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Architecture

Design Decoded: The Architectural History of Pepsi, Part 1: The ‘Mad Men’ Years

  The Park Avenue facade of the Pepsi-Cola Corporation World Headquarters, designed by SOM (image: Ezra Stoller, via SOM] In 1963, Pepsi-Cola launched a new advertising campaign: The Pepsi Generation. Those three simple words represented a drastic rebranding for the company, which had previously marketed itself as a cheaper version of rival Coca-Cola. With the […]

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Architecture

Design Decoded: The Secret to the Modern Beehive is a One-Centimeter Air Gap

Typical examples of modern beehives. The larger boxes at the bottom contain the brood and food for the bees. The smaller boxes, separated by a filter that prevents entry by the queen bee, contains the frames used for collecting honey. (image: jonathunder, wikimedia commons) In 1851, Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth invented a better beehive and […]

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Architecture

Design Decoded: Apiculture and Architecture or What’s the buzz on honeybees and highrises?

  Looking up into a skyscraper for bees, designed by students at the University of Buffalo (image: Hive City) It’s been five years now since it was reported that, for the first time ever, more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. Such a dramatic demographic shift comes with inevitable consequences – […]

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Architecture

Design Decoded: BIG Plans for a Lego Museum in Denmark

Still from an animation illustrating the concept behind BIG’s design for Lego House (image: BIG) Some architects played with Legos as a child. And some never stopped playing with them. Take, for instance, the Copenhagen and New York-based architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) –the architects currently developing a master plan for the Smithsonian Institution in […]

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Architecture

The 64-Square Grid Design of ‘Through the Looking Glass’

  Painters, sculptors and musicians have long since found inspiration in the complex movement of thirty-two pieces across a chessboard. But writers too have found inspiration in the 64 square battlefield. Perhaps none moreso than Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll aka the writer of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What […]