Foreclosures Become Nature

I just came upon this – amazing proposition — looking for post industrial (and post-slurb) utopianizers:

The Frog Dream

Calvin Chiu’s Frog’s Dream, which proposes to re-establish a sustainable relationship between city and suburbia by transforming foreclosures (’McMansions’) into wetlands and natural water filtration systems for urban centers. The idea maker speaks of a ‘Living Machine’ of eco-water treatment machines, in which a “micro-ecosystem of plants, algae, bacteria, fish and clams are present to purify the water. A micro-wetland ecosystem will be formed around these mansions to sustain larger wetland animals and plants.”

Chiu won the Grand Prize of the competition, Reburbia.  Hurrah. I was palpitating and flushed when I saw this image.

Archigram

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

Lovely article at Art Fag City,  on Google Street View’s incidentally captured moments.

Two years ago, Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View

Consistent with the company’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this enormous project, titled Google Street View, was created for the sole purpose of adding a new feature to Google Maps.

Art Fag City, Jon Rafman, Google Street View

Never hiding its presence, but never announcing its arrival, the Street View vehicle is a systematic pursuer of fleeting moments. continue…