Houston, Texas; Civic Pride; Futuristic Architecture; and Admiral Horatio Nelson

"Houston's Trafalgar Square? Big name architects vie to design futuristic METRO Central Station"
Tyler Rudick, Rate Them Yourself, CultureMap Houston (January 27, 2012)

"Houston METRO and the Downtown District revealed the finalists in a design competition for Central Station — a new light rail transfer hub that will be built on Main between Capitol and Rusk at the intersection of the upcoming East End and Southeast lines.

"Two stops originally planned for the 600 and 800 blocks of Main were consolidated to create Central Station, which will sit at the center of a busy new transfer area at the heart of METRO's light rail system. For such a prominent location, architects plan to give the new station a landmark treatment.

"A panel of Houston leaders including deans Patricia Oliver and Sarah Whiting of the University of Houston and Rice University architecture schools, respectively, pared down a list of nearly 70 internationally-recognized firms to five high-profile candidates...."

There's a slide show with the article that shows the five proposals. One of them, Denari Architects', is a fairly bright shade of red. That one would definitely stand out. The others aren't quite so colorful: either the finished product is intended to be a sort of pale gray/white, or that's the way architects' renderings are done these days.


(SHoP Architects, via CultureMap Houston, used w/o permission)
This, in the Lemming's opinion, is the most emphatically "futuristic" of the lot. Looks pretty cool, and might be practical.

A list of the five entrants:

• Mark Wamble of Interloop Architecture, Houston
• Paul Lewis of Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects, New York
• Neil Denari of Neil M. Denari Architects, Los Angeles
• Chris Sharples of SHoP Architects, New York
• Craig Dykers of Snøhetta, New York and Oslo

What's With "Trafalgar Square?"

That reference to Trafalgar Square gets explained about two thirds of the way through the article:

"...'Central Station will be the centerpiece of an area where people in the city collect,' he said, referencing London's Trafalgar Square and New York's Washington Square Park. 'Areas like this are often marked with an architectural element, something that celebrates the space.'..."

They could just as well have used Union Station (Washington D.C.), Union Station (Kansas City), or Union Station (Chicago), as a comparison. "Trafalgar Square" is a tad more distinctive, though, and doesn't take any more syllables to say: although it's three letters longer.

"Trafalgar Square" in the headline had the Lemming wondering if Houston planned to put a whacking great column with the statue of some admiral on top, and that's almost another topic.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Javits Center: Green, Then Gone"
  (January 25, 2012)
• "A 21st Century Look at 19th Century Visions of the 20th Century"
  (January 4, 2012)
• "New York City, Stray Cats, Shag, and Sense"
  (December 28, 2011)
• "Ohio City Dusting Off 1978 Restoration Plan"
  (December 21, 2011)
• "Minneapolis Skyways: Warm Winter Walking"
  (November 9, 2011)

Geodesic Domes are Back: In Hollywood Trees

"Hollywood Domes: L.A. Accessorizes With Geodesic Tree Houses"
Wired Magazine (November 19, 2009)

"Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes have reached new heights: as tree houses for the rich and famous. Arboreal architect Dustin Feider is installing them all over the Los Angeles area. Producer and writer Mark Levin has two in his backyard. The LA County Museum of Art has exhibited one. And the nest shown here belongs to Doors guitarist Robby Kreiger...."


(from Brent Humphreys, via Wired Magazine, used w/o permission)

Looks like the geodesic dome is cool again. I remember, back in the sixties, if memory serves, when dome homes were going to be the Next Big Thing in domestic architecture. There's one northeast of the small central Minnesota town I live in, and another off the Interstate between here and Fargo, North Dakota.

After being a prominent feature in 'house of the future' articles and science fiction stories, people noticed something about dome homes. Cool as a geodesic dome looks, and efficient as it is in encompassing a given volume with the least materials, that round shape is hard to divide into rooms. Rooms that people can use easily, anyway.

For applications like radomes, auditoriums, railroad roundhouses, and other buildings where you want a building that's essentially one huge room: geodesic domes are great. And, as Disney World Florida demonstrated: they look really cool.

I think the elite of Los Angeles have found a splendid new way to use Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome. The spherical shape and recurring angles are, I think, a fine aesthetic match for the shape of many urban trees.

And, as usual with a design using Fuller's geoids, they look cool.

