The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is the new name for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) currently being constructed in Chile. The Objective When it becomes fully operational in October 2022, the observatory will take ten years to photograph all of The Universe it can see. With a field of view of 4° (or about eight times […]
Sheep aren’t indigenous to Australia but their rearing and shearing factors large in Australian history and culture. True, sheep didn’t turn into ecological nightmares like starlings, rabbits, camels, cane toads and such but still, they don’t touch the ground lightly. They graze much closer than cattle and overgrazing by sheep has been causing soil erosion and denuding landscapes around the world […]
For every force there is an equal and opposite reaction. As the level of amenity, let alone luxury, people can reasonably aspire to steadily lessens, the market for Architecture must continually expand downwards by appropriating materials, configurations and concepts formerly the realm of Building. The absence of applied finishes occurs in vernacular buildings as the expedient use of resources […]
And Peter Behrens saw the shed was naked so he covered it up. And so the shed was made to feel shame. Taking something virtuous and forcing it to wear an aesthetic statement of questionable value is the original sin of architecture, its genesis. It’s as if architecture loves to see good ideas killed through a process of aestheticisation – the […]
Peter Behrens supposedly had the idea first – take a lowly building type and “elevate” it to Architecture. 1909 hmm. I’m surprised it wasn’t earlier. By 1909, wealthy landowners had all but died out, or were soon about to. The smart money would have been on wealthy industrialists – especially ones who produced light bulbs, […]
It’s been said before. The microprocessor is not trying to look beautiful. BECAUSE OF THIS, microprocessors have had the exponential performance increases Moore’s Law describes. Computer scientists are now conceiving of exascale computing systems capable of at least one exaflops which is one thousand petaflops or one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second. One of the largest challenges they face concerns power […]
The house is aligned east-west so the balcony on the south side probably does all the right things regarding solar gain. If not, it’s nothing a few bamboo blinds won’t fix. Or should we even care? In Japan they’re supposed to enjoy living with the seasons aren’t they? Just the other side of the mountain […]
The other week I was in Madrid’s Barajas Airport Terminal 4. Designed by the architects now known as Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, it won The Stirling Prize, the UK’s ‘highest’ architectural award in 2006 so it must be good, right? After all, it’s not often one gets to see a real, award-winning bit of […]
