Why aren’t we using building materials like Aerblock instead of wood? Habitat Forum 1976 alumni Michael Baron is involved in manufacturing this safe, lightweight, storm-proof, insulating, healthy-air concrete material that mimics ancient pumice building blocks.

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This is a poor photo of a very interesting bottle, despite the fact that the boy running this soda cart in Mysore was being super helpful. (Below, some clearer photos of this type of bottle, courtesy of Wikipedia.) This is known as the Codd-neck bottle and you can read a full history and explanation below, but in short, the bottle is sealed via the use of a glass marble held in place by the pressure of the aerated soda; pressing the marble down either with a thumb or wooden plunger releases the seal, dropping the marble into the curved cavity and allowing the soda to pour out.

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“Charles and Ray Eames, husband and wife team… They were doing mashups before mashups even existed.”

Ice Cube studied architectural drafting before becoming a rapper.

Thanks, Krista Jahnke for finding this on archinect.

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Beautiful simple cabin by my architect friend Mark Osburn and his firm Osburn Clarke. Via Adventure Journal.

I heard another architect say lately that the cabin form is the vernacular architecture of British Columbia, and that is probably true.

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Living room on wheels designed by Italian designer Mario Bellini in 1972 as a collaboration for Citroen and Pirelli. It’s a combination conversation pit/sleeping area. It was introduced to the US later that year in a show at MoMA – Italy: The New Domestic Landscape.

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Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander will be giving a lecture Thursday November 18 at the University of British Columbia’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum. From the site:

The environment is not the same to a landscape architect as it is to a biologist.

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Cornelia Oberlander, the pre-eminent Canadian landscape architect noted for long collaborations with Arthur Erickson and Moshe Safdie among other things, designed the landscape for Erickson’s famed Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

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Kusari toi (sometimes translitered “doi”)—the Japanese characters are 鎖樋 which translates literally as “chain gutters”—are known in English as rain chains. They are used in Japan as downspouts to direct rain from a gutter to the ground, where it either flows into a gravel or pebble bed or into some sort of catchment.

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“Most Indian households use a rounded terracotta drinking water vessel — a matlo — that cools water to 14° below ambient temperature without refrigeration. Our matlo is a slip-cast version which has evolved to incorporate filtration and could be batch-produced from a mould.

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The post Matlo, based on the traditional water cooler called matka, by Doshi Levien appeared first on Ouno Design.

This is a Japanese tradition we desperately need to adopt in North America – re-using textiles to wrap presents. It’s an art form, but it’s worth learning because it dispenses with all the annoying and wasteful tape and paper and ribbon, it’s a fun skill to learn (for kids too), and it’s an educational conversation piece – you might have to explain to the recipient what it is, but that’s probably worthwhile.

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