TIme

I suggest watching this Horizon episode concerning time - Charlotte Knight recommended it. It has some wonderful thoughts on change, time and aging.
Watch on BBC iPlayer here.

Rogier van der Heide: Why light needs darkness

Fed recommended this video on the importance of darkness to light - well worth a watch.

The Art of Changing One's Mind(set)

Ecological Citizenship and The Art of Changing One's Mind(set)
Friday 18 March 11 - 5 pm, Buckley Building, Oxford Brookes University. Room BG01

This one-day symposium organised by the Social Sculpture Research Unit deals with the issues we are looking at this year. As part of this Dr. Arran Stibbe is going to 'explore the role of the Arts in helping to break out of a set of social and cultural constructions that have placed humanity on a path to self-destruction and in helping to open up new, previously unimagined paths. He will raise questions of whether it is too late, or impossible, for the trajectory of society to change fast enough to avert ecological collapse of some kind, and the consequences for how we see our work.'
More details here.

evolo 2011 Skyscraper competition

Some very interesting ideas were explored in the 2011 evolo skyscraper competition - worth taking a look (recycling plants, air cleaning etc). Also some very useful example of presentation methods and how to communicate detailed ideas.
evolo competition web site here - continue scrolling down the page to see all the entries.

Ken Yeang

Ken Yeang has developed his ideas for bioclimatic design through a sequence of projects with his practice TR Hamzah & Yeang and as a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang.

Two examples of projects are shown below.
Editt Tower
The images above are of the Editt Tower project, Singapore.
'Ecological design starts with looking at the site’s ecosystem and its properties. Any design that do not take these aspects of the site into consideration is essentially not an ecological approach. '
TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Further info here.

Elephant and Castle Eco Towers


Details on TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Full details, including plans etc are in Tall buildings By Guy Nordenson, Terence Riley which you can look at on google books here.

Barragan

Recommend spending a bit of time immersing yourself in Barragan's plans, walking through the designs in your mind aided by the photographs tagged on the plans on the Barragan Foundattions web site. Look at the way he allows freedom of movement, the interplay of internal and external architectural space, and how the simplicity of spaces can reveal the complexity of the movement of time. Barragan Foundation web site here.

Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch

Fed recommended this talk by an RCA student who set about making his own a toaster from scratch....
'It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.' TED site
TED web site.

Living Systems

Liat Margolis and Alexander Robinson's Living Systems blog named after their book has a few intersting projects on it, including that shown above - : 'The concept of Launch is a combination of living and nonliving systems: a progression of vegetal growth and its correspondent structural scaffolding that is required to guide the plant’s form and trajectory until it reaches stability. The scaffold may be a transitional structure, i.e. biodegradable; permanent; or designed to evolve symbiotically. The material systems include aboveground structures, such as a tensile cable, a mesh, and beam frameworks that allow for plant attachment, as well as subsoil materials, such as geotextiles.'
Living Systems
Launch.