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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

Design Decoded: Would You Like Arches With That? When Famous Architects Design McDonalds

Photos and drawings of SITE’s floating McDonald’s image (images: SITE: Identity in Density) Since the late 1960s, when McDonald’s abandoned its iconic, modernist-inspired golden-arched buildings in favor of a separate, golden-arched sign and a decidedly less exciting mansard-roofed structure, it has been rare to mention the words “McDonald’s” and “architecture” in the same sentence. Rare, […]