Physical Dreamscape

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Experiments in Motion

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MY DVA

Studio CHYBIK+KRISTOF has given a old car showroom new life for MY DVA group, which focuses on the production of office, school, and metal furniture. The facade is lined with over 900 black plastic seats creating an eye-catching and highly textural motif. Upon viewing the building, you instantly know that’s it’s got to do with interior design—essentially making the structure a giant advertisement.

Noah Oasis - Vertical habitats from disused oil rigs

Oil rigs can be ugly things, and as they rust and decay they only become a worse blight on the ocean landscape. In an effort to change this, a group of Chinese designers - Ma Yidong, Zhu Zhonghui, Qin Zhengyu & Jiang Zhe - have produced a concept they call Noah Oasis; a vertical garden habitat that transforms rigs into something amazing. 

While the habitats would be shelters from the devastating effects of oil spills and other blights, they would also function as centres for research. At the top of the tower there would be large scale structures to allow for forest growth and places for birds to nest, with residential spaces and research wings in the middle sections, while beneath the water line large absorption lines (for drawing in spilt oil) would allow for the formation of reefs. 

They see their habitat functioning in three stages: 

“1. Short term strategy: absorption of spilled oil when an oil spill incident happens, the floaters at the end of each pipe will immediately absorb the spilled oil covering the surface of the sea as an instant response. 2. Medium term strategy: habitat for marine life and migrating birds the collected oil will be transported through the root-like pipes underwater to the central processor attached to the original rig, where the crude oil will be converted into catalyst for coral reef and produce plastic as building material. The catalyst will be transported back to the pipe to booster the growth of coral reef on its surface and the plastic will become the building material of the plastic-twig structure with the help of 3D printing and the injector. In this way, the project will become a habitat for vertical bio-habitat and help revive the biodiversity. 3. Long term strategy: shelter from future disasters ultimately, when the sea level rises to a disastrous degree, the twig like structure would continue to remain above the sea level. Then the oil rig will become the noah oasis”

Whether the project is able to get off the ground or not remains to be seen, but this would certainly be a fantastic use of an otherwise decaying chunk of human waste. Can’t wait to see how it develops!

Alternatives Landscapes Benoit Paillé

From the artist:

I was interested in the introduction of a man-made object in an outdoor setting, a luminous square, a human element that forms a relationship with nature and helps it to be reborn. From this I feel a kind of poetry blossoms, linked to the presence of this regular shape, like a recurrent canvas that symbolically references creation, the blank page, the empty space that needs to be inhabited.

L.A.T.B.D.  | Geoff Manaugh + Smout Allen USC Libraries (University of Southern California) Oct 15 2015 - Jan 31 2016 Installation by Stonehouse Photographic.

“I have to be seen to be believed…”

Tax forms don’t always have to be a nightmare.

Designers Want To Put Rikers Island on the Map The guerrilla #SeeRikers campaign aims to correct a New York subway map oversight—and highlight the corrections crisis.

Japanese-American Setsuko Winchester explores the history of internment camps in her art. She has created 120 hand-made ceramic tea bowls, all glazed in varying shades of yellow — one for every thousand Japanese-Americans held during World War II.