Protecting Bicycles with Innovative Modular Storage Systems

The Palo Alto, California-based company, Bike Arc, was born out of a shared reverence for the bicycle and the environment. The design evolved from the collaborative efforts of celebrated U.S. bicycle advocate Jeff Selzer and Joseph Bellomo, an architect renowned for his leadership in holistic, green design. Bellomo and Selzer worked together on the Palo Alto Bikestation at the Caltrain depot. Bike Arc is patented in both the United States and in Europe.

PRODUCTS:

The concept of the Half Arc stemmed from the need to offer cyclists’ security as well as weather protection for their bicycles. Using the Arc design from the original Bike Arc, the Half Arc once again offers outstanding security in a light, small footprint.

The Umbrella Arc organizes bicycles in a beautiful and efficient manner. It combines the ease of use of the Rac Arc with sculptural organization. It offers an efficient use of space while providing shelter for bicycles in inclement weather. The Umbrella Arc effectively and securely parks 8 bicycles in less than 25 square feet.

The Tube Arc is the flagship of the Arc offerings. Each of the other Arcs was born out of this modular elegant design. The Tube Arc offers exceptional security, ease of use, and complete protection for the bicycle from the elements. The design was conceived to offer flexible, easy-to-install (assembled on site) bicycle parking structures with a “light” approach. The Tube Arc is adaptable from 16 bikes to upwards of 60+ per unit.

The Rac Arc was designed to offer basic, affordable, and attractive bicycle parking. It is a unique design that organizes and honors the bicycle while offering superb security. The design offers a variety of configurations adaptable to commercial and public realms, but is equally effective for use in a single-family home. The Rac Arc can also cantilever over existing or proposed landscaped areas.

The Loop Arc offers simplicity, affordability, and usability. Similar to the rest of the Bike Arc family, it maintains the organization of bicycle parking by providing each bike a designated “parking spot.” As the Loop Arc is two separate pieces, one that supports the front wheel and one that locks to the frame and back wheel, it can be used in a variety of locations and situations including sloped areas or on uneven ground. The Loop Arc works with all different types of bikes (including those with baskets) and no lifting is required.

The Car Arc provides covered shelter for vehicles including electric cars and electric bicycles. The structure is formed from the same curved 1”x3” tubes as the rest of the Arc family, but further extruded to provide enough protection for the entire length of a car. On top of the polycarbonate roof is a layer of solar film, which captures solar energy and converts it into power for the vehicles. The Car Arc is an affordable solution that has the potential to be used in commercial, public, and residential applications and can also be added to an existing car park to provide shelter due to its light load.

The Bus Arc is a further iteration of the Half Arc, generating both a bike storage facility and a waiting area. Recycled resin sheets are rolled and simply attached to the steel ribs, allowing people to sit under protection. An added benefit are the energy inverters, which produce energy that users can plug into while waiting for the bus.

The Ad Arc is a street level barrier screen that has the potential to display a variety of imagery depending upon the use. Each screen is fabricated from galvanized steel flat bars (fixed Ad Arc) or aluminum (removable Ad Arc) framing a transparent polycarbonate printed screen. Each panel can be easily and affordably replaced on a regular basis allowing users to frequently update their display such as a restaurant owner revising a menu or retail products. The size of the seating screen is also flexible, ranging from 2’ to 4’ in length and 3’ to 5’ in height to fit into every application.

The Transit Arc promotes bicycle routes along transit corridors providing safe and continuous bike commute corridors. For example, we believe there is an opportunity for bike connections to exist alongside electrified commuter train corridors with high-speed trains elevated aesthetically beautiful above such as the San Jose to San Francisco new High-Speed Rail and Caltrain.

The House Arc is a modular off-the-grid housing solution where the pieces are shipped (ideally, fabricated locally) to the site and erected by the user or community. The first House Arc prototypes to be built will be on the Big Island of Hawaii; completion is anticipated in 2009. We hope organizations dedicated to finding the most affordable off-the-grid modular housing solutions will consider the House Arc.

