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ARCHICULTURE: A Documentary About Architecture School

Finally! Archiculture: A Documentary About Architecture School has just been released. It's been in the making for about 6 years and was originally called: "ArchiTorture" (for rightful reasons). Now it's here to show all of the hardship of architecture school for those that are familiar with it, and those that haven't gone through it, will get a sneak peak of what it's all about. Enjoy! #architecture #architectureanddesign #art #designer #design #environment #experiment #furn

Algerian Parliament Gets a New Design

Bureau Architecture Mediterranee unveiled the design for the new Parliament of Algeria which houses the People's National Assembly The National Council, The Chamber, and a residence for legislators. The design is organized around a central plaza as a symbolic gathering place for the people that give the republic its authority. Placed with a backdrop of the historic city, the design is meant as a joiner of the old and new. The National Council and The Chamber buildings are var

Product Feature: "The Sa"

It’s an origami umbrella! Yes, you read that correctly. It’s an umbrella that is designed without a structural under-skeleton. Instead, the Sa umbrella uses a dual-canopy structure that utilizes planar tension to move free of the skeleton. The canopies expand and contract in unison allowing the umbrella to open and close. Opening and closing is simple with a mechanism that rotates at the bottom of the handle. Sarah D. I Designer I The DesignBloc #design #creativit

The DesignBloc Feature // PLAY: The Documentary

PLAY: The Documentary play (plā/) verb : engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. All work and no play, is just no fun! People from all over the world are working themselves too hard, and leaving no time to enjoy the little moments in life. However, our friends at The Urban Conga are making a difference to change that. The Urban Conga, is a non-profit community that activates social interaction through the act of "PLAY." Thei

So What’s This Buzz About A Bench?

The world is being left confused and perplexed as to the recent and mysterious decline in the wild bee populations. The up side? This has opened a new forum for designers to try their hands at tackling the problem. One artist, AnneMarie van Splunter has undertaken this charge with her design of the Buzzbench. A sculptural bee habitat that also doubles as a bench is constructed of digitally cut local bamboo and reed. Currently, it is up to the masses to get this built so if yo

All Rise, Court is Now in Session

Zaha Hadid is suing the New York Review of Books over an article that was published claiming that Hadid was “showing no concern” for the deaths of migrant construction workers currently working on her design for a football stadium (that’s soccer) for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. That’s right, we have a good, old fashioned defamation suit on our hands. Now I will present the arguments and allow you to come to your own conclusions. The complaint centers on an article by Fil

Motion Tracking LED Basketball Court

Nike is at it again, this time they are talking to my heart. They have created a basketball court with motion-tracking and reactive LED visualization technology built into the floor for Kobe Bryant and his teaching of players in Shanghai. No, the pictures below aren't snapshots from the "Tron" movie set; This is real life right here. Located in the “House of Mamba,” the court is working with Nike’s RISE campaign that is a competition for young Chinese players to win an opport

Cars Underground? Guanajuato: One of the Most Walkable Cities

In the 1960s, many cities were expanding roads for cars, buses, and different modes of transporation. Despite this trend around the world, there was one city who was doing the exact opposite: The Mexican city of Guanajuato. This unique city has all but one of its main traffic arteries running underground. Above ground lies the most walkable city in North America. So, where do all of the cars go? They travel underground in a network of roads beneath the city. But another quest

You’ve Heard of Pop-Up Restaurants? Well, Let’s Welcome the Pop-Up Park

Welcome to Philadelphia’s Spruce Street Harbor Park. A spot that is turning into more than just a temporary, recreational haven. It's a preview of what a city’s vision of an industrial waterfront can be. Created by Groundswell Design Group, the 5,500 SF park has turned into a success on the banks of the Delaware River. The team created a boardwalk along the river, repurposed three floating barges as a waterside refuge with beer garden and restaurant, and planted 30 trees to c

Step Aside Trees, We Have A New Leaf

A graduate from the Royal College of Art has claimed to have developed a silk leaf that could create oxygen for space travel and make the air better here on Earth. Julian Melchiorri, along with the silk lab from Tufts University, is responsible for this new idea. The leaf is created from a mix of protein extracted from silk and chloroplasts and when exposed to light and water, the leaf supposedly acts just like our friends already on the trees and produces oxygen. Currently,

Testing Revitalization in Myanmar

Myanmar is a country in flux so Entrepreneur Ivan Pun and architecture firm Leong Leong have taken an abandoned transit shed and transformed it into an art gallery. Since the handover of power from it’s military to a civilian government, the country is primed for revitalization projects of all sizes. The old transit shed has been transformed into a 3,800 sf space with rotating art exhibits, design-oriented retail, restaurant and other programming. Pun is using this transit sh

