I Love Maps >> I’M DYING THIS IS SO AMAZING

THIS IS A REAL MAP. I saw this and thought someone had painted something pretty on top of an old map.

Not so, which means this might be the most amazing map I’ve ever seen.

In the early 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers commissioned a guy named Harold Fisk to make a map of the various courses the Mississippi River has taken over time. He showed each course in a different color, to show when and how they happened. This is the result.

Just goes to show, the representation of practical information can be executed in a way that is also aesthetically pleasing.

I feel like I could look at these forever. I’ve searched and searched and I’m pretty sure you can’t buy any prints (original or reproduced) of this, but I wish you could*! I would frame a whole bunch and hang them on my wall!

(*If anyone can find any originals and would like to give them to me, it would be like the coolest gift eveerrrr, just sayin)

Rivers are constantly in flux, as they erode banks and make deeper curves (or “meanders”), until the meanders become so meandering that the two sides of the curve almost touch. At this point, the river cuts off the curve and so that it has a straight path again, and it leaves an oxbow lake behind.

Here’s a detail:

When all the pages, each showing a different section, of his study are fit together, they form this long continuous path of the Mississippi. I can’t get the image to load any larger, but it looks really cool when it’s shown as the same width as the pages above.

THE ALLUVIAL VALLEY OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI RIVER
Harold Fisk, 1944

via Pixels & Arrows

May 5, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Arts Visuels, Favorites, I Love Maps, Wonderment

Labels:
Arts Visuels, I love maps, wonderment

We need more of this kind of stuff in the world >> Crop Mobs

Loved this article in the NYT about “crop mobs.” Essentially, a small-scale sustainable farmer who has more work than he can handle gets a one-day boost from a “mob” of volunteers who subscribe to a listserv. It’s like a modern-day barn-raising!

The idea of a group of ordinary people pulling together to help someone out with their burder for a day is pretty inspiring, and the tie-in to what this says about the generation that started it– and their ideas about fulfillment and community– is really interesting.

Also check out design*sponge’s post about “work parties”– getting friends together to help out with your house (or yard) work in exchange for a great dinner and the promise of help in exchange should they need it at some point at their house. It all seems very timely given what’s been going on in the world.

Field Report: Plow Shares

By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

Published: February 24, 2010

“Who brought their own wheelbarrow?” Rob Jones asked the group of 20-somethings gathered on a muddy North Carolina farm on a chilly January Sunday. Hands shot up and wheelbarrows were pulled from pickups sporting Led Zeppelin and biodiesel bumper stickers, then parked next to a mountain of soil. “We need to get that dirt into those beds over there in the greenhouse,” he said, nodding toward a plastic-roofed structure a few hundred feet away. “The rest of you can come with me to move trees and clear brush to make room for more pasture. Watch out for poison ivy.”

Bobby Tucker, the 28-year-old co-owner of Okfuskee Farm in rural Silk Hope, looked eagerly at the 50-plus volunteers bundled in all manner of flannel and hand-knits. In five hours, these pop-up farmers would do more on his fledgling farm than he and his three interns could accomplish in months. “It’s immeasurable,” he said of the gift of same-day infrastructure.

It’s the beauty of being Crop Mobbed.

The Crop Mob, a monthly word-of-mouth (and -Web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon, has taken its traveling work party to 15 small, sustainable farms. Together, volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 person-hours, doing tasks like mulching, building greenhouses and pulling rocks out of fields.

Click the jump for the rest of the article…

(more…)

May 4, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
A Teachable Moment

Labels:
article

Tara Donovan

Artist Tara Donovan creates sculptural installations out of ordinary, often tiny, objects grouped together in mass. The resulting pieces appear to be something like a topographical landscape, but with an element of movement and amorphism.

Above, an installation of all styrofoam cups. Below, a detail shot of the cups.

This waxy looking looking wall covering is actually all…

…plastic straws!

This drip-castle like creation is…

…buttons!

Are you amazed yet? I just can’t imagine having the vision to start stacking up some buttons on your table or whatnot, and then thinking, I know, if I glue these together by the thousand, I can make a really cool landscape thing.

I like that this ameobic mass below is fairly unremarkable, until you realize what it’s made of…

click the jump for the rest…

tape!!! (Yes I’m amazed every time.)

A very short skyline made of…

Don’t these little sea urchin creatures look like they’re moving?

They’re fishing line. I don’t want to think about how long those took to put together.

Tara Donovan is
rep’d by Ace Gallery. Here.

May 4, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Arts Visuels

Labels:

LustList Overload >> Paris Apartment

This Paris apartment has so many things on my LustList in one place, I’m dying! Though it’s not 100% my style, it’s freakish how many of their pieces are things I have either been collecting or am dying to have some day… I’m feeling like I’m design-soul mates with this couple.

Or at least now I know who my competitors are on ebay when I search for these things!!

