Sou Fujimoto is a Japan architect that has been pushing what we traditionally call a house, but way beyond that just formal aspects. New typologies are explored, introducing new ideas on “living”.

For example: the layered living on House N, the empty/void relations in the Final Wooden House (result of Kumamoto Artopolis 2005), the blending of exterior/interior on his ORDOS 100 vila, or the circulations on the House Before House for the Tokyo Gas Project. This is also seen on his book Primitive Architecture.

Our friends from 0300 had the chance to sit down and talk with Sou Fujimoto, resulting on a 2 part video interview reproduced here.

I recommend checking this one out, as Sou has very interesting points of view on architecture.

VIDEO OF RHONDA IN ACTION

An interesting piece of software came to my attention today. 3D sketching has been underway for quite some time, and this video shows a crisp exampel of bezier based freeline drawing in three dimensions.

The auther of the software is Amit Pitaru who is an artist, designer and researcher of Human Machine Interaction (HCI). He develops custom-made musical and animation instruments, and has a particular interest in Assistive Technologies and Universal Design. Commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation he is currently writing a chapter for an upcoming book on his recent work – creating toys and software that are inclusively accessible to people with various disabilities. Lastly he regularly teaches at New York University’s ITP and Cooper Union’s Arts department in the coupling of technology and the creative thought process.

Keep an eye on his work in the future.

Interview with Amit Pitaru at NewMediaFix.net.

Produced by the guys from MK12 the intro to the 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction features a crisp matchmoving of lineart and footage. Matchmoving is one of the key elements in making special effect shots look trustworthy, and is is simply the act of lining up reel footage with cgi animation. Andrew Kramer over at Video Copilot has some excellent tutorials on the subject, and while you are there check out the rest of his videos. You will be inspired!

A more recent event in world politics made me thing of Fords old saying, and I started to compare the different approaches to premelary research into conceptual designs. To some extend the Fords qoute is spot on, since the fact remains that architects and designers are meant to protect the public from aethetic stagnation. Alas, what signifies the architect and designer is a distict ability to maneuver in the public domain and identify and adapt these points og terratories of stagnation.

This brings me back to Ford, since he did not invent automobiles (in 1902 at least 50 other US firms manufactured cars, although mostly to wealthy customers), neither did he invent assembly line (which had been around for a century since Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and further more was brought to Ford Motor Company by William Klann, not Ford, after viewing the “disassembly line” of a Chicago slaughterhouse).

What signifies Ford was therefore not a new technology or even a new process, but an insight into the exchange of public needs and techonological application, and his eye for a potential shift in aestethic stagnation.

Presented by Noriaki Kano in the early 80′s the Kano model has become a generaly accepted model for sizing product/service development and customer satisfaction. The concept is a basic topic in engineering design, but do not dispair, it involves no complicated math and hence is simple to assimilate.

In this video Dr. Steve Shooter, a professional and practicing engineer at Bucknell University explaines the concepts of the model by applying it to the bicykle. He has numerous videos focusing on product design and development.