1. ABOUT Concrete Canvas Shelters are rapidly deployable hardened shelters that require only water and air for construction. The 16m2 variant can be deployed by 2 people without any training in under 40 minutes and is ready to use in only 12 hours. The key to CCS is the use of inflation to create a surface that is optimised for compressive loading. This allows thin walled concrete structures to ..
Dezeen podcasts: in this latest in our series of podcasts for the Design Museum, illustrator Alan Aldridge gives a talk recounting stories from his career, which spans nearly 50 years. A retrospective exhibition of his work is on show at the museum until 25 January. Involving characters from Princess Margaret to the The Beetles, the stories cover Aldridge’s early experiences of illustration, his..
Contemporary Japanese visual artists tweaked the genes of Osamu Tezuka’s manga characters in dozens of works featured at the recent “Tezuka Gene - Light in the Darkness” exhibit at Parco Factory in Shibuya. Here is a small selection. Astro Boy (Enlightenment) The Three-Eyed One (Enlightenment) Phoenix (Hiroki Tsukuda) Ambassador Magma (Yutanpo Shirane) Buddha (Teppei Maki) Unico (Tsuyoshi Kusano..
Duality + Co. Reel 2008 from Christopher Holewski on Vimeo In the past, we have featured several architecture photographers, such as Cristobal Palma, Joao Morgado and Iwan Baan. But the web allows for much more than just images. This time, the guys over Duality Co -readers of our blog- shared with us their reel on architecture videos, a new service they are offering to architectural firms. They ..
For a brief period in the mid-1870s, artistic woodblock prints known as “newspaper nishiki-e” were a popular form of mass entertainment in Japan. These colorful prints fed the public’s enormous appetite for sensationalism by retelling shocking stories culled from the major newspapers of the day. The Meiji government swiftly cracked down on the publishers of these “unofficial” sources of informat..
“A Dream To Have In Heaven” (Tengoku De Miru Yume - 天国でみる夢) by Maki Sasaki is a surreal non-narrative one-shot manga published in the November 1967 issue of the now-defunct Garo, an alternative manga monthly magazine that peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+] [+]
Every August, as Japanese spirits return en masse from the otherworld, Tokyo’s Zenshoan temple exhibits a spine-chilling collection of 19th-century ghost scroll paintings. Here are a few. (Click the “+” under each image to enlarge.) Ghost [+] // Sea Monster [+] “Ghost” by Iijima Koga is a portrait of a floating, kimono-clad female apparition with all the ghastly physical features you hope to fin..
Twilight Zone I take photographs of Tokyo townscape from emergency staircase of multi-tenant buildings and of apartment houses. Most of staircases are facing back streets, and it is interesting that the other side of Tokyo appears there. Townscape in the twilight looked from staircases, to which no one reaches as if it has slipped from everyday life, has so erotic appeal that I am fascinated by ..
The Tokyo-based Groovisions motion graphic design crew has created a stylishly animated educational video for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), which highlights some of the issues surrounding the future of food in Japan. In the video, Groovisions use their hallmark playful-yet-ordered sim-like virtual landscape to illustrate a host of food-related challenges facing Japa..
Mexican tattoo artist Dr Lakra is known for drawing macabre designs on found objects and images. During a visit to Japan last year, he inked hardcore tattoos on some fine antique ukiyo-e woodblock prints purchased at used bookstores. Some of these works were included in the “Goth” exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art in March, but a few of the more provocative tattooed shunga prints were ref..
