We just saw this incredibly new reactive foil wall. We don't know what it does yet and as described by Studio Roosegaarde the

Lotus 7.0 is an organic wall made out of smart foils which open while interacting with human behavior. Walking by 'Lotus 7.0' its hundreds of squares unfold themselves in an organic way; creating little see-troughs between private and public. Here physical walls become alive, in a poetic morphing of space and people.

We're interested in the metamorphosis. How does one thing become another? Is it when the light changes? Does it have to be active or can change be passive? It's the question of the effect of parallax when rushing by at 45 miles an hour or the zoetrope.

What do you think?

Courtesy Favela Painting

The supergraphic has become vogue again. Charlie Moore and Bob Venturi, maybe remembered as the Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg of the architecture world. Like their avant garde art contemporaries, Moore and Venturi re-imagined what pop culture imagery did to the changing face of architecture. The post-critical critique of critical post-modernism attempted to transform the architecture of pop culture into a kind of quasi pop art. Today, however, the art collective Haas&Hahn, which is the working title of artistic duo Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, are repainting the favela's of rio and in doing so creating communal public spaces that are both graphically organized and urbanistically disorganized. Maybe we'll call it super-popul-urbanism.

At The Functionality we're always excited to see projects like this that build community and re-imagine the most minimal means to unify a uniquely organized urban fabric.

Courtesy Favela Painting

Suicide's 1981 self-titled album is fuzzy, noisy, and loud. It vibrates the airwaves around you. The Hayworth Gallery in London does that to its surroundings. It's a brutalist behemoth landing in the heart of the city and it requires a trek to its vibrant inner galleries filled with Ernesto Neito's colorful vibrant nets and thin luminous spaces.

Go check it out if you're in London. It opened June 19th.

Here's a fascinating look at a high-tech bicycle parking solution being used in Japan.  To promote a high percentage of mode share in dense urban areas, designers of end-of-trip facilities must carefully consider the needs of cyclists.  This system is efficient, secure, and satisfying to use (at least according to the users interviewed in the video).  Additionally, space above ground—previously consumed with bike racks—is liberated for other public uses.  The video has some interesting insight into the design and construction of such a facility.  

For over 45 years, New York’s Lincoln Center has been a central cultural attraction - at night.  With the exception of afternoon matinée performances, the dozen resident organizations, including the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, open their doors after the sun has set, typically for an 8pm curtain.  Fortunately, a series of small public interventions are creating a new daytime face for the institution, and many more are on their way.

Water Fountain (photo credit: Spain)

 Mark Fuller and his company Wet have redesigned the signature water feature.  Fuller, known for progressive and wild water projects, most recently five sculptures at CityCenter in Las Vegas, has created a classic fountain with lots of water power for Lincoln Center’s central plaza.  The new circular bench is positioned well above the water line, and its seemingly invisible structure heightens the drama of sitting over water. 

Elevated Bosque (photo credit: Spain)

Similar to the calming and powerful nature of the water feature, Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s elevated bosque creates a green sanctuary amid the stark public space.  Situated five steps above the plaza level, the hyper-designed platform, complete with built-in bench, footrest and upper tier of seating, conceals a slight shift in grade and creates a cool haven for relaxation and people watching.  On a recent Friday afternoon, these seats were perfectly positioned for a view of Julliard students practicing their slow-motion leap-frog and mock pizza deliveries. 

The fountain and bosque are just two of the many public interventions commissioned by the institution.  With a restaurant and infoscape yet to be completed, the face of Lincoln Center seems poised and on track towards the positive lift it is looking for.

Stay tuned for The Functionality’s complete review of Lincoln Center’s new public spaces and look for us there at lunchtime when the weather is perfect.

On behalf of the Mayor, Design for London pushes forward the policies and objectives to promote a compact city with an enhanced network of public spaces.  It is widespread knowledge among DfL that areas in close proximity to public green space have less instances of social and economic deprivation, health disparities, and educational achievement shortfalls.  Recently, in an effort to holistically revitalize East London, DfL—in partnership with CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) and other organizations—has developed the East London Green Grid, one of the first spatial frameworks of its kind to use a landscape and human-centred green infrastructure approach.  According to CABE:

The framework considers new green spaces as well as enhancements to existing green spaces. A strong emphasis is placed on green space connectivity, most notably by using strategic green corridors to link town centres and transport nodes to major employment and residential sites. The role of river corridors, their adjacent environment and links to the green belt are central to the project’s delivery.

East London Green Grid delivery plan. Copyright Nathan Jones / Levent Kerimol, Design for London

What is interesting in DfL's description of their work is their consistent reference to "good" design and their ability to fix what may need improvement based on their knowledge of what works best.  They insist on the highest quality of design for all projects within the city.  In an effort to make projects happen, they "take a flexible pragmatic approach, working with an entrepreneurial spirit and jumping at opportunities."  

This type of attitude at the govrnernmental level is refreshing to those who are living in the United States, where, typically, a new or innovative project has to go through a variance process or a temporary experimental treatment process in order to gain approval.  Of course "good" design is subjective; however, DfL, through working in partnership with a wide variety of architects and engineers, makes the case for improving places by promoting sustainable growth and targeting investment to areas where it can deliver clear economic benefits.