From Maruja Fuentes.

I don't know about the elbow rest portion, but the sitting spot has excellent potential for bus stops, DMV's and the like. That is to say, potential for very hip versions of those places.

Chew with your lights on...

Gummi Bear lights:

Around 7" by 4" wide and come in various colors. They have a 20-hour lithium battery, so no cord is needed. Place them anywhere in your German candy factory.

via Property Furniture.

Develop : Make : Object

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

If only it were this easy...

It's a whole new world, hopefully...

Obama: the post-environmental president

What does the election mean for climate change and energy policy?
by Adam Stein – November 5, 2008

There’s been a bit of chatter in recent weeks about whether an Obama victory would truly be as transformative as many progressives hope and expect. Some have quietly suggested that nothing in Obama’s record, temperament, or platform should make us expect dramatic gestures. They say that those who think otherwise are letting the man’s remarkable personal story cloud their judgment of his governing philosophy, or discounting the extent to which every president is constrained by Congress.

There’s something to this, and ultimately any president’s legacy is determined as much by events as by his or her personal qualities. That said, I think that Obama’s presidency has a good chance of being a transformative one, particularly in the area of climate and energy. Circumstances have delivered up a set of interlinked crises — economic, environmental, and security-related — at just the moment that we’ve elected a person who seems to fully grasp the scope of the problem and the proper shape of the solution.

Obama has often been referred to as the first post-racial politician. When we someday evaluate his tenure, we may come to see him instead as the first post-environmental president, the leader who was able to connect the dots on energy, the economy, and security in way that elevates these issues above narrow interest group concerns and places them at the center of the political agenda.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Happy November 4th...

Google gives your ideas an allowance...

Project 10 to the 100th is a call from Google for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. On February 27, Google will choose the best 200 ideas, donating $10 million to help with their implementation. Deadline for submissions is October 20th.



Categories:
Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

Criteria:
Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?

You spin me right round...

Look closely, tell me what you see...

Liverpool Biennial's Flickr Page

Launched on August 20th, 2008, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Joyful Trees was a hit at the Liverpool Biennial MADE UP.

Celebrating 10 years of commissioning ambitious and challenging new work by leading international artists, the fifth edition of Liverpool Biennial’s International exhibition is MADE UP, an exploration of the power of the artistic imagination.



What's more to this than just a simple installation are the eerie sounds that escape the city in the background as the trees spin, complimenting the mechanical movement of the organic landscape. You can't help but think of the cars and buses as factory noises, pushing steam and popping hydrolic lifts, spinning the tress in circles.

Liverpool Biennial's Flickr Page

As a practical concept, think of the installation in terms of blocking heat gain. Perforated steel and other materials could be replaced with waltzing trees and spinning shrubs. It's a stretch, I know, but what really isn't in this day and age?

I've landed...

I've been in Seattle all week, posts will resume shortly....

Von's in Seattle, with over 450 bottles of booze behind the bar.

Jennnnnnga...

From ARBITARE.

Next Generation House is a small housing module for weekend use, located on the edge of a forest overlooking the River Kuma at Kumakura, opposite the temple of Shibatatehime.

The client is a timber merchant. The small pavilion, a 4x4 m cube, is made by assembling solid Japanese cedar blocks kept in place by their own weight and connecting metal cables running through vertical drill holes. Some of the inside cubes are laid off-centre to create shelves, small living areas and even steps to move from one level to another.

Offsets in the wall cubes also create windows with views of the surrounding countryside. The oblique glass windowpanes are held in place with plastic plugs. The mobile sheets are in transparent acrylic. Two roof skylights provide extra natural light – an architectural feature over which Fujimoto takes special care. At night, artificial light visible from the outside helps to dematerialise the cube by mixing the warm tones of wood with the amber glow of incandescent bulbs, emphasising the ways in which a structure made up of heavy wooden elements can seem so light and airy.

