Alex Chinneck’s spectacular levitating building in London

A piece of the historic Covent Garden market appears to have broken free of its stone base, with its top half levitating in the air, in the latest installation by London designer Alex Chinneck.

Take My Lightning but Don’t Steal My Thunder by Alex Chinneck is a precise replica of a section of the 184-year-old market building in London’s Covent Garden that has been made to look as if its upper portion has broken away from its stone base to float in mid air.

Built from a steel frame and filcor, a type of expanded polystyrene, the 12-metre-long structure took 500 hours to shape using digital carving techniques and was painted to replicate the appearance of the existing building on the site.

A four-tonne counterweight enables the suspension of the top half of the fake building.

Take My Lightning but Don’t Steal My Thunder will be on display in Covent Garden’s East Piazza until 24 October 2014.

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Amazing discover! New forms of life created by Theo Jansen

Since 1990 Theo Jansen has been occupied creating new form of life.
Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. He makes skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don’t have to heat.
Over time, this skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storm and water and eventually he wants to put these animals out in herbs on the beaches, so they will live their own lives
More info at http://www.strandbeest.com/index.php

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 Designed by Sou Fujimoto

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 is designed by multi award-winning Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.

He is the thirteenth and, at 41, youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery. The most ambitious architectural programme of its kind worldwide, the Serpentine’s annual Pavilion commission is one of the most anticipated events on the cultural calendar. Past Pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008), the late Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural structure in 2000.

http://bcove.me/o77d8hnq

TOMÁS SARACENO – K21 STAENDEHAUS -SUSPENDED INSTALLATION “IN ORBIT”

In one of his most ambitious suspended installations to date, artist Tomás Saraceno (previously) launches visitors at the K21 Staendehaus museum in Düsseldorf more than 65 feet (20 meters) above the main piazza with a taunt, multi-level web of netting.Titled In Orbit the giant interactive piece is constructed from three separate levels of safety nets accessible from various points in the museum separated by enormous PVC balls measuring almost 30 feet (8.5 meters) in diameter.

 

What if flat-pack furniture was smart enough to assemble itself?

Belgian designer and engineer Carl de Smet is experimenting with a kind of smart foam technology, which he believes could do just that.
Once heated to a set temperature, the material he works with, shape memory polyurethane (SMPU), will expand to a given design.