2013 MAPEO Workshop Hopes to Explore Experimental Mapping Techniques
A new Kickstarter campaign is hoping to raise a goal of $3,500 to fund the second annual MAPEO Borderless Workshop – a workshop that focuses on community mapping and brings diverse people and minds together to think about cities within the US-Mexican border region. By rallying individuals from different disciplines with different backgrounds, MAPEO aims to “learn more about our own cities, evaluate urban challenges and come up with ideas on how to improve our life in cities in a very quick and meaningful exercise.”
Kickstarter Campaign Aims to Transform Denver Parking Lot into Outdoor Classroom
Architecture for Humanity-Denver is seeking to raise money for the transformation of a museum parking lot into an outdoor classroom for children in need. The goal of Denver’s Museo de las Americas is to educate the community about the diversity of Latino Americano art and culture from ancient to contemporary through innovative exhibitions and programs, but the museum is lacking the necessary space for its increasingly popular youth summer camp.
Read more about the project and how you can help after the break.
Kickstarter: New Model Library in Africa
With only 3% of Africa’s 1 billion population capable of accessing broadband internet and the wealth of information it provides, a multidisciplinary team, led by a strategic partnership between Architecture for Humanity, Gensler, Son & Sons, Librarians Without Borders, has embarked on an ambitious Kickstarter campaign to create a network of low-cost, digitally powered, revenue-generating libraries “deployed along the expanding fiber optic infrastructure in the developing world.”
If successful, Librii will become the first library to actively engage users as content creators, while operating on a sustainable business model and maximizing the potential of high-speed information exchange in developing markets.
Learn more about this initiative and support their Kickstarter campaing here.
Kickstarter: BrickItUp!
BrickItUp is a kickstarter project, created by Jose Luis, that allows for simple and intuitive 3D modeling. Block by block, users can easily create 3D spaces and environments without any limitations. BrickItUp caters well to collaboration and allows users to work on a project live with each other. When working in groups, users are able to see what each person is working on in real-time, making distance a negligible factor in collaboration.
More on BrickItUp after the break.
3D Printing Pen Turns Sketches Into Reality In Seconds
The 3Doodler isn’t just a small pen-like device that’s “the most affordable way to 3D print” – it’s also a Kickstarter smash. The pen reached its $30,000 goal in just a few hours, and, at the time of publication, has earned $555,301.
We’ve mentioned 3D Printing before for its exciting potential for architecture in the long-term; however, this little doodler shows how quickly the technology is progressing (and how cheap it’s becoming). Plus, it’s easy to imagine the 3Doodler becoming an integral part of any architect’s life, as the device lets you trace your drawings and then pop them to life. It’s not a 2D plan, it’s not a 3D visualization, but something – awesomely – in between.
Learn more about this 3-D Printing Kickstarter success, after the break…
Never Built: Los Angeles
Never Built: Los Angeles will present a thorough compendium of projects by some of the worlds most celebrated architects that never made it past the drawing board. After two years of extensive research, countless untold stories and hundreds of beautiful designs – many promoting a denser, more vibrant Los Angeles – have been unearthed. Co-curated Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin and designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects, Never Built: Los Angeles will present the most visionary designs that had the greatest potential of reshaping the city and question why they were never built. Forgotten, yet innovative projects from Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, Rudolph Schindler, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and more, will be presented.
The research and exhibition design is complete. However, they need your (tax deductible) donations to help make Never Built: Los Angeles a reality. Learn more and support the exhibition on Kickstarter!
The exhibition plans to open this spring at Los Angeles’s A+D Architecture and Design Museum.
“99% Invisible” Blows Kickstarter Goal Out of the Water
99% Invisible is, by far, our favorite radio show on architecture and design. Although, granted, there aren’t that many. As Roman Mars, the show’s host and producer, admits: ”since these are disciplines usually appreciated through the eye, you might be thinking: well, that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Fair enough. It turns out [though], I don’t need pictures to talk about design, [...] I like making stories that tell us about who we are through the lens of the things we build.”
Despite being an auditory medium (and a low-budget project, sponsored by KALW and AIA San Francisco, but produced in Mars’ garage), the show works because it gets to the heart of any design project: its story.
Well, it turns out we’re not the only ones into Mars’ quirky approach (Aside: if you are too, stay tuned, we’ll be interviewing him for our Disruptive Minds series next week). After launching a modest Kickstarter campaign to help offset costs, a goal promptly smashed in 24 hours, Mars upped the ante. But not to a price tag. Rather, he wanted a show of support. 5,000 backers.
The results for this little-show-that-could were nothing short of extraordinary.
Read More about 99% Invisible’s Kickstarter Campaign, including the very cool design prizes that went with it, after the break…
Kickstarter: Fresh Punches //// Experimental Architecture Prototypes
Help kick start the suckerPUNCH + land of tomorrow exhibition that will feature twenty student projects from around the United States that explore the possibilities of fabrication and material experimentation at the start of the 21st century. Slated for Fall 2012, this exhibition will have it all – “transmogrifications, strange sensations, primal textures, unfamiliar geometries, self-propagating architectural species, augmented atmospherics, vicissitudinous juxtapositions, reinvented building typologies, sensual pleated skins, a crisis or two, physiologically responsive interfaces, threshold blurring gizmos, and plenty of robots”.
If funding is successful, this exhibition will provide the rare opportunity to display the exploration and research from multiple U.S. architecture schools in one location. The three top projects will have prototypes fabricated by Drura Parrish at PR&vD.
Support this project here. Continue reading for more information.
Only 6 hours left to help fund Jimenez Lai’s Hefner/Beuys House!
