by Josh Hill with Casey Kazan – December 13, 2007 via DailyGalaxy.Com

If you watch just about any SciFi movie or TV series, or read any book where the Nazis won in World War 11 as historical fact, then you will most likely have seen an airship! They seem to be the stuff alternate time lines are made of, with movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and books like Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials both preferring airships, zeppelins or dirigible to a good old-fashioned airplane.

continue reading "The Airships of the Future"

by David Sokol – November 26, 2007 via MetropolisMag.Com

Responsible vehicular design is taken to task at the Art Center College of Design.

In March 2005, Stewart Reed had a homecoming to southern California. The 1969 transportation-design graduate of Art Center College of Design returned to Pasadena to take on the chairmanship of the department. Although Reed had collaborated with his alma mater in the interim—he taught a class while heading Toyota’s advanced design studio in nearby Newport Beach, and served as an advisory board member—Reed’s work as a full-time educator is only just starting.

continue reading "Safe at Any Speed"

August 27, 2007 via BehindTheCurtains

A steam shower that runs in sync with iPods and other mp3 players, the iSteamShower is designed for maximum relaxation. This version, with a curved back that houses an integrated lounge-type chair, comforts bathers with 10 body jets, a foot massage and foot scrub system.  The price for all this futuristic pampering?  $3542 at iSteamShower.com, where you can buy online, search other models and find out more.

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August 17, 2007 via BusinessWeek.Com

The skyscraper has had more comebacks than Cher. From its humble, naive beginnings in Chicago after the fire of 1871; its idealistic representation in early European Modernism; its apex as the glam symbol of American corporate eminence; its bimbo phase in Postmodernism; its more recent dalliance with high-tech engineering; and culminating with its supposed demise on September 11, 2001, the skyscraper is one helluva contender.

continue reading "The Skyscraper: Still Soaring"

by Dianna Dilworth – August 17, 2007 via BusinessWeek.Com

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, known for his cardboard houses, has just installed his latest endeavor in the paper-building world—a temporary bridge over the Gardon River, in the south of France. The 7.5-ton structure is made of 281 of Shigeru’s trademark cardboard tubes, each of which measures 4 inches across and 0.47 inches thick. It provides a visual foil to the nearby Pont du Gard: an ancient Roman bridge now listed as a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

continue reading "Shigeru Ban’s Cardboard Bridge"