From ~EvidencE~’s photostream.

Stare off into the distance, watch Heavenside appear….

Photo taken by Derek Olson, link via David Forbes.

A short little movie showcasing Tokyo, from pinktentacle.com:

HP has just unveiled an incredibly ambitious project to create a “Central Nervous System for the Earth” (CeNSE) composed of billions of super sensitive, cheap, and tough sensors. The project involves distributing these sensors throughout the world and using them to gather data that could be used to detect everything from infrastructure collapse to environmental pollutants to climate change and impending earthquakes. From there, the “Internet of Things” and smarter cities are right around the corner.

HP is currently developing its first sensor to be deployed, which is an accelerometer 1,000 times more sensitive than those used in the Wii or the iPhone – it’s capable of detecting motion and vibrations as subtle as a heartbeat. The company also has plans to use nanomaterials to create chemical and biological sensors that are 100 million times more sensitive than current models. Their overall goal is to use advances in sensitivity and nanotech to shrink the size of these devices so that they are small enough to clip onto a mobile telephone.

Once HP has created an array of sensors, the next step is distributing them and making sense of all the data they generate. That’s no easy task, granted that a network of one million sensors running 24 hours a day would create 20 petabytes of data in just six months. HP is taking all that number crunching to task however, and will be harnessing its in-house networking expertise, consulting, and data storage technologies for the project.

Link via inhabitat.com.

no speed limits in Beleize City, so speed bumps are placed at strategic locations to help keep things under control. no word who they got to model for the sign.

From *Watcher*’s photostream.

Via rabbitz_man’s photostream.

From Inhabitat comes another dose of future-pr0n, a truly epic vertical farm project:

Urban Forest is a commercial high-rise building that takes the form of an urban mountain with over 70 floors, each one different and unique. Each floor is an abstract curved shape, layered slightly off-center to give the facade an organic look as it rises up into the sky. A central cylindrical core structure supports all the floors and hosts the mechanical systems and elevators.

Each floor is also covered in floor-to-ceiling glass windows, providing expansive views of the city. A walk-around balcony of differing widths hosts the green garden space, as well as pools, trees, and courtyards. Some floors are nothing but open space, while others contain offices or residential space. Each floor is seen as a separate and unique level of the urban forest and is meant to combine both nature and the urban metropolis.

Why do I keep blogging these crazy schemes? Because eventually one of them will succeed and I frankly can’t wait to go check out the one that does in person.

Speaking of ambitions, good news for Masdar City; the Dubai debt crisis shouldn’t affect it.

A hilly suburb of Cairo, where Coptic Christians make a living sorting and disposing of trash:

Link and photo via we-make-money-not-art.com.

Gorgeous book, featuring prints from thirty-seven photographers from around the world, including ~EvidenceE~.

Ordering info here.

Missed Vol 1?

• IDN 01: The Industrial Decay Network

From bldgblog‘s flickr set, images from Studio Lindfors.

Thanks to VertigoJones for the tip!

From the BBC:

A giant “digital cloud” that would “float” above London’s skyline has been outlined by an international team of architects, artists and engineers.

The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data.

The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used an observation deck and park.

…

Its designers plan to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people.

“It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.

“We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

…

The different spheres would act as structural elements, habitable spaces, decoration and LCD screens on which data could be projected.

“We could provide a custom feed of… searches made by Londoners during the Olympics to give a real time ‘barometer’ of the city’s interests and mood,” said Google, one of the supporters of the project, which has also offered to provide the information feeds.

…

The structure would also be used to harvest all the energy it produces according to Professor Ratti.

“It would be a zero power cloud,” he said.

As well as solar cells on the ground and inside some of the spheres, the lifts would use regenerative braking, similar to that in some hybrid cars.

That way, the designers say, potential energy from visitors to the top of the tower can be harnessed into useful electricity.

Via adamned.art’s photostream.

From Gregory Bastien’s flickr stream, my favorite version of the shot.

Designed by Fabio Novembre, the trees act as an oasis in the middle of the city Milan:

Link and photo via mocoloco.com.

London, England.. soon to be home to a city within a city, thanks to The Shard.

As Inhabitat describe it:

The 72-storey building in the London Bridge Quarter will contain premium office space, a world-class hotel, luxury residences, a spa, restaurants & cafes, retail space and a 15-storey public viewing gallery. On the ground level, public piazza, restaurants and cafes will be open to the public with places to rest and changing art installations. Access to public transportation via bus line, train and underground will be directly on site.

How very pretty and science-fictional is that cityscape?  And for once this isn’t design-pr0n, they’ve actually started construction on it.  Of course, whether they finish it is another thing entirely.  Worst case, future-London gets a 72-storey squelette.

Via ~Evidence~, who also has some great pictures in the Garden of Decay book.

From imgfave.com, via Debbie Millman’s photostream.

The project is called “How it would be, if a house was dreaming,” designed by Urbanscreen:

Link via engadget.com.

Not the train station at Heavenside, but:

Via adamned.art’s photostream.

From archiCentral:

Belgian firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures have designed a vertical farm based on the wings of a dragonfly. Located along the East River at the south edge of Rooselvelt Island in New York City the tower is a true living organism being self-sufficient in water, energy and bio fertilizing. Spanning 132 floors and 600 vertical meters, the dragonfly can accommodate 28 different agricultural fields for the production of fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and dairy.

thanks to cnawan for the tip-off!