AD: david beckham plays beethoven with soccer balls

in an ad for the samsung ‘galaxy note’, david beckham sounds out ‘ode to joy’ on a 15-foot wall by kicking soccer balls at specific drums


in a web-only ad for the galaxy note smartphone by samsung, soccer player david beckham plays beethoven’s ‘ode to joy’ by kicking soccer balls against a 15-foot wall of differently sized and toned drums and gongs.

shot in under two hours, the ad was directed by creative agency cheil USA. in addition to highlighting the large screen size and S-pen stylus functionality of samsung’s galaxy note, it celebrates the upcoming olympic games of which samsung is sponsor, as ‘ode to joy’ has been used in several opening ceremonies and olympic commercials of years past.

in the advertisment, the director uses a ‘galaxy note’ and S-pen to show beckham the ‘strategy’ for this play

source: designboom

ENERGY: Demand for Fresh Water Causing Oceans to Rise Faster Than Melting Glaciers →

energy-revolution:

by Leon Kaye, 05/21/12

Waterlevel Photo by Shutterstock

A study published in Nature Geoscience concluded that the global demand for fresh water is contributing to the oceans’ rise faster than the impact of global warming on melting glaciers. The trillions of tons of fresh water pumped out of underground aquifers, and then used for irrigation and to keep cities watered and fed is seeping into oceans faster than those underground water supplies can be replenished. The researchers leading the study insist that the impact of humans’ unquenchable usage of water over the past 50 years has been grossly overlooked.

University of Tokyo Ph.D. Yadu Pokhrel was among the group of researchers who studied the impact that groundwater extraction has had on rising sea levels. Since 1961, scientific evidence generally agrees that the oceans levels have risen an average of 1.8 millimeters a year. The combination of melting ice caps and glaciers, along with the expansion of water due to the oceans’ slow heating, contributes about 1.1 mm to that figure. Melting ice caps and glaciers contribute around 0.4 mm each year. Meanwhile 0.7 mm of the oceans’ rise had long been unexplained.

Pokhrel’s group developed an integrated statistical model that measured global groundwater supplies and matched them to human activities such as reservoir maintenance and irrigation. The result was a sea-level rise of 0.77 mm a year increase the last half century that the researchers say can be attributed to humans’ rapid consumption of groundwater.

The consumption of groundwater across the world, from China to Saudi Arabia, in both rural areas and urban areas like Mexico City, has therefore become unsustainable. Since the early 1960s an estimated 18 trillion tons of water, most of which took millenia to collect, have been pumped out of underground reservoirs. That water eventually flows into the world’s oceans at a much faster rate than rainfall can eventually replenish the ancient aquifers. The study’s conclusions add to the growing concern among scientists that even if climate change is to be stalled or even reversed, oceans will still continue to rise because of human activity.

+ Nature Geoscience

Via The Guardian, Scientific American

Satellite photo of Saudi Arabian farms courtesy Wikpedia (Expidition 30 Crew), photo of Mexico City courtesy Leon Kaye

GRAPHICS: Ben Long Etches Beautiful Reverse Graffiti Drawings in Exhaust Grime on Commercial Trucks

by Lori Zimmer, 05/21/12

British artist Ben Long uses a surprising medium for his reverse graffiti artwork – the grime that builds up from exhaust emissions on traveling cube trucks. Using only his finger, the artist has created a series of ephemeral drawings of children, birds and other animals in the layers of dirt. The project, called “The Great Traveling Art Exhibition,” is an ongoing series that takes over the back of commercial trucks, which are usually emblazoned with advertisements.

Long uses a subtractive process to create his detailed characters. That is, he carefully etches away the built up film of exhaust on the truck’s surface to create his figures. The “clean” areas become the lines and details of each piece. The resulting works are made through the cleaning and removal of dirt.

Each of the pieces is made on a commercial truck that is in use, so naturally the trucks drive all over, showing Long’s work to many different people throughout their runs. Yet, being a moving vehicle that is in commercial use, the pieces are impermanent, vulnerable to rainstorms, vandals, and the owners’ desire to wash them. Long creates these temporary pieces on trucks because it is a way for people to see his art without the need for a studio, gallery or financial backing. All he needs is an idea and a cup of water to get started. The drawings in dirt are captured in photographs so that Long and his fans can appreciate each art work long after it has been washed away.

