Caring for pets has a lengthy list of physical and mental health benefits, and studies show that folks who aren’t quite ready to commit to a rambunctious pup can find similar solace in a marine pal. The aquatic enthusiast behind Foo the Flowerhorn recently released a video series documenting the DIY building process for a home ecosystem, in addition to capturing the organisms’ intrepid natures. Conveying thoughtful methods for balancing inter-species relationships, the tutorial is also an example of aquascaping, or the art of aquarium design (dive into the world of competitive aquascaping here).
Beginning with a 7.6-gallon aquarium, the video chronicles the assembly of a volcano-shaped rock formation, which serves as a filter despite being enveloped by algae, and a custom-built cover to keep the adventurous creatures inside. Every species is introduced to the ecosystem in a specific order to ensure their chances of survival. The plants, snails, Amano shrimp, and tetras are added early on, with the territorial Siamese Fighting Fish following after ten days. “Adding a betta into this mix is risky. He is a chirpy little fellow, and I’m a little worried about the shrimp, especially. He has tried to catch the tetras here and there but soon realized that there is absolutely no chance of him catching one,” the designer said. (via The Kids Should See This)
Dezeen showroom: Swiss company Geberit's roof drainage system Pluvia is a solution for draining water quickly from large roof areas that has been standardised so that multiple units can be combined together in a single system.
The compact Pluvia system uses negative pressure to achieve almost double the discharge rate of conventional drainage systems.
Roof outlets come in a variety of different designs and sizes that can be installed on practically any roof structure.
The Pluvia system has a compact design
The outlets have long outlet connection pieces to facilitate installation into highly insulated roofs, and the outlet grating has a rotating lock bar that allows it to be attached and removed easily and without tools.
For warm roofs, green roofs or weight-bearing roofs, Geberit has designed Pluvia solutions for vapour barrier connection to ensure a sealed, durable system.
Planning and calculation of all Pluvia drainage systems are supported by Geberit's ProPlanner software. The hydraulic calculation can now also be done in the Autodesk Revit CAD software using a corresponding plug-in.
Geberit offers a free download of all Building Information Modelling (BIM) data in the Autodesk Revit format, so that a sanitary engineer can calculate the configuration of the entire system in the CAD program.
About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
Mexican artist Stefan Brüggemann has created red, white and blue neon lights of the words truth and lie for an artwork unveiled on the US-Mexico border on the day of the 2020 US presidential election.
Featuring the colours of the American flag, Brüggemann's artwork was unveiled to coincide with the US presidential election, which is scheduled today.
TRUTH/LIE is installed at the US-Mexico border
The artist, who is based in Mexico and London, created the words lie and truth because he wanted to show the notion of these words have "lost meaning" in political campaigns leading up to the event.
"I came up with the idea of the installation after observing and absorbing how so many of the political narratives in the world in these last few years have brought truth and lies into question, and shifted their meaning," Brüggemann told Dezeen.
The lights are red, white and blue – the colours of the American flag
"These powerful words, LIE and TRUTH have eroded into a meaningless word – or shifted polarities – now perhaps the lie is the truth and the truth is the lie," he added. "The relevance is that these words have lost their meaning in many ways."
TRUTH/ LIE is installed in Tijuana, a city in Mexican state Baja California that borders the US – a location Brüggemann chose to further emphasise the meaning of the work.
"The location in Tijuana attracted me as I liked the idea of how the piece would be understood on a physical, geographical border – reflecting the idea of blurring boundaries, of language losing its clarity, and how the meaning of the two words have eroded one another, their meaning blending into each of the two words," he explained.
As shown in an accompanying video, the neon lights are elevated on stilts atop a building known as the tunnel house, which Brüggemann said previously served as an illegal physical connection between the US and Mexico.
TRUTH/LIE is raised above a building known as tunnel house
Brüggemann's choice of site on the US-Mexico border also has significance because a key commitment in US president Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was that a wall would be built between the two countries.
Along the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, sandy drifts swell and surge in a massive mural by the Canadian architecture firm NÓS. Aptly named “Moving Dunes,” the anamorphic artwork is comprised of neutral-toned lines that undulate along the walkway, creating a deceptive path mimicking deserts and beaches. Chrome spheres sporadically appear along the street in order to reflect the surrounding architecture and rippling patterns on the ground.
The 2018 project coincided with the museum’s exhibition, From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso, Past and Present, which prompted NÓS to evoke the perspective-bending approach of cubist painters. “Moving Dunes” was chosen after an annual call for proposals to install a large-scale artwork on the Avenue de Musée. Follow NÓS’s latest designs and illusory projects on Instagram. (via designboom)
Architecture studio Space Popular has designed the venue for Punto de Inflexión, the first-ever architecture conference held in virtual reality.
