I received a review copy of Héctor Tobar's new book Deep Down Dark the other week and read the entire thing in one sitting. In it, Tobar tells the utterly mind-boggling story of the Chilean mine disaster of 2010, when 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days after a catastrophic internal collapse...
The Underground Wind Bulbs of Utah
[Image: From a PDF by Dresser Rand]. A new electricity distribution system being described as the "'Hoover Dam' of the 21st century" will bring wind energy from Wyoming to customers in California—and it will get there by way of a $1.5 billion artificial cave built specifically for storing air inside...
Untitled Landscapes
[Image: Untitled (Uranium tailings); Mexican Hat, UT, 2005, by Victoria Sambunaris, from Taxonomy of a Landscape]. Design writer Sarah Rich has posted some really spectacular images by photographer Victoria Sambunaris, along with a short Q&A discussing landscapes altered by human activities and...
Empty Landscapes of Invisible Dangers
[Image: "The Polygon Nuclear Test Site 1 (After the Event)," Kazakhstan (2011); photo by Nadav Kander/©Nadav Kander, courtesy of Flowers Gallery]. The new book Dust by Nadav Kander documents the broken test-cities of the Soviet nuclear program, with shells of partially dismantled buildings lying scattered...
Procedural Forestry
[Image: A "procedural forest gone wrong... or right?," developed by Florian Veltman]. We looked at procedural Brutalism the other week—and, deep in the BLDGBLOG archives, we explored the moors of a procedurally generated British countryside—so why not procedural forestry? Designer Florian Veltman tweeted...
Celestial Chiaroscuro
An interesting new project called Satellite Lamps, by Einar Sneve Martinussen, Jørn Knutsen, and Timo Arnall, attempts to visualize the ever-drifting, never exactly accurate workings of GPS. As the above video shows, the project uses "a set of lamps that contain GPS receivers, that change brightness...
Implied Landscapes
[Image: "Colour experiment no. 61," 2014; photo by Jens Ziehe, via Tate Britain]. The forthcoming exhibition of J.M.W. Turner's late works at Tate Britain not only looks amazing, but it's also accompanied by a gorgeous new series of seven works by Olafur Eliasson. Called "Turner colour experiments,"...
Procedural Brutalism
[Image: Procedural Brutalism by Cedric]. Here are a few GIFs of procedurally generated architecture by a game developer named Cedric, built using Unity. Cedric describes himself as an "indie game dev focused on social AI, emergent narrative and procedural worlds." [Image: Procedural Croydon by Cedric]....
Shapegarden
[Image: From "Geometria et Perspectiva" by Lorenz Stöer (1567), via Bibliodyssey]. I just thought these images were cool: geometry workouts engraved in the 16th century by Lorenz Stöer, featuring dense architectural exercises of pure geometry, with shapes drawn for the sake of shapes—on top of shapes...
Demolition School
[Image: The Broelschool, Kortrijk, Belgium, via Space Caviar]. As part of the 2014 Biennale Interieur, curatorial group Space Caviar is hosting what they call a "demolition workshop" in the Belgian town of Kortrijk. Set in a derelict school building condemned to demolition after the workshop has ended,...
