The Brains

The Brain Obsession

is still on

Brains

Cities

Buildings

Streets

the URBAN

and everything

that makes the visual memory

a map

a mental map

a brain map

a brain obsession

2013

Work In Progress:

Niemeyer for Converse - how real is it ?

So if you're on the design blogs lately you might have noticed a :
"Niemeyer has created a collection of sneakers and slip-ons for American shoe company Converse"

Ok so let me rephrase that. Oscar Niemeyer who is 104 and hospitalized twice this year has actually designed shoes for Converse ?
The man barely walks, is practically ill, and they want us to think he has time to jiggle around Converse the shoe maker firm for some shoe designs !
Where have we reached with the globalization / commercialization the creation of Icons to make fortunes out of them !?
#ontheborderline of unethical

(on a different note ) Below are some of the converse shoe designs that I find absolutely amazing


Above: Skid Grip Oxford


Above: Jack Purcell


Above: Chuck Taylor All Star Oxford




Above: Chuck Taylor All Star Hi


Above: Chuck Taylor All Star Chukka Boot

"2" not to B missed events

Bloggers Kifna ?

so 2 emails about events i received early this morning and i'm sharing with you guys not to miss:

• the first: 98weeks  tonights' event at 6  - as featured on their website:

15.10.12

98TALKS

"Are you talking to me?"
Presentation of the Bik Van der Pol Workshop

Thursday October 18, 2012; 6pm

After a week-long intensive workshop, Bik Van der Pol and participants will present their stories, maps and documentation of their experiences.

Participants traveled by taxis, talked with drivers, recorded their conversations, and returned with stories which will be disseminated by public radio. The space of 98weeks functioned as a hub where workshop participants listened and discussed their recordings while constructing of a large city map of the routes taken and speakers were invited to talk about public space, mapping and the forming of collective memory.

The taxi is regarded as social place, as carrier and interface of public voice, knowledge/history, often across generations. By choosing the taxi, the project also subtly touches upon two major urban management issues in present-day Beirut: lack of public space (spaces of collectivity) and transportation.

• the second Share Beirut is over but it seems their events are not- email below for their event on Friday night:

Kifkon dear friends,

We've got two nice occasions for this edition of SHARE newsletter:
 

1.      Share.mov II is finally released online, and available to watch here. Give it a shot and help us spread it over the Internets, we've put a lots of time and energy in producing it. Movie is a fast-paced and very dynamic documentary blending loads of ideas, experiences, and wisdom told in 72 hours of this year's edition of SHARE conference in Belgrade, mixed with short-cuts from a wicked night program in clubs around the city. It also consists of a teaser from Beirut edition movie which is in the editing process at the moment, so you even might spot yourself among all the hipsters and geeks filmed during these three wonderful days.
 

2.      Our lovely friends from Lamba Labs are giving all of us an opportunity to keep on sharing and meeting each other. If you're in Beirut on Friday, don't miss this event, here's their invitation message:

Hello awesome people!

Do you miss Share already? Well Share misses you back. There has been some chatter around how to keep the energy alive and the excitement moving after the conference is over. All the people who attended, contributed, and spoke at Share are part of the same community. How do we all grow together, and ensure that there will be an even bigger conference next year?

So now we’re calling all of you – future thinkers, artists, technologists, activists, amazing people who want to make amazing things – to join us at Lamba Labs this Friday at 8pm for a Share and Tell. Bring a personal project, tell us about your favorite moment from Share, bring falafel/pizza, tell us what inspires you.

We’ll gather at the Lamba Labs hackerspace, and let’s carry on the torch of sharing and light up the future.

