The architect and city planner Oscar Newman, better known for his dreadful "Defensible space theory", (pdf here) also fostered in 1969 the bizarre … [Read more...]
Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb? Post-apocalyptic depictions of 80’s Nuclear Paranoia
"Thinking that perhaps some terrible calamity was imminent—a nuclear catastrophe, or a sudden epidemic after a research-laboratory accident—and that … [Read more...]
Stuxnet: Anatomy of the first weapon made entirely out of code
Stuxnet is the first computer virus (precisely a "worm") created to target, study, infect and subvert only industrial systems, namely … [Read more...]
Duga-3, a Giant Abandoned Radio Structure Within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Just a few miles away from the exploded nuclear power plant of Chernobyl, stands a huge Soviet abandoned rectangular antenna made by an array of … [Read more...]
Katzenklavier (Cat Organ)
Thanks (indirectly) to Matteo Pasquinelli, I discovered the Katzenclavier. A "Cat Organ" is a fictive musical instrument consisting in a line of … [Read more...]
When Mathias Rust landed on the Red Square, Building an Imaginary Bridge on the Iron Curtain
In the autumn of 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met in Reykjavík, Iceland, to talk about nuclear disarmament. The summit was a … [Read more...]
Duck and Cover, Nuclear War Awareness campaign
In 1951, shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing, the US Federal government's Civil Defense started producing a series of films and … [Read more...]
The Unplayable Score: Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz – John Stump
"Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz (from ‘A Tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich’)", by American John Stump is a parody of a composition, meant to be impossible to … [Read more...]
Technologic wizardries at Paris 1900’s Exposition Universelle
Electric machines and light installations, mechanic sidewalks, ramps and escalators, metropolitan lines and hot air ballons were among the urban scale … [Read more...]
The Future, according to Google Search Results
Google terrifying vision for our future. From Xkcd. Via Entschwindet & Vergeht. … [Read more...]
A day in the life of a warehouse robot
A look into how automized warehouses have got and how unnecessary manufactorial human labor could be in the future, thanks to robots like Kiva's. … [Read more...]
Cartographic Regression
Here's how the territory of Palestine has shrinked and borders have fragmented from 1917 to present day. A cartographic essay on GOOD. Thanks, Ethel, … [Read more...]
“Grundrisse, Housing Solutions for the Immaterial Worker” by Microcities wins first prize at Think-Space | Moral borders competition!
We don't use to post our own projects here on Socks, but this one just won the prestigious Think-Space | Moral borders competition (ex-aequo with two … [Read more...]
The mission: never come back (Ships Not Shelters, a non-Earth heterotopia)
“–Evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.” To escape into the upper air, This is the task, this is the labour. The underlying premise … [Read more...]
What if New York City were hit by a category 3 hurricane?
A 2007 retrofuture competition, recalled on fb by Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity): "In 2007 our NYC chapter worked with the city to … [Read more...]
Phase IV, (1974) the only Saul Bass feature film
From Wikipedia: Due to some unknown cosmic event, listed in "phases," ants have undergone rapid evolution and developed a hive mind. A scientific … [Read more...]
Oliver Sacks covers, by Cardon Webb
cardondesign.com Click to zoom. Via: Spine Out … [Read more...]
Cabazon Dinosaurs by Claude K. Bell, 1960’s
Ethel Baraona linked this post about two giant dinosaurs structures on a stretch of Palm Springs's Interstate 10. Two dinosaurs, 150 and 100 ton, … [Read more...]
May come in handy in the future
1929 New York City Airport Concept This landing platform was proposed in 1929 for the Pennsylvania Railroad station in New York City. Image number: … [Read more...]
Disposophobia, or the Acquired Inability to Escape
We call disposophobia a man's incapacity to trash things. I just read a weird story about this person who uses to engage in compulsive hoarding, and … [Read more...]
Human Landscape
Florida housing view from above. On Big Picture, of course. Click here for more. Bonus: (Arcade Fire, Sprawl I - … [Read more...]
From AE 2010 – “The Toaster Project” by Thomas Thwaites
"Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it." Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams, … [Read more...]
Minus
Fata Morgana, by Damon Zucconi 2010 (Google Maps minus Maps) "Seasoned explorers, vehemently insisting on what they had seen, set down mountains … [Read more...]
The loose and lost walled city of Kowloon
Kowloon Walled City was a densely populated, largely ungoverned settlement in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Described by Steven Poole as an "oasis of political … [Read more...]
