This is architecture

What is architecture? 

Is this architecture?

While we ponder over this troubling issue, some seek the ultimate in the products of post capitalist society, found in this highly intriguing competition that challenges and probes into this very question that shapes our  world today. "Jelly Competition" is part of a series of events across the London Festival of Architecture that explore the relationship between food and architecture. 

Organised by Wow! Bompas & Parr and Article 25, the many entries received are judged on innovation, aesthetics and “wobble factor”.  The competition is now closed but we are able to view the results that will be on display to the public during the Architectural Jelly Banquet being held in UCL’s Quad on the 4th July in London. Tickets are available, from the 5th May, from www.lfa2008.org.

Live in a Beagle

Fancy looking at the world from a dog's perspective? Now you are able to at Dog Bark Park Inn Bed and Breakfast in Cottonwood, Idaho.Dog Bark Park Inn is a bed & breakfast guesthouse inside the World's Biggest Beagle. Guests enter the body of the beagle from a private 2nd story deck. Inside and up another level to the head of the dog is a loft room with additional sleeping space plus a cozy alcove in the muzzle.

For more information, click here.

City of Happiness

Felicity (n):

happiness: state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy

“What if a city is built on a foundation of happiness?” This was the question that drove the FeliCity workshop project, which was conducted at the University of Edinburgh, by Paskal A., David Lee and Adib Jalal.

Instead of adopting usual city planning methods, the FeliCity project is based on the idea of developing a poly-centric urban region based on the Gross National Happiness concept. It proposes that the key strategy in developing an emotional landscape of the region of Belt 1 is to regulate the levels of happiness so as to maintain a state of ‘emotional equilibrium’ across it. This would enable each city in the belt to develop at its maximum potential with their high happiness indices.

The project proposes that the M8 be replaced by a new transport system, named Plutchik2, which other than being a mass rapid transit system is also a means to regulate the emotions of commuters from one city to another. Thus, through regulating and transferring the emotional energy of happiness from one city to another, this ideal state can be achieved.

For more information, click here.

The Likely Unlikely

Familiarity is dependable but is, at times, over used these days. Shopping has become a predictable affair and little delights the senses.

Thankfully, at most Commes des Garcon Guerilla Stores, the visual and emotional experience becomes part of the whole consumerist exercise. Wood Wood Temporary Space at Commes des Garcon Guerilla Store in Poland is conceptualised in the veins of a Commes Guerilla store, but is quite unlike what one would expect of a boutique. Here, too, the design preys on the unsuspecting and derive pleasure in antithetical shock tactics. Brought to life by Karl-Oskar Olsen and Brain SS, this store's deliberate run-down feel incorporates raw, vintage-y elements and stacks of casually placed cardboard boxes that are used as shelves within it.

Comme des Garcons Guerrilla Store +4822 III ul. Koszykowa 1 00-564 Warszawa Poland

Where is Mas Selamat?

The answer to the unsettling question of the whereabouts of the infamous fugitive may just be found on widely posted banners and welcome signs. We think the obvious may be hard to spot at times.