More about Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes:

• "Geodesic Dome History - Invention of the Geodesic Dome"
  The Great Idea Finder

The Sentient Cities are Coming: But First, Park Benches With Attitude

"Sentient cities may answer back"
BBC (October 16, 2009)

"It may look like an ordinary rubbish bin, but don't let that fool you. Throw an aluminium can in here and you'd be none the wiser, but try chucking a plastic bottle away, and with an angry buzz it will throw it back out at you, fans whirring to rid itself of the wrong kind of rubbish.

"This is the 'smart trash can', part of the 'Toward the Sentient City' exhibition in New York, which explores how our lives might change when we can embed computers in anything and everything. ..."

Then there's the bench, that lets people know if they've sat on it too long. (I'm not making this up.)


(from BBC, used w/o permission)
"Among 'smart' technologies on show at the Sentient Cities exhibition was a bench that tips people off if they sit too long"

The BBC article's about "five projects commissioned for the exhibition by the Architectural League of New York." The others include Trash Track (MIT), Amphibious Architecture (New York and Columbia universities) and Natural Fuse (Usman Haque).

Judging from previous predictions of "The Future," I'd be moderately surprised if any of these projects foreshadowed exactly what cities will be like fifty to a hundred years from now.

The idea of trash cans that can tell who's trashing recyclables, and park benches with attitude, though, seem to be part of a trend that's driving 'privacy' advocates bonkers.

I live in a small town, and have lived in both rural and metropolitan areas. There's something to the joke about small towns: 'If you've forgotten what you've done today, ask someone: they'll know.'

It's not so much that small towns lack privacy - we've got lots of that. It's why we have shades on our windows. (But they've got to be down: FOXNews October 22, 2009.)

What smart trash cans and benches may do is remove another layer of the anonymity city folks have enjoyed for so long. Security cameras made it possible to tell who took extra newspapers from the vending machine, blew through the toll booth, or couldn't be bothered with a stop light.

Such oppression!

And now, They are likely to be watching to see who recycles and who doesn't.

Me? I'm hopelessly stodgy: so I'm not quite so worried about these new threats to 'privacy.'

And, I think the technology's pretty cool.

Really Cool Ideas for 'the Bathroom of the Future' - Some Might Actually Work

"Bathrooms of the Future"
home-designing.com (September 26, 2009)

"Ever wonder how tomorrow’s bathrooms would look like? Will they be radically different from the ones we have today? What technologies would these futuristic bathrooms incorporate?

Here are some concepts that could give you some idea about what is in store...."

"...Here is another concept by designer Young Sang Eun that lays emphasis on hygiene. What is special about this design is that on one side it features a urinal and the other a sit-down commode. With the flip of a switch the design is capable of swiveling around. It self-sanitizes using Steam and UV. No more dirty toilet seats...."

Okay: That design looks simple enough, mechanically, to be practical. And the idea of sterilizing a toilet's surfaces with steam and ultraviolet radiation is a good one: I've cleaned enough toilets to understand how easily micro-critters grow there.

The only down side I see to Young Sang Eun's design is the steam and the UV. To actually sterilize a surface, that steam would have to be real steam: water at or above the boiling point. "Live steam" is another name. And it seems to me that the jolt of UV radiation necessary would be, well, noticeable.

It's not the power bills I'm concerned about. There'd have to be really good fail-safes on the 'cleaning' cycle. Think about jets of steam and lethal radiation cutting in, when you're using that toilet.

Designer Jang Woo-seok's idea (there's a pretty good photo and diagram in the post) of channeling waste water from the sink into the toilet tank has merit - although I think you'd either need a really good filter, to keep hair, dirt, and miscellaneous sediment from collecting in the toilet tank. Still, it's a good idea. Even if water doesn't "become a precious commodity in the future." My household is in the income bracket where the amount of water we use makes a difference. Municipal water's cheap, here in central Minnesota: but it's not free.

Then, there's the "Phyto-Purification Bathroom" - a great idea, for city folks. The idea of taking a shower on an indoor analog of a sandy beach, complete with rushes, must seem idyllic. The photo's rather attractive, by the way. As I wrote earlier, though, I live in central Minnesota. I spent quite a few summer on and near sandy beaches and stands of rushes. They look great, they're fun to be around: and I really wouldn't want to take a shower in one. Those little 'ecosystems' are simply teeming with life - quite few examples of which would just love to take up residence on (and, in some cases, in) my body. Thanks, but no thanks.

