The Hackable Building: From Corporate to Cool for Tech Tenants

At Latitude 34 in Los Angeles, Gensler is re-conceiving office space for a new type of client. Jack Skelley tells us how. Rendering courtesy Gensler.

By Jack Skelley

While the commercial real estate market remains in the doldrums, with high vacancies and low rents, one submarket is on fire: Tech. Companies such as Google and YouTube are expanding into Southern California, for example, and gobbling up all the “cool” buildings. You know, old bow-truss warehouses turned into creative space that feels authentic, textured, scaled to the individual, and not “corporate” like most traditional office buildings.

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Glass Future

Corning Incorporated, a world leader in specialty glass and ceramics, works to develop interactive glass that will transform ordinary surfaces into sophisticated electronic devices. These new technologies could allow you to organize your daily schedule with a few touches on your bathroom mirror. They could allow you to video-chat with relatives on your kitchen counter. "This world," says Corning Chairman and CEO Wendell Weeks, "is being created as we speak."

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MIT Researchers Invent Revolutionary Robotic Oil Skimmers

Researchers at MIT have invented a new robotic oil skimmer, called Seaswarm. Senseable City Lab is unveiling the first prototype at the Venice Architecture Biennale on Saturday. The hope's to produce a whole fleet of Seaswarms that'll be able to attack oil spills like a swarm of bees. A patented hydrophobic nanofabric devours as much as 20 times its own weight in oil without collecting water. To capture the oil, the nanofabric's draped over a conveyor belt that's then dispatched on the surface of the ocean like "a rolling carpet." The robot's entirely autonomous; it swims along, powered by a pair of solar panels.  

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Buildings App Syncs Location and Architecture

The London-based company OpenBuildings recently released an App for iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to sync their location to find local architecture. The App, simply called Buildings, mimics the function of OpenBuildings, acting as an encyclopedia for architecture. It pulls from various online resources to provide a comprehensive architectural database. Using Buildings, the user can browse the international collection, look at photos, watch video, and get directions. The App is available at the iTunes Apps store. 

Keiichi Matsuda's Augmented City

Augmented City 3D from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Keiichi Matsuda, a designer and film maker, often enjoys explore futuristic design concepts through the medium of film. One of his latest experiments is entitled Augmented City, a small walk through a few
minutes in different people’s lives in a city filled with augmented reality technology. Beyond forecasting
the way people may live in the future, the video demonstrates a series of different technological devices
and interfaces.

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