![Giant Robot Prints Chairs From Ground-Up Refrigerators [Video]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/Fanuc_lede.jpg "Giant Robot Prints Chairs From Ground-Up Refrigerators [Video]")
Giant Robot Prints Chairs From Ground-Up Refrigerators [Video]
We know that headline sounds totally absurd, but bear with us, because what we've got here will blow. Your. Mind.
Circular Monastery Makes Walking Meditation a Snap
Walking meditation is the essence of simplicity: just pace clockwise, taking one step after each full breath. Of course, there is more to it than that -- much more, if you're a Buddhist monk who spends more than eight hours a day in silent contemplation. Thai architect Suriya Umpansiriratana has designed a single-monk monastery (called a "cell") whose circular structure assists walking meditation while symbolizing the cyclic routines of the monk's daily life.
Design Crime: Artists Sell Chunks of the Polar Ice Cap
Remember when everyone declared irony dead after 9/11? Well, it's back. Or maybe it didn't go away. Either way, we've never wished it deader. Here's why:
Buffalo Professor To Turn Snow Into a Colossal Work of Art
Is there a bleaker place than Buffalo, New York, between now and March? The answer is no. Hell no. So in an effort to assuage the city's monumental winter blahs, University at Buffalo assistant architecture professor Sergio López-Piñeiro will make a canvas of playful polka dots using the season's most plentiful resource: snow.
ADVERTISEMENT
LED Raindrops Cascade Through Crystal in Troika’s Magical “Falling Light”
The London-based creative agency Troika has created some wild, weird stuff in its day. But for the Design Miami exhibition, they've created something downright soothing: "Falling Light," an installation using 50 optically pure Swarovski crystal lenses to refract LED light beams into ethereal glowing droplets.
A Time Capsule of Black History, Rediscovered and Preserved in New York
It's hard to imagine any inch of New York City that hasn't been scrutinized, glorified, surveyed, bought, and sold. But only 42 years ago, in 1968, Pratt Institute Professor Jim Hurley discovered three buildings in Brooklyn completely off the grid. He was in a helicopter, preparing for his urban studies course when he spotted three ancient houses along a forgotten alley. It looked like a little farm airlifted from Middle America. Instead, it was an improbably intact remnant of Weeksville, the country's first community of free, black Americans.
Magical Contraption Turns Pigeon Poop Into Soap
Pigeons crap. Humans clean. Let's merge the two, why don't we? That's the idea of Belgian-born designer Tuur Van Balen, who's on a mission to turn feral pigeon feces into detergent. You read that right. By feeding pigeons a metabolism-altering bacteria, then getting them to defecate in a designated box, Van Balen reckons he can create soap suitable for washing dirty windows, sticky floors, and, yes, even pigeon turd on the awning. Think of it as a closed-loop system for one of the city's most irritating (and plentiful) natural resources.