Sou Fujimoto (Japan, 1971) architect. He lives in Tokyo, Japan. His children’s mental health centre won an AR Award in 2006. He has taught in several Japanese universities. In addition to his work as an architect, he writes for international magazines like A+U. He is currently working on a series of housing projects: House N, Tokyo Apartment and the Future Primitive House.

He had a pretty interesting start at the ripe age of 20. Worthe a quick read HERE.

Let's go throw the proton around...

Over at DVICE, they've got 30 stunning images of the Large Hadron Collider. Judging by a quick summize of Twitter, we're all alive and (still) cracking jokes, albeit poorly written ones.

Be careful not to step in any strange matter.

String cheese theory and hard-on jokes seem to be especially popular.

It's raining regulatory code, hallelujah...

Catching rain water is against the law

August 12th, 2008 @ 11:49pm
By John Hollenhorst

Who owns the rain? Not you, it turns out. You're actually breaking the law if you capture the rain falling on your roof and pour it on your flower bed! A prominent Utah car dealer found that out when he tried to do something good for the environment.

Rebecca Nelson captures rainwater in a barrel, and she pours it on her plants. "We can fill up a barrel in one rainstorm. And so it seems a waste to just let it fall into the gravel," she said.

Car dealer Mark Miller wanted to do pretty much the same thing on a bigger scale. He collects rainwater on the roof of his new building, stores it in a cistern and hopes to clean cars with it in a new, water-efficient car wash. But without a valid water right, state officials say he can't legally divert rainwater. "I was surprised. We thought it was our water," Miller said.

State officials say it's an old legal concept to protect people who do have water rights. Boyd Clayton, the deputy state engineer, said, "Obviously if you use the water upstream, it won't be there for the person to use it downstream."

"Utah's the second driest state in the nation. Our water laws ought to catch up with that," Miller says.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

It came with a wrench...

Building with the Swedish system of closed panel wall elements in Sigtuna, Sweden.

Want.

My new guilty pleasure...

...is surfing the web...

...for a different kind of porn...

...known as stair porn.

Thanks to this website, I don't have to look very far...

Stair Porn

1. Wooden bookcase images from Living Etc, Elle interiör
2. Tolo House, Alvaro Leite Siza
3. Roarockit Skateboard Company Deck Stairs
4. Hanging Spiral Stairs, Didden Village, MVRDV
5. Wexford Hotel, Montego Bay, Jamaica

A homegrown post...

When we die, let's donate our land to the city with the hopes that they turn it in to a field of cement corn. Think of it, Eulalia...cement corn as far as the eye can see!

Flickr user jfsl3.

I'm not sure that that's exactly what Sam and Eulalia Frantz envisioned for their land before passing from this life to the next. Actually, I'm sure nobody envisions such an image. Regardless, that was the fitting tribute they gave this corn farmer and his wife.

Sam Frantz had/has a rich farm history in Dublin, OH. He is most well known for his corn hybridization techniques, most notably from the 1930's to the 1960's. And from my perspective, as a child, Frantz road really was the heart of Dublin. Aside from the upper-echelon houses and neatly-cropped golf courses, there wasn't much in the area but expansive farmland and soccer fields, all of which stretched along the perimeter of Frantz Road.

Today, however, farm titles have been bought Sam Walton-style in favor of track housing, "upgrade-available" condos, and malls, malls, malls - I can even remember (a number of years ago) one of our independent papers running a contest to come up with a new city motto, and a jaded reader submitted the wonderful, "Columbus: Malltastic!"

Such is the feeling for a good portion of Columbus development, including but not limited to, the outskirts of Dublin in the mid-1990's. Many other areas, such as Hilliard, Gahanna and Westerville experienced the same sort of development. Some fared the storm, while others folded in favor of the next housing development or mall expansion.

