Experiments In Motion

This weekend (April 27-28), New Habitat will be hosting a hackathon as part of the Ideas City Festival that will present architecture as an “API” to be hacked. The hackathon will mobilize a diverse group of architects, designers, artists, engineers, and technologists by providing the designs for a proposed building in New York City to be hacked away at, into and through to new ideas for domestic living.

The vicious cycle of innovation that opensource knowledge and infrastructure and a hacker ethos has ignited in other fields has yet to adequately disrupt architecture, buildings, the environments we inhabit on a daily basis. Cities have been hacked to death, but somehow the walls of architecture have stood firm. No longer.

New Habitat is a venture to do precisely what it claims, to rethink habitats. To participate, hackers of all stripe can register on Eventbrite at new-habitat.eventbrite.com. The hackathon will occur at the NewLab space at the Brooklyn Navy Yards on April 27-28, with a public presentation the following Friday, May 3 at the Ideas City Festival, hosted by the New Museum, The Architectural League of New York, Storefront for Art and Architecture and other amazing NY-based organizations.

Experiments with Water and Sound

This is what happens when you combine: a powered speaker, water source, soft rubber hose, tone generating software, 24 fps camera, and tape. via

Does Using Tumblr Make You a Tumblr Person?

Peter Vidani, Michael Rock, Mark Wigley and other designers take part in a round-table-turn-table at the Audi Forum in New York to discuss the implications of choreographing users and how invisible design should and can be. More Videos Here

Home in Motion

The Dynamic D*Haus folds and shifts into configurations developed using advance geometry and mathematics.

(via Architizer)

Experiments in Motion Featured in Surface Magazine’s American Influence Issue

Beyond Traffic:

The mesmerizing traffic patterns in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

(via Rob Whitworth) 

NYC MTA Catalogue of Used and Abandoned Spaces

The importance of the subway system in New York City cannot be underestimated. This study compares the amount of space in the entire subway system with spaces that are either inaccessible or abandoned - a complex system of spaces and possibilities. Timothy Bell exhibited this project along with architectural renderings along this September as part of the exhibition “Experiments in Motion”. Every project in the exhibition started with the question - what could these transportation space be used for in the future?

Interactive Aluminum Flower Dome

Lotus Dome by Daan Roosegaarde and his studio is a living dome made out of hundreds of ultra-light aluminium flowers that fold open in response to human behavior. When approached, the big silver dome lights up and opens its flowers.

Its behavior moves from soft breathing to a more dynamic mood when more people interact. The light slowly follows people, creating an interactive play of light and shadow.

Eco Drones   |   Christopher Geist

By capitalizing on the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which created guidelines for the introduction of unmanned aircraft, drones could be introduced to Manhattan. Free of the traditional limitations of the street grid, the drones’ paths could evenly spread seeds throughout the city, thereby bridging the ecological gaps within the urban fabric. Better able to mitigate the urban context, the drones will do what natural processes could not: re-introduce plant life to the city and aid in sustainability.

Street Life   |   Paul Tran and Shuning Zhao

If technology evolves to allow for interior personal vehicles, it will change the boundaries of transportation. Rather than remaining limited to today’s traditional networks, urban mobility can exist within the walls of the building itself. Neighborhoods could exist within one megablock, complete with its own interior system of transportation. The new vehicular system could move both horizontally and vertically, dissolving today’s “convenience” of the grid and creating neighborhoods within neighborhoods.