Humans are far from the only creatures with the ability to shape the environment in their favor. From insects and arachnids to marine invertebrates and mammals, the animal kingdom is rife with members who all construct their own habitats. Here are the most prolific builders in Animalia.
Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings—solid, tangible structures. These images, however, depict views of spaces that have only ever existed in silico—and they're breathtaking.
Art and architecture collide in this playful new series of paintings by Federico Babina. What if Andy Warhol designed a mod apartment complex? Or Joan Miró a museum? Babina has taken 27 artists and reimagined their work as places where people can live and work.
These extremely rare, previously unseen travel posters make me want to travel back in time and visit a Japan of another era. These beautiful graphics were recently rediscovered, and they'll auctioned off at the Vintage Movie Posters Signature Auction this month.
Last week we introduced to you the totally awesome Exosuit
GIFs are a blast. They can teach you how to knit
These amazing, almost 100-year old covers of the weekly French magazine Le Petite Journal are from the online collection of the french National Library. They show what were the most exciting innovations of the 1920s, and how people in Europe imagined the future of technology and science.
I came across some wintertime military photographs that looked like lost frames from the Battle of Hoth, in The Empire Strikes Back. So much, in fact, that I couldn't resist adding some laser gun turrets and AT-ATs. Check them out and post your mashups in the comments.
After our first cutaway collections on spacecraft and weapons, here comes a new one: Aircraft! You can see here a few really rare and special illustrations, some of them never published on the Internet before.
Humans don't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to environmental stewardship, but that doesn't mean we aren't trying. Numerous projects around the world are working to rebuild lost habitats, protect vital wildlife highways, and regenerate lost populations. Here are a few man-made structures built on behalf of our four-footed brethren.
Building a home for yourself could either be a nightmare or a dream: You have free reign, but you also must live with your mistakes or second-guesses forever. That hasn't stopped many architects from overseeing the designs of their own spaces—and lucky for us, sometimes they let photographers inside.
Shigeru Ban, Hanegi Forest, Japan
Architecture has a rich history of unapologetically demanding massive amounts of land to create man's vision over nature's. However, a more conscientious and natural approach to architecture has emerged to quell our territorial imperialism over mother nature. It's about time.
These days, we think of tall buildings as profitable, if predictable, tools of real estate. But at one time, skyscrapers were as technologically exciting as the Space Race. The eVolo Skyscraper Competition, now in its ninth year, aims to recapture some of that excitement.
Nowadays, shopping malls are seldom considered masterpieces. But that was completely different at the turn of the 19th century—a time when the department store was a pinnacle of high style and technology.
Last night, Shigeru Ban became the 37th winner of the "Nobel for architecture,"
Churches tend to ebb and flow with generations: Chapels close after neighborhoods are redeveloped, cathedrals are abandoned after religious upheaval. So, what then? In more than a few cases, they've been turned into bookstores and libraries.
The oldest beer factory in Guangzhou, China, dates back to the 1960s—a hulking concrete building on the edge of the Pearl River, with 12 silos rising 114 feet into the sky. Two years ago, O-Office Architects decided to do something with the 60-year-old behemoth: Turn it into their own studio.
Cities change: skyscrapers go up, row houses are torn down, neighborhoods gentrify, earthquakes destroy. Vintage photographs of cities can be fascinating in and of themselves, but the familiar unfamiliarity of these time-warped photographs are especially intriguing.
Museums are lightning rods for criticism. The most public of all buildings, they're also the most vulnerable, and even long-accepted classics faced scorn in their infancy. Today we're taking a look at vintage photographs of New York City's famous museums while under construction.
In the history of medicine, machines became crucial parts of the diagnostic and treatment process in the first half of the 20th century. Scientists and doctors experimented with some really strange devices, and they developed a lot of creepy-looking health equipment—at least some of which seems almost horrific, seen through the eyes of today. The following 22 instruments are partly scary, partly weird, and partly awesome—just as inventions should be.