Related posts:

• " 'The future ain't what it used to be.' Probably Just as Well"
  (August 30, 2009)
• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (August 25, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Groundbreaking at Spaceport America: World's First Purpose-Built Commercial Spaceport"
  (June 20, 2009)
• " 'House of the Future' - Another One, this Time in Brussels"
  (June 7, 2008)
• "Cities of the Will be that Was"
  (June 22, 2009)

"The future ain't what it used to be." Probably Just as Well

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."
George Burns, US actor & comedian (1896 - 1996)
The Quotations Page

"The future ain't what it used to be."
Yogi Berra, US baseball player, coach, & manager (1925 - )
The Quotations Page

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, 200 A.D.[!], Roman Emperor, A.D. 161-180 (121 AD - 180 AD)
The Quotations Page

Since I was born during the Truman administration, I've been living in 'The Future' for a couple of decades now. We still don't have flying cars or atomic toothbrushes: but we do have the Web, blogs, and hundreds of cable television channels. And people are still the same maddeningly obtuse, refreshingly insightful, energetic, lazy, creative and dull lot they've been all my life.

I enjoyed reading those quips by George Burns and Yogi Berra. They both made good points. I think Marcus Aurelius Antoninus has a good point too. I've met people, off and on, over the years who seemed quite convinced that Terrible Things would make The Future unbearable. That's been a somewhat fashionable point of view for quite some time now.

Sure, we've got problems. But that's nothing new. Plato wrote about Socrates' concerns about a dangerous new information technology, a plague swept the Roman Empire while Marcus Aurelius was Emperor, and a thousand years ago half of my ancestors were enduring raids from the other half.

And yet, we're still here.

I don't think I'm complacent about what hasn't happened yet: but I don't think getting jittery makes sense, either.

Related posts:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (August 25, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Groundbreaking at Spaceport America: World's First Purpose-Built Commercial Spaceport"
  (June 20, 2009)
• " 'House of the Future' - Another One, this Time in Brussels"
  (June 7, 2008)
• "Cities of the Will be that Was"
  (June 22, 2009)

High-Fashion Frog

"mai hat, is sexy, no?"
I Can Has Cheezburger? (November 12, 2007)

That's all the text you'll see in this post: the content is a photo of a frog, on bricks (?), wearing a snail.

That's right: wearing a snail. That is not a typo.

Actually, it's more attractive than some of the high fashion I've seen lately.

Related posts:

• "More High Fashion: Blindfolds on the Models?!"
  (August 1, 2009)
• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Sustainable High Fashion?"
  (March 17, 2009)

---

A tip of the hat to irish_brigid, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this.

Tokyo Motor Show, 2007: Cars of the Future

Tokyo Motor show, October, 2007:

"Futuristic Japanese Cars"

diagonaluk, YouTube (December 18, 2008)
video, 1:27

The track record for predictions about The Future isn't all that good. On the other hand, many of these vehicles seem to be practical for handling high-volume, low-speed city traffic.

The vehicle that's two micro cars in one mini-car strikes me as just plain strange, though. But, who knows: that may be the Volkswagon bug of 2085.

Related post:

• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)

Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s

A PATHETONE WEEKLY newsreel from the 1930s:

"1930s Futuristic Fashion Predictions"

lamaladietropicale, YouTube (March 11, 2009)
video, 1:37

Don't laugh. Somebody will probably be reading and viewing our predictions, somewhere around 2085.

Actually, this bit of futurism wasn't entirely off the mark. Skirts haven't disappeared entirely, but women in western countries often wear pants: which is simple common sense in Minnesota winters. We also have portable radios and telephones these days: quite often worn on the belt.

Related post:

• "Tokyo Motor Show, 2007: Cars of the Future"
  (June 26, 2009)

Cities of the Will be that Was

"Future City"
Tales of Future Past

"This painting by Frank R. Paul's of a city of the future and is pretty typical of such predictions. The city is a massive pile of steel, plastic and glass put together in a way that not only has no past, but actively rejects it. It is a place of heroic technology with skyscrapers the size of whole districts, roof-top aerodromes, wide pedestrian boulevards, and metal roadways strangely devoid of traffic. There are even urban space launch pads where giant rockets are winched upright before blasting off to the heavens. Noise regulations, Shmoise regulations.

"The iconic image of the future is the city. Think about it. In how many films have directors established the fact that we're in the future by conjuring up some landscape of incredible buildings with air cars whizzing about like semi-regulated gnats. Metropolis, Bladerunner, Just Imagine, Things to Come...."

This is the introduction to David S. Zondy's Tales of Future Past segment on the city of the future, as imagined by people in (for the most part) the first half of the 20th century.

Some of the predictions were serious, some were silly, and some quite plausible.

Each page is illustrated with a picture of The Future: as imagined in our past.

