Rotterdam Cube Houses as Stayokay Hostel

From Stayokay, the famous Kubuswoningen, designed by Dutch architect Piet Blom in the 1980's, are now a hotel. In December 2009 the Cube Houses became the most modern of Rotterdam's listed buildings. The new Stayokay Rotterdam hostel officially opened March 24th.

from M.Claiborne

The Perfect Machine by Lance Letscher



Cubes and collage are the name of the game, or rather, the Perfect Machine, as far as Lance Letscher is concerned. Themes of technology, locomotion and the creative impulse fuel the latest collages and sculptures by this artist who combines record covers, pages from books and other paper cast-offs into colourful pieces of art. Guns, walking feet and a festive looking cycle are among the collaged items that take their place among Letscher's recent work.

Artist: Lance Letscher
+ dbermangallery.com

From M.Claiborne

Bowery FMX Bike by Giant

Via @uncrate, cross between a traditional track racer and a BMX bike, the Giant Bowery FMX Bike is a mix of the old and the new. "It features a lightweight ALUXX aluminum frame, a BMX custom 'no rail' saddle, a CroMo 3-piece tubular crankset, alloy high-rise handlebars, and the ability to go fixie or freewheel."

From M.Claiborne

3-D Printing Whole Buildings in Stone...in Space: This Printer Rocks

In Pisa, Italy, mad genius Enrico Dini is building sandcastles on the moon. His giant 3-D printer is the first of its kind with the potential to print whole buildings, and it makes them out of solid rock, cutting down a thousand-year-long process into a few minutes. It uses sand, but someday it'll use moon dust.

The machine, called D-Shape, sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles--its resolution is about 25 dpi, not bad for printing on this scale. The glue binds the sand into solid rock, which builds up, layer after layer, into a sculpture, or a piece of furniture or, someday, into a cathedral. "What I really want to do is to use the machine to complete the Sagrada Familia," Dini says. Okay, it seems a little crazy, but not much.

Dini claims the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment. But its chief selling point may simply be that it makes creating Gaudiesque, curvy structures simple.

It's not enough for D-Shape to be the missing link between the tiny 3-D printers of today, which never really caught on beyond gimmicky jewelry and model-making, and bigger printers capable of making full-size structures. No, Dini wants the moon. As part of the European Space Agency's Aurora program, he's talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space, and Norman Foster to modify D-Shape to build with moon dust. Voila: instant moonbase.

By Ian Kempton

Shape-shifting polymer pulls off amazing memory tricks

CALL it the yoga polymer: Nafion, a material used in some fuel cells, has an unrivalled memory for contortions.

Tao Xie at General Motors in Warren, Michigan, has twisted and stretched a Nafion strip into three distinct shapes, and found that it will revert to each shape at the appropriate temperature.

Nafion becomes softer as it is heated. At 140 °C Xie stretched it into a particular shape, which was locked in the polymer's "memory" as it cooled to 107 °C and stiffened. Stretching and cooling it twice more allowed two other shapes to be memorised, so that when heated to the appropriate temperature the Nafion formed the corresponding shape (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08863).

Previously the best shape-memory polymers were able to remember only two shapes.

By Ian Kempton

The Cloud (By Emily Guthrie)

Funky Chair

Another wacky clear chair. Ron Arad calls it the "Well transparent Chair." It's well strange and probably well expensive too. Made from bent plastic sheets; the sitting surface gives a bit so it's probably not as uncomfortable as it looks.

-Rob Todd