This is an amazing stop-motion film charting the (literal) rise of the Tokyo skyline. Not even being 35 years old, the sheer dedication and ambition of the task truly astounds…

via techeblog

HypoSurface is a wall with a personality problem – it doesn’t like staying still! Check the videos after the jump, its properly cool in the “holy-shit that redefines the way i look at everyday objects” way. They say its responsive, but in most of the vids it looks just plain aggresive ;)

via Matt Knight

Check out this Digital Water Pavillion proposed for the 2008 Expo in Zaragoza, Spain. Essentially the 4 exterior walls are nothing more than sheets of falling water. Using the latest tech from MIT, they can precisely control when and where the water comes out – effectively making these walls into a pixel-screen with all its ensuing possibilities.

Now not sure how many of you have been to Zaragoza, but its nowhere near the coast, its hot and its bone-dry. Which will make this building even more of a statement. I just hope they open it up to SMS messages from the crowd. Now that would be awesome.

via Digg

Through my continuing my research into layers, I came across the photography of Michael Wolf. Based in Hong Kong, he takes tightly cropped photographs of the city’s residential skyscrapers. Divorced from the ground and/or horizon line, they cease to be architectural photos, and become beautifully entrancing patterns. I can only imagine how insane these must be when blown-up.

Coming from the horse’s mouth, Diller Scofidio + Renfro is “an interdisciplinary firm straddling architecture, urban design, visual arts and the performing arts”. You should definitely check them out, because they make beautiful hybrid “things” like the Blur Building in the photo above.

From their site: “Water is pumped from the lake, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through 31,500 high-pressure mist nozzles… Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical “white-out” and the “white-noise” of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself”.

Damn impressive is what that means in plain english. Wish I had of seen it myself…