Welcome to the pleasuredome: Fellows Friday with Antonio TorresSquishy, vivid, frozen, frothy – architect and artist Antonio Torres’s wildly colorful and whimsical built spaces are often created using membranes filled with gases, liquids and organic materials, inviting people to crawl in, jump, touch and play. Here, we ask him about his incredible works and where his inspiration comes from. Tell me about yourself […]
Can you recap 30 years of architecture? Submit a proposal to speak at TED201430-y-o global ideas conference seeks hot architecture talk. Are you an architect, architecture critic, historian of architecture or otherwise involved with architecture and design? Have you always wanted to give a TED Talk? To celebrate the 30th anniversary of TED, our 2014 conference will include several talks that look back on three decades of advances […]
Wikihouse’s Alastair Parvin on the bright potential of community-led developmentOne of the things we’re interested in exploring here at TED is … what happens after a talk? Most often, a speaker is telling us a story without an ending — a tale that’s just beginning rather than coming to an end. That’s certainly the case with TED2013 speaker Alastair Parvin, whose project, Wikihouse, is really just […]
Skyscrapers of wood: Michael Green at TED2013Architect Michael Green presents an interesting riddle: why are buildings made of wood only a few stories high when trees found in nature are remarkable for their height? Speaking in session 7 of TED2013, Green shares his deep love of wood — which he first discovered from his grandfather, a woodworker who taught him to […]
Designing a cloud: Yu “Jordy” Fu at TED2013An overhead sculpture of cut paper that looks like an intricately woven cloud. An undulating shopping mall designed like a wave. An apartment complex that emulates the beauty of the local peach blossom trees. These are the kind of things that architect, interior designer and artist Yu “Jordy” Fu creates. Fu, now of the firm Marques and Jordy, […]
The DIY house of the future: Alastair Parvin at TED2013Designer Alastair Parvin begins this Session 4 of TED2013 with the theme “Disrupt!” When we use the word architect or designer, Parvin suggests, we mean a professional, a person paid to design. And we believe it’s only these people who can solve the world’s biggest design problems. But he says firmly: That’s wrong. When Parvin […]
A community center, built by the community, wins the latest City 2.0 awardThe Klong Toey Community Lantern — a community space in the oldest and largest of Bangkok’s slums — was built very quickly. Not quite as quickly as shown in this three-minute timelapse video, but construction for the project took just three weeks thanks to the help of the community. But while construction went fast, Norwegian […]
Four very fresh ideas about air conditioningAir conditioning used to be a luxury — but as Doris Kim Sung points out in this talk from TEDxUSC, modernized society has become thoroughly air-conditioning reliant. This is largely a problem of materials, says Sung, a professor at the USC School of Architecture. Many new buildings — especially skyscrapers — are built with floor-to-ceiling […]
10+ tips for designing classrooms, hospitals and offices that are kind on ears, from Julian TreasureArchitects design with their eyes rather than their ears — which means that spaces generally look great and sound terrible. At TEDGlobal 2012 University, sound consultant Julian Treasure warned that — even though we’re rarely conscious of sound — terrible acoustics can have very negative effects on our well-being. “We’re designing environments that make us […]
Cities of cardboard: TEDActive artist Kiel Johnson featured on the Huffington PostArtist Kiel Johnson, who led the amazing workshop “Everyone’s An Architect” last year at TEDActive, was featured today on both the Huffington Post and Sinbadesign for his intricate cardboard city creations, which TEDActive attendees helped build in Palm Springs last spring. Since then, Kiel’s been involved in a couple of TEDx events around the world, […]
Architectural forms as complex as snowflakes? Here’s what they look like up closeArchitect Michael Hansmeyer is not one for the T-square. As he explains in a fascinating talk from TEDGlobal, this “computational” designer took inspiration from nature — specifically from morphogenesis, aka the splitting of cells — and created algorithms that help him design highly unusual shapes. Instead of the same old boring Doric, Ionic and Corinthian […]
Civilization reboot: Fellows Friday with Marcin JakubowskiFounder of Open Source Ecology Marcin Jakubowksi is creating open blueprints for the building blocks of civilization, starting with the Global Village Construction Set. This set of 50 low-cost machines will allow anyone to build all the infrastructure a community needs – including, at Factor E Farm, one of his own. The Global Village Construction […]
The case for being opaque: Deyan Sudjic at TEDGlobal 2012The director of the Design Museum in London, Deyan Sudjic arrives onstage with a confession. “Designers have a tendency to answer the question they haven’t been asked,” he says. As such, he’s going to overlook the theme of the session, “The Upside of Transparency,” and instead focus on other aspects of the term. After all, […]
TEDGlobal 2012 Fellows Talks: A recap of Session 2Photo: Ryan Lash Andrew Nemr, tap dancerAndrew takes the stage again – one built especially for his performance here – to dance in improv based on his time at TED so far. Even as his rhythms – some familiar, some confounding – intensify, he dances as naturally as walking … painting with his body and […]
5 amazing spaces with surprising ways to stay coolGoing to an outdoor event during the steamy months of summer generally involves packing a miniature fan and slathering yourself in sunscreen, as most venues do little to shade attendees in the cheap seats. This is something Wolfgang Kessling, of the German climate engineering firm Transsolar, would like to change. In a talk at the […]