It took me a while to get used to Zondy's navigation conventions: but it was worth the effort.

'You Will Forget' - The Doctor Will Fix You Now?

"The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs"
Wired Science (April 10, 2009)

"The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.

"Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now...."

Now That Your Childhoods Fears and Neuroses are Gone, Along With Most of Your Personality - - -

Can't remember where I saw the comedy skit that started with something like that.

We could be in for an interesting phase of medicine. I can remember the waning days of lobotomies, and other (I trust) well-intentioned procedures like electroshock therapy.

Doctors and medical engineers are more sophisticated now: it isn't necessary to stick an icepick into someone's head and wave it around to cure the patient. Soon we'll have a drug that'll do the trick: with no muss, no fuss!

We Can Forget it For You: Wholesale

(Tip of the hat to Phillip Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (pdf, at Open System Lab, Indiana University).)

Don't get me wrong: I really appreciate contemporary medicine ("Lemming Tracks: If Auto Mechanics Were Like Doctors" (March 20, 2009)). It's nice to live in an age where an old coot like me can get some original equipment swapped out and replaced with shiny new parts.

On the other hand, I remember what happened when "Doctor knows best," and bothersome people were made into nice, docile, subjects.

Nokia Makes a Wiggly Phone

"The New Nokia 888 Can Change Shapes On The Fly"
The Hottest Gadgets (August 26, 2008)

"Nokia is planning to change the way we think of mobile phones. Their new phone will come in the form of a device that will roll up and mimic a bracelet, bend over and clip to your pocket, wake you up in the morning, form to fit your face when you use it as a phone and more. So far Nokia's calling this cell phone a personal mobile communication device. To me it looks like a revolution in the way you look at a gadget...."

Okay. This is cool. And, I think, practical. One of the illustrations shows the phone worn as a bracelet - and having a screen display that could hold more than a sentence or two.

Impressive.

Amazing Artificial Islands: Weird, Real, and Both

"45 Amazing and Incredible Artificial Islands"
lifeinthefastlane (July 9, 2008)

Breathless titles like that make be dubious from the get-go, but this post warrants that title.

"Artificial islands — those created by humans rather than natural means — constructed in the distant past and becoming increasingly rampant in recent years have been built by all sorts of revolutionary and bizarre methods and materials, from construction upon existing reefs, drudging of sand and blasted rock, to stainless steel, and even trash...."

What follows is a collection of photos, text, and video, showing actual works in progress, exotic daydreams, and a few exotic daydreams in progress.

And, yes: Dubai is well-represented.

More Strange Furniture

"V Chairs"
Baekdal.com (March 1, 2008)

"Verikon Furniture has created 2 somewhat unique chairs - the Shelley and the Lobster. In some way it draws it inspiration from the Famous 'Ægget by Arne Jacobsen', but it is still so different that they are unique in their own rights...."

Each of these odd bits of furniture is shown in photographs. They look like futuristic padded egg cups to me.

Jigsaw Sofa and Fantastic Futuristic Furniture

"Yang Sofa : Modular Sofa Sectional Seating by Lignet Roset"
Furniture Fashion (July 1, 2008)

"Ligne Roset has always had a willingness to bring unique designs to the public and of coarse[!] it helps when you have great designers like Francois Bauchet. I really like the creative aspect of the Yang Sofa but its versatility is the most appealing feature...."

There's nothing coarse about this piece of furniture: It's an imaginative blending of sofa and jigsaw puzzled.

There's more on the page, including "Futuristic Furniture - Living Room Design "


(from Furniture Fashion, used w/o permission)
That's a sofa, they tell me.

Lilypads: Floating Cities, Again

"Future Architecture : Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees"
freshome (June 11th, 2008)

"According to the less alarming forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate), the ocean level should rise from 20 to 90 cm during the 21st Century with a status quo by 50 cm (versus 10 cm in the 20th Century). As a solution to this alarming problem architect Vincent Callebaut came up with this ecotectural marvel that could serve as a luxurious future retreat for 50,000 inhabitants seeking refuge from rising waters due to global warming. He believes the world will be desperately seeking shelter from the devastations of climate change, and hopes the auto-sufficient amphibious city will serve as a luxurious solution. To bad that right now we are close to 7 billion people and this luxurious future retreat is just for 50,000 inhabitants ( just for rich people )...."

Never mind the standard-issue apocalyptic/workers-of-the-world-unite start to this piece: It's a fairly good introduction to Vincent Callebaut's 'Lilly Pad' city. Still, You'd think the author would checked out the architect's website, and seen that the idea was that more than one of these things was envisioned.

