We donated $250 to this brilliant cause… but it also guarantees we can grab Cameron Sinclair for a few minutes if funded. We’ve been trying to nail him down for an interview for months now but he may be even be harder to catch up with than Obama. Here’s hoping he will do an interview for Archiculture while he is in New York in a couple weeks.

via: Discovery News - A Traffic Cop For Satellites

Stumbling around today on the internets and found some beautiful imagery of our solar system. Thought I would share them on this Tuesday morning to help inspire everyone after the long holiday weekend.

more via here

ps. how am i posting via wireless on a bus? ill never understand that

“This concept master plan aspires to indicate, through its design strategies, a future that is positive and hopeful in all aspects. Striving to maximize social engagement, the plan creates an urban structure that promotes walking and healthy activities in its multitude of parks, paths and trails. The development will also preserve existing stream and wetland communities, returning clean, healthy water to the ecosystem at equal rates and in the same patterns of the undeveloped site through the use of integrated strategies. The overall goal is to make Liuzhou’s water cleaner, to make its air fresher, and to make its people happier. Befitting its designation as a demonstration project, the plan demonstrates what is possible in Liuzhou, in China, and in communities around the globe. The project serves as a challenge to seek excellence in placemaking that will enable Liuzhou’s children to live and work in concert with a world full of potential and opportunity.” McDonough + Partners

“Talk about upcycling — this tiny barbeque grill is made from a single Altoids Sours tin, two salvaged computer fan guards and a handful of nuts and screws, and it’s big enough to handle a wiener or a hamburger patty! Instructables user vmspionage claims that he (or she) got the inspiration from the eBq, which employs the larger Altoids mints tin, but in the name of progress vmspionage has made that original grill look like a 1980s computer by comparison.

Read more: The ‘Altoids Sours’ BBQ Grill Is Curiously Awesome! | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World”

a friend’s industrial design work … alvin aronson (object group)

his personal work is above, his day job is below

DBA

We would like to help spread the word of a great new book by our friend and Archiculture collaborator Matt Dellinger. He has been working on the story for Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway (or available here) in earnest for the past few years and now has it ready to be shared with the world. My copy will be arriving this week but I urge anyone with an interest in City Planning or Urban Design to definitely pick this book up. Also, if you like to read great small-town, human interest stories with brilliant illustrations of how large scale planning can effect middle America then be sure to grab this book. Having read segments in the past, Matt has an uncanny ability to thread many dynamic and personal tales of those along the proposed highway into a singular masterful piece. Best of luck to Matt!

Further details:

Interstate 69 is an enlightening journey through the heart of America. With this epic tale of one vast and controversial road project, Matt Dellinger brings to life the country’s complex political, social, and economic landscape.

The 1,400-mile extension of I-69 south from Indianapolis, if completed, will connect Canada to Mexico through Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. This so-called “NAFTA Highway” has been in development for two decades, and while segments are under construction today, others may never be built. Eagerly anticipated by many as an economic Godsend, I-69 has also been opposed by environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization.

Part history, part travelogue, *Interstate 69* reveals the surprising story of how this extraordinary undertaking began, introduces us to the array of individuals who have worked tirelessly for years to build the road—or to stop it—and guides us through the many places the highway would transform forever: from sprawling cities like Indianapolis, Houston, and Memphis, to the small rural towns of the Midwestern rust belt, the Mississippi Delta, and South Texas.

In an era when bridges fall, levies fail, and states lease their toll roads to foreign-owned corporations, Americans are realizing the central importance of infrastructure, how it affects our standard of living and quality of life, and how it determines which places prosper and which places fade. This book vividly illustrates that the story of America is indeed the story of transportation—and that story continues.

Matt Dellinger connects these dots with an absorbingly human, on-the-ground examination of our country’s struggle with development. Interstate 69 captures the hopes, dreams, and fears surrounding what we build and what we leave behind.

Reviews:

“A great journey, with sharp reporting and fine writing and a genuine feel for an America we don’t often notice. With Dellinger at the wheel, the saga of the unfinished interstate becomes a wonderful tale.”
—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

“A rollicking dispatch from the heartland as great plans are laid for a mega-highway just at the moment when America runs out of gas. Matt Dellinger is a first-rate reporter and an agile portraitist who gives us a rare look at the loony shenanigans that shape our landscape and our society.”
—James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency

“Interstate 69 is not just about highways. It’s about Americans deciding on their future. The politics and arguments about this one proposed highway may or may not lead us somewhere—but like any great journey, it’s the trip that’s the thing.”
—Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

“From the first page Matt Dellinger draws a compellingly written narrative that is not only hard to put down but is sweeping in its context. America’s history, and its future, breathes in these pages.”
—Ken Auletta, author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

“Interstate 69 is about a road that doesn’t exist, and probably never will, and we learn anew about small town America whose fortunes ebbed and flowed with the advent of the superhighway. Dellinger has given us a new way to understand—and enjoy—our history.”
—Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

“Whether I-69 is ever built or not, it has provided Matt Dellinger a good route into the middle of our country, a fascinating and often-neglected place. His story of an imagined road, its boosters and its discontents speaks eloquently of the deep changes shaking up America today. This is an affectionate, hard-won, and skillfully-made book, filled with the pleasures of original discovery.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains and On the Rez

For more info follow Matt on Twitter @MattDellinger and join him on Facebook to hear of local speaking engagements.

“65 years ago today, the head of the German military garrison in Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, surrendered to Allied forces after a week of street battles, thus cementing what came to be known as the Liberation of Paris.

LIFE photographer Ralph Morse was on the scene to capture not only the tension between the German and Allied forces, but also the extraordinary events that followed when Paris was free once again.” - Huffington Post

See more of Ralph Morse’s recently published unreleased photos on LIFE.

It’ll be interesting to see where this discussion goes in an economically starved city looking for any form of new development.

“You can see in the renderings above how each side envisions the future of the skyline. In Vornado’s, each tower is clearly visible in all its illuminated splendor. Co-existence, hooray! But in the Empire State Building’s, it’s like 15 Penn Plaza has obliviously and obnoxiously lumbered in front of the Empire State Building while you were taking a photo. “Um, excuse me, sir — sir? — you are right in our way.” - NYmag

Thanks for the tip Sam.