Indice dei contenuti per July/August 2016 in Dwell

Amanda Dameron, Editor-in-Chief • amanda@dwell.com / @AmandaDameron “ We are born with an operational system that is integrated. Everything is working together. Nature’s design has the senses coordinated in order to provide protection and efficiency in the environments that we originally inhabited. Humans are very adaptive, more adaptive than many other creatures. We are all over the planet and generation by generation making further adaptions.” Charlie Morrow “ We see ahead when we make designs that are materialized in the future, when we write problems that anticipate solutions, when we link one step to another in navigating our lives....” John Maeda “ The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” Mark Weiser “ Everything changes…

Ekco AD65 Radio Wells Coates designed the AD65 radio, shown here in a rare green version, for British electronics company Ekco in 1932. New technology made this wireless device possible, but it was the visual shift from wood cabinetry-like casing that made the piece stand out. “ Seemingly banal products . . . are key symbols of the modern age, crucial pointers to the future, and a continual reminder that we live in a world defined largely by technology.” —Penny Sparke, design historian 1 ET Personal 55 Typewriter Italian architect Mario Bellini led electronics company Olivetti’s design division from 1963 to 1991, producing calculators, typewriters, and personal computers. He invented a tapered profile to reduce the heft of this machine, designed between 1985 and 1986. 2 Algol 11 Television Unlike…

It’s hard not to see Masdar City as one of the lessons that came out of the mid-aughts dream of the new Gulf. The project, which broke ground in 2008 under the oversight of architecture firm Foster + Partners, was slated to be a two-and-a-half-square-mile, carbon-neutral smart city in Abu Dhabi—a vast experiment in which buildings and infrastructure would be seamlessly integrated, with residents zipping around in driverless electric pods. If all had gone according to plan, Masdar would have been more or less finished by now. But in the wake of the global financial crisis, Foster + Partners ceded control of the plan to the state-backed firm Mubadala, and the completion date was pushed closer to 2025. Today, about 5 percent of the development is built, and the goal…

Early next year, motorists in London and in Gothenburg, Sweden, will be invited to go hands-free when Volvo Cars unleashes 100 semi-autonomous vehicles onto each city’s commuter freeways in the first realworld test of its kind. Here’s how it works: When the car senses that conditions are right—smooth roads with middle barriers and no pedestrian access—it invites the driver to switch to autopilot. Volvo calls this moment the “handshake”: when trust is transferred to the car. “The test allows us to take it step-bystep,” says program head Marcus Rothoff. “We can open up the functionality into more and more difficult scenarios over the duration of the pilot.” By 2018, fully autonomous cars will be introduced. The move toward driverless cars is part of Volvo’s pledge to eliminate fatalities and serious…

Reshaping individual behavior is just the beginning for wearable gadgets. Cities come next. 1964 Plug-In City by Archigram A pioneer of “paper architecture,” Archigram was an avant-garde design collective active in the 1960s in London. Using collage and illustration to communicate progressive, otherworldly designs, they produced concepts that were more theoretical than practical. The Plug-In City, designed by Peter Cook, envisioned an urban landscape devoid of static buildings. Instead, the scheme consisted of standardized modular “components” that would slot into the framework of a mechanized megastructure. 1. Sponge Suit What if beachgoers could make the ocean cleaner just by playing in the surf? Sponge Suit, a hydrophobic nanocarbon bikini being developed by New York architecture and design firm Eray Carbajo, safely extracts oil-based contaminants from the water around swimmers a…

All it takes is the sun to power Watly, a combined water purifier, micropower station, and Internet hub, whose creators see it as a way to provide the most basic services to even the most remote communities. In 2015, the Watly 2.0 prototype, roughly the size of a VW Beetle, was set up in Abenta, Ghana, a village that’s home to a little more than 200 people. Using vapor compression distillation, the prototype provided roughly one liter of clean water per person each day from any source—even seawater— and enough electricity to charge 100 cell phones. Its success has spurred the development of Watly 3.0, a 15-ton behemoth that can provide up to 5,000 liters of water per day. CEO Marco Attisani intends to sell Watly to luxury hotels in…