Held on 21 and 22 October and featuring speakers including Peter Cook and Carme Pinós, the Punto de Inflexión conference was held in nine virtual rooms set out in a grid inspired by Barcelona's street plan.
Top: the conference layout was inspired by Barcelona's urban grid. Above: the amphitheatre hosted talks
"It's the most ambitious virtual space we've ever built," said Fredrik Hellberg of London-based Space Popular. "As far as we know it's the first of its kind in architecture."
Attendees selected avatars in the lobby area before navigating along circulation routes to rooms containing architecture exhibitions, watching movies in a cinema space and attending talks held in a large amphitheatre.
They could also network with other attendees by chatting with them in chance encounters or arranging meetings.
Attendees chose their own avatars on arrival
The coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge of interest in virtual replacements for physical activities. Virtual fashion is booming as people look for ways to make their online avatars more stylish while architect Arthur Mamou-Mani turned to VR to realise a structure intended for the cancelled Burning Man festival.
"This year, because of Covid-19, we couldn't organize the festival in Barcelona, where it was intended to happen," Herrero Delicado told Dezeen.
A series of galleries hosted an exhibition of Arquia/próxima competition entries
Herrero Delicado decided against asking speakers to give talks via Zoom like other virtual conferences as "I found them very boring and you cannot really engage either with the speakers or with other people attending".
"I was thinking, how we can do something that is more social, where people can talk to each other, discussing, bitching or gossiping about what is happening?"
Space Popular's solution was to create a grid of rooms separated by circulation routes and featuring facades inspired by Barcelona's architecture.
The grid itself is derived from the Eixample (Expansion), the iconic lattice of city blocks created when Barcelona expanded beyond its medieval walls, with the circulation routes lined with abstracted versions of local building typologies.
Attendees could navigate through the rooms using arrow keys
The main arena featured elevations derived from the city's gothic quarter.
Spatially, one of the biggest differences between a virtual and a real conference is that there is no sense of arrival at a VR event, Hellberg said: "You just click on a link and you're there immediately, which means that virtual spaces can't have all of the very necessary psychological kind of threshold spaces that real architecture has."
With many of the attendees unfamiliar with VR environments, Space Popular kept navigation as simple as possible.
"Always the most important thing is access and inclusivity over what things look like," said Hellberg.
Galería Documental contained a multi-screen cinema
The conference environment was built on the Mozilla Hubs platform, which allows attendees to explore online environments without having to download special software, wear a VR headset or remember complex key commands in order to move around.
"If you have to download something, people are not gonna join it," said Herrero Delicado. "If you have to register, people are not going to do it."
Attendance was limited to 100 people at a time to prevent users' computers getting overloaded. "We had a capacity that is limited by the processing power of the user and their connection," Space Popular's Lara Lesmes said.
Architect Carme Pinós speaking in the amphitheatre at Punto de Inflexión
Conference-goers moved through the rooms using simple forward-and-back commands to prevent them from getting lost or stuck, with sound design used as a key tool to help orientation in both a spatial and a social sense.
"Everything hinges on the use of spatial audio," said Lesmes.
As users entered the auditorium, the voice of the speaker would get louder while the din of delegates chatting in the circulation space would fall.
Avatars could approach other attendees to talk to them
Similarly, when they approached other delegates, their voices would rise in volume so they could engage in conversation without disturbing others.
Punto de Inflexión, which is Spanish for Turning Point, was the seventh biannual architecture festival funded by Spanish charitable foundation Fundación Arquia.
Besides the conference, the festival featured rooms containing exhibitions of work entered for the 2020 edition of the Arquia/próxima architecture competition, which is open to emerging Spanish and Portuguese practices.
Established in 2007 and organised every two years, Arquia Foundation launches the competition Arquia/próxima to recognise the works developed by Spanish and Portuguese architects during their first ten years of career.
Herrero Delicado said the conference was a success, not least because of the reduced environmental impact.
"Normally the foundation pays for like 100 trips from all over the world for people to come to the festival," he said. "So obviously, the carbon footprint of the festival was minimised as much as possible. And that was to me was a huge achievement."
Lesmes predicted that hybrid conferences that combine real and virtual experiences will become mainstream in future as technology improves. However, she said that virtual conferences will never entirely replace physical events.
"I would never see it as a replacement," she said. "Nothing is replacing going out for a drink."
Punto de Inflexión was held online from 21 to 22 October. For details of more architecture and design events visit Dezeen Events Guide.
