I find the pattern of fingerprints fascinating. No two people in the world have exactly the same print and not even the fingers on your own hand may all have the same style of swooping ridges. This makes for an endless number of patterns. Some cultures believe that ones prints are indicators of thier personality or even their destiny.
The way the lines ebb and flow like the currents of a stream are very interesting to study. Features resembling natural topography can even be identified like a ridge, valley, fork or delta. But with as many different prints as there are in the world, they can be broken down into basic categories and are often classified into the following: loop, whorl and arch. These patterns can be used in design like the picture at the top of the Fingermaze by Chris Drury in Hove Park in the UK which used stone set into the turf. Another artist inspired by the swirling lines isKevin Van Aelst who designed his finger prints into some typical objects as if seeing fingerprints appear in things like spilt suger in everyday life.
I’m not entirely sure what to think about this article from Popular Science. I could argue both sides. I mean, it’s good news in one sense but one of those things where if it were to take the place of the real version it terms of people “placing” trees around the city versus planting real ones, I would certainly have an issue with it. Especially the idea of a synthetic forest, yikes!
A little on the functionality from the Popular Science article “The ‘tree’ uses plastic leaves that capture the carbon dioxide in a chamber. The carbon dioxide is then compressed into liquid form. The tree captures the carbon without the need for direct sunlight, which means that, unlike traditional trees, the synthetic trees can be stored in enclosed places such as barns, used anywhere, and transported from one site to another regardless of conditions.”
And also this interesting little bit, “the captured CO2 could be used to create fuel for jet engines and cars, the two most common carbon emitters. In other cases, the CO2 could be used to enhance current production of vegetable produce.”
Synthetic trees could be interesting for the indoor environments where there is no sun or no windows. Perhaps instead of taking place of real trees, they could instead take the place of those horrific fake plastic trees…in fake plastic earth… (cue Radiohead).
Monday June 29th 2009, 6:32 pm
Filed under: Infrastructure
image via Lisa Town
When I first entered Gibralter as part of a trip through southern Spain last year, via double decker British style bus of course, the first thing I noticed was the fact that the main road in and out, just past the Spanish border, cut right through an airport runway. I know there’s not a whole lot of space there with all that water and a big rock in the way, but was that really the best planning solution? Of course, at the time, I kept thinking….no, that can’t really be the actual runway. Planes don’t go right on through the main public access road, right?
Well, as it turns out, they do and the runway even made it in this website showcasing “4 of the World’s Strangest Airport Runways” and with the accompanying pictures from the article below. Text from site:
“Gibraltar Airport’s single runway is one of very few in the world (and certainly the largest example) to intersect a public road. That’s correct: a public road. Operating similarly to a train crossing, traffic travelling along Winston Churchill Avenue in Gibraltar is brought to a halt each time a plane either lands or takes-off, causing the spectacle seen in the photos [below].”
Another interesting one is the Funchal Airport’s Extended Runway on the island of Medeira where the extended runway doubles as a covered vehicular parking garage. “When engineers were looking for a viable way to extend Funchal Airport’s dangerously brief runway, they cleverly opted to ‘rest’ the enormous structure on 180 pillars, each measuring 230ft, rather than using landfill to support the strip. The result is a unique, safe runway which now also houses a car park underneath its extension. The newly adapted runway also won the IABSE’s Outstanding Structure Award in 2004.”
