construction

Posts tagged
with construction

Craft Design

Construction Goes Small Scale with Mini Materials’s Tiny Building Supplies

Building a tiny home gains new meaning when working with Mini Materials. The U.S.-based company invites craftspeople and masons to think small for their next projects, offering pallets of cinder blocks and lumber ready to be slathered in mortar or nailed into position at either 1:6 or 1:12 scale. From construction supplies like road signs and barriers to kits for creating a backyard firepit, Mini Materials offers a vast array of products intended for minuscule fabrication, all of which are made of the same concrete or wood as their life-sized counterparts.

Shop the small supplies on the company’s site, and find a variety of projects and how-to guides on its blog and YouTube.

 

Animation Design History

Watch the 14th-Century Construction Process of Prague’s Charles Bridge Unfold in a Meticulous Animation

Up until the mid-19th century, the only way to cross the Vltava River in Prague was to head over the gothic stone arches of the Charles Bridge. The project of King Charles IV, construction of the now iconic structure began in 1357 after a flood damaged the existing walkway. A short animation by Engineering and Architecture peers back into history to chronicle the centuries-old building process as it shows wooden trusses framing the structure and bricks seemingly sprinkling into place. While the video collapses decades of work into less than a minute, the Charles Bridge wasn’t complete until the early 15th century.

Find more of Engineering and Architecture’s construction studies on Instagram and YouTube. (via Laughing Squid)

 

Photography

Photos of Hong Kong Construction Sites Wrapped in Colorful Cocoons by Peter Steinhauer

Like a burst of color on an otherwise grey canvas, a single majestically colored building rises out of a sea of dull grayness. This is not Christo’s latest “wrapping” project, which is what the photographer Peter Steinhaur first thought, naturally, upon encountering the phenomenon. In fact, these are construction sites wrapped in a colorful mesh material, a traditional method employed in Hong Kong to prevent debris from falling onto the streets below. According to Steinhauer, who’s lived and worked in Asia for the last 21 years – but was stunned to discover this unique construction method in Hong Kong – buildings are wrapped regardless of whether they’re coming up or going down. I’ve seen a similar method employed in Japan with smaller houses, but never anything of such monolithic scale. You can see many more photos over on Steinhauer’s site, where he has two series aptly titled “Cocoon.” (via Featureshoot)

Art

Xu Bing Arrives at Mass MoCA With His 12-Ton Birds Made of Construction Equipment

Chinese artist Xu Bing has several works currently on view as part of an exhibition at Mass MoCA in Massachusetts. Among the works are two 12-ton birds titled Phoenix that fill the museum’s football field-sized Building 5. Two years in the making, the birds were constructed from materials collected at various Chinese construction sites including demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and assorted remnants of migrant laborers. The male Phoenix titled Feng measures 90 feet long, and the female, Huang, is nearly 100 feet in length from beak to its steel tail feathers. Both birds are illuminated from within through a network of lights.

Somewhat similar to artists Yao Lu and Ai Weiwei, Xu Bing seems to be commenting on China’s rapid commercial development that is drastically altering the physical and cultural landscape within the country. Phoenix will be on view October 27th. (via junk culture, hyperallergic, my modern met)