Architecture

LA JOLLA, Calif.--Cottages shouldn't stick out way over the edge of buildings, but when they've been picked up by mysterious forces and dropped out of the sky, that's exactly what can happen.

Welcome to Korean artist Do Ho Suh's "Fallen Star," a small, New England-style house that was unveiled in June atop -- and well out beyond the roof of -- the Jacobs Engineering School building at the University of California at San Diego here.

I've come to explore "Fallen Star" as part of Road Trip 2012, and though I'… Read more

SAN SIMEON, Calif.--To visit Hearst Castle, the private palace built by media magnate William Randolph Hearst along the Central California coast, was to enter a place completely out of any obvious time period.

Easily one of America's most notorious homes -- it was fictionalized as Xanadu in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," Hearst Castle was first conceptualized in 1919 and was never finished. Work stopped when the media magnate left in 1947, four years before he died.

Packed with hundreds upon hundreds of priceless antiquities from throughout Western history, Hearst Castle was constructed before there were ever … Read more

Intel will not join a chip-related alliance aimed at making it easier for software developers to take advantage of the compute power locked up in graphics silicon.

Advanced Micro Devices, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., and Texas Instruments announced the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation on Tuesday.

Here's how Lisa Su, an AMD senior vice president, described it in a phone interview with CNET.

"The point is, even if you put a really powerful CPU next to a really powerful GPU, if these [chips] don't interact and the applications don't know when it's better to … Read more

It was just over a year ago that the CDC told the public how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, tongue firmly in cheek.

Today, it ain't so funny. Following the stunning case in Miami, Fla., of a drug-addled man eating another man's face, there have been reports of horrifying cannibalistic crimes in Texas and Maryland.

Naturally, there's a Google map of these and other incidents foretelling zombie doomsday.

Ridiculous? Yes. But even the CDC weighed in on it, with spokesman David Daigle reassuring everyone that there's really no such thing as zombies.

Oh but there are more things in heaven and earth, CDC, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. … Read more

Did you ever wish you could create cool 3D images of cars, landscapes, and anything else you can visualize, only to choke at the price of 3D modeling software? High-quality 3D design tools are finally available as freeware, such as ThreeDify Designer Free, a scaled-back freeware version of 3Dify Designer, which some users will remember as ActiveSolid. This capable 2D- and 3D-modeling and rendering application has two operational modes, as a standalone tool and as an ActiveX object in Internet Explorer, Excel, PowerPoint, and other programs. We tried its standalone mode.

ThreeDify Designer Free's user interface bears a strong … Read more

A group of scientists has gone offshore in an effort to bypass the food-versus-fuel debate.

Startup Bio Architecture Lab today published a paper in Science it claims will turn seaweed into a viable feedstock for fuel and other chemicals.

Making fuel and chemicals from crops such as corn and sugar cane requires significant quantities of land and fresh water, creating competition for resources with agriculture. Macroalgae such as seaweed, by contrast, grow in salt water and are relatively productive energy sources because they are 60 percent carbohydrates and don't contain lignin, which binds up useful molecules in many earthbound … Read more

I've been going to Burning Man for many years, and each time I've struggled to figure out a good way to make a home in the desert that's shaded, ventilated, stylish, and comfortable.

Over the years, I've tried nearly everything: tent, carport, dome, truck, RV, van, and combinations of all of the above. And I've even finally gotten to the point of making a space that I feel proud calling my living room. People come to visit, there's room for plenty of seating, and if someone wants to make dinner, they can do it. … Read more

The Volvo C30 Electric is already out on the roads in Europe, but this week the Swedish automaker released 10 video clips documenting the development of new technology for the C30.

According to Volvo, the C30 Electric had a short development time, and the process involved about 100 research and development specialists.

Click on the links below to view videos two through 10, to learn more about testing, safety, engineering and other aspects of the C30's development.

The films include "A Milestone in the Automotive Industry" (below), "Battery System," "Electrical Architecture and Electrical Safety,&… Read more

I know that some people stared at images of Apple's planned headquarters on the old HP campus and cooed and ahhd.

Many of these people were on the Cupertino city council. They saw fine, new ways in which to pay for, oh, silver sewers and gold-plated faucets in public washrooms, perhaps.

However, the architecture critic of the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne, looked at the plans and felt slightly more chilling emotions. He found it a "doggedly old-fashioned proposal," with perhaps the greatest emphasis on the "dog" syllable.

He described it as a "retrograde cocoon.&… Read more