While many a volcano has flared up lately with maddening consequences, the cinder cone that hosts the “Volcano House” in Newberry Springs, Calif., offers nothing but cosmic, barren beauty. The creation of architect Harold J. Bissner Jr., the dome house has been sitting atop a 150-foot conical hill of volcanic fragments since 1968 and is now for sale, at $750,000.
— Vegas Seven / What We Do Is Secret / Google Maps

What you can see from the video is traffic jams, what you can hear is noise, and there is also invisible air pollution. At present, there are mainly 4 types of public transits in China: subway, light-rail train, BRT, and normal bus. They have advantages and disadvantages, for example, subway costs a lot and takes long time to build; BRT takes up road spaces and produces noises as well as pollution to the air. How to develop environmental-friendly public transportation? Straddling bus provides a solution. Let's watch a demonstration.

The straddling bus combines the advantages of BRT, it is also a substitution for BRT and subway in the future. As you all know, the majority vehicle on the road is car, the shortest vehicle is also car. Normally our overpass is 4.5-5.5 m high. The highlight innovation of straddling bus is that it runs above car and under overpass. Its biggest strength is saving road spaces, efficient and high in capacity. It can reduce up to 25-30% traffic jams on main routes. Running at an average 40 km/h, it can take 1200 people at a time, which means 300 passengers per cart.

The bus can save up to 860 ton of fuel per year, reducing 2,640 ton of carbon emission. Presently we have passed the first stage demonstration and will get through all of the technical invalidation by the end of August. Beijing's Mentougou District is carrying out a eco-community project, it has already planned out 186 km for our straddling bus. Construction will begin at year end.
—China Hush

As we see it, though, there are critical gaps in the disciplines that cities and citizens might naturally call upon to help them grasp this opportunity. As a profession, interaction design has tended to have problems thinking beyond the screen; it lacks any account of large-scale physical, spatial or social environments. Meanwhile, the fields that traditionally deal comfortably with these scales — architecture and urban planning — quail before the unique demands posed by the human interface with networked information systems.

This is the challenge we’ve taken up. Urbanscale is a practice committed to applying the toolkit and mindset of interaction design to the specific problems of cities. Through the design of products, services, interfaces and spatial interventions, our work aims to make cities easier to understand, more pleasant to use and more responsive to the desires of their inhabitants and other users. We hope you join us in the coming weeks and years, as we explore the abundant possibilities presented by a world of networked cities and citizens.
—Urbanscale

The Arctic Drifter is designed to travel on the prevailing winds above the Arctic Circle, rolling across the landscape gathering images. When fully inflated, the Drifter presents a 15 m diameter profile, cushioned by Hypalon air-bags (a similar material is used for heavy-duty inflatable boats). Because of its size and buoyancy it is able to cover almost any flat terrain, including ice, water and small crevasses. It is able to travel in extreme wind speeds and weather conditions that would ground most travelers. With the air-bags mostly deflated, however, the Drifter presents a much smaller dome-shaped profile, giving it stability. The inner roll-cage ensures that the crew capsule is able to remain upright. To exit the capsule, the crew deflates a section of the air-bags completely and detaches them.
– Studio Les Bêtes

Seward's Success, while never built, was designed to enclose a community of 40,000 Alaskan residents beneath a climate-controlled glass dome. Since the proposed city didn't allow for cars, pedestrians would get around on moving sidewalks, bikes, and escalators.
– Alaska's Glass Metropolis: March 1970

The patented Aquapod™ is a unique containment system for marine aquaculture, suited for rough open ocean conditions and a diversity of species. The Aquapod is constructed of individual triangle net panels fastened together in a spheroid shape. Most Aquapod net panels are made of reinforced high density polyethylene with 80% recycled content and covered with coated galvanized steel wire mesh netting. Individual net panels or groups of panels are modified to accommodate other functions, such as access, feeding, fish transfer, grading, and harvesting. The Aquapod functions as a secure containment system for finfish while submerged or partially surfaced.

Now here’s a story: a guy in Oregon has figured out how to turn the hulks of four to six former cars into cool little houses that cost between $100,000 and $250,000, depending on their size. The stories I read burble on to describe the incredible energy efficiency of the houses, how they are designed to be built by five workers in forty-five days rather than by the average fifteen workers in the average 225 days, and how rats and termites and carpenter ants and suchlike will curse and moan because they cannot chew their way through recycled steel, and how the houses take advantage of the biggest, heaviest recyclable product that pretty much everyone owns, and how the houses, called Miranda Homes, don’t look like gleaming metallic yurts, as you might think they would, but more like your regular old friendly suburban cottage, the kind where Donna Reed is beaming at the door and you can smell bacon and there’s a kid upstairs not doing homework, and I get so fascinated I track down the guy, and we have us a good talk.
– Orion Magazine

“How do they survive?”
“They just do. Go live there a while and see for yourself.”
“Anybody can just go live there?”
“Anybody. Drop City is Utopia.”
“Don’t believe it,” Frinki said.
“I don’t believe it. Nobody believes in Utopia any more. At least not in Colorado.”
“Okay, it isn’t Utopia,” Kugo said. “Utopia’s got rules. Drop City doesn’t have any rules.”
“Up is down and down is up. Isn’t that right, Kugo? And the tooth fairy leaves Thai sticks under everybody’s pillow.”

—Memories of DROP CITY

The first issue of MAP has cast itself upon the unknown, but also the very physical. Although the Antarctica has only been a building site for slightly over 100 years, the scenario is, to say the least, disastrous and marvellous at the same time. Building is almost impossible in some areas, but Mac Murdo Base Station seems a mining station with a vengeance, in size and appearance. In other regions, buildings are being literally devoured by the ice and spat out into the ocean. Just the mere climatic contradiction that the Antarctica (larger than Europe) is 70% ice, but a dessert at the same time, makes it an unavoidable subject to be studied. Brainstorms precipitate, MAP is the result.

MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a publication of research and visions; research into territories, which can be concrete or abstract, but always put into question.
—MAP

The Interlace, one of the largest and most ambitious residential developments in Singapore, presents a radically new approach to contemporary living in a tropical environment. Instead of creating a cluster of isolated, vertical towers – the default typology of residential developments in Singapore – the design proposes an intricate network of living and social spaces integrated with the natural environment.