Oh Beehive: With all eyes on Milan during the Salone del Mobile this week, the city will only get two weeks’ respite before the next extravaganza, Expo 2015, begins on May 1st. The international event, which has the theme of “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” with a masterplan by Stefano Boeri, Richard Burdett, Mark Rylander, and Herzog and de Meuron (albeit not without frisson) also includes pavilions by Foster + Partners, H&P Architects and Daniel Libeskind. Yesterday saw the completion of the first pavilion, by English artist Wolfgang Buttress (pictured above) in collaboration with designer and engineer Tristan Simmonds and architecture firm BDP. Inspired by the honeybee, its hexagonal structure explodes outward — those Brits really know how to do lenticular pavilions — and is illuminated by LEDs.
The Salad Days of Greenwashing: Noting the recent, kudzu-like encroachment of greenspace as a kind of Miracle-Gro for London development, Olly Wainwright dismisses “Potemkin planting” as “garnish [that can] mask a multitude of sins.” The proposed Garden Bridge and Viñoly’s “Walkie-Talkie” building are the main offenders, but the Guardian critic disperses his herbicide all over London Town.
Smart Dystopia: Rem Koolhaas, longtime critic of smart cities and homes, offers a forbidding warning: “Soon, your house could betray you.” With the maker of Roomba designing an automated lawnmower, Amazon’s IRL one-click reorder button, and IKEA launching a line of furniture that wirelessly charges our phones (expanding rapidly to boot), Rem might just be right.
L: CCTV Headquarters via WeChat; R: “Turn to the Future” by Shin Kuo
WeChat is the Best Way to Get into OMA’s Pants: In a manner of speaking, of course: ArchDaily recently shared a photo gallery that offers a rare glimpse inside the CCTV Headquarters.
A Residential High-Rise with an Interesting Twist: Reportedly inspired by the class divide depicted in Neill Blomkamp films, industrial designer Shin Kuo has proposed a concept for an apartment building in which the units circulate from top to bottom, corkscrew-style, at regular intervals. It’s something like a Tricennial Tower that you might actually, you know, live in.
CGI-cago and Other Cities: Real and digital space colliding in a stunning wireframe supernova, check out this 1984 film by SOM that imagines a computer-generated versions of nine cities. The 16mm film was uncovered by illustrator Peter C. Little. (Via Curbed Chicago)
Rendering at top © Wolfgang Buttress, via The Journal of Wild Culture