tiny gigantic

Our homies over at MINE just sent us another piece of their Everything is Okay project. Sweet!

From the project:

This project exemplifies the power of design to alter meaning through context, and invites people to question (not simply accept) the veracity of its message.

Now, that sounds all serious and design scholar-like, but actually this is a super fun and playful project, which seems meant to be screwed with, kicked around, added to, subtracted from, and otherwise participated in. You’ll just have to decide how.

This is the TrekStop, a prototype for a vending machine that sells bike parts for quick repairs on the go. It sells stuff for doing minor repairs: bike tire inner tubes, patch kits, etc… and it also comes with an air pump, area maps, a message board and a video kiosk that offers tutorials on how to do minor repairs. It’s hard to know if these things will get enough permission in the cycling community to become ubiquitous, but if they do, it’s a super-smart bit of branded content by Trek.

Via Bicycle Design

See more googly-eye street art by Filthy Luker here.

Via woostercollective.

This is just one of the many amazing nests and cocoons and huts that Patrick Dougherty makes. Gorgeous.

The Sundance Channel has created a new series of, uh, educational insect porn videos. They’re narrated by Isabella Rossellini, and they’re weird, funny, freaky and make me a little uncomfortable. Still, I love that something like this got produced for the mainstream. The worm one is especially weird.

I’ve been saying forever that it’s actually impossible to be productive with your creativity 8 hours a day. That you have to take good, long breaks. And that any one who says they can do their best all day long without rest, is lying. Now, I’ve got back up.

Eric Clough isn’t your typical architectural designer. Sure, he’ll design you a fine den or kitchen, but he’s clearly got a creative streak that goes much deeper than that.

That’s why, when given the opportunity, he secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a US$8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.

From the New York Times:

“In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.”

How amazing is that? It took the family months to discover the scavenger hunt and weeks after that to figure it all out. It’s like living in a children’s book of some kind.

Unfortunately, magical things like this really are only possible when you’re loaded enough to buy an $8.5-million apartment and then give someone another $1.26 million to renovate it without much oversight. But hey, maybe if you’re nice to the guys installing your new fridge they’ll leave a post-it note with a poem stuck behind it as a secret prize for when you move. Not quite as magical, but I’m trying to work within your means here.

More images and details after the jump.

So just as the iPhone craze gets even crazier, and the iPhone backlash get’s even, um, backlashier, this little bit of branded content from a company who makes kick-ass blenders is right on the money.

So a bunch of you know that we’ve been contracted to do a book on our message graffiti project, Written on the City. There’s a a nice little blurb about it in Good mag this month. Check it out and look for the book to hit stores August 20th. Yes!

So I’m in a tiny little town in Alabama, acting as an advisor for students ofProject M, a design education program that invites design students out to the home of the Rural Studio, to learn how to think about design as a way of approaching social problems.
I’ve been here for about 20 hours. Here’s where I am:

-There are some super smart, committed designers coming out of some unlikely places. That’s encouraging.

-Young designers are exceedingly focused on the vehicle for the communication, as opposed to the content of it.

-Instead of asking the question, “What can I do?” we’ve decided to ask “Who can I help and how?”

-It seems like access (to all kinds of things large and small) is a huge problem worth tackling in rural communities all over the country.

-There’s something about small, almost dead places that puts pity in your heart. And pity mostly doesn’t seem that helpful.

-Instead of assuming, ask.

Whachou think?

So as the earthquake hit in China, a young couple had just finished exchanging their vows. They had just moved on to the photographs when the the ground started shaking. Oddly, the photog continued to shoot the wedding. And apparently, and happily, none of the 33 guests were injured.

Thanks to Ethan for the link.

Classic.

AND

And there’s tons more on youtube…

Lucy and Bart like to get conceptual about body stuff. Their work gives me feelings of vague uneasiness. Check this link if you want to feel uneasy too.

So my father has been working on a project called Seeing Peace: Artists Collaborate with the United Nations. The premise is this: if we cannot first envision what peace actually looks like, we will never make it so. So he’s asked artists from United Nations member nations to make art works that show what peace might actually look like, from their unique cultural perspective. Think about that for a second and ask yourself: what would peace actually look like? It’s easy to visualize war. But peace, it surprisingly tough.

A small part of the project, Peace Billboards, will be running in San Francisco from May 26th to June 22nd. 10 artists from 10 countries will be displaying their visions of peace on 10 billboards all over town. So we made a website to help spread the word. Monster thanks to the vega project for the killer flash design!

Go check it out and spread the word.

These are the Kaibo Zonshinzu anatomy diagrams, painted in 1819. They’re nasty. And awesome. Cuz you mostly see very bland, very antiseptic anatomy diagrams. Not so here. Ooof.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

via worldwide wall.

this is the sky bridge in langkawi, malaysia, a stunning cable-stayed bridge which actually curves around the single support column from which it’s suspended, 687 metres above sea level. completed in october 2004, the structure relies on an 87 metre high support column to hold the weight of the deck, this weight distributed through 8 load balancing cables attached to its head.

more at deputy-dog.

I love that sometimes, the lore of a city turns out to be true and that all the mystery we thought lacking in our lives becomes present again. Here’s what I mean:

The lost rivers of Manhattan are real; hundreds of streams and whole wetlands were paved over and filled so that the roots of buildings could safely grow. But whether or not you could ever fish in them – this whole thing sounds like Dr. Seuss to me – is the subject of a post on the also defunct blog, Empire Zone. There, a commenter informs us that fishing for eyeless carp in the underground cisterns of Istanbul is something of a national past-time.

Thanks to bldg blog for this one.

Sega’s new game, Condemned 2, is so dark and nasty that they built a site filled with ponies and hearts and rainbows so you can offset the evil.