architecture · creativity · Mental · psychology

Rx Art For Hospitals: Just What The Curator Ordered : NPR

Being able to relax during medical treatments makes treatments more effective, as well as making better patients. Diane Brown is working to add a little art and light to a scary place: hospitals.

“While hospitals have become more physically welcoming in recent years, with new buildings designed by famous architects and lobbies filled with art, those changes rarely find their way to some of the hospital’s most difficult spaces — the rooms filled with machinery where treatment actually happens.

Diane Brown is trying to change that. She’s the founder of Rx Art, a nonprofit group dedicated to bringing art into the examination room and giving patients a way to escape their bodies’ sickness through their minds’ imagination.”

more via Rx Art For Hospitals: Just What The Curator Ordered : NPR.

architecture · Social · technology · writing

Booklust of the week

I am a little worried it was supposed to be released more than a year ago and I can’t find any updates, but…

Play All Day documents a collection of the most vibrant, stimulating and engaging design products and concepts for children. This book sets a new standard of design for children with fascinating examples of innovative and well-designed toys, playgrounds and play environments, room decorations, wall coverings, furniture and kindergarten architecture. In addition to these products, it also presents illustration and photography as well as new and original ideas offering playful solutions that talented designers and creative parents are designing for and with their kids. It is an inspiring reference for design-savvy parents and other professionals.

more at the Play All Day publisher’s website.

architecture · Nature · Social · technology

Nine of the World’s Most Promising Carbon-Neutral Communities | Popular Science

Looking for some last minute destinations for Labor Day weekend here in the U.S.? Why not choose a destination that is carbon neutral? Although the plane ticket to get there would cancel out a lot of their hard work. From the article in Popular Science:

In the global race to reduce carbon emissions, these eco-minded communities, from Kansas to the Maldives, lead the pack. Here’s how they’re making their carbon footprints disappear.

See the nine at Nine of the World’s Most Promising Carbon-Neutral Communities | Popular Science.

architecture · Nature · Social

Art Review – Pondering Public Sculpture in Manhattan – NYTimes.com

Art Review – Pondering Public Sculpture in Manhattan – NYTimes.com.

I love public sculpture, and I love it even more when people actually use the sculpture.

architecture · Nature

Gardens that grow on walls

I have seen this done in a couple of places, but always love to see it done, and often in different ways. This was featured in the New York Times a couple of months ago, but like I said I’ve been storing these ideas for a couple of months now.

From the NYT article, “Vertical Gardens, Grown on Walls” by Kristina Shevory:

Mr. Riley, a former commodities trader turned plant expert who went on to become assistant director of the Horticultural Society of New York, was eager to move beyond potted plants in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to many others. It took a number of expeditions, a lot of research and more than a decade and a half, but by 2003 he had figured out how to grow a wall of plants inside his Upper West Side apartment. …

Vertical gardens — which began as an experiment in 1988 by Patrick Blanc, a French botanist intent on creating a garden without dirt — are becoming increasingly popular at home. Avid and aspiring gardeners, frustrated with little outdoor space, are taking another look at their walls and noticing something new: more space. And a number of companies are selling ready-made systems and all-in-one kits for gardeners like Mr. Riley who want to do it themselves.

Matthew McGregor-Mento put 400 plants in his vertical garden in Manhattan.

These were originally developed by artist Patrick Blanc almost 30 years ago. The NYT article features garden walls in New York, for obvious reasons, but they are also sprouting up in Tacoma, WA, London, Singapore, and other cities.

antigravity forest, London
Maximum Garden
Maximum Garden House, Singapore. Credit: Jeremy San
architecture

George Washington’s boyhood home found

I didn’t even know it was missing, but apparently they found it (“they” being a collection of archaeologists and historians). The biggest let down: no cherry tree. They were also [for some bizarre reason] surprised that the house wasn’t more rustic; from what they can deduce, it had up to 8 rooms including separate bed/storage rooms upstairs, rather quite nice for that time’s standards and much more appropriate for a gentryman [again, duh!].

architecture · play

Man single-handedly building replica of Stonehenge

This guy in Michigan is successfully experimenting with ways of moving several ton blocks into a Stonehenge-like formation.

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/moving_big_rocks.