Clipmarks | Architecture Clips

Green Museum

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:12:10 GMT

clipped by: AainaA
clipper's remarks: World's first GREEN Museum

A Green World

Unlike traditionally dark natural history museums, the new Academy is filled with light and life. Glass is used extensively in the exterior walls, creating open, airy galleries and sightlines to the surrounding parkland. And, the exhibits in the building are filled with 38,000 live animals - including African penguins, an albino alligator, colorful rainforest birds and butterflies, and the world’s deepest display of living corals.

One of the world’s most innovative museum building projects has reached completion. After nearly a decade of planning, the California Academy of Sciences opened its new doors to the public in September. Designed by Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano, the building is topped with a 2.5-acre living roof and employs a wide range of energy-saving materials and technologies.

The Academy is the only institution in the world to house an aquarium, planetarium, four story rainforest, natural history museum and world-class research facility under one roof.

Tags: academy, architecture, business, education, green, museum, piano, renzo

Risk and reward compete in brain

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:43:47 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.brainmysteries.com

That familiar pull between the promise of victory and the dread of defeat - whether in money, love or sport - is rooted in the brain's architecture, according to a new imaging study.

Neuroscientists at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute have identified distinct brain regions with competing responses to risk.

Both regions are located in the prefrontal cortex, an area behind the forehead involved in analysis and planning.

By giving volunteers a task that measures risk tolerance and observing their reactions with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that activity in one region identified risk-averse volunteers, while activity in a different region was greater in those with an appetite for risk.

"We can see risk as a battle between two forces," said Antoine Bechara, professor of psychology at USC. "There is always a lure of reward. There's always a fear of failure. These are the two forces that are always battling each other."

Tags: neuroscience, behavior, emotions, risk, fear

Dominant design definition

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:22:58 GMT

clipped by: virolo
clipper's remarks: Definizione da wikipedia

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Utterback and Abernathy first used the term 'dominant design' in 1975. 5

Dominant designs may not be better than other designs in the market place, however they will incorparte a minimum required set of key features . The oft cited example of the QWERTY keyboard, specifically designed to overcome limitations on the mechanical typewriter but now almost universally preferred over more logical keyboard designs.6

When a new technology emerges (e.g. computer GUI operating systems) - often firms will introduce a number of alternative designs (e.g. Microsoft - Windows, Apple Inc. - Mac OS and IBM - OS2) . Updated designs will be released incorporating incremental improvements - at some point an architecture that becomes accepted as the industry standard (Anderson and Tushman, 1990) may emerge (e.g. Microsoft Windows).

Dominant Design is a Technology Management concept identifying key technological designs that become a de-facto standard in their market place.

Dominant Design

Tags: dominant design, dominant, design

Ieoh Ming Pei - Zeuthaus

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:17:39 GMT

clipped by: transparent
clipper's remarks: Opened in june 2003

Clip Source: www.berlin-ru.net

Tags: architecture

Importance of Links in Site Architecture

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:27:37 GMT

clipped by: novemestranged
clipper's remarks: Good article on using links on sites

Clip Source: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Intuitive navigation for users

Starting at the homepage, if the user doesn't use the search box on your site or a pulldown menu, can they easily find the desired information (ball handling like a superstar) from the navigation links?

Let's say a user found your site through an external link, but they didn't land on the homepage. Starting from any (sub-/child) page on your site, make sure they can easily find their way to the homepage and/or other relevant sections. In other words, make sure users aren't trapped or stuck. Was the "best dribbling technique" easy for your imaginary user to find? Often breadcrumbs such as "Home > Techniques > Dribbling" help users to understand where they are.

Sitemap submission is also helpful for major search engines, though it shouldn't be a substitute for crawlable link architecture. If your site utilizes newer techniques, such as AJAX, see "Verify that Googlebot finds your internal links" below.

Article Marketing for Deep Linking

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:37:33 GMT

clipped by: davidthocx
clipper's remarks: Building Link Architecture with Article Submission and Article Marketing. Article Marketing is a worthwhile marketing strategy for short-term and long-term website development and search engine optimisation. A well-planned article marketing strategy that maps out its linking strategy prior to article submission will promote your website with search engines and position your website to develop long-term customer leads.

Clip Source: www.linkpopularity.com.au

Tags: article marketing, article submission, article writing

Beauty by brains

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:35:35 GMT

clipped by: Savi010

Clip Source: www.fun-on.com

Medieval Islamic Architecture Presages 20th-century Mathematics

Intricate decorative tilework found in medieval architecture across the Islamic world appears to exhibit advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry -- a concept discovered by Western mathematicians and physicists only in the 1970s and 1980s. If so, medieval Islamic application of this geometry would predate Western mastery by at least half a millennium.

These tiles, dubbed "girih tiles" by Lu and Steinhardt, consist of sets of five contiguous polygons (a decagon, pentagon, diamond, bowtie, and hexagon), each with a unique decorative line pattern. For medieval Islamic artisans, they may have represented a toolkit for generating huge numbers of distinctive tile patterns without the lengthy, painstaking, and often flawed process of creating each line segment individually.

remarkable photos from up high

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:08:09 GMT

clipped by: boozich

Clip Source: muzich.blogspot.com

Algae in the Gulf of Morbihan, France

Darul Aman Palace, in Kabul

Clip Source: muzich.blogspot.com

Icebreaker

Worker resting on bales of cotton,

Sand dune in the heart of vegetation on Fraser island,

This acacia is a symbol of life in the vast expanses of thorny savanna

Elephants

Gosse's Bluff meteor crater, Northern territory, Australia. Approximately 135 million years ago a meteorite fell on Australian soil,

Iraqi tank graveyard in the desert near Al Jahrah, Kuwait.

