Imagined Landscapes from Kilograph on Vimeo.
Los Angeles creative agency Kilograph has released Imagined Landscapes, an immersive VR experience that combines unrealized work by late American architect Michael Graves and watercolor painting. Set in Barranco de Veneguera, a resort designed for the Canary Islands in 1999, Imagined Landscapes is an interactive VR environment that users can "paint" in real time by pinching their fingers together to activate a paint brush. "Architecture is filled with works that speak to people on an impressionistic level," said Kilograph CEO Keely Colcleugh in a press release. "Imagined Landscapes was our attempt to bring this idea into VR, turning an illustrated past into a novel way for someone to engage with a design.” Imagined Landscapes is available for download at kilograph.com. [Kilograph]
Researchers from MIT have developed a method to produce cement without carbon emissions. In a recently published paper, material science professor Yet-Ming Chiang argues that the conventional process of heating limestone, sand, and clay by burning coal—which emits the dangerous greenhouse gases—can be replaced with an electrochemical process. While the team has proven the success of this new method in the lab, Chiang concedes that the technology is not ready for industrial applications. [MIT]
The Carbon Leadership Forum has launched the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator tool, an open source tool for architects, engineers, owners, construction companies, building material suppliers, and policymakers to compare and reduce embodied carbon emissions from construction materials. [ARCHITECT]
Apple reopened its New York City flagship store on Fifth Avenue following a restoration by longstanding design collaborators Foster + Partners. The team installed nine mirrored "skylense" seats around the store's iconic glass cube entrance that reflect the surrounding architecture and feature a circulatory cooling system that absorbs solar energy and offers frost protection. In the grand hall, Foster + Partners replaced the existing ceiling with a backlit 3D curved fabric that combines daylight and electric lighting. “Inspired by the original vision of the sunken open-air plaza, we wanted to completely dematerialize the roof of the store and flood the interior space with daylight," explains Foster + Partners head of studio Stefan Behling in a press release. "The Skylenses literally bring the skies underground and the innovative tunable white light ceiling allows us to match the exact wavelengths of sunlight at different times of day, blurring the boundary between inside and outside.” [Apple]
