A number of cities across the world have been organizing free public events, called OpenHouse.The events allow behind-the-scenes access to over 100’s of great sites for one select weekend in a given city. You have the opportunity to see private houses, public structures and secret spaces that are otherwise closed to the public. And it is all FREE!
In Chicago, we just had our first OpenHouseChicago and it was great fun to experience a roof-top farm and discuss it with the farmer, see the interior of a private Frank Lloyd Wright designed home, and peek in on the sacred spots of an old Church. But we missed hundreds of other cool spots, so we plan to go next year too.
OpenHouse takes place in a number of cities, so check out if your city sponsors it – it is well worth it.
Here is information for openhousechicago to find out about the weekend in 2012. You can volunteer too!
Design is a difficult thing to learn – sometimes it seems like people either have the skill or they don’t. But that is not true. There are a lot of things to teach about design as an effort of problem-solving. If you give kids a problem to solve, like to build a structure with 30 playing cards, you can see many results and then you can redo the project with different limitations.
And soon the students will be learning new ways of solving problems and that is exactly what design is about. It is not about drawing well or being an excellent craftsperson, but it is about figuring out how to make things better – using words, or paper or any other materials. Check out this article about design education here.
This wall seems to be nervous…when you approach it, it starts to jump and move! Designed by an architecture firm in New York called nARCHITECTS, the wall is made of foam and a bunch of electronic sensors that can tell when someone is near it. Once it senses you, it causes the foam to move, like it is a nervous person, who does not want to get touched.
See the video of the wall in action here.
We are not sure when you want to have this kind of wall in your house, except as a kind of conversation piece – but it sure looks like fun. More fun than a barrel of monkeys or a pit of plastic balls – maybe equally as fun as a trampoline.
How do they work? Or do they work at all? Try to go upstairs…or try to go downstairs. Or heck, try to get off of the stairs!
Penrose stairs are named after a father and son who have the last name of Penrose. (The stairs have nothing else to do with pens or flowers.) It was designed by them as an impossible staircase, or an endless staircase. Luckily for them, artist M.C. Escher learned of their drawing and he went on to draw a famous version of the staircase. A fun video that illustrates the Penrose stairs is here.
It is pretty clever to come up with an impossible structure. A building with inside walls on the outside maybe?
This house is not really a seesaw, it is firmly planted in the earth. Well, at least half of it is.When a structure hangs out without anything supporting it, it is called a cantilever. This house in Surrey England is an example of CANTILEVER EXTREME! And the story is that you can rent it and see what it is like to live in it! This video has the architect, a man from the Netherlands named Winy Maas, describing why he created this design. We want to visit and see if we eat too much and walk in the living room, if it might fall over. Hopefully not.
