Time Bank’s Growth

A short animation showing the gradual addition of units on site.

Joe Trippi – Politics and the Internet

Greece is at a turning point. For decades the Goliath forces in politics and government have failed to tackle the major problems facing Greece. As a result, the people of Greece have understandably lost trust in those institutions.

The top will not solve this problem: Parties have to trust the people before the people will ever trust the parties. A successful political party will use technology to empower their supporters to arm an Army of Davids to take back Greek politics from the failed Goliath institutions.

taken from TEDxAthens Blog:  http://blog.tedxathens.com/tedxathens-2011-talks-%E2%80%93-joe-trippi/

Pavilion of Gifts

One of the most fascinating aspects of Burning Man is the idea of gifting, the event of exchanging goods that takes place between participants with no commercial aims. This notion plays a fundamental role in the relationships that occur between people but also between people and their physical, built environment. The event of gifting is an action between one person which creates a reaction to the second one. This interaction can equally inform the spatial conditions and appearance of an architectural structure when such an event takes place within it. The aim of this project is to create a system which equally participates in this exchange procedure and which interacts with visitors in giving and receiving gifts. The ‘Pavilion of Gifts’ aims to manifest the different conditions of the event of gifting as it will actively participate with visitors. New spatial and social relationships will occur, where most of them are unpredictable but very interesting and original.

The design of the pavilion derives from the geometry of spirals. Spirals, are found in nature in plants and animals and their form is defined by mathematical expressions. The ‘Pavilion of Gifts’ employes a series of spirals, which when set together will form an aesthetically attractive and beautiful pavilion. The structure of each spiral is formed by a series of wooden triangular in shape pieces, all of the same shape but different in size. Because of the bending and flexible capacities of the material, the spiral will be formed with no extra components or joints. Each wooden piece is designed to fit with the next one with no extra component. In between of this wooden spiral, bags will be attached with a hidden circuit of LEDs which will make them to illuminate when left empty.

People passing by will fill in the illuminated bags with whatever they like and they will be free to open another bag and take the gift which is set from someone else within it. The illumination of the pavilion will be defined by the gift exchange procedure and will vary constantly. In this first approach the visitor would create an interactive relationship with the structure.

3-D Objects, Just Add Light

Folding 2D patterns to 3D objects only by lighting up the object is a very interesting technique been developed by the North Carolina State University. The process is very simple. A pre-stressed plastic sheet is run through a conventional inkjet printer which prints on it bold black lines. The bold black lines absorb more light when placed under the heat lamp, thus causing folding.

Bartlett-Unit14 2010 ‘Performance’

These air-supported structures were filling up with air according to visitors’ presence around them.
For more images visit Unit14 blog: http://bartlettunit14.tumblr.com/tagged/Performance

Casting Forms and Patterns of the Terrain

<a href=”

Creating the casts from Christos Antonopoulos on Vimeo.

“>

This project from MAADM explores the way forms and patterns can be created on a sand surface from an agend. The patterns were then casted in order to extract more information.

For more information you can have a look here: http://christosantonopoulos.tumblr.com/tagged/ThesisDevelopment

Hylozoic Ground

An interview with Philip Beesley on his project for the 12th Biennale Exhibition. The ‘Hylozoic Ground’ is an immersive, interactive architectural installation fitted with arrays of sensors and kinetic devices. Lightweight interlinking systems are interwoven with chemistry and respond to their environment.