There's more detail at

• "Lilypads, by Vincent Callebaut"
  Eikographia (July 1, 2008)
  Blog post, comparing Lilypads to another circular floating city concept.
  Click on the photo-realistic renderings for larger images.
• "Callebaut Dreams Up Waterworld Eco Islands"
  Skyscrapernews.com (June 30, 2008)
  More apocalyptic prose, and a very good set of graphics.
• "ShowCase: LILYPAD, A Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugees "
  Archinect (June 13, 2008)
  Quite a few more photo-realistic renderings, with plans and elevations
• "LILYPAD, A FLOATING ECOPOLIS FOR CLIMATE REFUGEES
  Oceans 2008
  World "
  Vincent Callebaut Architectures (undated)
  A quite good set of images, and a quite wordy bit of text. Vincent Callebaut has been thinking about what could happen if ocean levels rise - and has come up with a visually stunning response. And, these Lilypads just might work.

"House of the Future" - Another One, this Time in Brussels

" 'House of the Future' on Display in Brussels"
FOXNews (June 6, 2008)

"BRUSSELS, Belgium — Have you ever dreamed of living in a home that automatically could sense which groceries needed to be replenished and then order them from the store, or could warm up the shower before you stepped out of bed?

"That dream may be closer to reality than you think. A company founded by a Belgian entrepreneur is showcasing the house of the future — today.

"Living Tomorrow, which specializes in high-tech consumer goods and design, is exhibiting its 'House of the Future' in Vilvoorde, a suburb of Brussels.

" 'We're quite confident this is pretty much what the future can be,' said Peter Bongers, the co-founder and chief executive of Living Tomorrow...."

The article comes with about 15 photos of this "House of the Future."


(from FOXNews, used w/o permission)
Looks cool - and very pricey.

This 'house of the future' is set in 2012, four years out - and I think it's plausible. Also quite fashionably 'green.'

I'm not sure which I prefer: this one, or the Disney "House of the Future" of 1957.

For those planning a little trip to Brussels, the "House of the Future" and other exhibits are on the Living Tomorrow website. It's not quite designed for the computer of tomorrow, but does make some optimistic assumptions about your computer's resources.

Oh the other hand, it's got a cool-looking interface that doesn't take too long to figure out.

Self-Healing Aircraft: More Like Self-Patching

"Future Aircraft Could Repair Themselves"
LiveScience (May 20, 2008)

"Damaged aircraft could repair themselves automatically, even during flight, by mimicking healing processes found in nature, a researcher said this week...."

Very interesting new technology that could be available in five years.

Magic Walls and the Information Age

"Touch me, I’m a website"
Tierra LAB (May 9, 2008)

"Who would have thought primetime television during the primary season would show us a glimpse of the future of web design and development?"

Two videos, and a pretty good discussion of Perceptive Pixel's Magic Wall (you may have seen it on CNN).

Some new interface technologies are very, very cool. I think they also have the potential to be as useful as the keyboard, mouse, and touchpad.

A previous post on a similar topic: "Next-Generation Tabletop" (April 28, 2008)

Cell Phone Technology of the Future: Never Mind, it's Here

"Real Trekkie tricorder detects ailments"
msnbc (April 30, 2008)

"New handheld medical scanners could aid health care in developing nations"

"New handheld medical scanners coupled with regular cell phones resemble 'Star Trek" tricorders and could see what ails you with a push of a button.

"The invention, using off-the-shelf cell phone technology, would allow medical scanners to boldly go where none have gone before — to the aid of the roughly three-quarters of the world's population currently without access to ultrasounds, X-rays and other imagers used for everything from detecting tumors to monitoring fetuses."

Next-Generation Tabletop

"Microsoft Surface Demo @ CES 2008"
YouTube (January 08, 2008)

This ten-minute video (9:57, to be precise) is a very impressive marketing demonstration of a new Microsoft product: a tabletop. An interactive tabletop. A home version is probably a few years away, but things like this will probably soon be in places I can't afford.

In a way, it's not much more than an oversize touch screen. One that you can put tableware on.



This is not (quite) a toy. The narrator demonstrates a number of functions, from making ripples in water, to sorting out what that fancy wine is and customizing a skateboard.

With my background in graphic design, I can see this as a next-generation light table. Or kitchen table. Some of the wine-list functions could be transferred to food preparation.

What struck me as the demonstration went along was how this soon-to-be-released gadget is like something out of the science fiction shows I watched, a decade or three back.

Very cool interface.