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Somerset

- Allerford, Tarr Steps, Frome, Winsford, Dunster, Exmoor, Nunney Castle, Bossington, Axbridge, Glastonbury Tor

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These videos need to be used in lessons. Waaah wanna go back!

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Hong Kong is Home!

Maybe for use in a lesson?

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Misty morning by © dominique-merot

Huelgoat rocks chaos, a morning after a rainy night. Huelgoat - Brittany - France

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Nature; No Photoshop required.

1. Lenticular Clouds 2. Anvil Clouds 3. Cirrus Kelvin-Helmholtz Clouds 4. Fallstreak Hole 5. Mammatus Clouds 6. Polar Stratospheric Cloud 7. Roll Cloud 8. Undulatus Asperatus 9. Mammatus Clouds 10. Undulatus Asperatus

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Secret city design tricks manipulate your behaviour

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131202-dirty-tricks-of-city-design

When Selena Savic walks down a city street, she sees it differently to most people. Whereas other designers might admire the architecture, Savic sees a host of hidden tricks intended to manipulate our behaviour and choices without us realising – from benches that are deliberately uncomfortable to sculptures that keep certain citizens away.

Modern cities are rife with these “unpleasant designs”, says Savic, a PhD student at the Ecole Polytechnique Federerale de Lausanne in Switzerland, who co-authored a book on the subject this year. Once you know these secret tricks are there, it will transform how you see your surroundings. “We call this a silent agent,” says Savic. “These designs are hidden, or not apparent to people they don’t target.” Are you aware of how your city is manipulating you?

In 1999, the UK opened a Design Against Crime research centre, and authorities in Australia and the US have since followed suit. Many of the interventions these groups pioneered are familiar today: such as boundary marks painted around cashpoints to instil an implied privacy zone and prevent “shoulder surfing”.

San Francisco, the birthplace of street skateboarding, was also the first city to design solutions such as “pig’s ears” – metal flanges added to the corner edges of pavements and low walls to deter skateboarders. These periodic bumps along the edge create a barrier that would send a skateboarder tumbling if they tried to jump and slide along.

Indeed, one of the main criticisms of such design is that it aims to exclude already marginalised populations such as youths or the homeless. Unpleasant design, Savic says, “is there to make things pleasant, but for a very particular audience. So in the general case, it’s pleasant for families, but not pleasant for junkies.”

Preventing rough sleeping is a recurring theme. Any space that someone might lie down in, or even sit too long, is likely to see spikes, railings, stones or bollards added. In the Canadian city of Calgary, authorities covered the ground beneath the Louise Bridge with thousands of bowling ball-sized rocks. This unusual landscaping feature wasn’t for the aesthetic benefit of pedestrians walking along the nearby path, but part of a plan to displace the homeless population that took shelter under the bridge.

So next time you’re walking down the street, take a closer look at that bench or bus shelter. It may be trying to change the way you behave.

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Friday Link Pack

- Why did no one tell me there was an architecture Ryan Gosling?

- It’s time to geek out map enthusiasts

- Joseph Stieglitz on the price of inequality

- "UrbanGems" are using crowdsourced opinions to find the most beautiful route through a city

- Former farmer, then monk, builds amazing cathedral from only salvaged materials

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Malator House (1998) by Future Systems

Locally known as the “Teletubby House”

Designed by Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete Images from Loweswatercam and AL_A

Location: Druidstone, Pembrokeshire, Wales

The ground plan of the house is very simple and with an ease that reflects the lifestyle of its inhabitants, focusing on the living room around a central chimney with views towards the horizon. It is an interior of organic curves, which emerge as a continuation of the surrounding nature. In the interior one enjoys a single space with only the prefabricated units separating the bedrooms from the day area. A big central sofa is built fixed in the living room so one has a constant relationship with nature, with the birds by the cliffs, with the changing light and colour of the sea.

Outside, the passer-by enjoys the scenery on the walk along the path laid by the authorities of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and confuses this holiday house with nature itself, a hillock covered with grass where the surrounding landscape remains untouched with no visible boundary lines or designated garden area. The transparent glass wall, outlined only by a slim stainless steel trim acts as an extension of the inhabitant himself; it is like an eye that looks out to sea and life itself.

For the planning authorities, it would have been difficult to find arguments against planning permission for this house. From an aerial photo, this holiday house goes unnoticed in the landscape with the passing of time, just like the army shelter that had once inhabited the place.

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Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Circa 1960s.

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Pictures of these two-way staircases that connect twin residential buildings in Nanning, Guanxi Zhuang

#urbanism #flats #designforlife #china #shanghai #guanxi #zhuang #guanxi zhuang #urban #residential #nanning #staircase #stairwells #shanhaiist

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Tower of David: the World’s Tallest Slum | Via

The Tower of David is an abandoned unfinished skyscraper in the center of Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, that is now home to more than 3,000 squatters, who have turned the 45-story skyscraper into the world’s tallest slum.

Construction of the building, originally called “Centro Financiero Confinanzas” and nicknamed the “Tower of David”, after its developer, David Brillembourg, was started in 1990 and was to become a symbol of Caracas’ bright financial future. It is the third highest skyscraper in the country. But a banking crisis brought those plans to an abrupt halt in 1994. The government took control over the building and construction was never completed. The building has no elevators, no installed electricity or running water, no balcony railing and windows and even walls in many places.

In 2007, a group of squatters took over the building, and it quickly gained notoriety as a hotbed of crime and drugs. Despite this, residents have managed to build a comfortable and self sustaining community complete with basic utility services such as electricity and water that reaches all the way up to the 22nd floor. Lifts being absent, residents can use motorcycles to travel up and down the first 10 floors, but must use the stairs for the remaining levels.  Inside the building’s long hallways there are warehouses, clothing stores, beauty parlours, a dentist and day-care centers. Some residents even have cars, parked inside of the building’s parking garage. Some seven hundred families comprising over 3,000 residents live in the tower today.

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Look what Google did to my photos! Ooooh #tyntesfield

#tyntesfield #northsomerset #uk #england

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Gloucester Road tube station has a new wallpaper. #paglen #TrevorPaglen #Invisible #Geography

#TrevorPaglen #trevor paglen #paglen #geography #tube station #tube #london #gloucester road #invisible

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Shocking ‘Game Of Thrones’ Finale Concludes With Arrest Of 5 Million Viewers For Piracy

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Phase Transitions mixed photo/paintings by John Pusateri

Artist: Website / Behance

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Meet Jim Bachor, pothole artist.