Hurricane Earl, as seen from space (NYT)

The name might sound like a boxer from the ’50s, but Hurricane Earl is churning its way up the Atlantic seaboard. Winds are gusting up to 165 mph in the Category 4 storm, which reminds us why architects and builders take the long view when doing their work. The effects of the Hurricane of 1938 –which inspired the modern tracking and naming system–can still be seen across New England, if you know where to look.

Casa Areia, Portugal

The Portuguese architecture firm Aires Mateus has built an incredible beachside retreat. While the sand floors might not be wholly practical, the buildings respond superbly to their site and purpose.

From the “Classes I Wish I’d Taken” Department: Undergrads Crash NASA Satellite Into the Ocean. Students at the University of Colorado got to decommission a satellite for credit. I say that any class that lets you interact directly with outer space is pretty cool.

Modern Birdhouses in London

And finally, some cosmopolitan birds get modern digs in London. The title of the project is “Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven,” after the common name for the tree species (which, incidentally, is increasingly being seen as invasive)

The twisting concrete form connects the buildings elegantly

From Studio Bellecour, a green office building in Toulouse, France

Things being destroyed, very slowly. The sound effects are a bit much, but still, awesome.

Flickr user theclosedloop, via the Industrial Designers’ Society of America, reminds us that “there is no away”

Google Earth gets even more real

Google has added real-time weather monitoring to Google Earth. Representing environmental data is a complex design challenge–it often requires splitting up information between different views — but Google appears to be taking the comprehensive approach. This will be fun to follow in the next few years as it gets even more sophisticated. (Treehugger)

HVAC "Magic Box" for super-efficient spaces

At the Box Office, Stack installed efficient heat pumps and energy recovery ventilators, allowing for a tight envelope with excellent indoor air quality. These are two separate units. Equipment developed for the Passivhaus standard combines these two functions into one “Magic Box” that performs heating, cooling, and conditioned ventilation, all in one unit, saving energy and space.

Circulus at the disused Seeley G. Mudd Library at Pomona College

Art student Sam Starr built a small velodrome in a disused library at Pomona College. The project riffs off the idea of circulation — of bicycles, of books, of bloodflow in exercise — and simultaneously touches on the relationship between old and new media. Regardless, its a beautiful structure.

A boat!

Workers restoring the World Trade Center site found an 18th century ship buried in the muck.  BLDG Blog explores what it means to find ships and wharves suspended beneath the foundations of our cities.

Plastiki lands in Australia

A few months ago, a group of sailors departed from San Francisco on a trip to cross the Pacific Ocean, with a stop at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to raise awareness about plastic and waste. Their vessel? A catamaran made entirely of recycled soda bottles. Last week, they arrived in Australia. A staggering feat of seamanship, resourcefulness, and commitment to the environment.

While good news from the Gulf appeared on the horizon this week with the successful capping of the Deepwater Horizon well, the above simulation underscores how serious the situation still is. The simulation follows the release of 8 million particles into the currents of the Gulf and Eastern Atlantic.

Lord understands what Stack is all about, when he writes that we

focus on sustainable and innovative construction projects that lower costs by removing the inefficiencies that often arise between design work and construction.

Containers to Clinics was a gratifying project to apply that methodology, and we’ll continue to follow its progress closely!

Skydivers over Florida with the space shuttle in the background.

Spatially and artistically, the above photo of skydivers watching the space shuttle launch is extraordinary.

Realized in three dimensions.

Stack design intern  (and Box Office welder) Geoff Hawley threw together a mockup of our “cube” logo out of recycled steel.

There’s more below the fold…

Train traffic controllers hard at work

GE has a new train traffic control system that they claim can increase average train speed by 10 to 20 percent. The system is yet another example of how databases and computing technology, when applied to very practical and real-world industries, can generate huge gains in productivity and efficiency.

From the greener building department, BuildingGreen has a great article on the embodied energy and global warming potential of different types of insulation. We use open-cell cellulosic sprayfoam, which has one of the lower impacts on the list.

A small piece of Taylor Medlin's thesis project, "Towards a New Antarchitecture"

Via BLDG Blog, a stunning exercise in architectural modeling. Student Taylor Medlin used wax, sculpted ice, and several ingenious lensing methods to portray his ideas for building sustainably in Antarctica, or as he puts it, “Antarchitecture.” The craft, precision, and ability to evoke his ideas clearly make the model a success.

The staff of Containers to Clinics, the organization that engaged Stack to build a clinic out of two 20′ shipping containers, sent us these photos from Red Hook, Brooklyn, of the clinic getting loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Port-au-Prince.

The ISO containers fit in happily alongside their more utilitarian neighbors on the ship, a key part of Stack’s adaptibility-driven design.

The cranes that load the containers are controlled by highly precise GPS; the operator only varies the speed.

The ship pulling away from the dock

From Guatemala, news that a terrifyingly enormous sinkhole swallowed an entire factory, which was fortunately closed. The thing is reportedly 60 feet across and 300 feet deep — about as deep as the Statue of Liberty is tall.

The sinkholes — which occur regularly in Central America and Florida, among other places, are a result of the underlying Karst topography. Water (often from leaking infrastructure) dissolves the limestone bedrock, creating a cavity. Additional saturation — in this case provided by the destructive Tropical Storm Agatha — can cause the soil structure to collapse into the void. (Infrastructurist)

This guy got pretty lucky. And possibly didn’t even notice.

Some building scientists have done a study on the effectiveness of sticky rice as a mortar ingredient in traditional Chinese buildings. A pretty cool example of simple but secretly sophisticated technology, especially in earthquake-prone China. (Inhabitat)

And finally, because I can’t seem to leave this story alone, a visualization of what the BP oil spill would do to your region: If It Was My Home. Makes the magnitude of it a bit more real, notwithstanding their neglect of the subjunctive.

BLDG Blog points out this architectural prank/sculpture from artists Julien Berthier and Simon Boudvin: a fake door installed against a wall in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. It’s almost touching that the door is faithfully cleaned of graffiti by the city.

Stack continues to follow the Deepwater Horizon disaster closely. It’s events like this that redouble our commitment to green and high-performance buildings.  The Infrastructurist lays out the technical causes of the disaster, while CBS news has a harrowing (and damning) survivor account.

Speaking of the Gulf, this stunning 1944 map, prepared by the US Army Corps of Engineers, shows the wildly variable course of the river over millennia. John McPhee meditated on the futility of controlling these changes in his 1990 book The Control of Nature.

Fast Company provides a slideshow of the “Year’s Sexiest Houses,” as judged by the AIA.