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troca de e-mails entre Charles Jencks e Deyan Sudjic (Revista Prospect) sobre arquitetura iconográfica

Segundo o site metade da população mundial, cerca de 3 bilhões de pessoas em seis continentes, vive ou trabalha em edificações construídas com terra. Além das frases de efeito, o site tem informações muito boas e abrangentes.

Our opposable thumbs got us into this mess, and they can help get us out, says futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling:


Sempre bom dar uma lida na Sierra Magazine, especialmente neste número sobre o futuro da tecnologia:

... Twentieth-century design is over now. Anything can look like anything now. You can put a pixel of any color anywhere you like on a screen, you can put a precise dot of ink anywhere on any paper, you can stuff any amount of functionality into chips. The limits aren't to be found in the technology any more. The limits are behind your own eyes, people. They are limits of habit, things you've accepted, things you've been told, realities you're ignoring. Stop being afraid. Wake up. It's yours if you want it. It's yours if you're bold enough.

Are you bold enough? I can't tell you that. That's beyond my ability to judge. You have to tell me that.

I take designers with complete and utter seriousness. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the people who design the technical infrastructure of daily life are placed to become the most powerful and influential social group in the world. Because you are the people who are loose enough to understand the full scale of the potential, but together enough to do something practical about it in real life.

You only feel tangential, because you're used to living under the floorboards of art, commerce and engineering. But the twentieth century's house has burned down, and the space beneath the floorboards is huge. It's a tremendous, vast, creative space.

You have no real rivals. Politics are sterile. Banks are in a frenzy. Capitalists don't know what to tell you to do. Venture capital is a mob scene. The military can't take casualties. Religion is a joke. Scientists are losing government patronage and going broke. The fine arts certainly aren't gonna stop you. Engineers are obsessed with technical sweetness, they despise the end user and don't understand consumer trends. But designers: you're right in a booming market, and you have the public eye. You're without rivals; there's no one else on the public stage. This could be your profession's greatest, most golden moment. Ever! Ever.

Or maybe not. You tell me. I've said enough now, and we're out of time. Thanks for your attention...

STERLING, Bruce. Speech at Industrial Designers Society of America national conference Chicago: IDSA, July 17, 1999

Viridian Note 00445: Green Design Debacles

Key concepts: spectacular green design failures,inherent difficulties of real-world engineering, architecture, and design, anti-utopian pragmatism, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), AM/FM (Actual Machines/Fantastic Magic), Seattle Civic Center and Justice Center, attempting to get oil from offal

Attention Conservation Notice: Just because green technology is a swell idea doesn't mean that it's easy, or even that it works at all.

Ser criativo é uma coisa. Ser inovativo é outra. Ser ao mesmo tempo ingênuo é quase impossível. A Radial Timber Australia descobriu a pólvora. Foi inovativa, criativa e ingênua empregando uma técnica antiga para mudar o paradigma de produção de madeira para construção.

Em termos de "cortes" de madeira, as técnicas tradicionais tentam fazer perfis de seção retangular a partir de troncos de seção circular. Esses "cortes", além do "trabalho" geométrico, que resulta em excesso de sobras, requerem secagens cuidadosas e tratamentos especiais. Para impedir, por exemplo, as fibras da madeira de, devido à tensão residual, tentarem voltar à sua configuração original, na forma de farpas encurvadas, que se soltam da madeira em forma de paralelepípedo. Para impedir rachaduras. Para impedir o empenamento da peça cortada, que embora mantendo a seção retangular, deixa de ser reta.

Por outro lado o corte radial, corta o tronco em fatias, assim como se divide uma pizza. A madeira cortada de forma radial empena muito menos e aproveita muito mais o tronco.