Light and Love,

The Lambas

Lodz Design Festival 2012

Lodz Design Festival 2012 

ABOUT US

Łódź Design Festival 2012 – 6th Edition

Once again we are going to create an open space to facilitate talks about design, the exchange of good practices and meetings with personalities. If you are looking for inspiration or if you want to meet interesting people and discover latest design trends, just come to Łódź between the 18^th and 28^th of October 2012.
This year’s festival will be held under the motto AWARENESS to emphasise how important awareness is in design and how many connotations and meanings it has in relation to design. Awareness in design obliges us to ask what the role of design and the designer is. What design can do? In a sense, design speaks less about things, and more and more about the whole processes whose creation involves entire teams, consisting not only of designers, but also experts from the fields of humanities, science and others. Awareness tells us to look back and move forward, and above all to understand that design never exists out of context – human, historical, geographical, social. And nor does it ever exist in isolation. Furthermore, it belongs more and more rarely to only one category – one time it is a science, the next an art.

This year’s main programme for AWARENESS includes three exhibitions: The Future is Stupid, prepared by Sven Ehmann; Ways of Seeing/Sitting by Maria Jeglińska; and Who Are You? by Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka and Klara Czerniewska.

In the description of his project, Sven Ehmann, the author and editor of the Gestalten publishing house, writes: ‘’The Future is Stupid’ is a design exhibition. But it is NOT an exhibition about products, objects, brands, pop star designers, limited editions and status symbols… It is all about design as a tool, as a mindset, an attitude, a process, an approach…‘ Those who come to the exhibition in search of beautiful items will be amazed, because Ehmann’s exhibition is a collection of inventions and strange ideas – at least on the face of it. In its essence, however, they are things which change the quality of life, the world, and sometimes even the course of history… This exhibition proves that design is not a goal in itself but a means to achieve the goal, which takes imagination and courage.

The young designer Maria Jeglińska, a graduate of the famous Swiss ECAL, has already worked with such greats as Konstantin Grcic and Alexander Taylor; in her search for awareness, she has adopted a completely different perspective. Through her objects, she shows how the social changes which we witness and participate in influence the design. The mirror to each of these transformations is the chair, the archetypal object-icon for every designer. It is also a significant subject in discussions about design, because we often repeat that ‘design is not about the beauty of another chair.’ For Jeglińska, each chair goes hand in hand with another object. Together, in opposition to each other, they illustrate the problems or contrasts of socio-economic phenomena. Global versus local; digital technology versus analogue technology. The curator’s intention is not to build up a category or make a final summary of the phenomena, but to awaken curiosity in the observer, who asks himself questions and will look for the answers.

At first glance, the exhibition Who Are You may seem to be a nationalist provocation. It gathers the work of designers for whom the answer to this question is ambiguous. They are Polish emigrants, the children of emigrants, and people who never took the decision to leave, but who live and work outside Polish borders. They have had success there, and here they are unknown. They speak Polish, or they do not. They belong to different generations. If we tried to force them to answer the question ‘Who are you?’ literally, they would be in real trouble. But the curators Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka and Klara Czerniewska are not asking the exhibitors about their national identity, but about their design identity, about the sum of their experiences, which – among many – include being Polish. The implication is that the correct answer to this question is ‘I am a designer.’ What kind of designer and where they come from has no meaning today, because this does not provide any information about how someone designs.

The festival programme will feature all regular accompanying events that proved very popular and successful in the previous editions such as the make me! contest, a portfolio review, movie shows and discussions as well as events that have not been on the festival programme for long but have already won over a number of faithful fans: the Remade Market and the must have plebiscite.

What is new in this festival’s edition?

The extraordinary space arrangement by the architectural practice Centrala. The intent of the architects was to ‘weave this year’s exhibition’ by introducing colour, energy and an element of surprise into the rooms of an old spinning and weaving mill of the Naum Eitingon i Ska textile factory at 35 Targowa Street. A multi-coloured openwork structure, polychromatic layers and bunches of tight ribbons will entwine the building at all levels. The arrangement should create associations with the modern art of urban knitting, with a folk festival, but above all, with the history of Łódź and of Stara Tkalnia (the ‘Old Weaving Mill’).

