Future Design

"Bio-Printing, a technology which has the potential to allow us to re-engineer the human body, has been making tremendous strides over the last three to four years." 

CNC mills live in shops, and power tools are things you can carry around. That's been the paradigm. But building on their successful 17 years of producing and refining CNC mills, ShopBot Tools has now combined the two worlds with their new, portable, crowdfunded Handibot. (The Kickstarter campaign went live about fifteen minutes ago.) The Handibot is what they're calling a "smart tool," and it's essentially a 3-axis CNC mill that you can carry (and run via PC, tablet

Could our cities be seaworthy – or are remarkable new proposals for floating urban communities merely utopian sci-fi?

A floating village at London's Royal Docks has the official nod, and Rotterdam has a Rijnhaven waterfront development experiment well under way. Eventually, whole neighbourhoods of water-threatened land could be given over to the seas. After decades of speculation and small-scale applications, the floating solution is finally enjoying political momentum – and serious investment...

Everyone should have access to affordable medicine - declare it. Sign the declaration.

During the waking hours, the man known as OakOak goes about his 9-5 day, working in a typical office in Saint Etienne, France. But, once the workday is finished, OakOak becomes a creative sniper, scoping out opportunities to shoot paint in the urban spaces of the city.

OakOak had no formal training as an artist and really has no desire to pursue art beyond his street art in Saint Etienne. He saw his coal mining fueled city just getting grubbier and he wanted to do something about it. He says “I saw shapes everywhere, and wanted to realize them.”

Work has begun on stage one of The Goods Line Project, a railway-turned-urban park project connecting Sydney’s Central Station to Darling Harbour.

Located in inner Sydney, the project includes a pedestrian and cycle network, creating a new urban hub and connecting more than 80,000 students, residents and visitors to the harbour’s recreational and pedestrian precinct.

The new corridor is being compared to the High Line in New York City, a public park and walkway constructed on a historic freight train line elevated above the streets of Manhattan’s lower west side...

“City in a City”, an exhibition that concentrates on large-scale urban projects and answers to problems of overpopulation, finds itself at ease sitting in an environment that would seem its antithesis: a single-storey home in a city where space is still most often discussed in terms of “how much?” as opposed to “not enough.” Los Angeles is all about different methods of navigating life – remarkably different methods, according to person and neighborhood. But it is exactly because of these many incongruities that the popularity, and title, of this show make so much sense.

What if the title was posed as a question: “City in a City?” How do we make dense, urban spaces seem intimate, inviting, comfortable and even compact, within otherwise vast, hectic environments? This isn’t a new question, but the answers in this exhibition address a new time with its own demands and aesthetics.

“City in a City” is a noteworthy show, not only for the work that is on display, but also for the decisions that went into displaying them.

More images and information at the article link.

It’s been nearly 100 years since the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, the world’s fair celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal, was held in San Diego.

In preparation for the centennial, AIA San Diego and the San Diego Museum of Art recently held an ideas competition for improvements to Balboa Park, the site of the fair. The 1,200-acre park is home to a number of museums and other cultural facilities, including the San Diego Air & Space Museum, the San Diego Art Institute, the San Diego Natural History Museum, and the San Diego Museum of Art, plus cultivated gardens and family-friendly amusements

L.A. and other desert cities exist by importing vast quantities of water, but Peter and Hadley Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute have a different idea.

The mysteries of earthen design. If you've ever seen the bottom of a boat that's been in water for a long time, you probably noticed it's a breeding ground ripe for barnacles and all matter of marine growth.

Called SF RE:MADE, San Francisco-based IwamotoScott Architecture propose up-cycling Candlestick Park and two other out-of-use waterfront landmarks, the Hunters Point Crane and the Islais Creek Silos, providing alternative uses for aging 20th-century structures whose original purposes have become outdated.

One could argue that humanity has come to a critical point when looking at our current and future way of habitation.  Industrial civilization is moving towards the destruction of our planet, there is overwhelming evidence of this everywhere. We live without ration and we take our current condition for granted as if it were normal and somehow “part of human nature”, whereas in reality, it is the opposite.

There are lots of people who are working to make a difference, these people do not conform to the given social relationships that perpetuate inequality, injustice, scarcity and violence. For as long as there has been oppression there has been resistance and there are many of ways (theoretical and practical, or even both) in which we can all contribute to the struggle against our current self-destructive way of living...

Tentsile is a stunning suspended multi-person tree tent, created by UK inventor and designer Alex Shirley-Smith...

The neighborhoods of 2039 will feel more like cityscapes with environmentally friendly, energy efficient amenities and people living closer to their jobs.

How we live is indicative of who we are, and both are changing. As city planners look to the next quarter century, they must factor in three profound shifts in modern society: information technology, mobility and climate.

As with everything else, technology is changing not just how we live and work, but the cities where we live and work. That technology has already affected social change, making younger generations more mobile and urban. Technology has also offered new solutions to some of the biggest challenges for 21st century urban planners—climate change and how we make our neighborhoods as green as possible.

More at the link...

Protein Modification Could Push Cellulosic Biofuel Forward
Farm Futures
Production of cost-efficient cellulosic biofuels has been limited by lignin, which binds tightly to the cellulose found in plants' cell walls.

Jordan Miller, Andy Ta, and Steve Kelly talk 3D bioprinting at the 2014 Midwest RepRap Festival.

Understanding mistakes of the past can help guide U.S. transportation policy in the future.

Between the 1920s and 1960s, policies adapting cities to car travel in the United States served as a role model for much of Western Europe. But by the late 1960s, many European cities started refocusing their policies to curb car use by promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation. For the last two decades, in the face of car-dependence, suburban sprawl, and an increasingly unsustainable transportation system, U.S. planners have been looking to Western Europe.