Last week I found myself in Zürich, Switzerland, which in itself is somewhat unusual for a person who typically lives and works in the great state of Texas.  To add to that, while installed in said location I experienced one of those intensive periods of excitement and discovery that only happen when you toss yourself and an over-stuffed rolling suitcase headlong into a foreign country and participate in a workshop in order to learn how to screen print electroluminescent lamps (and also to learn that, although they are healthier, multigrain croissants are simply not as delicious as the …

If you were laboring under the misapprehension that it might be safe to take off your protective brain-encapsulation helmet, don’t: the 2010/11 MAS class at the chair for CAAD, ETH Zürich, supervised and tutored by Manuel Kretzer and Ruairi Glynn and supported through Lumitec AG and Ulano Corp, have been working on a new project that has the potential to blow your mind.  Last October I wrote about Shape Shift, the group’s experiment with a electro-active polymers (read more here), and if you enjoyed that project the odds …

I have a secret theory, based on anecdotal evidence supplied by my over-active imagination, that glowing architectural surfaces encourage people to spend more money.  I wonder why glowing, shiny objects are so alluring to human beings? It’s not like we have gizzards.  At any rate, if glowing surfaces do encourage people to open their wallets and part with the brass, it is quite a good thing because artificially illuminated glowing architectural surfaces cost a great deal to construct AND require supermegakilotons of energy to run.

Image courtesy thenewyorkgreenadvocate.blogspot.com
The Lumenatrix Backlighting System …

ARCHITERIALS is a year old now, and like most healthy, well-adjusted one-year-olds it needs to be changed constantly, crawls all over my apartment, and makes strange burbling noises.  No, really – it does.  It’s terrifying.
Over the past year I’ve profiled approximately 65 materials and learned about blogging, bacteria, and biscuits, although I must confess that the biscuts were a side project.  A delicious, buttery side project.  Anyhow, to celebrate the birthday of ARCHITERIALS and the fact that the tagline “Investigating architectural materials since 2010” has finally attained temporal legitimacy, I’ve compiled for this, …

Let’s assume for a moment that you are the Pope (because hey, this is the Internet and we can pretty much assume anything that suits our purposes, right?)  Okay, so let’s say your Holiness wants to head out of the Vatican and take a brief vacation at a villa that the Church happens to own on the Italian Sea Coast.  The ride out there shouldn’t be much of  problem danger-wise, because everybody knows that the “Popemobile” is bulletproof and “thicker than a 300 page novel” (Verrico).  But what if someone wants to cause trouble …

 
Resin is intriguing stuff.  In my mind it’s like honey to the power of two; it’s sticky as all hell, often golden or amber (ha!) in color, and it is, chemically speaking, a lot many kinds of serious.  Technically resin is a “hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, particularly coniferous trees valued for its chemical constituents and uses such as varnishes and adhesives, as an important source of raw materials for organic synthesis, or for incense and perfume” (Wikipedia).  It can also be used to make translucent panels in a wide range of colors …

Say what you will about Elvis Presley and his rhinestone-studed white jumpsuits, the man definitely made waves in movies and the music world.  Even half a century after his heyday I still catch Blue Hawaii airing on TV and even incurious millenials know Heartbreak Hotel.  In contrast to Elvis, I offer you Russell Brand: a man who appears to live life like a young Bret Michaels, and whose notoriety stems from a certain abrasive yet undeniable charisma.  Will Russell Brand’s … er … brand … stand the test of time?  Is he another Elvis?  I think …

Light-transmitting concrete is kind of endearingly creepy looking – it reminds me of one of those tiny hypoallergenic dogs with no fur except in pale tufts on its oversized head.  I’m jarred by the fact that light can shine through something designed to be massive and essentially made out of rocks.  Glass fibers are embedded in the concrete in parallel, so that light is transmitted from one side of a block of the concrete to the other.  The technology is not brand new;  I saw light-transmitting concrete featured at the National Building Museum some …