[Image: Prisons for sale; photo by Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times]. The State of New York is hoping to sell its old prisons. "One property, in the Hudson Valley, includes a 16-car garage, a piggery and hundreds of yards of lake frontage," the New York Times explains. "Another offers 69 acres...
Hotels in Zero-G
[Image: "Zero-Gravity Design" at the Domus Academy in Milan]. Given all the justifiable excitement in the past few days about the successful launch of SpaceX, Milan's Domus Academy is hosting a rather well-timed two-week design intensive this summer called "Zero-Gravity Design: Products & Microenvironments...
There's No One There / Man-Made Lands
[Image: Art by Joe Alterio]. New Yorkers, stop by Studio-X NYC tonight, Wednesday, May 23rd, at 7pm for free drinks and the launch of Man-Made Lands, "a collection of seven stories and five real architectural and landscape proposals for cities around the world," the first chapbook from Ninth Letter....
Mobile Surroundsound
Two design competitions that might catch your eyes and ears: 1) Legendary L.A. radio station KCRW is looking for a mobile sound booth: a "space where conversation can happen amidst the urban chaos. A comfortable space that isolates sound for good recording, but also gives the listener a sense of place."...
Vitamin C and Aloe
Hidden in an article about New York City's first million-dollar parking space is the somewhat incredible fact that, up in the apartment building this parking space will be attached to, "the shower water will be pumped full of vitamin C and aloe" for the building's economically distinguished residents....
Under Angeles
Design writer Alissa Walker recently took a tour of L.A.'s original subway system, one whose tunnels are no longer in operation, though they remain down there— [Image: L.A.'s original subway, now walled-off beneath downtown; photo by Alissa Walker]. —bricked off and all but forgotten beneath buildings...
SubBrit
I finally became a paying member of Subterranea Britannica this week, a website and historical organization whose interests (and influence) cast a long shadow over this blog's early years. Joining is £28 a year for overseas members and seems well worth it so far, having received my first issue of their...
Secret Soviet Cities
[Images: From ZATO: Secret Soviet Cities during the Cold War at Columbia's Harriman Institute; right three photographs by Richard Pare]. Speaking of Van Alen Books: earlier this week, they hosted a panel on the topic of "Secret Soviet Cities During the Cold War." These were closed cities or ZATO, "sites...
Perhaps it is not a city
[Image: Michael Maltzan's Inner City Arts building, Los Angeles; photo by Iwan Baan]. I'll be speaking tonight, May 17th, at Van Alen Books with architect Michael Maltzan about his book No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and Beyond, edited by Jessica Varner, previously discussed...
Papercraft
[Image: Wifi-blocking wallpaper from the Grenoble Institute of Technology]. 1) A collaboration between the Grenoble Institute of Technology and the Centre Technique du Papier has produced wifi-blocking wallpaper: a printable electromagnetic shield that "only blocks a select set of frequencies used by...
Mega City Soundtrack
[Image: A map of fictional mega cities, via 2000AD]. A short review in the most recent Wire discusses a new album by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury: a speculative urban soundtrack to Mega City One, a "post-apocalyptic sprawl covering the eastern seaboard of the United States" from Judge Dredd. "Portishead's...
Water vs. World
[Image: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; courtesy of the USGS]. In Charles Fishman's compelling exploration of water on Earth, The Big Thirst, there is a shocking statement that, despite the apparent inexhaustibility of the oceans, "the total water on the surface of Earth...
Lost Lakes of the Empire State Building
[Image: Sunfish Pond]. Something I've long meant to post about—and isn't news at all—is the fact that there is a lost lake in the basement of the Empire State Building. Or a pond, more accurately speaking. After following a series of links leading off from Steve Duncan's ongoing exploration of New...
Astrobiology and Drowned Nations
There's a lot going on again this week at Studio-X NYC. Two quick things to put on your radar, in case you're near New York: [Image: NASA astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild measures solar radiation, via NASA]. 1) Tonight at 6:30pm, we've got NASA astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild coming in to discuss her work,...
Performing Mars
[Image: Image via Karst Worlds]. An ice cave in Austria was recently used as a test landscape for experimental spacesuits and instrumentation systems—including 3D cameras—that might someday be used by humans on Mars. The Dachstein ice cave was chosen, Stuff explains, "because ice caves would be a natural...