Forum: Design & Architecture, or a new approach to lecturing. Our intention is to create even more space for the audience to have the opportunity not only to listen to design professionals such as designers, producers and curators, many of whom enjoy international recognition and the number is growing each year, but also to hear the answers to the pervading questions, to have discussions with the experts and to exchange experiences. Over five days, we will focus on the current topics related to the changes the world is undergoing as well as new working methods used by designers. We will talk about User Experience, design thinking, the condition of Polish design and about architecture. We will try to find the answers to a number of questions such as: Will experience design prove successful for Polish companies? How are decisions made today regarding architecture and space? Simultaneous interpretation for all speakers taking the floor during the Forum: Design & Architecture will be provided.

As we saw a growing interest from designers, we decided to announce a contest to award events and exhibitions in the Open Programme. Selected projects provide an additional context for the themes referred to in the Main Programme, but they take place in other venues across the entire city (in galleries, museums, clubs etc.), thus ensuring the presence of design everywhere in Łódź.

The range of activities undertaken last year under the motto Education. Children meet design. with the aim of bringing design closer to children will be enhanced to include new elements. Workshops, an educational playroom, an exhibition dedicated to children and their parents as well as exhibition tours with Ewa Solarz will be complemented by a calendar cut-out to inspire creative thinking and activity and to present information about the most significant designers in an understandable way. The activity will involve cutting out the images of items by top designers and freely organising them into clusters: by topic, size, function or the designers’ countries of origin. Every child visiting the Playroom is welcome to take the cut-out home with them!

Designer Zone
Over the main weekend of Łódź Design Festival 2012 (19th-21st October) we will create a special zone in the Festival Centre to present innovative tools and solutions that support designers and architects in their daily work. This will include both graphics software and new computer hardware.

MURATOR is the media partner of the Designer Zone.

Dutch Design Week 2012

This year's Dutch Design week is just a couple of days away.

For those who are willing to check it out an online website and program are available @ Dutch Design Week 

A lot of exhibits, conferences, and plenty of events going on:

here's a sneak preview of one of my favourite exhibits during the week -

Amsterdam based Elise Ousssoren's Elastic Storage Unit (just Brilliant)

New construction system HOLEDECK saves 50 cm per floor

via dezeen:

News: Spanish architects Alarcon+Asociados have developed a new construction product that allows a six-storey building to fit into a five-storey volume. (+ movie).

Developed for buildings with large construction spans such as schools and hospitals, Holedeck is a concrete waffle slab system that can accommodate electrical cables, plumbing and ventilation ducts within the floor structure rather than hung below. This prevents the need for suspended ceilings, which are installed to hide these services.

“A total of 30-50 centimetres are saved per floor,” explain the architects on the product website.

The first building to be constructed using the system is an office block for the research and development department of communications company Logytel in central Spain (pictured).
See more stories about concrete »
Here’s a list of the product’s features from Alarcon+Asociados:

---

The new concrete waffle slab HOLEDECK is a patented system of voided slabs for buildings with big spans between supports and a high level of services. It can be pierced all through its thickness by the building conductions and services.
This means that services in cross-sections occupy the same space as the structure itself and thus no additional suspended ceilings are required to hide them all. HOLEDECK is especially suitable for buildings requiring multiple services as well as big or medium spans, such as office buildings, hospitals, schools or any public, commercial or industrial building.
» HOLEDECK is suitable for big spans ranging from 10 to 18 meter high with a 50-60cm slab edge.
» It is possible to keep the structure with fair-faced concrete by adding dyes to the concrete mass.
» It is set up in a similar way to other voided flat plate slabs.
» It provides greater freedom of design for the plant geometry and pillar placing.
» It is modulated according to a 80cm interaxis so its modules are interchangeable with any voided two-way flat plate slab system.
Air may be distributed through conventional semi-flexible conduits or through a plenum system, which requires a sealed suspended ceiling and removable locks in lateral windows.

War of the Malls - Ch. 1

It is a fact that malls have quite a competition going on no matter where they were located and regardless of its' scale- whether it was a harrod's vs. selfridges or just the local ones in town !

But nthg has been more tangible than the undeclared "to be declared" war of Le mall vs ABC dbayeh !