Last month we shared with you Jimenez Lai’s vision to transform the Architecture Foundation’s Project Space in London with a cartoonish architectural installation of Super Furniture inspired by the exhibitionism of Hugh Hefner with the live-art of Joseph Beuys. As his first solo exhibition outside of North America, the Chicago-based architect plans to inhabit the Hefner/Beuys House for a few weeks, acting as a 1:1 comic book that people can literally become a part of. You may remember his past projects of the Super-Furniture Series, including the Briefcase House, which he has continued to live in for the past three years, and White Elephant (Privately Soft).
These previous installations were wildly popular, stimulating the imagination of those from across the globe, and there is no doubt the Hefner/Beuys House will do the same. Jimenez Lai is just shy of reaching his funding goal on Kickstarter. With less than 6 hours remaining on the campaign, the time to act is now. Follow this link to help fund Jimenez Lai’s latest Super Furniture project today! In return, you will receive some pretty sweet collectables.
Can you Crowdsource a City?
Unfortunately, of course, this mindset creates an anti-establishment (often, anti-architect) antagonism that would render any wide-spread change nigh impossible. Yes, the DIY movement, facilitated by the use of technology, is excellent for getting people involved, for encouraging important, innovative ideas – in the short-term.
As Alexandra Lange recently pointed out in her post “Against Kickstarter Urbanism,” technology is not a “magic wand,” and crowdsourcing initiatives often fall short in the day-to-day, nitty-gritty work of a large-scale, long-term urban project.
But while technology certainly has its limitations, its potential to facilitate connection and communication is unparalleled. What is vital, however, is that the technology enhance, not replace, our physical relationships. Instead of using online platforms as divisive or purely conceptual forums, they must becomes tools of transparency and trust-building, mediators of a conversation that invests and connects all parties on the ground.
Kickstarter: Cosmic Quilt – Interactive Installation + Student Workshop / The Principals
The Principals, a Brooklyn-based practice that work on industrial design and interactive environments, are posing a question to the design community: What would it be like if the environment we inhabit responded to our present in an active way? What if we shift the scale of the way in which our devices operate to the way our buildings function? The questions posed by The Principals are the considerations of a project called Cosmic Quilt that is planned to be exhibited on Design Week 2012 on May 19-21. In order to create a mock-up of this type of space, the group is enlisting the help of 20 students from the Art Institute of New York and the help of financial backer’s through Kickstarter.
More on the planned project after the break.
Kickstarter: Hefner/Beuys House / Jimenez Lai
Saturday, we shared with you Bureau Spectacular founder Jimenez Lai’s contribution to the University of Michigan’s Taubman College lecture series, focusing on what the genre of installation can offer architectural practice. Fascinated by experimental architecture, storytelling, cartoons and the pursuit of alternate realities, Lai’s latest performance-based architectural installation has made it to Kickstarter. It is up to you whether or not Lai will get the chance to transform the Architecture Foundation’s Project Space in London with a cartoonish architectural installation of Super Furniture – “a building that is slightly too small and a furniture that is kind of too big” – inspired by the exhibitionism of Hugh Hefner with the live-art of Joseph Beuys.
As his first solo exhibition outside of North America, the Chicago-based architect will inhabit the Hefner/Beuys House for a few weeks, acting as a 1:1 comic book that people can literally become a part of. You may remember his past projects of the Super-Furniture Series, including the Briefcase House, which he has continued to live in for the past three years, and White Elephant (Privately Soft). His previous installations have been wildly popular, stimulating the imagination of those from across the globe, and there is no doubt the Hefner/Beuys House will do the same.
All funds will go towards construction of the installation, which includes labor, material and transportation. Find more information and donate here on Kickstarter!
Architecturally Inspired Ties
We recently came across a Kickstarter project headed by Chattanooga architect William Mullins for architecturally inspired ties. Appropriately called Architectie, the initial run of designs feature abstracted designs based on four classics of architecture; the Notre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier, the Yale University Art Gallery by Louis Kahn, Tomba Brion by Carlo Scarpa and the Case Study house #8 by Charles and Ray Eames. Manufactured in the USA, the ties are the first in Mullins’ series, which he hopes to expand to include other lines of ties featuring abstracted designs of modern architectural icons. To see more of the ties visit his Kickstarter site here.
+ Pool / Family and PlayLab in collaboration with Arup
A 30-day Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the continued development of + Pool is underway. From the creative minds at Family and PlayLab, + Pool is a collaboration to design a floating riverwater pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City. Beginning the next phase of the project, material testing and design, the online fundraising campaign hopefully will raise the initial $25,000 needed to begin physically testing the filtration membranes providing results to determine the best filtration membranes and methods to provide clean and safe riverwater for the public to swim in. A preliminary engineering feasibility report was initially conducted by Arup New York, which assessed the water quality, filtration, structural, mechanical and energy systems of + Pool.
Family and PlayLab launched a Kickstarter online fundraising campaign this month with the ultimate goal of generating enough support to prototype the filtration system by building a full-scale working mockup of the one section of + Pool. Research, design, testing and development will continue through the year in conjunction with permitting, approvals and building partnerships with community, municipal, commercial and environmental organizations.
Donation levels for the Kickstarter campaign range from $1 to $10,000 with the hope that everyone interested in cleaner public waterways can get involved. Donors can choose from a variety of incentives and gear up for a day at the pool. For more information about the project and the campaign or to donate click here. Or write to info@pluspool.org.
Follow the break for more details about this project and the history of floating pools in New York City, which date back to the early 19th century.