+ Ben Long

Read more: Ben Long Etches Beautiful Reverse Graffiti Drawings in Exhaust Grime on Commercial Trucks | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Feist

‘Bittersweet Melodies’

April 9, 2012 | By Rolling Stone

“Bittersweet Melodies,” the latest video from Feist’s album Metals, features the work of Argentinian photographer Irina Werning, who creates new images by juxtaposing people in the present with images from their past. “I love old photos, but I love even more to recreate them,” says Werning. “When I fall in love with a picture I don’t stop until I have them in front of me dressed like this doing that thing they were doing. I’m always amazed that they do it.”

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/new-and-hot/feist-bittersweet-melodies-20120409#ixzz1sRDWTRcD

ARCHITECTURE: delugan meissl - EYE film institute

‘EYE film institute’ by delugan meissl associated architects, amsterdam, the netherlands
image © iwan baan
all images courtesy of delugan meissl associated architects


vienna-based firm delugan meissl associated architects has recently completed the ‘EYE film institute’ in amsterdam,
the netherlands. derived from the concept of film as an illusion of light, space and movement which becomes a reality through projection,
this structure builds upon these parameters to create a spatial experience with human motion. adjacent to the IJ river,
the exterior’s multiple layers of folding creating a transition across the water which divides the site from the historic urban center
and centraal station. the cultural center serves as a meeting point, the building becomes a landmark within the city’s new noord quarter,
currently comprised of apartments, office buildings and a tower which link the old and lively district. the site may be accessed
from different directions by a ferry, bicycle path and vehicular route.

a gently sloping promenade along the river leading towards the entrance creates changing views of the surroundings vistas
and continuing inside along the south facade, overlooking the water. the exterior’s geometry implies the interior’s spatial progression
while forming facets to introduce diverse lighting conditions. a flexible space, large steps generate impromptu auditorium seating
oriented towards the wall of glass windows. spacious exhibition areas with floor to ceiling glass enclosures overlook the
outdoor terrace below. underground filmography rooms, archives and laboratories are found within narrow passages.
oak planks are used in multifunctional rooms and robust polished concrete flooring are used within continuously changing areas.
neutral colors or matte dark colors are used in semi-public spaces to focus attention upon the screening happening at hand.
cladding the outer surface, aluminum panels are secured with seamless edges.



exterior facade and terrace
image © iwan baan



view from the arena overlooking the canal
image © iwan baan



outward view from the arena
image © iwan baan



relationship of the museum to the city center
image © iwan baan



aerial view
image © iwan baan



site plan



site overview



floor plan / level 0



floor plan / level 1



floor plan / level 2



floor plan / level 3



floor plan / level 4



section



section



urban development diagram



access diagram



places of sojourn diagram



urban development of shoreline diagram



synergy with new museum diagram



relationship to shell tower diagram



view from ferry diagram



height relationships diagram



pictogram



exploded pictogram



sketch



sketch

source: designboom

VIDEO: Manhattan Memorious - RUR Architects

ARTICLE: Resuscitation of Sustainability - Damian Holmes

By Damian Holmes, on April 15th, 2012

The term ‘Sustainability’has recently become passe and has slipped out of the design profession conscious beyond reading the odd design blog or column in the major city broadsheet newspapers with a feature about green walls, planting trees or installing some efficient/renewable technology (water tanks, solar panels, wind turbines, etc). Even the profession we have lost the energy to continue talking about sustainability as we have now taken for granted that the message has got through to everyone. So, it was refreshing to read Amrita Raja in her recent blog post “Socializing Sustainability” at Metropolis Magazine where she gave an interesting account of Adrian Benepe’s (Commissioner for New York City Parks and Recreation Department) resuscitation of sustainability…..

