Category Archives: Design & Architecture

Why Portland’s Public Toilets Succeeded Where Others Failed

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For the residents of Portland, Ore., taking a whiz in a public toilet is not just a matter of necessity. It’s an act of civic pride.

That’s because the city is home to the Portland Loo, a unique, patented outdoor bathroom that inspires such worship in its fanbase you’d think that Steve Jobs himself had designed it. This adoration comes despite the fact that the 24-hour loo was built to be as inhospitable as possible. This toilet does not want to be loved, but in Portland, it is No. 1 (and, presumably, sometimes No. 2 as well).

[Source: The Atlantic Cities]

The design definitely solves most problems that plague the public toilet.

Spiral Icon

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For a forthcoming exhibition called Contemplating the Void, New York’s Guggenheim Museum “invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space.

In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment.

[Source: Spiral Icon - BLDGBlog]

Biggest Little Cities

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Model cities aren’t just for show; they can have real utility. In 1957 the US Army Corps of Engineers created the Bay Model, a replica of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta meant to simulate the impact of public works projects and disasters—natural and man-made—on currents and tides.

Terence Russell at Wired Magazine tells us how scale models of cities are increasingly used for urban planning and design applications.

Open-Plan Offices Harmful?

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A review of global studies into the impact of modern office design found the switch to open-plan spaces had been overwhelmingly negative, with 90 percent reporting adverse health and psychological effects.

Open-plan offices not so good? Contrary to the popular opinion in business circles, Australian researchers have found open-plan offices counter productive and in fact, harmful to the health of the employees. Now let me get back to my cubicle and get some work done. Hopefully.

Buckminister Fuller's Dymaxion House

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“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top . . . that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver,” Fuller once wrote. “But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings.”

The New Yorker has an excellent piece on Buckminister Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome displayed in a grand fashion for the U.S. Pavilion for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal.

The geodesic dome as you know encloses more space with less material than any other structure and can withstand tremendous pressure (a staple for most sci-fi futuristic movies). But yet they are considered a “massive total failure.” Anyone care to guess why? Anyway, Fuller’s mission was not aimed at selling the Dome but hammering away at people’s stagnant capacity for change.