A 2014 study by Belgium’s Ghent University found that nearly 20 percent of meat-eaters are ready to try insects. That’s good news for Daniel Imrie-Situnayake, cofounder of cricketfarming incubator Tiny Farms, who believes insects are just an infrastructure away from shaking up the food industry. This February, a round of seed funding (Arielle Zuckerberg—Mark’s kid sister—pitched in) helped get them going in a former car factory in San Leandro, California. “We want insects to be cheap; they’re sustainable and taste good,” said Imrie-Situnayake as he geared up for Tiny Farms’s first harvest. The company seeks to patent its farming technique, which it will lease to would-be bug farmers in scalable units. “You don’t have to be a crazy startup if you want to produce cattle or corn, but you do…

PROJECT THOMAS RESIDENCE ARCHITECT TODD HAMILTON LOCATION DALLAS, TEXAS “I wanted something simpler,” says Dallas builder Matthew Thomas, “a place to relax after being in other houses all day long.” Matthew, who works with his wife, Lindsay, constructing homes, longed for a streamlined life. A residence with an efficient layout was important, but so was a home-automation program that would consolidate and, better yet, perform time-consuming everyday chores, like closing the shades in all the rooms at night. The couple got the chance to turn a dream into reality when they built their first home, a 3,700-square-foot HardiePlank-sided dwelling in a central neighborhood in Dallas. “It’s a traditional farmhouse on the front, modernized in the back,” says architect Todd Hamilton, who, along with Scott Slagle, helped with the fourbedroom, four-and-a-half-bath…

Project Palatine Passive House Location Seattle, Washington Architect Malboeuf Bowie Architecture It sounds like a punch line: Welcome to Seattle, where even the houses are smart and passive. In a city known for its progressive politics, it’s no surprise that a Seattleite would build a hyper-efficient Passive House–certified structure with a prototype operating system to connect all its home automation features. What’s perhaps less expected is that this particular home in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood wasn’t built by some gadget-loving tech-industry millennial, but rather by a boomer-aged grandfather of three. Homeowner Dave Bowie spent his career as a chemical engineer for energy companies. So when it came time to settle down for retirement, Dave and his daughter, Tiffany Bowie of Malboeuf Bowie Architecture, agreed he should build a house that pushed…

PROJECT Bucktown House ARCHITECT Min | Day LOCATION Chicago, Illinois If Tyler and Danielle Lenczuk’s remodeled town house has a heart, it’s the multilevel back deck, where the young couple love to grill with friends and family in classic Chicago style. If it has a brain, however, it’s the stack of black boxes lurking behind a closet door in the basement. That’s the control tower for a home automation system that empowers the Lenczuks to adjust everything from heating and lighting to window blinds, music, TVs, and security with a few taps on their iPads. Adding it was one of the many ways architects Jeffrey Day and E. B. Min transformed a nondescript spec house into an urban enclave tailored to their clients’ personalities— although doing so required a few…

52 The Smart Set Todd Hamilton Architect toddhamiltonarchitect.com Sidebar Collaborative sidebarcollab.com Thomas Development and Construction thomasdc.com RTI (Remote Technologies Interface) system rticorp.com Retractable screen doors by Phantom Screens phantomscreens.com All windows from Sierra Pacific sierrapacificwindows.com Bertoia side chairs by Harry Bertoia and Adult Stone table by Maya Lin, all for Knoll knoll.com Office desks and cabinets, all by Hon Voi hon.com Sofa and Lincoln Sugar Pull-Up Table, both from Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams mgbwhome.com Molded plastic counter stools by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller store.hermanmiller.com Appliances by Thermador thermador.com Countertop by Caesarstone caesarstoneus.com Wishbone chairs by Hans Wegner for Carl Hansen & SØn carlhansen.com Cord chandelier by Brendan Ravenhill brendanravenhill.com Vintage Kofod Larsen lounge chairs 1stdibs.com Custom South American hide rug by Feizy feizy.com Custom blinds by…

