Design, Science and Technology

NBBJ proposes a set of "shadowless" towers for London's rapidly changing skyline.

Architects from the global firm NBBJ have designed what they call a “No Shadow Tower” for a site along the Thames River in London. The hypothetical scheme, developed in response to a call for ideas from the architecture think tank New London Architecture (NLA), offers one way to lessen the impact of tall buildings on the urban fabric surrounding them.

NBBJ’s proposed scheme has a similar goal to Jean Nouvel’s recently completed One Central Park complex in Sydney, which depends on a giant heliostat to illuminate a garden that would otherwise often be in shade. But NBBJ uses the geometry of the buildings themselves to mitigate their shadows. The two London towers subtly twist and flair, with floor plates that are slightly larger on the upper floors. Developed with parametric design, the configuration is intended to reflect sunlight from the south face of the taller tower into the plaza below. This arrangement would create what Coop describes as dynamic pools of light...

Via Lauren Moss

An EU-funded project is building platforms to detect patterns in how people use urban spaces.

 

Maps don't typically convey time very well. They're static snapshots of a moment in history. A handful of animated maps that do a good job combining time and space using either transit data or geo-tagged social-media hits.

Now a new project, called Geographies of Time, is trying to do something similar with a more typical two-dimensional map. The effort is part of a broader EU-funded projects called UrbanSensing that's building platforms to detect patterns in how people use urban spaces.

Via Lauren Moss