DESIGN: The World's First Living Buildings by International Living Future Institute

This video about “living buildings” reminds me of the lower income apartment building called Hunderwasser Haus that I visited in Vienna. Designed by Austrian artist Hunderwasser, it features sloping floors, undulating walls, and “tree tenants”—trees planted inside the building that grow out through windows and walls.  It was the artist’s intent to design the building in harmony with nature.

The International Living Future Institute is taking a significantly more scientific approach to creating buildings integrated with nature. For their Living Buildings work, they have won the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Institute’s annual “The Buckminster Fuller Challenge,” which awards one winner $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

Says International Living Future Institute board member Dennis J. Wilde, “Much of the change that we now need to navigate is a process of changing our framing stories. One of the most important and one of the powerful ways of changing our framing stories is through demonstrations. Showing people what’s possible and that’s exactly what you’re engaged in with the Living Buildings work.”

DESIGN: Inspiration for the Logo-less

(C) 2010 Thomas V Hartmann (Click to view full-size)

I’m wandering off of my patch a bit, I know, but logo design has been on my mind lately. Hardly a day goes by, it seems, when I don’t find myself coveting the clever abstraction on someone’s business card or filled with envy over the cool symbol or mascot they use as their Twitter avatar.

When I made my debut in the Twitterverse, I struggled over what I could use to replace that newbie’s egg. I didn’t have a logo (my business cards were the templated variety from MOO, and I wasn’t crazy about using a photo of myself as my avatar (alas, like many other photographers I am camera-shy). I could have cooked up a simple type treatment of my initials, but I didn’t want people to mistake me for the element Thorium, and another photographer, Tomas Van Houtryve of VII (@TomasVH), was already using a simple, dignified “TVH”.

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MUSIC: 'There She Goes Again,' and Again

Electric Youth

The Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again” is about addiction / prostitution / dependency of some kind, or as Lou Reed says—and only he knows—“The story of lost love in America.” The La’s did their version, which is significantly more literal in its reference to heroin. And there have been many, many covers. But College (featuring Electric Youth) borrows the line, “There she goes again,” for their song, “She Never Came Back,” in what just might finally end the cycle of addiction…

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MUSIC: Carrie Manolakos' 'Creep' Video Goes Viral

We’re a bit late in sharing this, but if you haven’t already seen Carrie Manolakos’ ridiculous (in the best way) cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” watch it. Now.

Recorded live during her recent set at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Manolakos breathes new life into the song and reminds us what made it great in the first place, and folks are taking notice.

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DESIGN: Debbie Millman's 'Look Both Ways' at Chicago Design Museum

(Image via Chicago Design Museum)

Debbie Millman—author, designer, AIGA President Emeritus, President of the design devision at Sterling Brands, host of the Design Matters podcast, Chair of the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts, and past featured stated artist—will show her work, Look Both Ways, at the Chicago Design Museum, June 1-30.

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