While reframing the relationship between sustainability, economics, sociology and park design, Benepe interrogated the processes that facilitate, or do not facilitate, the actualization of these designs. He pointed to one stunning example: Unlike the rapid construction of pop-up infrastructure in China, it can take up to five years to install a public restroom in a New York park…………. The sustainable 21st century park arrives in the integration of this variable breathing apparatus into the city’s economic and social fabric, so that its design makes inseparable the quality of life of the city from that of its citizens. For those still wary of embracing the blurry beast, Benepe’s successes in reframing sustainable park design in a broader context, keyed into cultural, fiscal, and even medical factors, show that good design is not prohibited by “sustainability,” but by a casual exploration of its potential to generate thoughtful solutions. Amrita Raja – Socializing Sustainability – Metropolis Magazine

We all need to find a the way of reframing and resuscitating the sustainability message along with examples that excite the general public and our allied professions. We need to create a better sustainability story that everyone can relate to beyond technological application(SUDS, Green Walls, Materials, etc.) as these often appear very static to the viewer; Telling a story that includes social sustainability that has reinvigorated communities and cities will get people(in and outside the profession) excited about sustainability and how they can transform their own cities with social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Source: Landreader

ARTICLE: User Experiment and Companies →

kopierer:

User Experience Is The Heart Of Any Company. How Do You Make It Top Priority?

Written by: Mary Ellen Muckerman

If you start with “useful” as a first principle, then you automatically place customer need and experience first, writes Wolff Olins’s Mary Ellen Muckerman.

The closer you are to your customers, the more relevant your product will be and the more likely you make it for people to choose you. It may seem obvious, but the gap between those that do and those that talk is widening, despite the immediate bottom-line benefits. But more than this, companies that put usefulness at the heart of what they do become part of their customers’ lives. Engaging with customers then becomes an ongoing conversation, rather than the stop-start involvement that characterized the 20th century. This makes it much easier for customers to come back, and keep coming back.

Who are you for?

Usefulness is best achieved by thinking about everything as user experience. If you start with “useful” as a first principle, then you automatically place customer need and experience first. And you’re less inclined to get lost in your own jargon, product-development silos, or legacy.

Financial services like Zopa or the recently launched Simple (first known as BankSimple) are taking customer needs into account by addressing the frustration associated with the traditional banking system. Zopa shifts control away from conventional banking by encouraging peer-to-peer lending. And Simple creates a user-experience layer on top of standard bank partners that is more human, more modern, and more transparent. It speaks to customers in terms of personal savings goals and cuts through the jargon of the banking industry.

Designed to evolve with life

My experience tells me that the smartest approach to getting this right is to borrow from the playbook of user experience (UX). While this is often associated with the Web, consumers who experience good UX online don’t switch off their expectations when they switch off the computer.

The principles and theories of UX have created a new normal in terms of brand delivery and interaction. They state that how people actually use your product is much more important than how it was intended to be used. So engaging your consumer in ongoing, iterative product development is more valuable than holding out for a “perfect” product launch. It is far better to get started in a live environment and be prepared to change fast around the needs of the user. As a result, consumers need to know what to expect from your product, as well as what you expect from them. This means they need openness and transparency from you. If they make choices online based on honesty and credibility of comments, forums, and communities, they’ll expect you to be a part of that same engaged and involved culture.

Today’s most successful ”useful” organizations are oriented around this ethos. Their feedback loops (listening to their customers) and iterative releases (frequent launches) make them more fluid, responsive, and relevant than their competitors. The height of this relationship is co-creation, where consumers are engaged to create the product or services themselves.

How can a business evolve through customer feedback?

Walgreens provides a good example of how a business can evolve through customer feedback. From its beginnings as a local Chicago pharmacy more than a century ago, Walgreens became the largest drugstore chain in America. But by 2010, they were yearning to reposition themselves as leaders in wellness. Rethinking what it means to be a community pharmacy in the 21st century, Walgreens invited their customers into the process. Consumers were given tours of Walgreens’s redesigned pharmacy prototypes and asked to share their hopes and fears about their personal health.