Village on the banks of an arm of the River Niger, Mopti region, M

Morocco. Fortified villages are frequently seen along the valley of the Rheris

inspired by the Berber architecture built to protect against invaders

Athabasca Oil Sands, Alberta, Canada

make up the largest reservoir of crude bitumen in the world

Village on stilts in Tongki

Village of Bacolor under a layer of mud,

M2BPO

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:07:45 GMT

clipped by: zsuzsu
clipper's remarks: Notre outil regroupe toutes les annonces des marchés publics qui concernent les architectes.

Clip Source: www.m2bpo.com

Soyez vous-même avec M2BPO, concentrez vous sur votre cœur de métier et laissez nous faire le reste !

Notre outil regroupe toutes les annonces des marchés publics qui concernent les architectes.

Notre outil a été spécialement conçu pour les cabinets d'architecture, et pour répondre à vos besoins. Il se décompose en trois phases: Sélection, Suivi et Archivage.

Biologically inspired unique design

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:47:33 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Wow, that would be the day...
the idea of taking 2 concepts (e.g. biology, technology) and paralleling them is nice. The kissing borders may yield anew synthesis

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Immune System For Electronics? Electronics That Can Diagnose And Heal Themselves Under Development

The project is called SABRE (Self-healing cellular Architectures for Biologically-inspired highly Reliable Electronic systems)

Electronic hardware designers have achieved fantastic levels of reliability so far but, as such devices become more and more complex, such instances can only become more common.

Increasingly, our lives are intertwined with digital electronic equipment.

look for ways to create electronic systems based on a structure of ‘cells’ which have the ability to work together to defend system integrity, diagnose faults, and heal themselves.

Currently, those few electronic systems that are designed to be fault-tolerant either replicate whole sub-systems at a high level in the overall architecture (similar to having two lungs), or roll back to a simpler, safer mode when there is a malfunction

body are able to deal with malfunctions at a much lower level

Tags: technology, immune system, biology

Developing Search Architecture, Part 1

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:41:35 GMT

clipped by: meghbala
clipper's remarks: Developing Search Architecture, Part 1

Clip Source: www.campustudents.info

Developing Search Architecture, Part 1

[Video]

Tags: developing search architecture, part 1

Developing Search Architecture, Part 2 of 2

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:40:02 GMT

clipped by: meghbala
clipper's remarks: Developing Search Architecture, Part 2 of 2

Clip Source: www.campustudents.info

Developing Search Architecture, Part 2 of 2

[Video]

Tags: developing search architecture, part 2 of 2

URL Architecture Affecting PageRank

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:29:02 GMT

clipped by: meghbala
clipper's remarks: URL Architecture Affecting PageRank

Clip Source: www.campustudents.info

URL Architecture Affecting PageRank

[Video]

Tags: url architecture affecting, pagerank

Simple Low-Tech Home Wins Prize For Sustainability

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:33:06 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Woodruff's house uses just 25% of the energy of a conventional house of the same size. His winter power costs are a $30 electricity bill each month and a cord of wood. In the summer, power is needed only for the hot water heater and appliances.

Yet the little 1,100-sq.-ft. house is as straightforward as you can get. No high-tech gizmos. No elaborate contortions. The house relies on simple architectural principles -- windows oriented for sunlight, cross breezes for ventilation, overhangs for shade -- basics that were much lauded in the 1940s and '50s, but less emphasized since.

They included large doors that can be opened for cross-breezes. They designed the heating so energy is used and reused within rooms. The living/ dining/kitchen area is one big room heated by a wood stove on rainy days, and the sun on sunny days.

"The public rooms face east, the logic being you want those to heat up with the sun first in the winter and in the summer, you want to avoid the hot western sun.

Clip Source: www.nationalpost.com

The main room, with a 16-foot-long kitchen countertop, is the life of the house.

Mr. Woodruff's modest weekend home on Mayne Island in the southern Gulf Islands chain of British Columbia, took second place in a North America-wide architectural competition for sustainable principles and energy conservation.

"The Gulf Islands House stood out for its elegance and simplicity," juror Robert Rogers of Roger Marvel Architects said in an e-mail interview. "Its sustainable features were subtly woven into the basic program for a small house. Its size alone represents a fundamentally green attitude. We felt that the project was a graceful whole and neatly detailed."

"To say something as simple as the building should be lit throughout the day by the sun becomes a radical position," Mr. Woodruff says. "It's ridiculous, but it does. We have clients who insist on air conditioning. Psychologically in the modern world, people think that air conditioning is fundamental."

Tags: american institute of architects, "how green are you?", vancouver's measured architecture

Top Seven Weirdest Houses

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:25:41 GMT

clipped by: thedoorway
clipper's remarks: "Take a break from your routine and give your mind permission to believe in the extraordinary, as the creators of these houses certainly did. You never know where it might take you."

Clip Source: articles.mercola.com

Top Seven Weirdest Houses

1. Hundertwasser‘s House

2. The Upside-Down House

3. Toilet-Shaped House

4. The House on a Stick

5. Bubble House

6. The Broken Column House

7. The Glass House

Tags: houses, homes, weird houses, funny houses, strange houses, architecture