The Field of Corn

Also known as Cornhenge, the Field of Corn with Osage Orange Trees was conceived by artist Malcolm Cochran, and commissioned by the Dublin Arts Council in 1994. The site sits in a large grass field adjacent to Nationwide Insurance. Around the time of completion, 1,500 employees had relocated from Nationwide's downtown office in Columbus to the Dublin suburb - a trend omnipresent with the Central Ohio business model of that time. In fact, many other companies did the same, opting instead for the bright lights of the highway outer belt, over the parking-choked commute nightmare that was/is downtown Columbus.

Given the influx of residents to the suburbs, the decision was an easy one for most executives, even if it meant driving the city to one of the highest downtown vacancy rates in the nation, a trend that reached its worst from 00-02.

Now, however, with the development of the Arena District and surrounding areas --in addition to 10-year tax abatement programs for housing and other businesses-- Columbus is seeing a reurbanization of sorts.

So why the corn fields for a post?

Well, I've lived in Central Ohio for 80% of my life and never really explored some of the established attractions. As a result, Malcolm Cochran's cornfields caught my eye (or recaught, for that matter) because I've seen it surface every now and again on the interweb; from Scott Beale's experience at Laughing Squid to Neatorama's post, even Roadside America. Some people have even made videos of the field, like this one of a crazed man running through the corn sculptures. So it obviously catches a lot of peoples' attention, whereas I've kind of mentally written it off.

So again, why the fields?

They're odd, but they're the good kind of odd, and we don't get much of that good-kind-of-odd in Ohio. Not to mention, I think Cochran was trying to make a statement about the suburbanization of of our culture by permanently establishing a cornfield as, well, a cornfield!?!? And an absurd cornfield at that! 109 pieces of 8'0" friggin' tall corn.

From plaques on the site:

Corn has been cultivated in Ohio for approximately 1800 years. It was known to prehistoric Native American Hopewell peoples (A.D. 100-500). Prehistoric and historic Native Americans combined plantings of corn, beans, squash, and gourds in their fields and small garden plots. Two important varieties of corn were Northern flint corn, which had 16 to 20 rows of kernels on long, thin cobs, and Southern gourdseed corn, which had short, stubby ears with up to 32 rows of kernels. By the mid-1700s, Native Americans in Ohio grew great quantities of corn, often in larger fields. Particularly along the Scioto and Miami River valleys, it was not uncommon to see thousands of acres of cornfields. The Wyandot Indians, who are known to have camped on scenic Indian Run just north of Dublin village, were prominent among the historic Native American cultivators of corn.

OK, so the installation's plaque might not expound on my theory of cornfield-as-a-development-statement, but I still thought it was worth a post. And given the recent influx of cheap condos, loft-style apartments and plastic buildings going up in our fair city, who knows? Maybe one day we'll see a public park downtown with 109 strategically-placed tiny buildings scattered across a grass field - a fitting tribute to the over-development currently taking place.

Check it out when you have time:

Field of Corn (with Osage Orange Trees)
4995 Rings Rd
Dublin, OH 43017

Try it out in Google Streetview.

They have a FLARE for kinetic movement...

Some of you might know my obsession for the pneumatically actuated installation known as Hyposurface. I can't figure out if it's the flow or limitless functional possibilities that intrigues me more, but I'm fascinated by every color, click and wave.



Recently, a robot junkie peep of mine in San Fransisco pointed me to the water sculptures of William Pye and, for whatever reason, I was reminded more so of the mechanical movement in Hyposurface than the organic, hypnotic movement of Pye's water sculptures.

Call it an obsession with simulated movement, but for whatever reason, I'm more impressed with technological mimicry than its natural brethren. So I decided to go back to the Hyposurface concept and see if there was anything new on the market.

Needless to say, I'm in love with a new piece of technology. Take one part wall curtain, two parts stealth bomber, multiply by peyote and you've got:

FLARE: Kinetic Ambiant Reflection Membrane

FLARE turns the building facade into a penetrable kinetic membrane, breaking with all conventions of the building surface as a static skin. The FLARE system consists of a number of tiltable metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders.