Walgreens found that consumers were looking for simple, engaging, everyday ways to take better care of themselves. The company used that information to deliver an experience that reflected their commitment to staying useful to customers—the ”health and daily living” store format, which the company took from concept to in-market pilot in record time. The stores integrated new roles, digital tools, and spaces to help customers live healthier everyday lives. A desk area in front of the pharmacy brings Walgreens pharmacists out from behind the counter so they can consult with patients one on one. Private consultation rooms provide additional space for immunizations, blood pressure readings, and other services. Web pickup services allow customers to shop online, and self-serve touch-screen kiosks let them quickly refill their own prescriptions. Customers also have access to a staff member called a Health Guide, who is equipped with an iPad app loaded with health tips and frequently asked questions. The new store format has been introduced in 20 stores in the Chicago area, and Walgreens is converting all its stores in the Indianapolis market.

Don’t always ask the audience

Being useful doesn’t always mean asking the focus group. It’s fair to say that customers don’t always know what they want. Customers now play an increasingly equal, participatory, and critical role in brand and business. But co-creation should not be accepted as a default solution to every challenge. Even when consumers do know what they want, empowering them to create it might not result in the most impressive solution. Observing consumers is usually a more effective way of discovering unmet or poorly met needs, and can reveal hacked solutions that suggest real opportunities of how to be useful in the world.

Observing consumers can reveal hacked solutions that suggest real opportunities

Let’s look at M-Pesa, whose founders witnessed people in Kenya using pay-as-you-go mobile phone minutes as currency. In response, they launched a branchless banking service that allows customers to transfer money, pay bills, and make withdrawals via their mobile phones. Within two years, it was conducting two million transactions a day, and 66% of Kenyans had used it at least once. Co-creation on its own often leads to small and valuable improvements, but it takes a bigger vision to build an extraordinary business. Anticipation and observation, although riskier, hold out the promise of making yourself truly useful at a higher level.

***

3 Case Studies

Be More Like Apple

Think how you can be useful in areas that are not necessarily in your core but still drive customers to your business.

Apple’s ascendance during the past decade has distinguished it as a company that takes its own point of view into the market and then creates new customer needs (and therefore value) by improving devices that already exist in that market. By combining hardware, software, and services in a unique and useable way, it has built entirely new ecosystems of value from previously nonexistent customer demand.

Take the iPad, for example. Demand for the first-of-its-kind tablet skyrocketed after its launch, selling 300,000 tablets in the U.S. alone within the first 24 hours of sale. Two years later, the iPad continues to dominate the market, accounting for a reported 97% of all online Web traffic coming from tablets.

Be More Like M-Pesa

Look for ways that customers are navigating around obstacles and build a business out of that.

M-Pesa is a branchless banking service that uses mobile technology, and is currently available in Kenya, Afghanistan, and Tanzania. M-Pesa designed for people in rural areas where banking services are
scarce. Its founders observed that Kenyan locals were trading mobile minutes as currency. So they created a service that offers money transfers, bill payments and withdrawals—all through mobile phones. It is also creating adjacent services: M-Health, an agribusiness, and M-Farm which allows farmer co-ops to buy products via SMS and pay via M-Pesa.

Be More Like Zopa

Consider how you can connect your customers directly to one another. And have them create mutual value.

Zopa is the world’s first peer-to-peer money lending service. Addressing head-on the hassle and hidden fees associated with the banking system, it connects borrowers and lenders directly, creating a level of control and customer service unmatched by traditional banks. Zopa reduces lending risks by grouping together borrowers with similar track records and spreading borrowing requests across multiple loaners. The company gained more than 130,000 members within just two years of launch.

This story is part of Wolff Olins’s Game Changers report. Read the rest here.

Source: Fast Company

ART: Cloud Box - Peter Alexander (1966)

Cloud Box, 1966, Peter Alexander. Cast polyester resin. 9 5/8 x 9 5/8 x 9 5/8 in. Collection of Janis Horn and Leonard Feldman, Los Angeles. © Peter Alexander. Photo: Brian Forrest

Cloud Box, 1966, Peter Alexander. Cast polyester resin. 9 5/8 x 9 5/8 x 9 5/8 in. Collection of Janis Horn and Leonard Feldman, Los Angeles. © Peter Alexander. Photo: Brian Forrest

MAT-FAB: 3D Printing: Geek Dad And His 3D Printer Aim To Liberate Legos (Forbes) →

This story appears in the April 23, 2012, issue of Forbes Magazine.