The newest lake in Helsinki isn’t on the map—it’s more than 300 feet below the city, and it’s the latest cog in a centralized cooling, heating, and energy-production system that’s propelling the city closer to its goal of running on 100 percent carbon-neutral energy by 2050. Seawater cooled in the reservoir is piped through the inner city, creating a cheaper, greener, and more efficient form of air conditioning for some 300 connected buildings. While district temperature regulation like this isn’t new, the way Helsinki has joined it with multiple systems is a pioneering step. The city collects the energy that escapes through the process and recycles it. According to Kosti Koski, head of district cooling at energy company Helen: “The next big thing will be on the heating side, where…

At 20,000 bicycles and growing, Paris’s on-demand bike rental service, Vélib’, has become an indispensable part of the city’s public transportation system—and a model for similar programs around the world. But as bike shares have expanded from just 13, in 2004, to more than 855 worldwide, their economic viability has come into question, as some struggling programs, like Seattle’s Pronto and Montreal’s Bixi, have required city buyouts. A few key lessons can be learned from Paris’s program: It’s dense (the city boasts 1 bike per 97 residents, with stations set about 1,000 feet apart), open to a range of ages (with five specialized models, including the original by industrial designer Patrick Jouin), and securely backed by corporate sponsorship. velib.paris.fr 1934 Manifesto of Aerial Architecture by F.T. Marinetti, Angiolo Mazzoni, Mino…

Billed as a Silicon Valley for Mexico, Guadalajara’s Ciudad Creativa Digital (CCD) was conceived in 2009 by ProMéxico to jumpstart the homegrown tech industry. MIT oversaw master planning for the project in 2012, and construction began shortly thereafter. Its first phase, initially expected to be completed in 2019, will include an incubator for small businesses and university projects, an exhibition space, and an overhaul of Morelos Park. Seven years on, the project has hit a few snags: Construction struck water, and CCD had to return $1.75 million to Mexico’s National Institute of the Entrepreneur (INADEM) for noncompliance. But that’s par for the course, says Jesus Alvarez Felix, a PhD student at MIT who has been involved with ProMéxico from the beginning of the project. Felix notes encouraging measures taken by…

At last year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, Skylar Tibbits, Jan Willmann, and Matthias Kohler presented a structure called Rock Print. They designed the piece, but the tower built itself—thanks to robots that algorithmically laid out its supporting textile filament. Tibbits, codirector of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, investigates transformable materials for industry use, but so far the advances have been limited to a smaller scale, like the programmable textiles (above) he developed with Christophe Guberan. “The major challenges for the built environment are the amount of energy and complexity of construction,” he says. Still, Tibbits sees selfassembly as a way to make buildings— and cities—smarter. As scientists study how materials such as carbon fiber respond to energy sources like heat, they can engineer the materials to transform in useful ways, so…

Project Ranch OH Architect Feldman Architecture Landscape Architect Bernard Trainor + Associates Location Carmel, California As Mitcie Hanson and her wife make their way from Los Altos, California, to their weekend retreat in Carmel’s Santa Lucia Preserve on a chilly Friday afternoon in late fall, Mitcie pulls out her iPhone to prepare the house. With a few taps on the Savant Pro app, the radiant heat is switched on, external blinds are opened, and selected lights are illuminated. And because the Jacuzzi has been heating up during the two-hour drive, the travelers will be able to head straight into the restorative waters upon arrival. Come Sunday, a few commands and a touch of Lutron’s Away button (on the phone or on the keypad by the door) shut down the house…

Carlos Chavarría Born in Madrid, Carlos Chavarría moved to the Bay Area six years ago to launch a career in photography. He was recently chosen as one of Photo District News’s 30 emerging photographers to watch. Chavarría visited the tech-filled home of Scott MacFiggen and Regina Bustamante in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood for this issue (page 102). “I had an amazing time photographing them in their backyard at dusk—there was a magical light,” Chavarría recalls. Would you live in a smart house? “I can’t think of a more convenient city than San Francisco for living in a smart home, since a lot of aspects of life here are based on new technologies and connectivity.” Michael Friberg Based in Salt Lake City, photographer Michael Friberg lives with his wife and…

