Cool Hunting Video Presents: The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

by Cool Hunting Video

Formerly a military training ground, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is now part of the famed Walker Art Center and the largest urban sculpture garden in the U.S. In this video, tour guide Gary White focuses on seven pieces of the 40 permanent installations, filling in background details and some of the park's history along the way.

Ettore Sottsass: New Works 2005-2007

by Ami Kealoha

There's perhaps no other living designer who embodied the bold, playful look of the '80s more than Ettore Sottsass. Like the revivalism in fashion, graphic design and music seen in recent years, the groundbreaking Austrian-born designer's furniture and architecture has lately been experiencing a renaissance of its own with recent shows in Los Angeles and London. The next opportunity to see his work is at an upcoming exhibit that inaugurates NYC's Friedman Benda gallery this Wednesday, 19 September 2007 and also welcomes the legend into his 90th year.

Consisting of furniture and glass work created over the last few years, the solo show brings together a seminal collection that has never before been presented publicly in its entirety and still looks original and fresh.

Trademark cabinets feature typically top-heavy geometric construction and a use of materials that make for appealingly slick surfaces while also adding a sense of warmth. The result is furniture that is as fun to look at as it is engaging to experience, part of Sottsass' efforts to bring humor and emotion to design, as well as his tendency to mix in fine art sensibilities.

To get a complete sense of Sottsass' prolific output spanning furniture, ceramics, glass, architecture, industrial design for Olivetti and interior design, we highly recommend the catalog from his 2006 show at LACMA. You can pick it up from LACMA or Amazon.

Ettore Sottsass: New Works 2005-2007
Opening reception: 19 September 2007, 6-9pm
19 September–27 October 2007
Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001 map
tel. +1 212 239 8700

Alpinist 21

by Tim Yu

The haute mountaineering magazine Alpinist has stepped it up another level by going green with issue 21. Advocates for clean-style climbing (leaving no gear behind), Alpinist 21 puts their money where their magazine is by using an eco-friendly printing process called Earth Ink, in partnership with Patagonia.

The upshot is that in one year Alpinist will save 677 trees, 266,836 gallons of water, 469,000,000 BTUs of energy, 40,842 lbs. of solid waste and eliminate 75,296 lbs. of greenhouse gasses.

Even better, the new production methods don't compromise the look and feel of the book, proving that an archival-quality magazine is possible with 100% recycled paper. The issue also launches a redesign of the mag and their site—which might keep climbers indoors for once.

For more info and to subscribe, go here.

Mithun Urban Farms

by Jacob Resneck

As myopic urban planners and developers pave over rich topsoil to create giant-box stores and auto malls in their pursuit of easy tax revenue and profits, a partnership of forward-looking architects have hatched a scheme to comingle agriculture with urban development

Mithun, a consortium of cutting-edge architects in Seattle, recognize that when real estate and resources become scant, the solution is to build up. Their idea is simple: vertical, urban farms in which production equivalent to an acre of farmland is condensed footprint of a .72 inner-city acre.

"Constantly developing creative and challenging ideas is the best way to uncover innovative solutions to today's problems," states CEO Bert Gregory of Mithun in a news release touting the concept.

Grain could be germinated for animal feed; rooftop greenhouses could produce fresh vegetables; incubators could raise egg-laying hens; Methun's innovative design won Best of Show in the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge.

Ambitious, though not entirely impossible in years to come, the stated goal is no less than to integrate crops and livestock into an urban skyline. While the architects admit these ideas aren't likely to be realized any time soon, it's unconventional ideas like these that will be necessary to support a human population projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to rise to more than 9.4 billion by 2050.

Wired NextFest 2007

by Phuong-Cac Nguyen

From ideas that ran from the creepy (like regenerated body parts including bladders) to conceptually fascinating (like a harp with strings made from lasers and a Lifestraw that kills sinister infectious organisms in water upon contact), over 160 exhibitors at the 4th annual Wired NextFest in Los Angeles this past weekend enthusiastically revealed their visions of the future to receptive nerds of all ages.

But as anyone could guess from such a geeked-out expo, the star crowd-packers were the robots (we'll make any excuse we can to include them on Cool Hunting). The noggin of the smooth-moves Albert Hubo robot from KAIST, which holds the distinction of being the first walking robot with a face capable of showing expression, bore the eerie, exact resemblance of Albert Einstein courtesy of Hanson Robotics. The Android Twin Robot, in the same electronic vein, was a remarkably true physical clone of the maker's founder Zou Ren Ti and caused not only double but triple takes. (See some in action in our video from last year here.)

In design, the Desktop Factory 3D printer garnered the most adulation. With this machine that looks like it came straight from a lab, consumers who have $5,000 to drop on the hardware as well as lots of patience (five hours for a small creation) can design and print actual 3-D objects made from a powder blend of aluminum, nylon and glass. Other attention-grabbing products were the D30 suit, built with a flexible material that hardens upon impact making it a fave with some soccer players and snowboarders. CuteCircuit, known for their Hug Shirt that tenses so its wearers can feel the sensation of a real hug, showed off other irreverent but practical innovations like the M-Dress, which turns an outfit into a working cell phone.

The NextFest wouldn't be all things future without a motley selection of green-friendly entries, like the Pull Cord Generator by Potenco that's currently being used in developing countries to power LEDs for lighting but will be offered stateside for applications such as charging MP3 players and cell phones. Interactive Institute, known for its power-aware line, is debuting a clock that talks with your electricity meter to show energy consumption at any time of day.

Until the next NextFest...

Foster + Partners Eco Tower

by Lost At E Minor

Foster + Partners have clearly been busy on the large-scale eco front with another offering in the Russian city of Khanty Mansyisk. This 280-meter tall tower is built like a cut diamond to maximize daylight through the winter months by the refraction of light. Of the project, the architecture firm says, "this mixed-use scheme will create an elegant and crystalline landmark, providing crucial new amenities for its citizens—a place for living, working and leisure, sheltered from the harsh Siberian climate."