Last year Golan Levin’s son decided to build a car. Aside from the minor inconvenience of being 4 years old, the younger Levin faced an engineering challenge. His Tinkertoys, which he wanted to use for the vehicle’s frame, wouldn’t attach to his K’Nex, the pieces he wanted to use for the wheels.

It took his father, an artist, hacker and professor at Carnegie Mellon, a year to solve that problem. In the process he cracked open a much larger one: In an age when anyone can share, download and create not just digital files but also physical things, thanks to the proliferation of cheap 3-D printers, are companies at risk of losing control of the objects they sell?

In March Levin and his former ­student Shawn Sims released a set of digital blueprints that a 3-D printer can use to create more than 45 plastic objects, each of which provides the missing interface between pieces from toy construction sets. They call it the Free Universal Construction Kit. The tens of thousands of consumers who now own devices such as MakerBot’s $1,100 Thing-O-Matic can download those files and immediately print a plastic piece that connects their Lego bricks to their Fischertechnik girders, their Krinkles to their Duplos, or half a dozen other formerly incompatible sets of modular plastic blocks, sticks and gears.

One blog called it the “ultimate nerd dad triumph.” But as the proj­ect’s unprintable acronym implies, Levin and Sims are out to raise hackles—particularly those of intellectual property lawyers. “This isn’t a product. It’s a provocation,” says Levin. “We should be free to invent without having to worry about infringement, royalties, going to jail or being sued and bullied by large industries. We don’t want to see what happened in music and film play out in the area of shapes.”

A matrix of Levin’s and Sims’ adapters for every supported construction set. (Click to enlarge)

Levin and Sims didn’t just make near replicas of the commercial toys, they used a measurement tool called an optical comparator to copy the toys’ dimensions to within 3 microns. And then they published those models on the Web. “Our lawyers were a bit concerned,” ­admits Levin, so much so that the pair initially planned to release the project anonymously.

Levin counts himself part ofF.A.T. Lab, a hacktivist collective, and he wouldn’t be the first of its members to get into trouble. One of them had his PCs confiscated by the Secret Service last summer after installing software on Apple store computers that secretly took photos of shoppers’ faces.

Levin and Sims have been more careful. The patents on all the toys ­integrated in their kit expired years ago. But a copyright lasts many decades longer than a patent, and that’s the cudgel lawyers are using against downloadable objects. In June of last year Paramount sent a cease-and-desist notice to the designer of a 3-D printable cube that resembled the alien technology from the film Super 8. In December the company Games Workshop used copyright takedown notices to pressure the 3-D printing site Thingiverse into removing fan-uploaded ­designs for 3-D printable figurines from the game Warhammer.

Just a month later the Swedish copyright-flouting site the Pirate Bay began devoting a section to downloadable objects. One file, for instance, ­allows users to make 3-D prints of the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta. The mustachioed mask is the favorite symbol of the hacker group Anonymous, whose anticorporate members would much rather pirate the disguise than allow Time Warner, which owns the copyright, to profit from its sale.

A Lego spokesperson says the company has no problem with Levin and Sims’ work but is keeping an eye out for printed objects that infringe on its brand. Neither Hasbro nor any of the smaller companies that sell construction toys responded to requests for comment. So far the pair haven’t ­received a cease-and-desist letter.

As long as Levin and Sims stick with functional objects rather than aesthetic ones, they should be able to steer clear of copyright and trademark law, says Michael Weinberg, a lawyer with the nonprofit Public Knowledge who advised on the project. “You probably can’t stamp the name Lego on them, but if you don’t it’s hard to imagine what rights the companies could assert,” he says. “The real lesson is the vast ­majority of physical things aren’t protected by intellectual property law.”

Even so, Levin calls his project a “shot across the bow” of any company that wants to limit and control how their physical designs are copied, remixed or improved in the future. “Yes, it’s just a toy. But it’s also a harbinger of what’s to come. Things are going to get complicated.”

Source: Forbes | http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/04/05/how-a-geek-dad-and-his-3d-printer-aim-to-liberate-legos/

(via code-collective)