While NASA anticipates getting people to Mars sometime in the 2030s, new companies are chasing the dream of a colony on Mars with startup aggressiveness. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for one, will work with NASA to land and operate its unmanned Red Dragon spacecraft there as soon as 2017 (detailed plans will be released in September). The federal agency can’t afford such boldness— it now accounts for less than 0.5 percent of the federal budget, down from nearly 5 percent at its height in the 1960s. Flying to Mars is, of course, tricky—several unmanned NASA missions to the Red Planet have already failed. However, the dream persists. Musk has said establishing a Mars base could be evolution’s next giant leap. spacex.com…

By 2030, five billion people will reside in cities; 40 percent of them will live below the poverty line. As part of the Pritzker Prize ceremony at the United Nations headquarters this April, 2016 Laureate Alejandro Aravena addressed the projected housing crisis that will occur in less than 15 years. “Every week, we would have to build one new city for a population of one million people, with $10,000 per family,” the Chilean architect said. “And if we don’t solve this equation, it is not that people will stop coming to cities—they are going to keep coming— but they will live in awful conditions.” Aravena offers a solution that allows people to take matters into their own hands: a series of open-source blueprints that are now available to the public…

Virtual reality technology has been kicking around for nearly 50 years—even more, if you consider sci-fi a reputable source—but March 2016 marked a breakthrough for the nascent medium with the launch of Oculus Rift, the first VR headset geared toward a consumer audience. “VR offers a one-to-one hyperreal experience, a connection of our consciousness to an art form,” said Jessica Brillhart, principal filmmaker for VR at Google, at a recent conference organized by NEW INC and Kill Screen in New York City. In addition to the apparent gaming and entertainment uses, VR’s blend of 3D visuals with the element of time holds the promise of a range of applications—from immersive renderings for architects and designers, to virtual classroom field trips, to therapy sessions. Researchers say VR’s ability to have users…

Light pollution emitted from cities has more than just casual stargazers concerned. “Manufacturers are pressuring cities to switch out street lights for LEDs because they save energy,” says Susan Harder, New York representative of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). But the blue light emitted by LEDs poses risks. It can disrupt circadian rhythms and block the production of melatonin, a known tumor suppressant. It’s also harmful for birds. Guy Maxwell, a partner at Ennead Architects and a champion of bird-safe design, sums it up: “A building that’s fully illuminated, particularly on a night with low cloud cover, confuses them. They end up flying around it in circles until they collapse.” The LEED certification system has a light pollution credit, but few regulations are in place. The IDA and others are…

In a former industrial zone of downtown Toronto, more than 70,000 people—and counting—are now living in high-rise condo buildings. And where will they and their dogs hang out? Under an elevated expressway, thanks to the tentatively titled Project: Under Gardiner, a mile-long, 10-acre park that will open next year, driven by $25 million from private donors and an ambitious timeline. Urban designer Ken Greenberg and landscape architecture firm PUBLIC WORK envision a walking and cycling trail, performance spaces, markets, a cafe, an adventure playground, and a skating trail—all with staff “programmers” to engage locals and bring daily life to the place. “A new form of city is emerging on the traces of the old,” Greenberg says. “This underused resource becomes a living room for the city.” undergardiner.com…

Three new startups offer software-based tools for made-to-order furniture and housewares. 1. ShopFloor Customizing the curves and length of an extruded aluminum bench may not be remarkable in itself, but the ShopFloor Web app certainly makes doing it a lot easier. This Jonathan Olivares design is one of three products available via the intuitive design tool, which is geared toward contract buyers and estimates cost in real time as you point, click, drag, and drop. shopfloorapp.com 2. KWAMBIO Launched this year, product startup KWAMBIO is looking to change the perception of 3D-printing with stylish designs, including Mir Ett’s geometric silver Neo Bracelet (below). Customizable variables such as material and finish—likened to a set of Instagram filters— make it an e-commerce platform as much as a service for direct-to-consumer, on-demand manufacturing.…

Today we see an explosion of devices intended to bring technology to different parts of the home. With this explosion comes an important conversation and debate. Technology at its best is magic. It makes your life better by saving you time or bringing you great happiness. On one side of the conversation we see various devices enhance bits and pieces of the home, each in its own delightful way. On the other side, many of the devices have yet to speak the same language, leaving much to be desired in terms of saving time and frustration. In the end, though, we are optimistic that things are headed in the right direction. We’ve hit a Cambrian moment in computing. What started as a computer on every desk has now become a…