It's true that ABC dbayeh has scored a comeback with a foreign signature architecture by nArchitects that has been the reason of siteworks and expansions over the past years.. And yes, its architectural image has improved -from the days of that striking yellow box originally designed by Nehme- with interactive lighting elevations that are quite "statementful", with a replica rooftop although not as successful as its  achrafieh version, a "not so clear" circulation pattern and a limited reduced parking space compared to its original smaller area bigger parking ratio.

On the other hand its counterpart,  reminds us of the early "yellow" days of ABC's architecture with a bold and daring volume by Aconsult (ironically the same architects as the other version of ABC) that stands out of the context - and once again yes we know those elevation tubes were described "ugly" by many, a replica of China's bird's nest by HdeM & Ai WeiWei by others- but they have played their role and done their part in creating a buzz regardless of its esthetical value if it had any- true we've all nagged about its' finishes, its' internal layout, its circulation, its parking spaces and mainly the connection between those parking spaces with the main mall and the lack of escalators or even regular staircases (which exist but are not part of the public space) besides the fulltime busy elevators.

But yes for the sake of attracting customers we've done our best - assigned foreign designers, created bold architecture, etc- True that the tenant mix comparison does not stand as ABC targets a more posh layer of the society, but with a very large and diversified food outlet range Le mall has managed to attract consumers on that level. And yes, le mall has also succeeded to attract clients to its much more affordable stores and tenants !

But the war of the malls has reached a new stage or so it seems - with a full parking at all times and not only because of its business but its shortage as well-  Le Mall's consumers have managed to park in the next door lot ABC and have a walk to its premises.

So u might have noticed the newcomers in town (the parking meters) which announce that ABC after many long years of free parking in Suburbia will soon be paid.

Within all this chaos where does urban planning stand, and where does it actually define the line between a commercial growth along the coast and traffic generating mass blocks like the ones mentioned above ... Where do municipalities stand on regulating when it comes to such matters and hasnt anyone objected on the proximity of the malls and the amount of traffic it could generate (specially on weekends) and very soon on holidays!?

So the war of the malls was created not only by the greed of developers, or anxious consumers, it was encouraged by a chaotic planning (regardless of which governmental party was responsible of that) that in a fight of attracting clients might just as well turn those into objecters of the current status.

an Architects' vote on the american elections - Who Should You Vote For?

I like how analytical and "statistical" american elections get.

I love how the voting actually is so scientific based to the point where even architects and based on the industry development can form a say with their vote.

below is an article i found on architectmagazine explaining the development of the industry from 2008-2012 and what a vote for each candidate can be !

Here's where they stand at least online :

·      politics

Who Should You Vote For?

Architects have had a particularly rough go these last few years, being acutely affected by a recession and slow recovery. Will the next four years get any better? Two political reporters say that it depends on who you vote for.

·       

The Opinionators

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at The American Prospect and a Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, CNN, The Washington Independent, and The Washington Post. He is based in Washington, D.C., where he covers politics and public policy. To read his rebuttal of Klein's defense of the Romney/Ryan ticket, click here.

Philip Klein is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner, with a focus on domestic politics and policy. Prior to joining the Examiner, he served as Washington correspondent for The American Spectator, and as a financial reporter at Reuters in New York. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. To read his rebuttal of Bouie's defense of the Obama/Biden ticket, click here.

With the presidential election coming up, we asked two seasoned political writers to break down the case for which candidate would most benefit architects and other design and construction professionals—Jemelle Bouie of The American Prospect defending the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, and Philip Klein of The Washington Examiner defending the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. (In true debate style, we also gave Bouie and Klein the opportunity for a rebuttal to each others’ cases. Check back tomorrow to read those.)

Below, we begin first with Bouie’s defense of the incumbent. Klein’s defense of the challenger begins on the next page.

A Vote for Obama/Biden
By Jamelle Bouie

So far this year, a lot of pundits have wasted a lot of digital ink on the idea that this is an unusually high-stakes election. Commentators say this for every election, and most times, they’re wrong. But, at the risk of sounding cliché, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and in this case the pundits are on point.