Due to the developed pattern, an infinite array of flakes can be mounted on any building or wall surface in a modular system of multiplied FLARE units.

Each metal flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position. When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel.

By reflecting ambient or direct sunlight, the individual flakes of the FLARE system act like pixels formed by natural light. The system is controlled by a computer to form any kind of surface animation. Sensor systems inside and outside the building communicate the buildings activity directly to the FLARE system which acts as the buildings lateral line.

Read more about FLARE Facade HERE.

Gary Fisher hits nail on head...

“Cars are the new smoking.”

-Gary Fisher

via Bike Portland, via via Matt Haughey on Twitter.

If cars are the new smoking, then SUV drivers are the new meth addicts.

Like Matt Haughey, I love love love this Gary Fisher quote. Can't wait to use it in a bar.

It's diamond-polished on the soles of your shoes...

As we all know, I like my concrete. OK, so maybe not in a like-like sort of way, but a simple like.

Raw? It really does nothing for me raw. But inherent simplicity of the material, when spiced up a bit, can have a dramatic effect on a room (throw in a heating element and I'm sold!). Given its widespread use as a base in both residential and industrial design, I've yet to figure out why it is so underutilized as a final application.

So as we began tearing up 800 sf of carpet and began the process of prepping the concrete for an impending acid stain, I couldn't help but wonder what else was on the market to just treat treat/finish the floor as is; the term acid stain don't necessarily scream "chemical free" now, does it? One company that repeatedly surfaced in the blogosphere is the Utah-based Retro Plate Concrete Polishing System. They take an old floor, polish it up, and make it super shiny. Easy, eh?

Well, as it turns out, treating a raw concrete floor has other advantages I didn't know about:

From BuildingGreen.com:

Covering concrete with cosmetic layers can increase environmental and financial costs significantly over the lifespan of a structure as compared with using concrete in a structure-as-finish capacity. Polished and densified concrete floors (old or new) combine diamond stone-polishing technology with silicate chemical treatment to provide a significantly better alternative to film and wax coatings—highly durable, nearly maintenance-free, noncombustible… and the improved reflectivity can also reduce lighting requirements.

Who knew?

Neato.

More on Retro Plate and their sustainable polishing system:

Concrete in its “natural” state is a porous product that is susceptible to efflorescence, spalling and dusting; and it does not provide an aesthetic finish, nor is it easily cleaned.

That's why Advanced Floor Products has created a science and art that revolves around the conversion of concrete from being a plain, boring, and porous industrial floor, to being one of strength, longevity and beauty.

Rather than continually having to cover up the floor and trying to hide the inherent problems, only to create new ones, our skilled Certified Applicators create a floor that meets your long-term needs.

Through the use of our patented process of diamond grinding and polishing, in conjunction with the specially formulated RetroPlate, we eliminate your need for all topical sealers. We eliminate moisture vapor problems.

Bottom line: Look at the true costs of the product that you choose…and RetroPlate will generally be your cost effective choice. Short term or long term: we deliver the best!

-Retro Plate Concrete Polishing System

Anyway, now that the carpet is gone (but not forgotten) it amazes me to think how much acoustic insulation we will need. Even for a room that small, there is a tremendous echo. Such an echo would be minimized in residential applications (given the softer furnishings), but how do you make up for such a void in industrial applications? Where does the trade-off begin to level out of sound vs. durability?

Put it away after using the restroom...

Insanely busy at work/home right now, so the posts have been few and far between. Here's a quicky for ya...

As someone that used to live in an 750 sf house --yes, house-- I can appreciate the size of a bathroom. Every single square inch counted as we bumped morning elbows with one another, sometimes reaching for the faucet while the other was spitting. Well, two of these would have made a world of difference.

But think bigger.


Airplanes, trains, metro stops...