A collection of portraits, chevron-patterned wood floors, a Saarinen tulip table with a marble top…

A Chesterfield sofa, built-in bookshelves…

Old leather chairs, old maps as art (look over the bed)…

Click the jump for the rest of the apartment…

(here’s a better shot of the map– it’s an old plan of Paris), salvaged industrial lighting and seating (see welder’s stool below, science lab lamp above, heat lamp below)…

… and even old luggage and trunks and wine crates.

I couldn’t believe it! Each picture I got to, I was like, “no way is that a ____ in that photo.” It just kept getting better. And that’s not even mentioning the fireplaces, huge windows, amazing molding, or the fact that it’s in Paris… because who doesn’t want all those things??

See more photos and the interview with the couple, Gabriel and Olivie Wick, here.

May 3, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Interiors, LustList

Labels:

Spike Jonze: “How They Get There”

An amazing short by Spike Jonze of only 2 minutes and 26 seconds.

via Dalliant & Dainty

May 3, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Favorites, Must See

Labels:

A Guide to Contractors

Loved this guide to contractors in Dwell. Pretty funny and also has some useful tips for making sure all goes well with your contractor.

Here is the intro:

Contractors fascinate me. They always have. They are fundamentally different from other people. They have their own language of sorts and their own curious customs and mannerisms, like Klingons, or French people. They have cool belts and cool stuff (multitools, wee little anodized flashlights, and other things that would be handy to have) fastened to their cool belts. They look different, and they smell different. They smell like work getting done.¹ In this perhaps, contractors are not so much like French people.

*1: Like WD-40 and sawdust and Lectric Shave. My race—–the architects—–smells like hotel shampoo and that ozoney smell that wafts up when you fiddle around with the back of your computer.

Read the rest here.

May 3, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
A Teachable Moment

Labels:
articles

Treehouses

Love these incredible treehouses…

Aren’t they the fulfillment of all your childhood tree house daydreams?

Maybe my favorite interior shot from the book– love that the tree is coming through the wall, the cozy built-in nook, the bookshelf, the totally simple cushion and pillows…

Click the jump for more treehouses….

Another great looking built-in sofa… those pillows and the cushion in the simple ticking stripe look perfectly casual and comfortable.

A super posh one!! It has a chandelier!

Love the awning windows on this one, and the gingham pillows.

All images from the book Exceptional Treehouses.

April 30, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Favorites, Interiors

Labels:
architecture, LustList, treehouses

We Love DataVis Blog

I think clever infographics can be functional design at its best… Communicating statistics or messages clearly and simply in a visual medium, and then even making it look pretty, is not actually a simple task.

Here, a few great ones from the We Love Datavis (data visualization) blog, which keeps track of the latest and greatest infographics. I swear it’s not as nerdy as it sounds.

Who can resist a great flow chart?

And maybe the only thing better than a flow chart is a really good Venn diagram…

Below is an example of a more technical infographic gone wrong. This graphic was generated by a consulting firm for the US Army, and it is meant to show the complexity of the military strategy in Afghanistan to Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

As it turns out, all it shows is that the strategy is so complex that no one can understand it. (NYT article about this here.)

I particularly appreciate when people with this sort of visualization skill put their efforts into something fairly useless… The below graphic shows the evolution of crayola color choices from 1903 to the present.

Maybe working on “fluff pieces” like this is like the guilty pleasure of infographics people?

They’re like, “What data, if arranged into a graphic, will just look really pretty?” … “I know, crayola colors over time!”

This is an amazing example of a totally useless, and yet totally awesome infographic.

On a continuum, the pierceived trustworthiness of beard types. (Click image for larger version, then click it again to zoom.)

This is pretty entertaining… We all know about the “Missed Connections” section on Craiglist (I happen to love it), and this graphic shows the most commonly listed locations people give for where the missed connection happened, by state.

The geographic variation between places like gyms vs coffee places vs Walmarts is pretty interesting!

Map by A Very Small Array

April 30, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Graphic Fix

Labels:
Graphic Fix, infographics

Random Acts of Creativity >> Moss "Graffiti"

Living walls + silhouette art + random acts of creativity + street art = just too much. In the best way.

Living (or green) walls, also called vertical gardens, are such a cool concept, and Mosstika, an “Urban Greenery” collaboration between Edina Tokodi and Jozsef Valyi-Toth, has turned them into silhouette art using grasses and moss, and then, even better, they put their pieces on public walls.

I love how their work challenge the traditional notion of graffiti and the effect someone can have on a public space when “making their mark”– both through the content and the medium.

I love that it is something living on the wall, and reminds you of the nature that might have been there before all the buildings were.

Rather than just leaving a tag or a cryptic design, their street art gives something to the passerby– just a small moment in which he or she gets to stop and marvel at the fact that an anonymous stranger spent their time making something beautiful for them to see.

It’s an experience that is capable of making you feel more hopeful about the world for a moment, knowing that someone put that there expecting nothing in return.

Mosstika website here.

via twig and thistle

April 29, 2010

Curated by:
Eliza Coleman

Section:
Arts Visuels, Random Acts of Creativity

Labels:
Arts Visuels, random acts of creativity, Street Art