But if this is an important choice for the public writ large, then it’s a critical one for architects. As a profession, architecture has been in a tough spot for the last four years. Compared to other workers with college and graduate degrees, architects were hit hard by the housing bust and financial crisis—unemployment for experienced architecture college graduates is 9.2 percent, according to the American Community Survey, compared to 4.1 percent for college grads as a whole.

A critical choice, though, doesn’t have to be a tough one, and if one looks at recent public policy, it’s clear that the profession would be best served by a continuation of the path set by the Obama administration.

Since entering office in 2009, President Barack Obama has pursued a series of tax measures to benefit small businesses. The stimulus, the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, and the Small Business Jobs Act included tax exemptions for key investments, tax credits for hiring out-of-work Americans, greater deductions for startup costs, capital-gains tax cuts, and a measure that raised the small-business expense limit to $500,000.

The Affordable Care Act is another measure that benefits small architecture firms. Under the law, businesses with more than 50 employees will have to provide insurance to their employees—or face a penalty. Of course, this exempts most architecture firms, the large majority of which employ fewer than 10 people. Those firms—and the people they employ—will have the opportunity to purchase insurance off of the regulated markets established by Obamacare, where insurers will compete with each other for customers on the basis of price. The hope is that this will lower costs and make it easier for small-business owners to provide a key benefit to their employees. Businesses that take this step will receive a tax credit to help cover the cost.

On the other hand, Obama has promised to raise taxes on high earners in his second term, and there’s a real worry that this will affect small-business owners and middle-class workers. But the good news is that, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, just 3.5 percent of small-business tax filers—or 940,000 individuals—would pay a higher rate. Another analysis, from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, notes that only 2.5 percent of small-business owners who are taxed at individual rates—a somewhat smaller pool of people—fall into the top two income brackets. Given architects’ median income of $72,550—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—odds are good that most architects will see little change in their tax burden.

There’s also the issue of the architecture students and graduates who have been hit hard by high tuition costs and a sluggish economy—at a time when average in-state tuition and fees for bachelor programs in architecture have increased by 3.4 percent to $20,115. (For graduate programs, the increase is closer to 2 percent.) The Obama administration has recently moved forward with a program that would ease the burden on those struggling to repay federal student loans. The Income-Based Repayment Plan would allow borrowers to cap their student-loan payments at 15 percent of their discretionary income. And for the long-term, it has proposed a “Race to the Top”–style program for higher education to reward schools that lower tuition costs and boost value.

Other than a few references to cutting taxes for small businesses or helping out students, you won’t hear much about these policies from Obama on the trail. But they are all concrete steps that will continue if he’s elected to a second term, and might even expand if he can get congressional support. That’s what happens when you elect a president who sees a role for government in the maintenance of the economy.

This isn’t to say that the administration has been perfect for the architectural field; to wit, its lackluster response to the housing crisis has been tough for architects, whose fortunes are tied tightly to the performance of the housing market. But on a whole host of other concerns, the Obama administration has proven beneficial. This is especially true for the roughly 21 percent of architects who the IRS reports are self-employed.

It’s possible that Gov. Mitt Romney will see a need to pursue similar policies to Obama if he’s elected president. After all, he built his fortune as a sensible businessman who took wise advantage of benefits provided by the government. But, it’s also true that he’s the leader of the Republican Party, which has little interest in government as a proactive tool for improving the economy.

And while the president isn’t bound by the beliefs of his party, he is strongly influenced by them. A vote for the status quo isn’t inspiring. In this case, though, it’s the best bet for an economy that works for both architects and all workers.

Click to the next page to read Philip Klein's defense of the Romney/Ryan ticket.
To read Bouie's rebuttal of Klein's argument, click here

A Vote for Romney/Ryan
By Philip Klein

On the surface, architects may be tempted to re-elect President Barack Obama because he’s vowed that in a second term he’d spend more money “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.” Such infrastructure projects carry the promise of more work to struggling architects. The problem is, Obama tried to use government spending to stimulate the economy in his first term, and it hasn’t solved the problems facing the architecture industry.

