave the conference center).
Lodging needs to be close to the convention center (ASM is usually an 8,000-12,000 person meeting; it…
cevans | April 21, 2009
In 1976, NASA Administrator James Fletcher noted that "The question, 'What is feasible?' can be finally answered only by future historians." He was talking about the elaborate plans for space habitats the agency had spent a summer noodling over, but the same remark could have been made to the incredulous before the first moon landing, for example -- or before the birth of transoceanic voyages in the 14th and 15th Centuries.
So begins of one of my favorite pieces of utopist NASA detritus, a document called Space Settlements: A Design Study, made over the course of a 10-week workshop at the…
bioephemera | March 26, 2009
Norwich State Hospital, Piano
"New England Ruins"Rob Dobi, 2005
Three quietly stunning collections of photos mix the ache of loss with the unintentional but undeniable beauty of decay. First, Rob Dobi's "New England Ruins" documents abandoned buildings in various states of abandonment. His compositions vary from grand (abandoned stages and performance halls) to mundane (a chair fallen down a flight of stairs, the back of a derelict television). Norwich State Hospital, Piano (above) captures a broken piano, its innards undulating like the skeleton of a grilled trout, under a crude mosaic of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2009This is not the Mad Biologist
Or how the Boston Phoenix proves they missed the point of Shepard Fairey's work (Fairey made the iconic Obama poster). I'll get to that in a moment, but Sunday, I went to the ICA in Boston to see the Shepard Fairey exhibit. For me, it was a blast from the past: I was in Providence when the whole Andre the Giant thing started (I still have a sticker from that time). It was also funny to watch (discretely) a middle-aged--to be generous--docent explain to similarly aged visitors about Andre having a posse. Ironic proto-skaterpunk anarchism wasn't really…
greengabbro | June 12, 2008Earthquake engineer Kit Miyamoto has posted a journal of his trip to Sichuan. If you don't mind a little bit of construction jargon it's a good discussion of the details of what kinds of buildings collapse, and what kinds are safe, as well as the logistical difficulties of the immediate post-earthquake recovery. The lesson to be learned from the Sichuan earthquake is the same as the lesson of basically every major earthquake in the past several decades: If you build bad buildings, they will fall down and kill people.
After some earthquakes, we have been able to dramatically improve our…
mikethemadbiologist | May 17, 2008There's been a wee bit of excitement over the opening of the Apple Store in Boston. When you get right down to it, it's just another Apple Store: as far as I can tell, there's nothing special in terms of merchandise. It's the architecture that's the problem.
As a building, it's very sleek and modern, and looks nice, and works well...unless it rains.
Oops.
Keep in mind, this is Boston, not Southern California. More than occasionally, God cries (no doubt over gay marriage), and it rains. Or snows. Or between February and May, schlumps.
I figured that a rainy evening was a good time to…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2008
This is really cool: a building that is not only environmentally friendy (low energy use, low impact building materials, passive heating and cooling, and so on), but also comes with its own hydroponic garden system.
What's neat is that this isn't vaporware--China is in the process of building a bunch of these. Here's how much green stuff the building will have:
Look hydroponicy stuff:
Some more:
And:
It's got all sorts of convection air current stuff:
And the apartments look nice too:
I wonder if it will have termite problems though....
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2007It's sad that the only way oversight can occur in our Excellent Iraqi Adventure is when one sleazebag contractor rats out another sleazebag contractor (italics mine):
A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.
The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2007Today, the Boston landmark Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Arlington Street is no longer: it has become the Taj Hotel.
I first found out about this when I attended a Back Bay Architechtural Commission hearing in December about some development plans in my neighborhood. (For anyone who cares, the ugly greenhouse-like thing at the corner of Exeter and Boylston--which used to be a TGIF--will remain because the proposed structure to replace it was even worse). I arrived at the meeting one hearing early, which happened to be the hearing for some minor renovations at the Ritz-Carlton/Taj Hotel:…