Heliotropic Houses are getting around OR Dubai does it again with the Dynamic Tower

As a young child I used to love lying in the sunbeam on my livingroom floor, but, then the sun would shift and I’d lose my sunbeam. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just swing your house around to follow the sun?

This isn’t a new idea, there have been spinning houses for half a century, built by various inventors and nutjobs around the world

François Massau built his first rotating house, pictured, in 1958 for his sickly wife so that she could enjoy sunshine and warmth any time during daylight hours. (Jock Fistick for The New York Times)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/01/europe/journal.php

There are other spinning houses around the world, but are remarkably uncommon, and the concept is just not very popular. Who wants the neighbours to see the back of the house that hasn’t been painted yet? How can you buy circular furniture? What if the motor goes crazy and starts spinning the house like a merry-go-round?

But the benefits are unbelievable. The houses are very energy efficient, simply by moving the inhabited room into the sun all day reduces heating costs all year long.

This is great for a house in the suburbs…but isn’t this website called the URBAN Neighbourhood?

Enter Dubai. The city famous for building whatever the hell they feel like. You want new islands in the shape of the Earth? No problem. You want to build the World’s tallest building. Fine. You want an apartment that you can swing around to watch the sunset? Why not?

Enter David Fisher and his brilliant new apartment concept.

Surreal Estate

Looking inside

I came across one of the most interesting property videos today. While looking for video’s on YouTube came across a number of video’s by Squint/Opera showing the work of architecture firms. This particular video was produced for Alsop architects in London of a property  they renovated. The Victoria House property is a mixing together of traditional and modern styles. The video is a surrealists trip through the property starting with the more traditional aspects of its architecture an moving to the more modern elements as the footage progresses.

Big Brother Buildings… without the cameras

Yuri Ivanov of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories has come up with a comprehensive building monitoring and tracking system that may actually be less invasive of peoples privacy then current CCTV systems. He and his college Christopher Wren outfitted their office with 215 detectors placed at 2 meter intervals. These detectors capture less information in terms of raw data, but they are actually able to generate much more data then a conventional CCTV system. To understand how this is possible one only needs to think of the way that these sensors work.. a motion sensor picks up and relays if and when a person goes by, by having the sensors spaced closely together they are able to track a persons movements through the office. A CCTV on the other hand captures images of the areas they surveil regardless of whether anyone is there or not. Wren explained the difference as such;

“It’s not going to catch you picking your nose. You can only tell that some person went by,” Wren explains, “maybe this is better than living under thousands of cameras.”

The system basically knows that you are in the building but you could be walking around naked and it wouldn’t be able to tell. In order to make sense of all the data that these motion sensors capture the pair developed a software package that we have only seen before in Harry Potter of all places, they developed their own version of the marauders map. People on the display show up as bright spots of light with a comet tail that fades away behind them. Giving viewers the ability to both see where they are and what their trajectories are. The program also allows them to compile this movement data over extended periods of time and look for anomalies and patterns.

The implications for security and human traffic data collection are exciting. The pair was able to analyse data from a fire drill to discover that two out of three of the fire exits went virtually unused. The congregation habits of people and how long they stay at work also have implications for making air conditioning and heating systems more efficient. The system seems like an excellent trade off for better security without compromising personal privacy.

I know what I’m watching… How about you?

It is entirely possible that you have already heard about this program, it has been blogged about before but I would also like to make mention of this program since, well I have to admit I have a bit of a ‘reality’ TV problem. Big Brother, Top Model, Project Runway, all of these shows tend to make my viewing rotation. I am very excited to add ‘Architecture School’ to the list. It fills the reality TV guilty pleasure but I think it may actually teach me things too.. Check it out on the Sundance Channel, if you have it. If you are like me and you don’t, well I plan to scour the internet till I can find it. Until then here are a couple previews.

Episode 1 Promo

Episode 2 Promo

Sometimes extreme makeovers don’t last.

Comcast.net is reporting that one of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” homes has gone to foreclosure and will be auctioned off this coming Tuesday on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse. The house was the show’s most ambitious ‘renovation’ to date, replacing the Harper family’s old home and faulty septic system with a four bedroom maisonette with decorative rock walls, three car garage, entrance lobby, five fireplaces, solarium, music room, and satellite home office.

After the program, the family used the two-story home as collateral for a $450,000 loan to try to start up a construction business that ultimately failed. Back in 2005, when the family was given this house, the possibilites would have seemed endless, but then the morgage crisis hit.

ABC stated that it advises each family to consult a financial planner after they get their new home. “Ultimately, financial matters are personal, and we work to respect the privacy of the families.” It appears that the show takes this into account by collecting donations for a home maintenance fund when they present the new home, however the thrill of suddenly having a great new place and a much fatter bank account can be a hard gift to manage.

click here to read the comcast.net article.

There is also an interesting blog post over at Politically Incorrect in Boulder

The author discusses some of the realities that families who receive these dream homes might face, like the giant jump in property taxes that comes with a new dream home.

Real Estate Video for the Harper Home

Radiohead deconstructs urban space with lasers

No Radiohead hasn’t decided to unleash lasers on the the unsuspecting populous.  They’ve used captured environmental data to create a video. The’ve used the Velodyne Lidar system to capture all the images for their ‘House of Cards’ music video. The video is currently available on youtube so, for now at least, I can show it to you.

Urban Demographics – ‘I want you to want me’

Some people may wonder what a post like this is doing on an urban neighbourhood site.  The thing is that, in order to truly understand a neighbourhood and a city, you can’t ignore the most important part: it’s people. This is a lesson that it has taken me a little while to understand as I pursue my studies in planning, but it is a very important lesson. In order to understand how to create the kinds of cities and neighbourhoods that people want to live in–that help people to live better lives–we need to pay attention to those people and what they want. While the focus of this Art installation is the dating game, it also tells an amazing amount about about what people want and how they see themselves, or at least how they want others to see them. Plus it’s an amazing mix of information, music, statistics, and art.

“I Want You To Want Me”

Thanks Steven for tipping me off to the exhibit originally.

Dancing Street Sweeper

There is a street cleaner in the West End of London who has become somewhat of an internet sensation, along with being a pleasure to the local residents who see him. The Telegraph did an interview with the street cleaner and the Polish migrant, Zbigniew Colbecki, has had a couple of jobs (watchmaker and DJ) since coming to Britain three years back.

The 47-year-old street sweeper says that he dances while he works because ‘It makes it much more fun.’ Can you picture it? Cleaning crews performing their daily tasks to their own soundtrack? Trash Can Rock? Recycling Regge?

Read the Telegraph Article

The Bicycle Vault

New Urbanists, bike enthusiasts and pedestrians would love to see more and more of us switching from private vehicle use to mass transportation and bicycles. In order to cut down on the pollution caused by cars and eliminate so many of the parking lot wastelands that are a part of our cities. One of the problems that can come with this is where do we put all these bikes. Anyone who has walked around a major Japanese city, or even Amsterdam can understand that these multitudes of bicycles can be a bit of a jumble to wade through. Well leave it to the Japanese to come up with a high tech way of dealing with them.

Meet the computerised bicycle storage vault, you drop off your bike at the computer valet station and it whisks your bike away until you come back to retrieve it. While definitely not practical for North America where we have way more space, it could be the shape of things to come.