Weird Aircraft Concept Designs
Perhaps our great grandchildren will complain about being stuffed like sardines in the Green Airways Economy Class sometime in the future. But for now, this is a concept design of CleanEra, engineer Etnel Straatsma's idea of the future of eco-friendly, made-from-light-material aircraft at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. CleanEra also happens to be an abbreviation for Cost-effective Low Emissions and Noise Efficient Regional Aircraft.
If the Green Airways is for us ordinaries, the Strato Cruiser will be for the celebrities of the future. Designed by Tino Schaedler and Michael Brown, this "new doughnut concept" zeppelin is an airship filled with helium, featuring everything expected of opulence: gourmet restaurant, swimming pool, spa, library, private suites, and even a bungee jumping platform - for the ultimate 'throw 'em outta the plane' jibe at an annoying passenger, I'm sure.
A super fast plane concept by Reaction Engines for a European project called the LAPCAT which stands for Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies, this sleek and slender aircraft aims "to reduce long-distance flights, e.g. From Brussels to Sydney, to less than 2 to 4 hours." Their website describes it as "Configuration A2 Mach 5 Civil Transport". I'd want to call it the Concorde's Daddy.
Let's spare the cliches: It is both a bird and a plane and it's (get ready to introduce a new word to your vocabulary) an Ornithopter! If we thought great aircraft designs only included thick solid hunks of metal, we were wrong. Designed by NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, the idea is to morph the shape of the wing like a bird flapping. The wing material is called electroactive polymers (EAPs) which will make the aircraft flap and glide: flapping to gain altitude and gliding while using the sun's power.
Behold the Flying Bog Seat. A 'closed wing' type concept for an aircraft. The particular one above was reportedly designed by Lockheed in the '80s, and which reportedly didn't quite make it to the skies. However, for the sake of our post here, it provides a rather weird addition alright.
Labels: aircraft
Amazon Kindle with Whispernet
Amazon Kindle is one of my favourite new gadget devices to come out last year. I've long been an e-bookworm on my iPAQ Pocket PC and am really excited to follow Kindle's progress, and eventually hope to buy one. The device has been a sold-out already (as of today, January 1st, 2008) on Amazon, so it means the initial response has been great.
One of the best things about Kindle is not so much the concept of electronic book reading (which is really old) but the great proprietary Whispernet method of delivering content to the device, without any need of having a computer.
Amazon Whispernet is a cool cellphone carrier-like network (an EV-DO service) that has primarily been deployed for the delivery of Amazon.com's Kindle e-book content - wirelessly. Whispernet can also convert and deliver your PC documents to your Kindle device. According to the Kindle video, all you need is just to email your documents to Amazon and they will do the conversion and delivery to your device automatically. Whispernet does not require any subscription from Kindle owners, as the device itself comes with a lifetime subscription. As I said, Whispernet is like a cellphone network: you don't need a computer to use Kindle on it. You can use Whispernet without having to look for any hotspots, as you would do for WiFi. Though I am not sure what is the penetration of this network, and how widely available it is.
If you're an avid reader like myself, and have bought a Kindle, do share your experience using the comments. If you've ever used a Pocket PC to read books and have switched to Kindle, I'd be most interested!
Labels: gadgets
Ten Weird Building Designs
This is a lunar colony secretly built by NASA. Well, almost. It's actually the uber-sci-fi head offices of the RMF Polish FM Radio station RMF and RMF Television in Krakow, Poland. In fact, speaking of NASA, The external surface of the dome was indeed constructed in the United States under a licensing from NASA. The colony is so futuristic and environmentally conscious that the tunnel lights only go up when they detect someone approaching - to add to the lunar ambiance I'm sure.
Here's a bus station to wait in line for. At the Pacific View mall in Ventura, California, designer Dennis Oppenheim calls it "the metamorphosis of a bus becoming a house" and a thought to pack your bags with: "The passengers will arrive at their destination. They will arrive home." All aboard!
This is the Habitat 67 - architect and designer Antoine de Saint-Exupery's theme building for an exposition called Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Titled "Man and his World", Saint-Exupery called it a new house "that doesn’t have a face yet." And also that "the truth for one was to build; it is, for the other, to occupy it." Well, according to Habitat site, some 148 singles, couples and families occupy it now, and that's the truth.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California is designed by Frank Gehry. The building's exterior contains stainless steel with a matte finish and other areas include highly polished mirror-like panels. Gehry's sense of humour about his work is reflected when the building was later spoofed in The Simpsons in which the hall was turned into a Jailhouse, for which Frank Gehry himself provided the voice!
This gem of a building - designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito - is the Mikimoto & Company jewellery shop in the busy district of Ginza2 in Tokyo, Japan. During daytime, its steel facade looks like a leopard skin which is lit up at night in different colours.
A very practical weirdo in our series of buildings. It's a solar furnace at Odeillo in the Pyrenees of France. The idea is to harness the rays of the sun in order to produce high temperatures by concentrating those rays using curved mirrors. And as one not-so-equally clever hotel heiress would say: "It's hot!"
The Netherlands never really was a desert, but the designers down at UCX Architects in Amsterdam created this apartment complex called The Urban Cactus, anyway. Sure looks weird; though not half as weird as the Babelfish translation of the designers' description, which goes like: "Urban Cactus are themselves to the head of this back edge and belong as an object more at this green vein then at the surrounding urban structure." You betcha!
Ever wonder how a fairy tale house is imagined by a kid when he or she is almost asleep? That's the "Crooked House" on Bohaterow Monte Cassino Street in Sopot, Poland - our second weird design from Poland. Polish rule! According to the blurb from its contractor Allcon, it was inspired by the "fabulous drawings of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg." Or perhaps, inspired by their kids, I think.
Designed by a group of Dutch architects and designers of the firm MVRDV, these are Wozoco's Apartments: our second weirdo in Amsterdam, Netherlands - the Dutch rule too! A pretty funky architecture fit for a college's design department dorm, you'd think? Nope, they are for the elderly Dutch people! The designers description, weirdly, could almost be describing a space station: "We combine the technique of assemblage with strong zoning envelopes, often discovered through a recombination of program and site-specific elements." Yup, it's hip to be square in Amsterdam.
To be inaugurated next year before Beijing Olympics, this is architect Rem Koolhass's design for the new headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, China. It's two 60 degrees leaning towers that are bent at 90 degrees at the top and bottom. Another interesting factoid: It is considered an "earth-bound" structure and not a 'skyscraper' due to the fact that it is almost equally earth-bound horizontal and sky vertical.
Labels: architecture
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