In 1962 Bucky Fuller imagined a method to design the world. He called it "The World Game." In many ways the world game was the umbrella that Fuller's explorations eventually opened into. In simplified terms,  Fuller saw design as the realization of interconnected systems; his map that reorganized the globe through a triangular grid unified the world. The dymaxion house's mobility and re-configurability allowed uninhabited land to be colonized. The Wichita House repurposed the means of production for a nation built on war machines to create affordable houses on suburban plots. The geodesic dome's material and spatial efficiency defined new modes of form and living allowing us to inhabit the interior of the globe. All of these design schema exemplified the designer's ability to affect change beyond his local reach into a global sphere; they played upon not only humanities sympathies for what Fuller saw as unifying needs (transportation, industrialization, habitation etc) but were defined by their connected efficiencies.

If Cisco calls itself the human network, Fuller saw us all as already networked. 

Fuller's thoughts were the precursor for sixties british techo-pop firms. Hailed as a hero for Archigram, Grimshaw and others, Fuller's ability to re-imagine, reconfigure and then reinvent at scales far beyond the building inspired a range of projects that articulated this cross atlantic discussion. Projects like Sir Grimshaw's built thesis project from the AA to Archigram's Plug-In and Walking Cities to Cedric Price's Potteries Thinkbelt all developed Fuller's networked logic using Britain as it's test bed. 

We're interested in new networks (thank you Infranet Labs) their political economy (thank you Keller Easterling) and their new potentials (thank you BldgBlog). And we're curious who today is thinking as big as Fuller was in the 60's. 

Cities have a logic to them, a logic built of human ingenuity and need; we usually experience them in the horiontal plane.  Cities become labyrinths if we imagine their vertical plane. Stripped of that logic, playing Assassin's Creed 2 is a disorienting experience and revelatory experience.  "Venice" and "Florence," as constructed by the designers, are simulacra of their namesakes. Extendeding the pedestrian alley's and streets into verticle jungle gyms. They have scalable walls and rooftops that are just begging to be leaped from.  "Free Running" allowes players the freedom to explore the city vertically, through this ability the designers open up possibilities previosly unavailable to those inhabiting the cities today and inherent in the verticle dimension of the cities themselves.  

Using "scalable walls and jumpable roofs," as a design goal, the designers built a city that no human would ever recognize as being "real."  It looks beautiful. Individual buildings and streets are designed such that any given view is clearly reminds us of postcards of their real life namesake.  But the gestalt never coheres.  The streets run into nowhere, the market squares hang off of them like fruit rotting on the bough.  The local landmarks are gorgeous, certainly, but lumped haphazardly together, or scattered randomly in the outskirts.  One of the most striking failures of the games digital city planning is the lack of boundaries between wealth and ghetto.  This collage of a socio-economic spatial agenda seems naive when one consider's the stringent caste system that still applied to renaissance life; this was a time when the clothes really did make the man.

Reconsidering how to map a city in multiple dimensions presents a significant design problem for Assassin's Creed's designers.  The game has an excellent mapping function, but I found myself constantly lost in the city.  Dizzied by identical alleyways that led into streets that connected with no planning logic, I had a tremendous amount of trouble finding my way around.  Absent a main thoroughfare, merchant's area, or any of the other signs usually associated with city life, Florence or Venice become a maze of near-identical byways and avenues all leading to nowhere.

Video games give us an environment in which we can play with the fundamental aspects of how people build their lives, how they respond to and alter the space around them.  As games become more sophisticated, they let us explore visions of places that couldn't or wouldn't exist. Perhaps one day a team like the Assassin's Creed team will include had someone with a deep understanding of cities; someone who could make a Florence that would satisfy both the needs of the design and the basic human logic that informs city spaces.

Seperated by a considerable stretch of water, design conversations within The Functionality would not be possible (or affordable) without our friends at companies like Skype.

By coincidence, Skype are currently sponsoring an exhibition in London (and Berlin) called the Art of Conversation..

'From January to March 2010 the participants, 10 London based design studios and 10 Berlin based design studios, played a visual game of Chinese Whispers. Each participant was presented with a work/idea from the previous participant in the chain via a Skype chat, they then had 3 days to interpret it and forward their results to the next participant. These responses could take any form; from sculpture to performance, photograph to text.'

Within The Functionality, distance maintains individuality and, as 'chinese whispers' is the emphasis of the exhibition, resulted in some ingenius misunderstandings and unexpected mistakes.

If you're in London, check it out--great work produced by the likes of (friends of the Functionality) APFEL at the Idea Generation Gallery...or, if you're in Berlin, it's going to be there in June at the Program Gallery.

May 5-15 W/——— will feature a collection from the recent retrospective it is what it is, by New York City-based design firm 2x4, Inc. This book paints the portrait of a studio in 1000 images and will be displayed on the walls and floors as well as the sidewalk outside the installation space. The objective is to draw in passersby in order to encourage interaction with this large collection of work in a compact space. The closing party will be on 5/14, 7-9

Following 2x4 W/--- will exhibit work by Leong-Leong Architects May 17- 31. Working closely with materiality and site specificity, the architects intend to subvert the form of pink foam, turning the gallery space into a cleverly constructed water cooler. Conceived of as a Box-within-a-Box, the installation is composed of the commonly used hard-foam insulation to create an experience that embraces the tight confines of the gallery space while utilizing the thermal properties of the foam thus creating a "cooling" room. From the street, this installation appears as a glowing, pink, enigmatic box, its contents and purpose unknown. Once inside the box, all reference to the boundaries of the gallery are obscured, leaving only a warm glow around a grotto of cool beer and hot dumplings. The wit and humor combined with the considered use of basic materials make this a playful and intelligent collaboration. The closing party will be on May 27th.