Blighted Areas Turned to Pocket Parks

Last year, a partnership began with the Lincoln Reimagine Project, Architecture for Humanity, and Architectural Digest in an effort to transform a blighted San Francisco block into a "pocket park." Artist Jason Jagel put together a mural that portrays the Portola neighborhood as a cheerful and thriving community by using bright colors and selective imagery to symbolize growth and diversity. The designers just finished a time-lapse video of the mural. Watch it and tell us what

Bringing People Together with Design: The Urban Conga

Great things are going on right now in Tampa, Florida. A Non-Profit Organization called The Urban Congo has recently designed and set up one of their newest installations: A PINK Ping Pong Table in a park! Their motto is "Come Out and Play," and they encourage public interaction through the power of public design and urban furniture. They even got the Mayor of Tampa to join in on the fun during the ping-pong in the park kick-off. Check out the video below for an overview of

Product Feature: DrinkPure

Now you can quench your thirst anywhere with "DrinkPure." DrinkPure bring potable water to you whenever it's needed. It's an attachable water filtration device that fits onto any waterbottle. I've been to many developing countries where this product would save thousands and thousands of lives! I also see great applications for it within developed countries; It would be great to have during a long hike or a camping trip. The fact that it traps sediment, odors, and chemicals, m

It's Summer, and The Surf is Up!

Growing up within 30 mins to some of the nation's best beaches, pretty much every child was given some sort of board as their birthright. If you're a surfer like I am, you know that the worst thing is getting old wax off of your board without killing a credit card or other plastic necessity. EAST Surf Co. now has an answer to all your wax removal problems. This Brooklyn-based surfwax maker decided to design a wax comb that is as elegant as it is useful. The design is simple:

Shwood. It's a Household Name

Shwood is a purveyor of fine hand crafted wooden eyewear. Cut, shaped, assembled, finished and shipped all from its office in Portland. Their slogan is "Experiment with Nature," and that is just what they do. Everything from the concepts to manufacturing and packaging all started as an experiment in their wood shop. Starting with Zebrawood to Walnut, and everything in between, they are able to craft just about any type of sunglasses that you could imagine. Not into the wood g

Beethoven Music Hall: Zaha Hadid

Music and architecture are pretty amazing alone, but when you combine the two art forms, it's just magical. Zaha Hadid Architects created magic when they designed today's featured building, the Beethoven Concert Hall. The Beethoven Concert Hall is a renovation of the once limiting 1950's building located in Bonn, Germany. It not only gave the existing building a facelift, but it incorporated a "multifaceted crystalline mass, growing out of the earth, floating on water," state

Take a Look at What Coca-Cola is Doing to Empty Bottles... You Won't Believe It.

What a Beautiful Idea Imagine a world with less empty coke bottles flooding our rivers and polluting our streets. In fact, think of a world where all empty bottles can have a 2nd life. This video shares with us what that may look like. Coca Cola teamed up with award-winning ad agency Ogilvy & Mather China on a new “2nd Lives” campaign, and created 16 red screw-on caps that transform these plastic bottles into something fun, usable, and functional. Graham Fink, the chief creat

Equilibrium: An App That Keeps You Balanced

Balancing your Life: Check out this great new app made by architects, graphic designers, and product designers. It's called Equilibrium, and it's designed to promote balance in our daily lives. You know we can all use more of that! "By tracking activities in your area that improve mind, body, and spirit, Equilibrium gives you a more complete picture of wellness." says Equilibrium developers. Here's how it works: Equilibrium organizes wellness into three categories: think, whi

Product Feature: "The Minnow"

Saving the Waves one Board at a Time: Bureo (meaning "the waves" in Chilean), is the name of a Los Angeles-based sustainable skateboard company, that has recently come up with the world's first skateboard deck composed of recycled fishing nets! Its program, "Net Positiva," is the first fishnet recycling and collection program in Chile that creates a line of recycled skateboards; The first skateboard released is called, The Minnow. The Design What's so great about this? Not o

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ARCHICULTURE: A Documentary About Architecture School

Algerian Parliament Gets a New Design

Product Feature: "The Sa"

The DesignBloc Feature // PLAY: The Documentary

So What’s This Buzz About A Bench?

All Rise, Court is Now in Session

Motion Tracking LED Basketball Court

Cars Underground? Guanajuato: One of the Most Walkable Cities

You’ve Heard of Pop-Up Restaurants? Well, Let’s Welcome the Pop-Up Park

Step Aside Trees, We Have A New Leaf

Testing Revitalization in Myanmar

Blighted Areas Turned to Pocket Parks

Bringing People Together with Design: The Urban Conga

Product Feature: DrinkPure

It's Summer, and The Surf is Up!

Shwood. It's a Household Name

Beethoven Music Hall: Zaha Hadid

Take a Look at What Coca-Cola is Doing to Empty Bottles... You Won't Believe It.

Equilibrium: An App That Keeps You Balanced

Product Feature: "The Minnow"

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