Jan 30, 2018
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: arupassociates.com)
seen from Poland
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Lithuania
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Martinique
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
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seen from Romania
seen from United States
seen from Egypt
seen from United States
seen from United States
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: arupassociates.com)
Groundscrapers probes systems, populations, and infrastructures that occupy massive amounts of space in our existing cities, yet go unrecognized by typical urban dwellers. Rather than reaching vertically towards the sky, Groundscrapers seeks to reach horizontally across disciplines to cultivate meaningful moments along and within the pedosphere. Through conscious positioning of content, visual matter, sedi- ment, and ephemera, Groundscrapers theorizes that the physicality of the printed page can transcend the bookshelf—that print media can orient itself with the surface of the earth, according to its geographical and architectural coordinates.
Alison Furuto, SOILED / CARTOGRAM Architecture + Urban Design (via archdaily.com)
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: arupassociates.com)
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: Concrete Quarterly 70, Autum 1966)
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: Concrete Quarterly 70, Autum 1966)
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: architecture.com)
Mining, Minerals and Metallurgy Building. University of Birmingham.
Arup Associates, 1966
(source: arupassociates.com)
CoeLux fixtures use traditional LEDs, calibrated to the same wavelengths as the sun. However, accurately recreating sunlight also requires mimicking subtle variations caused by the atmosphere, which varies in thickness and composition depending upon where you are on earth. CoeLux uses a milimeters-thick layer of plastic, peppered with nanoparticles, that does essentially the same thing in your living room. CoeLux’s inventor, Professor Paolo Di Trapani hasn’t made any disclosures about how the nanotechnology works in practice, but an impressive list of peer-reviewed publications, industry awards, and testimonials from customers provide comfort that these devices actually work as advertised.
You can get a CoeLux now, but expect to spend five figures. Di Trapani is eager to see what happens when architect start imagining new kinds of buildings enabled by this technology. Just as elevators enabled the construction of skyscrapers, and air conditioning allowed buildings to become wider, Di Trapani believe CoeLux could allow for the creation of “groundscrapers,” or buildings that stretch hundreds of feet into the ground, yet don’t make you feel you’ve descended into a deep, dark cave.