In February 2009, Obama signed his $833 billion economic stimulus package, promising “shovel-ready” projects. Yet between 2009 and 2011, when the bulk of the stimulus money was spent, architecture firm billings dropped 41.3 percent, according to data compiled by the AIA.

For those still drawn by the allure of more government spending despite this track record, the reality is that unsustainable debt levels at the federal, state, and local levels will continue to put pressure on budgets. So, ultimately, the success of the industry hinges not on government, but on broader economic growth in the private economy.

One of the biggest policy contrasts between Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney is on taxes. If re-elected, Obama has vowed to raise the top marginal income tax rate on those earning more than $250,000 per year to 39.6 percent from its current 35.0 percent. His healthcare law also includes $1 trillion in tax increases on top of this, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the start of 2013, a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income and a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare payroll tax will hit higher income earners. All told, the changes that Obama has already enacted—or is seeking to enact—will raise the capital-gains tax to as much as 30 percent, or double its current 15 percent. Such tax increases would be detrimental for architects on several levels.

To start, the tax hikes wouldn’t be limited to just wealthy individuals, but would apply to 940,000 small businesses that file individually, according to a 2012 study by the Joint Committee on Taxation. This would punish architecture firms in particular, which tend to be small businesses. According to 2012 AIA estimates, “almost a quarter of architecture firms are sole practitioners, and more than 60 percent have fewer than five employees on their payrolls.”

Beyond the direct effects on architecture businesses, if individuals with income above $250,000 have less disposable income, they may decide to put off building or renovating homes. More broadly, cutbacks by higher income consumers will be a drag on the overall economy.

In contrast to Obama, Romney has vowed to repeal the $1 trillion in tax increases in the healthcare law. Not only will he not increase marginal tax rates, but he’s also proposed reducing them across the board by 20 percent (bringing the top marginal rate to 28 percent) and keeping the capital-gains tax at 15 percent. He’s also proposed cutting the corporate tax rate, which is currently the highest among industrialized nations, to 25 percent, thus encouraging more business activity at home. Romney has said that he would offset these rate reductions by getting rid of various deductions and loopholes in the overly complex tax code.

Beyond taxes, the candidates have articulated different views on regulation. During Obama’s first three years in office, the federal government imposed 106 new major federal regulations, costing over $46 billion per year, according to the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. “This was nearly four times the number—and more than five times the cost—of the major regulations issued by George W. Bush during his first three years,” Heritage wrote in its report. The continued implementation of the healthcare and financial regulatory laws would increase this number dramatically if Obama were re-elected.

Romney has vowed to repeal the healthcare and financial regulatory laws, and review and eliminate regulations that place a burden on the economy. Of particular interest to architects who have been hit hard by the housing crisis, Romney has proposed to “replace complex rules with smart regulation to hold banks accountable, restore a functioning marketplace, and restart lending to creditworthy borrowers.” Romney has also vowed to undo Obama’s executive order encouraging federal agencies to use unionized contractors in large-scale construction projects, which hurts non-union businesses and drives up project costs.

None of this is to guarantee that Romney would be the greatest thing to happen to architects since the invention of the blueprint. Obviously, all of his proposals will have to be fleshed out in more detail and will inevitably clash with legislative reality. But at least based on what the candidates are proposing, it’s fair to say that there’s a better chance that taxes would be lower and regulations would be fewer under a Romney administration, which is more conducive to spurring the type of economic growth needed to revive the architecture industry.

Beirut

So practically nowadays the new reality is Online !

Beirut ! The city we live in ! What do we actually know abt it !?

Did u know that beirut is hashtagged over 90.000 times on instagram !?

Did u know that there are over 81 apps in the local itunes store with the word beirut in !?

And did u know that the mere fact that the word Beirut is the name of a mexican originated new york band (And yes they actually play great music)ended up with having the name BEIRUT designed in tens if not hundreds of posters that actually look Awesome !?

Enjoy Beirut below with a glimpse of the designs of a couple of the posters of the band !